Running head: Culture Beyond Salt Lake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Culture of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Beyond Salt Lake

 

Mathew Call and Emily Luke

 

Brigham Young University

 

 

 

 


 

Abstract

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is undertaking an amazing feat.  Its goal, to invite, reach and include every race, culture, kindred and tongue, is a commendable one.  Efforts and focus are directed to strengthen the structure and stability within as the church continues to move outward--from country to country, people to people.  Growth has been substantial from a few hundred members in 1830 to nearly 11 million in 2003.  Amidst such exciting growth exists an underlying dichotomy of universality and diversity.  Universality is present in the church's efforts to be one--in direction and our love for the Savior. However, diversity exists.  The church recognizes that people are different and finds power in our variance.  The conflict arises as each individual and the church as a whole must assess and prioritize amongst traditions, heritage and membership in the Kingdom. Concerted efforts are directed towards the problems that arise as the church attempts such a feat of producing an inclusive worldwide religion that accurately represents the cultures it embodies.  

The issue of cultural diversity within the church is not a new one.  Leaders have addressed such challenges from the earliest beginnings of the church and continue to do so today.  The efforts extended by the church in regards to this challenge are numerous and varied yet there are still gaps in its reach.  There is yet work to be done to ensure that each member of the church throughout the world feels that they are just as much a "Child of God" as are their brothers and sisters in Salt Lake City (Hymns, 1985, p. 301).

In 1942 John F. O'Donnal, a member of the church from the Mormon colonies in Mexico, moved to Central America as an agricultural adviser of the U.S. government.  As a result, five years later the first LDS missionaries arrived.  After another year of meetings with government leaders, Brother O'Donnal was set apart as the first district president of Central America and 66 people attended the first meeting in 1948.  In 1952, Elder Spencer Kimball of the Twelve visited and organized the Central American Mission.  By 1956 there were 250 members in three branches.  In 1965 the narrower Guatemala-El Salvador Mission was formed and in 1966 with a membership of 10,000, official recognition was granted.  One year later the first stake was organized only to be divided in 1972 along with the mission; Guatemala and El Salvador became their own entities.  President Kimball returned in 1977 and the Guatemala Guatemala City Mission was divided once again with the creation of the Quetzaltenango mission and John F. O'Donnal as president.  A temple was announced in 1981, built, and dedicated in 1984.  The first temple president was none other than John F. O'Donnal.  Today in Guatemala there are a total of four missions, forty stakes, 23 districts, and almost 200,000 baptized members (Deseret, 2000).

            As a naïve missionary in Quetzaltenango from 1998-2000, I oftentimes found myself justifying the correcting of branch leaders in the way they handled church-related issues because "the church here is young and they don't know how it's supposed to be run.  I'm sure the church had the same problems in the U.S. when it was in its early stages."  Far too many times I would go to great lengths just to obtain a VCR to be able to show "El Hijo Pródigo" ("The Prodigal Son") to investigators.  Sure I could feel the Spirit every time we watched it but I seriously doubt now that most the people we showed it to even knew what was going on in those fancy carpeted houses with grand pianos in them.  Even if they could accept that much, I was sure to lose them when it came to talk of such places as Centerville and Farmington, Utah.  I even found myself correcting some of the members when they sang the hymns "wrong".  It's a small wonder that in its history, the church has generally done well in countries and in urban population centers where the people are more Americanized and poorly in countries that have negative political relations with the United States (Mauss, 1996).

            These are merely a few examples of many that could be told; events that have occurred in the church's latter-day history that illustrate what it (the church) has done to accommodate the cultures it embodies and in what areas it has failed to do so, all while trying to maintain a single identity.  Indeed the church's history is full of both.

 

 

Introduction

Definitions

By the "church" we do not mean the "gospel."  We are referring to the social organization that is of human makeup.  Since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is hierarchical as far as decision-making is concerned, we are specifically referring to the decisions that church leaders make.  Aside from individual inspiration that is intended for oneself, revelation is believed to be received at the stewardship level.  Therefore it is the mother's or father's right and responsibility to receive revelation for her or his family, the mission president's to receive revelation for his mission,  the committee head's for her organization, and the Prophet's for the church as a whole.  Unfortunately (for clarity's sake), the Prophet cannot possibly receive and relay revelation for each individual member of the church.  Although not always sought, stewardship-type revelation is clearly always experiential as opposed to propositional, that is, it consists of words which humans speak about their experiences with God and the interpretations they make of them as opposed to actual sentences God speaks to man (Sandberg, 1996).  It could be said that it is unfortunate that humans are all God has to work through.

As to culture, no doubt the reader already has a basic idea of what they believe culture to be.  Of all the terms the social sciences have brought into the language of the general population, culture is undoubtedly one of the most wide-spread.  For our purposes, the 2003 English Oxford Dictionary's definition of culture will suffice: "The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." A simpler definition might be: one's orientation to life; the beliefs, symbols, and values one learns from the society in which s/he is raised and that allow him/her to make sense of experience.  (Hence because of culture, revelation can be understood differently by different people.)  More often than not, each nation defined politically is generally homogenous in its culture so that individuals raised in the same country can culturally relate to each other more so than individuals from differing countries.  Of course this is an extreme oversimplification of culture but will suffice to demonstrate certain points.

We will first look at why the church needs a universal identity to begin with as it expands.  Then we will consider one of the challenges of establishing this identity.  We will follow this discussion with the treatment of three areas dealing with the challenge just developed: its existence through the history of the church, efforts the church has already extended to meet it and needs that still may need to be met.

 

Necessity of a Universal Identity

            Since its earliest beginnings, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made known its mission to reach every nation and people with a certain message.  This very mission requires it to extend its membership across political, geographical, and cultural boundaries, to name a few.  As the church grows, it strives to maintain a single identity with as little variation as possible in gospel principles.  This is a wise thing to do as it results in high group solidarity or unity.  Armand Mauss' discussion of the church's "tension factor" is very helpful.  According to Mauss, there is recent research showing that the religious communities that have the greatest growth are usually those which make the most arduous demands on their members (not vice-versa).  An additional plus is that high joining and membership costs tend to discourage free riders.  "Thus, if many demanding or ‘high cost' religions tend to be relatively small in membership, at least the average levels of commitment and sacrifice for the religious community are relatively high and mutually reinforcing for individual members" (1996, p. 239, emphasis author's).  Hence it follows that in the case of the LDS church, some kind of universal identity is what facilitates growth and unity.

A Challenge with a Universal Identity

Let us reflect on the difficulty of the task the church is to achieve.  It would follow that an institution with such requirements as establishing a universal identity across world cultures would eventually create its own culture made up of beliefs, symbols, and values different from its surrounding culture in each case but similar within and throughout.  We will call this LDS culture.  Many religious institutions would claim success with this feat but under closer examination, each culture's practices of the same religion result in an identity quite different than that of all other culture's thus indicating more homogeneity in proximity rather than religiosity.  Is such an achievement even possible?

The question facing the church is not whether such a feat is possible, for it has already answered itself that question in the resounding affirmative.  The question facing the church is where to draw the lines.  How are members, especially missionaries, to distinguish between the absolute core doctrines that cannot be changed from culture to culture and the traditional LDS customs that are wholly optional?  How much, even specifically which practices of each "national" culture are to be discarded when joining the church and which can be considered enriching and not in conflict with the gospel?  In other words what is the "minimal Mormonism" that will make it "maximally adaptable" (Mauss, 1996, pp. 245, 248)?

The real question and thus the challenge is this: as the church spreads attempting to preserve this universal identity, does it do so by allowing Anglo-American cultural standards define what it means to be a Latter-day Saint?  Does it at times require the implementation of Anglo-American cultural practices or can one be a Mormon and still encompass the entirety of her or his own culture?  In what ways have leaders of the church specifically considered as well as failed to consider other cultures outside of their own when creating new church policy and programs?

Several of the Brethren have directly addressed this issue (see Ballard, Carmack, Scott, etc.) and plenty of scholarly work parallels our dilemma (see Allen, Sorenson, Tullis, etc.)  A summary of the general view of most religious and scholarly authorities follows:  The Lord prepared the founders of this nation in order that there could be an atmosphere of religious freedom and sociality allowable for a restoration of the church at the time of Joseph Smith.  Since "in this dispensation, the restored church has been cast in an Anglo-American sociocultural context…" (DeHoyos, 1971, p. 12) it would follow that America is the "matrix of the Church" (King, 1978, p. 4) making "the Anglo-American culture a special case in the national cultures of this world" (DeHoyos, 1971, pp. 10-11).  However "important tragic deviations from its ideals have developed" and the American people have at times failed to follow their own basic precepts (DeHoyos, 1971, pp. 10-11).  Since the organization of the church must be the same everywhere in order that the kingdom of God on earth is consistent and cohesive, and since the church was restored in America, it is usually the "Mormon Americans who perceive their own total cultural package as somehow being synonymous with the ‘LDS culture'" (Rivera, 1978, pp. 122-123).

These kinds of questions addressed above bear down on many Saints and seem to necessitate an elevated struggle in order to find answers.  Obviously this is a challenge the church has always had to deal with.  Its evidence can be traced through any number of examples.

 

Primary Research

Desiring to better understand personally the perspectives and opinions in regards to efforts the church has already extended attempting to balance unity and diversity, we interviewed several individuals from distinct cultural backgrounds other than the Anglo-American. The cultures represented included: Japan, Hong Kong, India, Sweden, Uruguay, Hawaii, Mexico, Navajo, and Deaf American.  Our interviews focused on how the individuals felt about the history associated with the challenge of balancing unity and diversity, efforts the church has already extended in regards to this challenge and the need for additional attention (see Appendix 1).

To supplement our interviews, we also issued a three-question survey to 18 returned missionaries that served "outside Anglo America" focusing on how the culture of the people in their mission affected their missionary methods and how they felt the Church could be more inclusive of other cultures.  Returned missionaries from the following "cultures" were represented: Philippines, Peru, Argentina, Lakota (Sioux) Reservation, Belgium, Russia, Netherlands, Guatemala, Brazil, Germany, Deaf (American: ASL), Spain, Uruguay, Portugal, and England (see Appendix 2) (Call, M., & Luke, E., 2003).

 

History of the Challenge

From the Beginning

            Once again, the issue of cultural diversity within the church is not a new one.  It began nearly two thousand years ago as Christ commanded the apostles to be witnesses of Him "both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (The Holy Bible, 1979, p. 1366).  Paul wrote many letters to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Thessalonians, etc. addressing each according to their language and heritage.  His awareness of the Athenians is evident in Acts 17 as he regards both their perspective and history when trying to increase their understanding and alignment with the ideals and doctrines of the church.  "For in him we alive, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring" (The Holy Bible, 1979, p. 1397).  In this verse, Paul specifically refers to a point of reference they were familiar with, their poets, as he makes his point.  Since the beginning of church expansion, efforts have been focused on using general human perspectives to tailor a universal message easing personal application and assimilation for an individual.

During the Restoration

            This challenge was also faced during the early years following the restoration.  Difficulties associated with establishing missions in foreign countries illustrate one instance that further exemplifies the struggles the church faced through its efforts to expand.  During this time, there were abundant attempts to reach beyond U.S. cultural borders through the opening of numerous missions, only to disappointingly soon thereafter have to close some of those missions.           
 

 

MISSION EXPANSION

 

Mission Area

Opened

Closed

Tahitian Islands

April 1844

May 1852

France

June 1850

1864

Hawaiian Islands

Dec 1850

May 1858

Malta

Feb 1852

1856

South Africa

April 1853

April 1865

Mexico

Nov 1879

June 1889

                                                                                    (Deseret News, 2000, pp. 426-428)

As shown above, there were attempts to encompass other cultures, but due to many contributing factors, including cultural contrariety, efforts were either postponed or abandoned altogether.

Today

Contemporarily, examples of problems that arise as the Church crosses cultural boundaries are plentiful.  When interviewing a member from Japan, she shared an example that a BYU philosophy professor Noel B. Reynolds uses as an example in his argument that various cultural value conflicts "connected with American terms with which the gospel is often interpreted and transmitted" (Allen, 1990, p. 26):

A Melchizedek Priesthood manual exhorts a husband to observe the highest standards of modesty and chastity and to treat his wife with love and respect.  But when the instruction is elaborated to include kissing his wife as he leaves the house or returns, it raises a serious problem, for example, in a Japanese home where the children protest, demanding to know why he is "biting" their mother  (as cited in Allen, 1990, p. 26).

 

This is just one instance that exemplifies difficulties that arise as behavioral directives are given when perhaps it would be better to simply communicate the principle, allowing each culture to determine what it means for them to "observe the highest standards" (Reynolds, as cited in Allen, 1990, p. 26).

            Elder Richard G. Scott cautiously and sensitively discusses how modern situations pose a challenge for saints of different cultures even today.  He encourages readers to follow King Lamoni's example of recognizing and abandoning false traditions (1998).  When speaking in New Zealand in 1990, President Hunter admonished, "I suggest that you place the highest priority on your membership in the Church of Jesus Christ.  Measure whatever anyone else asks you to do, whether it be from your family, loved ones, your cultural heritage, or traditions you have inherited--measure everything against the teachings of the Savior.  Where you find a variance from those teachings, set that matter aside and do not pursue it.  It will not bring you happiness" (as cited in Scott, 1998).  Elder Scott cited specific instances when incorrect traditions should be deserted: some of which included conditions that would: violate the Word of Wisdom, encourage the establishment of caste systems, defile the body, breed conflict with other cultures, foster imbalance between husband and wife, and force others to comply by station or position as determined by heredity.  He ended his comments directing, "Where family or national traditions or customs conflict with the teachings of God, set them aside.  Where traditions and customs are in harmony with His teachings, they should be cherished and followed to preserve your culture and heritage" (Scott, 1998).

            As evident by the content of the recent General Authority remarks, this is a current issue within the general population of the church.  Cognizance is not enough.  Elder John K. Carmack supports this claim when he notes, "Experience teaches me that we must work hard at creating unity in diversity. . . . Unity in diversity will not happen if we let nature take its course" (1991).   The church has not been idle, allowing nature to take its course.  Its attentiveness and alacrity indicate its priority to establish "unity in diversity" (Carmack, 1991).

 

Efforts Extended

      The Church is aware of the problems associated with growth and expansion, and its efforts reflect this awareness.  Leaders have been attentive and diligent as Missionary Training Centers have been established, the Book of Mormon and Liahona translation increases, General Conference broadcasts continue to expand, and temples are being built at an increased rate.  These are just a few examples and not meant to comprise an exhaustive discussion.

Effective training and preparation of missionaries progressed in 1976 with the construction of the first Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah (Allen & Leonard, 1992).  The MTC provides a more standardized and comprehensive preparatory learning experience and continues to improve and increase the quality of the churches' representatives.  There are currently an additional 16 MTC's throughout the world in places such as Ghana, England, Spain, the Philippines, and Brazil.

The Book of Mormon was first published in 1830 with 5,000 copies made (Allen et al., 1992).  Ever since President Ezra Taft Benson's exhortation in 1986 for the members to make better use of The Book of Mormon in their personal lives and in their efforts to reach out to those not of our faith, the translation and publication of The Book of Mormon has soared (Allen et al., 1992).  There are now complete translations of The Book of Mormon in 68 languages, with selected passages translated in an additional 34 languages (Deseret News, 2000).  Members who have access to The Book of Mormon in their own language can better relate with the teachings and culture of the church.

In addition to an increase in translation of The Book of Mormon, the churches monthly publication, the Ensign (Liahona in all other countries), has increased circulation immensely. Recent changes in format allow access to the same material in 51 different languages at the same time.  Previously, publication schedules varied depending of language, but because of the change in format and streamlined translation efforts, everyone will receive the same content in their monthly church magazine (including Conference Reports) (Comment, 2003). It must follow now that the subject matter of the articles not be Anglo-centric.

Another contribution reaching beyond Salt Lake has to do with the broadcasting of General Conference.  The first radio broadcast was in 1924, with the initial televised conference in 1953.  Today, the opportunity for members throughout the world to watch and listen to the Prophet in their own language, many in their local meeting house or stake center, is phenomenal.   It brings the church, the whole church, to the people (Allen et al., 1992).

Increased accessibility to temples has been an essential necessity to establish a unified church.  Most recently, President Gordon B. Hinckley has expressed the Lord's desire for all of His children to have access and opportunity to increase in understanding and dedication in his goal to have 100 operating temples by the year 2000.  The church reached and now surpasses this goal with 113 temples in 35 different countries with 14 more under construction, 6 of those in countries where there is not yet a temple.

The church has become a worldwide entity and continues to encompass more and more of the world's population.  It has gone to extremes to insure that each individual's transition is as aided as possible. Yet there is still work to be done.

 

Need For Additional Attention

As unfortunate as it is, even up to the present day, a lack of cultural comprehension is precisely what obstructs groups of people, including the church, from obtaining higher levels of empathy.  Considering the incredible range of diversity the world's cultures offer, it is difficult to envision anyone, much less an entire institution being able to show real empathy towards any great number of cultures, let alone all of them.  As we shall see, it is once again precisely this lack of cultural comprehension that at times keeps the church from fully accomplishing its mission.

The responses of the surveys (to returned missionaries) were somewhat helpful in further assessing areas the church can still develop.  In every case there were "fewer members" and "less Priesthood leadership" in the respective countries when compared to the United States.  Fourteen out of eighteen returned missionaries resorted to saying in essence that the members in their mission did not know how the church was supposed to be run.  Only four people seemed to think that the programs of the church could actually be altered to fit other cultures.  Those four had suggestions similar to those given by the interviewees.  The most significant finding here was that in general, the missionaries had very different viewpoints about the church than the interviewees or members did.  Next, we will discuss suggestions that reflect the results of our interviews and surveys.

Technology Adaptations Surpassing Content Adaptations 

More than one individual mentioned that they appreciated the fact that the church has embraced the technology that allows world-wide live broadcasts to take place but it seems to them that the content of these fireside and General Conference talks is still very American.  Many speakers make reference to themes of American patriotism, tell stories about their childhood that take place in small unfamiliar Utah towns, or illustrate doctrinal points using war stories but always from the American side.  Sweden, for example, was neutral in World War II.  And why lots of talk from the pulpit about every war the United States is in yet very little about, say, India's war with Pakistan?  Although the principles being taught may be just as applicable in India or Sweden as in Utah, the path getting there is a bit rockier for some members than it is perhaps for members raised in Utah.  Rather than feeling spiritually uplifted, these other members of the church feel left out.

 

Emphasize Recent Church History and Modern Pioneers

Some interviewees especially felt left out with the amount of focus the church placed on the 150th anniversary celebration of the first pioneers in Utah.  The excitement of such projects as the reconstruction of the Nauvoo temple just couldn't quite be felt to the same degree.  Granted all due respect and attention should be paid to these amazing and wonderful pioneers and their lives.  But how did the title "pioneer" become synonymous with the Mormons who trekked across the soon to be United States in the 1800s?  If those members were the only "pioneers" and if that is all that compiles "church history" then what of the church's history when the gospel went outside the United States?  What about the first Navajo or Japanese pioneers?  It would not be far-fetched to claim that most missionaries know much more about the church's pre-1900 history than about the church's post-1900 or more recent history, including its history among the very people with whom they are working.  Perhaps missionaries ought to be just as familiar with the latter and relate it from time to time to members and investigators.  Doing so may accomplish something positive for the image the church desires to have in countries outside the United States.

 

Produce Original Church Media 

This was the most common suggestion made by our interviewees.  They said the most popular church videos may work just fine for American audiences, maybe even some immigrant American audiences, but when they are directly translated without also altering their content, they make little sense when shown to those living within entirely different cultural settings.  They would like to see the church produce media originally in their language cast in their own cultural setting.

 

Flexibility of Programs

In some countries, the manner in which we carry out home teaching in the United States would be considered an invasion of privacy.  In others, the community is so closely-knit that any physical or spiritual needs are already known without the need of a special visit.  In America, individualism is stressed, whereas family and interdependence is stressed in much of the rest of the world.  If the purpose of Family Home Evening in the U.S. is to bring the family together, then at least that need is already fulfilled for families of many other cultures.  In countries like India, it is not customary for youth to make any physical contact with each other.  Thus something like a youth dance would be very looked down upon.  These are just a few examples of the need for flexibility in programs.

 

More Humility Among Church Members

One interviewee wondered when and how American Mormons came to be so sure of everything.  So many state in their testimonies that they "know" this, they "know" that, they "know" there is no other true church on the face of the earth, etc.  She said they are forgetting that we as humans are socially constructed beings and do not know the mind of God perfectly.  We, especially as members of the church, should not leave out the possibility of God's hand in providing other peoples of other places with parts of the truth through some of the major world religions that have developed in history.  This is also a good example of semantics and various words carrying weighted meanings in other languages.

A different interviewee was not impressed with how impersonal church leaders and other members were here compared with those of his hometown.  He said that here they seem to greet him because they are supposed to, yet they do not actually establish a personal interaction.  They are more concerned with getting their job done and getting the numbers than with getting to know the individual.

Two things about the Hawaiian culture were mentioned.  First of all, in Hawai'i it is very normal to be a large portion of the day on the beach and in what might be labeled as swimming attire.  Members there are sometimes criticized by others, who are not familiar with the culture, commenting that they do not wear their garments enough.  That is very easy to say if you are from the mountain state of Utah.   Secondly, mainland American members, as they assess priorities, need to factor in culture when judging things like tattoos.  A Hawaiian band for example may have a much deeper and more reverent cultural significance than merely a body-defacing fad as most mainland American Mormons would view it.

 

De-emphasize the Roles of Missionaries

Because American missionaries frequently get frustrated with how the church runs in other cultures, they usually take on much greater roles there than they do in wards and branches within the United States.  Of course this may be necessary when the membership simply is not there.  However when there are sufficient members with callings, missionaries ought to back off some and merely aid members in their callings instead of perform them.  In time this would enable members to run their own branches and wards as opposed to depending on the missionaries in the event the missionaries are removed (as is always the case).

 

Stress the Importance of Native Missionaries

  A large part of the reason the church is seen as an American church by outsiders is because of the enormous percentage of American missionaries living and working outside America.  By increasing the number of native missionaries in each country, more people will correctly identify the church as a local as well as a world-wide entity and less people will receive lessons on the gospel solely because they are intrigued by the American missionaries.  Having said that, as long as American missionaries are still needed in other nations, they ought to receive cultural training.  In this way they could more effectively relate and connect with the people among whom they are working.

As an example, one interviewee told of how in the Deaf culture of America, everyone is part of a closely-knit social tied network of friends that possesses an aura of hesitation towards outsider hearing people attempting to relate to the Deaf.  This hesitation is understandable given the history of extremely harsh treatment to which the hearing world has subjected the Deaf.  The most effective missionaries are the ones who have a deep gospel concern for this people and have figured out that their message will decidedly be ignored until this aura of hesitation is gone.  (This is especially true if the missionary happens to be hearing.)   This missionary and his companion would go to bowling alleys and ice cream parlors during proselyting hours just to meet and gain trust among the Deaf.  Unfortunately some of these ASL missionaries abused their needed freedom and from the hearing mission president's view it looked as though ASL missionaries were the problem.  In the late 1990s the church stopped calling ASL missionaries and gradually began moving the ones already out in the field into the hearing program.  As told by a former ASL missionary of the time, luckily one of the Brethren found out about what was going on and re-instated the ASL missionary program (C. Call, June 5, 2003, personal communication).  Yet there are still large concentrations of Deaf in parts of the United States without any ASL missionaries serving nearby.  Incidentally, it was not until 1995 that the Book of Mormon was translated into ASL in video format (Deseret, 2000).

To sum up, when asked who they identify with more, whether non-Mormons in their own country, or Mormons in this country, more than half of the interviewees stated they feel they are more similar to and identify more with non-Mormons in their country. 

 

Conclusion

 

The church's efforts to bridge the gaps that inherently exist in such a diverse group have been commendable.  The membership as a whole does not seem to be critical nor does it resent the shortcomings of such an immense undertaking.  There are gaps, but they are becoming smaller and smaller and will continue to be a priority with the church's ever increasing efforts to embrace other cultures.  It is the opportunity of each member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to educate him/herself on the extremely important issue of culture.

 

 
 

References

 

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Wells, G. M., & Burr, W. R. (2000). The proclamation and the philosophies of the world. In D. C. Dollahite (Ed.), Strengthening Our Families: An In-Depth Look at the Proclamation on the Family (pp. 360-369). Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft.

Williams, R. N. (1998). Restoration and the ‘turning of things upside down': What is required of an LDS perspective. AMCAP Journal, 23(1), 1-30.

 

 


 

Appendix 1

 

 

 

THE INTERVIEW

 

Biographical Information

 

  1. where they are from
  2. how long they've been here
  3. where they were baptized
  4. have they been back since they've been a member here (how much have they encountered the church in their home country)
  5. how much have they been involved with the church here (e.g. working in the translation dept. of the church might seriously alter their answers!)

 

 

Interview Questions

 

*Don't ask these to people who haven't been members in their country

 

  1. *What was your ward like at home? (Is the church different here than it is there? In what ways? e.g. organization, leadership, emphasis on rules/expectations, activities, attendance, activity level; When you joined the church were you expected to give up specific cultural traditions?)
  2. *What role do the missionaries play in your home ward?
  3. *Do you think Mormons and non-Mormons in your country are different? Here?
  4. *Do you think you are more like the non-Mormons there or the Mormons here? (Who do you identify with more?)
  5. Do you feel that there is a dominant culture in the church?
  6. *What LDS traditions are not well accepted in your country?
  7. How has the church as a whole broadened it's spectrum to include your culture?
  8. How have church leaders not considered your culture when creating new policy and programs?
  9. Have you encountered any discrimination within the church?
  10. Do people seem to place you into a category here?
  11. What kinds of activities are carried out here that don't seem relevant to the gospel?
  12. *What things did you find strange about your American mission companion?
  13. *Is it easier for Mormons to come to America than non-Mormons (because they possibly already have some exposure to American culture)?

 

Appendix 2

 

 

SURVEY

 

1.    In what ways did the Church differ in your mission from how it is run here?

 

 

 

 

 

2.  How did those differences alter what missionary activities you chose to do?

 

 

 

 

 

3.  What do you think the church could do to be more inclusive of other cultures?