At the most basic level, this was a comic book series about a middle class Caucasian family with four children, closely spaced, a professional father and an essentially stay-at-home mom. The parents had obviously married and begun having children while fairly young, probably while still in college. Given the composition of the family and the way they behaved, they simply "seemed Mormon" to many readers, or at least to those who bothered to think about what religion they might be.
The parents and four children obviously had some religious training in their background (although they were never shown attending church in the present), yet there was never anything such as a character wearing Catholic crucifix (or any sort of cross worn or displayed in the home) to concretely tie the family to a specific denomination. When one of the characters began wearing a BYU sweatshirt (for "Brigham Young University," where 98% of students are Latter-day Saints), it seemed to indicate that the parents had attended school there (which is probably where they met, before the father's graduate studies elsewhere). For many, this confirmed existing suspicions that the family had a Latter-day Saint background.
The occupation of the family's father (James Power) was also seen as an indicator of the family's religious affiliation. Whereas a talented, religious-seeming physicist with four young children might seem unusual in most circles, it would not be abnormal among Latter-day Saints, among whom physicists are over-represented. Contrary to trends exhibited by most religious denominations, among Latter-day Saints higher levels of education are associated with higher levels of religious activity. Published studies have shown that this trend is most pronounced among Latter-day Saints with advanced degrees in physical sciences (particularly physics and chemistry) and least pronounced among members with advanced degrees in the Humanities (literature, history, etc.)
James Power's specific field of research was antimatter. In fact, it was his creation of an antimatter energy device that led the benign alien Whitey to come to Earth to try to prevent Mr. Power from activating a device that could unintentionally devastate the entire Earth. The science of antimatter energy is (at this time) mostly theoretical rather than practical, but it is a real field of research which follows directly from the application of quantum mechanics to chemistry, an area which was pioneered by famed Latter-day Saint scientist Henry Eyring (20 February 1901 - 26 December 26 1981). Past president of both the American Chemical Society and the Association for the Advancement of Science, Henry Eyring received the National Medal of Science for developing the Absolute Rate Theory of chemical reactions. Eyring, a colleague of Albert Einstein, was widely known as a Latter-day Saint within the scientific community. Henry Eyring spent most of his career as a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey - not far from where the Power family lived when their comic book series began. Henry Eyring married Mildred Bennion while in Wisconsin, before going to Princeton. One of Henry Eyring's three sons became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest governing body of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Despite vague surface similarities between James Power and Henry Eyring in their families, lives and field of research, James Power is in no way based on Henry Eyring or any other real-life Latter-day Saint physicist.
If anything, James Power and his wife Margaret were based on Power Pack writer Louise Simonson and her husband Walt Simonson. Louise (who was known to her friends as "Weezie") was also known as an editor for Marvel Comics including (for many years) the X-Men family of titles. Walt Simonson was one of the most America's most popular comic book writers and artists, whose highly-regarded work includes a lengthy run on Thor. Despite the many positively-portrayed overtly religious characters that can be found Walt Simonson's comic book writing (including Hawkgirl), neither Walt nor Louise Simonson are known to be Latter-day Saints. Regardless of what readers think of this characters, Louise Simonson probably did not consider the Power family to be Latter-day Saints when she created the characters.
In identifying Power Pack as Latter-day Saints, some comic book fans have gone beyond comparisons of the Power family to contemporary Latter-day Saints and have suggested similarities between the team's origin and the origins of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a whole. Joseph Smith Jr. was the founder of this denomination. Joseph Smith lived with his mother, father, brothers and sisters in New York (like the Power family). According to his account, Smith was visited by Heavenly messengers who were clad all in white and bathed in light (similar to Whitey). Whitey placed his hands on the Power children and passed his powers to them so that they could save the world from annihilation that could be caused by the anti-matter device. Similarly, Joseph Smith was given priesthood power when Heavenly messengers laid their hands on him and Oliver Cowdery (his brother in the church). This was power they were given so that they could bring the world the message of the "Restored" New Testament church. Although not as physically expedient a mission as that undertaken by the Power children, Smith's assignment was also, in effect, to help "save the world."
We regard such analysis as an inappropriate method for identifying a character's religious affiliation. (For example, despite Superman's overtly portrayed Midwestern Protestant upbringing and non-human birth, some people have identified the character as "Jewish" of similarities between his origin story and the story of Moses.) Regardless of obvious similarities between the Power Pack origin story and the Joseph Smith story, such similarities should not be regarded as evidence that the Powers are Latter-day Saints. It should also be noted that there are many marked differences between the Power Pack origin story and the Joseph Smith story.
As of this writing, Latter-day Saints comprise 2% of the U.S. population. This means that, statistically speaking, 1 out of ever 50 American super-heroes are likely to belong to this minority group. The Marvel Universe is supposedly a fictional version of the real world, with events taking place in real cities (such as New York) and characters belong to real religions (such as Catholic Nightcrawler and Daredevil, Jews Kitty Pryde and the Thing, etc.) It is natural for some readers to look at the known super-heroes and wonder which of them belongs to all sorts of real-world minority groups (ethnic, religious or otherwise). Ultimately, the real source of speculation that the Power Pack kids are Latter-day Saints might be the question, "What Marvel super-heroes are most likely to be LDS?" Marvel has hundreds of super-heroes, so 1 out of 50 must mean there are a few. If not Power Pack, then who? Power Pack provides a natural fit to this natural question.
Is it possible that Power Pack is not LDS? We believe the answer is "yes." We have no objection to those who feel that the "jury is still out" on this subject and that the religious affiliation of Power Pack has not been authoritatively established within the context of the comics themselves.
Of course, defenders of this position are likely to respond, "If Power Pack isn't LDS, what on Earth are they?"
To this, we have no answer.