BYU ScholarsArchive

Article Title

Review of Mormonism and the Making of a British Zion, by Matthew Lyman Rasmussen

Authors

Douglas J. Davies

Keywords

Mormon studies, British Zion, European religion

Abstract

Through eight chapters and four appendixes, Rasmussen develops a book from a previous postgraduate dissertation on the emergence and organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Great Britain. As with numerous regional-national histories of Mormonism, Mormonism and the Making of a British Zion includes basic elements of Mormonism’s emergence in the US, but always with a keen

eye on the UK and, more specifically still, on North West England. While Liverpool was the key seaport for early missionaries traveling to the UK, and for the emigration of converts to the US in the last half of the nineteenth century, Preston and its River Ribble Valley environs are shown to have assumed more than geographical or transportational significance. Here we encounter some of the book’s major themes as empirical information derived from considerable historical, archival, local, and oral history research engages with descriptive interpretations of church doctrine, organization, and policy. For this review I single out just two themes, what might best be called inspired tradition, on the one hand, and intergenerational flourishing, on the other.

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Davies, Douglas J. (2018) "Review of Mormonism and the Making of a British Zion, by Matthew Lyman Rasmussen," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 5: No. 1, Article 19.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18809/msr.2018.0125
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol5/iss1/19