Neither Fairyland nor Dystopia: Taking Western Europe Seriously in Mormon Studies

Authors

Julie K. Allen

Keywords

Mormonism, Europe, immigration, nineteenth century, church growth

Abstract

Although Mormonism is intimately associated, externally and internally, with American history and culture, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has older ties to western Europe than to anywhere else outside the United States and Polynesia. Without the influx of approximately eighty thousand convert-immigrants from the UK and continental Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, the fledgling church would not have been able to successfully colonize the intermountain West. Although church membership levels in Europe have remained low in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, a robust network of Latter-day Saint congregations across the European continent and the British Isles supports approximately five hundred thousand members of record (though activity rates hover at around 12 percent in most countries).

BYU ScholarsArchive Citation

Allen, Julie K. (2019) "Neither Fairyland nor Dystopia: Taking Western Europe Seriously in Mormon Studies," Mormon Studies Review: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr2/vol6/iss1/5