Journal articles on the topic 'Mormon missionaries'

I have encountered Mormon missionaries in various regions of the United States and the world—but I never could find any detailed information about them written by a non-Mormon. I found this absence surprising, since their church has sent over 1.1 million missionaries around the world since its founding. With encouragement from my students, I, a non-Mormon, wrote the book The Mormon Missionary: Who Is That Knocking at My Door? (2015, 576 pages). This article tells the story of my interviews with nearly three hundred Mormon missionaries, my findings, and the book’s reception by the Mormon scholarly and missionary communities.

Despite the steep decline in organized religious affiliation in the United States, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, has continued to see consistent growth and stability in the organization. One way this Church maintains its organizational and cultural structure is through its mission program. This program institutionalizes and standardizes a large-scale rite of passage so as to foster structural understanding and commitment. Using a structurational model of identification, this study examined the missionary experience of 38 prospective, active, and recently returned missionaries and how the missionary experience influences the rules and resources that make up an individual’s identity. Constant comparative analysis revealed that missionaries experienced a rite of passage through three identity-shaping processes: divestiture, individualizing the missionary identity, and mastering the missionary identity. Further, this study demonstrated that missionaries and returned missionaries use rules and resources developed through missionary service to influence the production and reproduction of the Mormon structure through individual development, family construction, and organizational service.

This qualitative research examined Mormon missionary experiences and their impacts on the religiosity of returned missionaries living in Utah. Based on open-ended surveys completed by those who served a mission for the Mormon Church, this research analyzed how missionary experiences increased the religiosity of most missionaries, as well as reasons why some respondents felt their missionary experiences decreased their religious level. This paper also examined the missionary experiences of those who later dropped out of Mormonism – why their missionary experiences failed to strengthen their commitment while they convinced others to join the Mormon Church. This paper found that men and women faced different challenges during their mission, and mission experiences also affected men’s and women’s religiosity differently. In addition, although those who served in Western Europe faced the highest rate of rejection during their mission, they reported higher religious and spiritual levels than their counterparts. The paper concludes with the development of a grounded theory arguing that the impact of the Mormon missionary experiences on missionaries’ subsequent religiosity corresponds to a process of maximizing social acceptance and minimizing social rejections among various social groups.

In 1852 King Victor Emmanuel’s ministers proposed legislation to recognize civil marriages in the Kingdom of Sardinia (Piedmont). This proposal was opposed by Pope Pius IX and other Catholic apologists who argued that it would result in undermining the official status of the Catholic Church and one of the church’s sacraments. Even worse it would mean that Jewish and Protestant marriages would be recognized. This legislation coincided with Mormon missionaries proselytizing in Torino and the public announcement that the church practiced polygamy. Catholic opponents of this legislation argued that even Mormon polygamous marriages would be recognized if the legislation passed. During fierce debates that took place Catholic apologists also claimed that Mormons formed alliances with other Protestant “sects” to push through the civil marriage litigation. The specter of Mormon plural marriages in a civil marriage system continued to be mentioned until civil marriages were finally recognized in 1865.

This study offers a theoretical perspective on the role of social media in the transition home for returning missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (lds/Mormon). Despite a long tradition of strict lds institutional norms aimed at sheltering full-time church missionaries from outside media influences, missionaries are today increasingly encouraged to use social media sites in their proselytizing efforts. Through qualitative, in-depth interviews with recently returned lds missionaries, this study explores the role Facebook plays in facilitating the maintenance of mission relationships after missionaries have returned home, something interviewees said helps them retain the sense of religious commitment and identity developed through missionary service. Interview findings also complicate the potential benefits of social media use, providing evidence for the argument that returning lds missionaries are often caught between media technology, personal media preferences, institutional authority, and popular culture. These individuals seem to occupy a doubly liminal position between full-time proselytizing and life at home, between a historical religious tradition of missionary media isolation and an emerging institutional embrace of social media—all of which results in what might best be described as an uncanny experience.

John Nicholson's The Preceptor is the first book dedicated to an explicitly Mormon rhetorical theory, which he attempts to employ in the troubled landscape of LDS missionary training. This essay examines Nicholson's advice to missionaries, and argues that The Preceptor links logos and the Holy Spirit together in homiletic division of labor, connecting traditional Christian preaching with indigenous Mormon style and theology. By studying The Preceptor we can gain an appreciation for how rhetorical theories develop specific features that reflect a particular culture's location in history and society, and examine a rhetoric that served as an alternative to mainstream American religious and secular rhetorical development.

This article examines the linguistic skills, cultural knowledge, and assimilation of students who have completed a Spanish-language mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a population that attains a high level of fluency in a second language. The results of a written survey completed by 103 students who had served Spanish-language missions are described. These students’ linguistic strengths and weaknesses resemble those of heritage language learners, while their motivation and cultural understanding are more similar to those of traditional foreign language students. Although these students lived in the target culture for an extended period of time and many attained a high level of linguistic proficiency, their awareness of cultural issues and ability to articulate them were limited. It seems that certain attributes of the Hispanic culture may have become ingrained in the students’ personalities nonetheless.

This study attempted to explore the ‘coming out’ experiences of gay men affiliated with the Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) Church, and who once were missionaries for their church. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was chosen as the method of data analysis. Three self-identified gay men were interviewed over the telephone and their discourses tape-recorded and transcribed. Five main themes emerged from the data: (1) heterosexuality as ideal; (2) awareness of own sexuality; (3) becoming a Missionary; (4) enduring gay feelings; and (5) embracing a gay lifestyle. Overall, participants experienced early in life the stigma that their church has on homosexuality, and felt failure and despair for sometime after returning from their mission. In the end, they have prioritized their sexuality over religion but are hopeful that the LDS church will one day accept gay people without trying to change their sexuality.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the first Mormon mission to Jamaica in January 1853. The missionaries, facing opposition from both black and white Jamaicans, returned to the United States after only a month on the island, having made only four converts. Latter-day Saints did not return to Jamaica for another 125 years. Drawing on the missionaries’ personal papers, church archives, local newspaper reports, and governmental records, I argue that the 1853 mission played a crucial role in shaping nineteenth-century Mormonism's racial theology, including the “temple and priesthood ban” that restricted priesthood ordination and temple worship for black men and women. While historians have rightly noted the role twentieth-century missions to regions of the African Diaspora played in ending the ban, studies of the racial restriction's early scope have been discussed in almost exclusively American contexts. The mission to Jamaica, precisely because of its failure, helped shape the ban's implementation and theological justifications. Failing to make any inroads, the elders concluded that both Jamaica and its inhabitants were cursed and not worthy of the missionaries’ time, which anticipated later decisions to prioritize preaching to whites and to scale back and ultimately abandon efforts to proselytize people of African descent.

In March 1830, the Grandin Press in Palmyra, New York, published the first edition of the Book of Mormon. On April 6, Joseph Smith, Jr., organized the Church of Christ—Mormonism—in Fayette near the Finger Lakes. Shortly thereafter, Joseph's unschooled younger brother Samuel filled a knapsack with copies of the book and traveled to villages westward to make converts to what he believed to be the restoration of primitive Christianity. From these beginnings, a small army of itinerant missionaries gathered several thousand American converts throughout the 1830's.

During the nineteenth century, Protestant clergymen (Anglican, Presbyterian, and Baptist) as well as missionaries for new religious movements (Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses) believed that Waldensian claims to antiquity were important in their plans to spread the Reformation to Italy. The Waldensians, who could trace their historical roots to Valdes in 1174, developed an ancient origins thesis after their union with the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. This thesis held that their community of believers had preserved the doctrines of the primitive church. The competing churches of the Reformation believed that the Waldensians were "destined to fulfill a most important mission in the Evangelization of Italy" and that they could demonstrate, through Waldensian history and practices, that their own claims and doctrines were the same as those taught by the primitive church. The new religious movements believed that Waldensians were the best prepared in Italy to accept their new revelations of the restored gospel. In fact, the initial Mormon, Seventh-day Adventist, and Jehovah's Witness converts in Italy were Waldensians. By the end of the century, however, Catholic, Protestant, and Waldensian scholars had debunked the thesis that Waldensians were proto-Protestants prior to Luther and Calvin.

Presented at the Second Language Research Forum, Michigan State University, USA; 30 October 2009Recent years have brought increasing attention to studies of language acquisition in a country where the language is spoken, as opposed to formal language study in classrooms. Research on language learners in immersion contexts is important, as the question of whether study abroad is valuable is still somewhat controversial among researchers (DeKeyser 2007; Sunderman & Kroll 2009). In the introduction to a pioneering volume on language study abroad, Freed (1995, pp. 17–18) noted that a vital question concerns the relative linguistic benefits of a summer, a semester or a year in the foreign environment. Our purpose in this colloquium, which was organized by Lynne Hansen, was to introduce a new line of research which allows comparisons of L2 attainment over these exposure times as well as longer periods. Tens of thousands of young missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the LDS or Mormon Church), advanced speakers of some fifty languages, return home annually after two years of language learning abroad. This natural sample of learners, in its relative uniformity of learner characteristics and learning contexts, allows for the control of variables in SLA research which can be problematic in studies of more heterogeneous groups.

The first African converts of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa were five freed slaves, who had been given to the mission by the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1864. Their stories provide a microcosm of varying responses to mission Christianity by both clerical and lay Christians. One convert, Arthur Songolo, quickly rejected mission Christianity outright. Three converts embraced the UMCA's primary goal and were trained to serve as missionaries on the African mainland. One of them, subdeacon George Farajallah, died during the cholera epidemic of 1870, before he could be assigned to a mission post. Francis Mabruki served as a missionary, but ultimately left the UMCA, in part due to paternalism in the mission. John Swedi served faithfully his entire life as a deacon on the African mainland and in Zanzibar. Robert Feruzi appropriated the UMCA's goal for lay Christians. He was a reliable employee and consistent Christian throughout his secular career, which included participation in two of Henry Morton Stanley's African expeditions.

The period of 1989–2001 is of interest for the study of church life in Russia, including in Togliatti, since it was at this time that the legislation on religious cults was radically changing, and religious organizations were given freedom for their activities. In Togliatti, this was reflected in the fact that since 1989 unregistered religious organizations came out of hiding and new ones were formed. Religious organizations had the opportunity not only to worship, but also to engage in social activities and to go to the media. The city authorities, instead of strict restrictions and regulation of religious organizations’ activities, were obliged, according to the new legislation, to assist them. The purpose of the research is to study the situation and activities of religious organizations in Togliatti in 1989–2001, to evaluate the results of their interaction with municipal authorities. Materials and methods. The study implementation was achieved through the use of materials from the municipal public institution “Togliatti Archive”, periodical press data, memoirs of contemporaries, materials from the current archive of Samara Diocesan Administration closed to the public (reports of the ruling bishop of Samara Diocese to the Moscow Patriarchate), materials from the author’s personal archive: reports of officials on the religious situation in Togliatti. The sources were analyzed to identify patterns in changes in religious life that took place and trends in its formation. The research methodology includes the method of analyzing documents, and the method of synchronous comparison with documentary material was used in working with periodical press materials. The statistical method is used to analyze the data related to the emergence of new religious organizations and opening religious buildings for worship by them. In order to solve the issue of the reliability and representativeness of the sources put into circulation, the history of the origin and the fate of these sources was studied using a content-related and correlation analysis. The scientific novelty of the research lies in disclosure of the forms and methods of work carried out by Togliatti municipal authorities with religious organizations and believers, the study of the number of religious organizations and their numberedness in 1989–2001. Research results. Religious organizations effectively took advantage of the new religious legislation, multiplying the number of parishes in Togliatti, as well as forming new religious communities. Togliatti municipal authorities preferred Orthodox religious organizations in religious policy, which is confirmed by their financing, allocation of land plots to construct temples, and media coverage of intra-church events. Most Protestant organizations appeared after visits to Togliatti paid by domestic and foreign missionaries and preachers. Some of them stayed in Togliatti and headed these communities. Conclusions. In 1989-2001, the number of parishes of various religious organizations in Togliatti increased from 4 to 40. If before 1989 there were registered Orthodox and Baptist parishes and unregistered Muslim and Pentecostal religious organizations in the city, then since 1989 there appeared parishes and communities of the Roman Catholic Church, the Old Believer Church (3 directions), the New Apostolic Church, the Molokan spiritual Christians, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Mormons, witnesses the Jehovah’s Witnesses*, the Buddhists, the Krishnaites, the Sahaja yogis, followers of Vissarion and others. Not all of them were registered. The number of Orthodox parishes increased from 1 to 13, Baptist parishes from 1 to 3, Pentecostal parishes from 1 to 4, and Muslim organizations from 1 to 4. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and the diocesan leadership were not satisfied with the status of Orthodoxy as one of the religions, they claimed a special status, attitude and funding from the state and local authorities. It follows from here – creation of a dozen church departments covering all aspects of the society’s life and activities, from interaction with the media to presence in correctional facilities. The diocesan and city church leaders opposed the increased activity of non-Orthodox church organizations, sending appropriate letters to the municipal authorities of Togliatti, publishing articles in the media. Togliatti authorities took into account the opinion of the Orthodox leadership even in such cases as allocation of land plots to non-Orthodox religious organizations.

AbstractThis article applies Language Management Theory/Framework to the behavior toward language observed in the missionary program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons) in the Czech Republic. It analyzes data directly from the mission site, focusing on specifically the combination of the highly specific character of the missionaries' acquisition of Czech and their role as native speakers of English. It explores not only the acquisition, but also the use of the mission language, highlighting the relationship between macro structures of the church's language policy, the character of the missionaries' work in general, and language use in individual interactions. The article concludes by arguing that not only the knowledge of the local language, but also the acquired orientation to the local sociolinguistic situation and communicative practices are what enable the missionaries to do their work.

This article provides a philosophical analysis using Foucault’s concepts of archaeology and genealogy to the Spanish colonization of the Filipinos. As a philosophical treatise, this article focused its discussion on the plurality of discourses that emerged and prevailed during the colonization. It illustrated the techniques and strategies used to propagate the discourses of the colonizers and to transform the Filipino natives into colonial subjects and in particular, the techniques and strategies utilized by Spanish missionaries. Lastly, it also presented the discourses of Filipino propagandists to enlighten the Filipinos about their colonial situation as well as to deconstruct the discourses inculcated by the colonizers in the Filipino consciousness. References Arcilla, J.S. “Chapter Three: Organizing A Colony” in Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People. Volume 3. 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