This study presents a backstepping scheme for the control and synchronization of chaos in the damped-driven pendulum. The method is a systematic design approach and consists of a recursive procedure that skillfully interlaces the choice of a Lyapunov function with the control. With this technique, the chaotic dynamics of the pendulum is stabilized to the stable equilibrium point and the arbitrary bounded function of time f(t) is tracked. It is further shown that the complete synchronization between two identical chaotic pendula can be realized using this method. Numerical simulations are also presented to verify the control approach.