Busting the Silos of “Global” Scholarship

“this is the global mormonism volume we've been waiting for,” my colleague David Howlett recently said of the Palgrave Handbook of Global Mormonism.I have to say I agree. At 868 pages, this volume is more comprehensive than any that have come before, with thirty-one chapters written by forty-two authors on three restoration traditions, discussing over forty countries and even more ethnic and cultural groupings. The editors have brought together not only scholars from the fields already well represented within Mormon studies (history, religious studies, sociology, anthropology, studies of gender, race, and culture) but also scholars with provocative perspectives from geography, demography, and corporate research.1 There is a pleasing mix of new and familiar names.Reviewing a book such as this one could easily consume the allotted space with summaries of each individual contribution. Instead of comprehensive summaries, I will first describe the book's content and identify some highlights. I will then discuss how this work fits into the context of past, current, and future research in the field of Mormon studies and the study of global Christianity more generally.The book is divided into five parts. All but two of the thirty-one chapters concentrate on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City. One article by David Howlett examines the Community of Christ, headquartered in Independence, and another article by Janet Benson Bennion surveys fundamentalist groups in the western United States. The first section frames the volume with historical overviews of “global Mormonism” (i.e., the history of Latter-day Saint international growth, showing the significant role of non-American church members and areas throughout) by Colleen McDannell, ecclesiastical organization by Gregory A. Prince, missionary enterprise by Ronald E. Bartholomew, and patterns of church unit growth by Samuel M. Otterstrom and Brandon S. Plewe.The second section's chapters are also mostly high-level, with a contemporary run-down of “global dimensions” by Laurie Maffly-Kipp, an analysis of worldwide membership growth by David G. Stewart Jr., and chapters on gender by Nancy Ross and Jessica Duckett Finnigan, sexuality by Laura Vance and Scott Vance, and generation gaps by Benjamin R. Knoll and Jana Riess. One chapter by Rick Phillips on Utah's religious subculture—probably the most “exotic” and anomalous region in the world as far as Latter-day Saint experience is concerned, the Antarctica of global Mormon geography—would have fit better in the third section, which contains the bulk of the book, with studies of lived religion around the world.This third section begins with a demographic overview by Matthew Martinich and includes chapters on a variety of countries and regions around the world. This section on subcultures ends with Janet Benson Bennion's survey of fundamentalist communities in the United States.The fourth and fifth sections add chapters on the experiences of North American Latter-day Saints who are Black, Latino, and Indigenous by LaShawn C. Williams, Ignacio M. Garcia, and Thomas W. Murphy, respectively; the worldwide COVID-19 response coordinated by Latter-day Saint officials in Salt Lake City, by Matthew T. Evans; and a concluding chapter by coeditor Ryan T. Cragun summing things up and looks to the future.Like other global roundups of Mormon studies scholarship in recent years, this volume is characterized by an inevitable inconsistency in authors’ tone and approach.2 “Coverage” is always in tension with “consistency,” but when in the past “consistency” has sometimes also meant “homogeneity” and “narrowness,” the lavish geographic and disciplinary variegation found in the Palgrave Handbook is most welcome. Global Mormon studies, and its parent fields of Mormon studies and the study of global Christianity, are spheres that attract professional academics, independent scholars, and religious adherents. (Those three categories are not always mutually exclusive.) There is something in this Handbook for everyone.The best thing about so many of the “framing” chapters is that they tell, at last, a story of Mormonism that integrates its global dimensions, including robust accounts of Latter-day Saint groups and centers that have long been left at the margins of history. Colleen McDannell's “Global Mormonism: A Historical Overview” chapter should become the chapter that introduces students to the tradition in a university setting. Gregory Prince's chapter on evolving ecclesiastical organization contains helpful framing and periodization on Latter-day Saint governance, canon law, building practices, and local and general leadership structures with global application. The chapter on gender by Nancy Ross and Jessica Duckett Finnigan makes a significant early foray into sampling on a global scope.Many chapters take on the question of finding optimal tension between globalizing and localizing forces. David Howlett's chapter on Community of Christ (RLDS) congregations in the Philippines examines this seesawing history and gives insights into both aspects. On the one hand, Jennifer De Guzman-Gutierrez, ordained as the first woman to serve as the assistant mission center president for the Philippines, strove to “implement a standardized church architecture plan for Filipino churches,” with distinct “Kirtland Temple” windows and coral-blue paint scheme (666). On the other hand, in small village settings, wherein any ordained church member is seen as a de facto neighborhood “pastor,” they can be called upon by locals to preside over funerals, which can take up to nine nights—to the point where in such places, “Community of Christ leaders have found it extraordinarily difficult to find members who will accept ordination to the priesthood” (667).Other examples of tension between central and local authority and practice abound in this volume. Caroline Kline observes how in a Latter-day Saint context, negotiations over lobola can be reframed locally as “family discussions about sharing wedding expenses” (622). Ian Barber discusses friction between leaders and local Latter-day Saints over Māori tangihanga (funerary rites) in New Zealand/Aotearoa. He references Marjorie Newton's research on Australia, including her pithy observation that the central discourse of universalism was in practice “unattainable,” producing “an anaemic Americanism” instead (467). Julie Allen and Kim Östman highlight the mismatch between general US-based leadership and Nordic Latter-day Saints when it comes to politics, cultural concerns, and styles of governance.There are some exemplary (deep) contextualizations of local practice, including Walter van Beek, Ellen Decoo, and Wilfried Decoo's robustly framed introduction to the Latter-day Saints in the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Flanders) and Rex Cooper and Moroni Spencer Hernández de Olarte's chapter on Latter-day Saints in Mexico. The Mexico chapter includes an account of “the Mormon Zapatista Battalion,” in which Latter-day Saints in the Volcanoes Region forged personal relationships with revolutionary leaders, including Emiliano Zapata. They saw Zapata as akin to the Book of Mormon's Captain Moroni, and joined his forces in several revolutionary battles (374). Marcus Martins—who, as the church's first Black full-time missionary and the son of the church's first Black general authority, Helvécio Martins, has deep personal ties to his subject—lists ways in which members in Brazil influenced Latter-day Saint communities worldwide. These include not only being the catalyst for the 1978 revelation on the priesthood, which is well known, but also “exporting leaders” to the upper echelons of church administration (426) and piloting the Helping Hands program (which is why the yellow vests with green and blue symbols worn by Latter-day Saint volunteers all over the world resemble the uniform of the Brazilian national soccer team) (425).Three contributions to the collection, grounded in the United States but global in their aspiration to push into new dimensions of race and ethnicity beyond White American experience, derive energy from scholars’ personal experience. LaShawn C. Williams captures the psychological resilience of Black Latter-day Saints carving out “a safe, brief home” for themselves where “concentrated listening” occurs. She calls for scholarship on contemporary Black Latter-day Saints to “address the structural and systemic consequences of antebellum enslavement” in addition to histories of individual Black members (719). Ignacio Garcia gives a rich historical and ethnographic account of Latino Latter-day Saint communities and “theology on the ground” (742). Thomas Murphy employs a decolonizing methodology to analyze seven “entanglements” between settler colonialism and Indigenous Latter-day Saints (752).Some authors bring a particular analytic lens to bear on lived global Mormonism. Jason Palmer and David Knowlton's chapter on Latter-day Saints in Peru presents a model for making Mormon studies relevant to other scholarly conversations—in this case, the study of religious pilgrimage. A “pandemic bonus” chapter at the end, written by Matthew Evans of the Correlation Research division in Salt Lake City, surveyed institutional global responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from within the institution itself. Among other things, Evans suggests that global uniformity enforced by the central leadership, so lamented by other contributors in terms of cultural relevance and local identity, saved lives when it came to fighting COVID-19.Altogether, what do these chapters tell us about Mormonism? As coeditor Ryan Cragun notes in his conclusion, the preponderance of evidence shows that restoration communities around the world struggle to find balance in local cultural adaptation and constructive responses to the forces of globalization and secularization. With regard to the Latter-day Saints, the majority of the book's chapters conclusively demonstrate how much of what is taught as universal “gospel culture” from the Salt Lake City pulpit is likely to be identified as “American culture” by local members from Canada to Sweden to Belgium to the UK to Ireland to Japan to New Zealand/Aotearoa to Australia to Ukraine to South Africa to Nigeria. This mismatch in attribution is significant for reevaluating the question of what makes a restoration tradition truly global. Is it the existence of a brick-and-mortar network of offices, meetinghouses, and temples? A shared textual culture based on translated scriptures and periodicals? Inculturation, to the point where local restoration cultures become incongruous from country to country or even village to village?Complicating this recognition of American-derived religious culture is the fact that this Americanness can be seen as desirable global branding by adherents such as members of the Community of Christ in the Philippines, or Latter-day Saints in Ghana and Nigeria (666, 595–96). With regard to gender norms, this collection of chapters shows the same church teachings felt as patriarchal and oppressive by feminists in North America, Europe, and the Antipodes are received in many Pacific and African cultures as egalitarian and empowering (445, 610).Because of the diversity of contributors’ positionality, and the contributions’ often-blurred line between academic and devotional discussion, and also between internal and external points of view, there is an inevitable unevenness that sometimes afflicts discussions of methods, terminology, and cultural influence. There are also numerous moments when authors drift from academic description into prescription for improving cultural relevance at the local level (e.g., 52, 164–65, 187, 254, 279–80, 357, 392, 490, 517–26, 554–55, 648–49, 825–39). This is not necessarily problematic, given the varied tone of the volume as a whole, and indeed many readers interested in culture will find these passages extremely thought-provoking.Overall, the Palgrave Handbook's varied chapters make up a panoramic composite of the young, enthusiastic, and inclusive nature of Mormon studies as a field right now. The field needs all hands on deck, and in this volume, they certainly are.Beyond its specific research content, a second way in which the Palgrave Handbook is pathbreaking is in the new community it brings to the fore. The Palgrave Handbook's doorstop-like heft truly does create a new “critical mass” of research and researchers that is unprecedented. In 2020 and 2021, two other major scholarly collaborations on global Mormonism were published: The Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender, and a special issue of Religions titled “Globalizing Mormonism.”3 The community of researchers in the field of global Mormon studies is well represented, with many publishing in two of these volumes and a few publishing in all three.This glut of ambitious, high-profile global Mormonism scholarship represented by the Palgrave Handbook, the Routledge Handbook, and the Religions special issue is of historic proportions. Of these three, the Palgrave Handbook is the most comprehensive and most obviously announces the maturation of a robust global community of scholars reading and responding to each other's work.In the past, numerous studies of restoration traditions (most frequently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ/Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in individual countries or regions have been published in books, periodicals, theses and dissertations. Listing them all would be impossible.4 Two major works on the Community of Christ deserve mention here because of their influence in that field. The first is Maurice L. Draper's Isles and Continents, with short-term fieldwork in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, using 1970s “open systems theory” to examine how missions provided “feedback” to change the organization as a whole.5 The second is Matthew Bolton's biography of Apostle Charles Neff, touching on issues including indigenization versus standardization of practices, the formation of NGOs and humanitarian ideologies, and so on.6The community of scholars mustered in the Palgrave Handbook has been nurtured through the steady increase in academic infrastructure supporting comprehensive, ambitious collaborations, increasingly produced by scholars from outside the United States, and connecting with larger conversations in the academy. Below I will highlight just a few milestones in the development of global networks and associations in Mormon studies, up to the current milestone represented by the Palgrave Handbook.In Latter-day Saint focused scholarship, European scholars founded the European Mormon Studies Association in 2006.7 The online International Journal of Mormon Studies, edited by UK scholar David M. Morris, launched in 2008, but went on hiatus in 2013. Meanwhile, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking scholars established the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Mormon Studies around 2007.8 From 2010 to 2015, the Associação Brasileira de Estudos Mórmons (Brazilian Association of Mormon Studies), held an annual Mormon studies conference. In 2014 and 2015, they pioneered a global conference format with which we are now all familiar—the online videoconference.9The year 2014 saw Mormon studies conferences at Brigham Young Uuniversity, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (on Mormonism in Asia),10 the University of Waikato in Aotearoa/New Zealand,11 and Groupe Sociétés, Religions et Laïcités in Paris.12 At that year's Mormon History Association Tanner Lecture, world Christianity scholar Jehu Hanciles pointed to the dearth of non-Western and non-American voices in scholarship on Mormonism and called on the community to be proactive about reaching out.13Beginning in January 2015, issues of the Journal of Mormon History were identified with the month of their publication (instead of the North American season). Max Mueller and Gina Colvin then guest-edited a special July 2015 issue on race, which included a global range of topics.14 Near the end of 2015, the Oxford Handbook of Mormonism, coedited by Philip Barlow and Terryl Givens, was published, including a section on “The International Church,” with surveys of “Latin America,” “the Pacific,” “Europe,” and “Asia.”15 In 2016, the journal Mormon Historical Studies published a double issue on global Mormonism.16In 2017, the Global Mormon Studies Research Network was established along with its website, www.globalmormonstudies.org. In 2017 and 2018, conferences involving global Mormon studies topics and presenters took place at the University of Auckland, Utah Valley University, and Claremont Graduate University.17 The 2019 Mormon Studies Review published a forum on global Mormon studies with literature reviews on scholarship in North and Central America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Oceania, and Africa.18 On March 29–30, 2019, the first conference of the Global Mormon Studies Research Network took place in Bordeaux, France.19Comparing the recent handbooks with the Oxford Handbook from 2015 is In the 2015 Handbook, Mormonism” was its with the Routledge Handbook of Mormonism and Gender, not around any includes perspectives on methodology includes an on and in a Global and an on by in and Pacific Mormonism. includes on in includes touching on gender in New and in and and in the on includes in way the Oxford they is that just a few has brought a increase in and community In the past, and Mormonism” and “global Mormonism” were to but the Routledge Handbook shows how global perspectives are in something as and central as Palgrave Handbook has come this as the of “global Mormonism” is an of just a in Mormon studies were seen as a of to the of Mormonism in its global dimensions is now seen as the the Palgrave Handbook, all studies of take of the these global the or energy as they the studies should be as “the American of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day or “the Community of Christ in the United or using some of the relevant Palgrave Handbook will the to the level scholars in the field to One geographic more work is Asia, which is by only one study in the Two disciplinary areas with are the study of and for which Gregory Prince's chapter a The most significant for the field are published works beyond and global Mormon studies research to more within studies of global do in the United States and become through with do religious and at the and religious traditions, with regard to at the margins of central including and of are the of and practice in does in the between and local does “global and the of a tradition as it around the I to more work on global Mormon topics that other scholars in on these is that this book is for individual David Howlett this is the global Mormonism volume we've been waiting for to come out in

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