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Irish Mormons: Reconciling Identity in Global Mormonism

2025; Volume: 12; Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/21568030.12.22

2156-8030

Johannah Palomo,

Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wears its identity as a "global church" as a badge of honor, often referencing the fact that more than half of church members live outside of the United States. But how do church members who make up this global majority understand their religious identities as Latter-day Saints, and how is that identity affected by their status as religious minorities in their broader national contexts? In her book Irish Mormons: Reconciling Identity in Global Mormonism, Irish sociologist Hazel O'Brien attempts to answer these questions by conducting the first ethnographic study of Latter-day Saints in the Republic of Ireland.The LDS Church in Ireland is particularly small; there are currently only thirteen congregations in the country, and according to the most recent Irish census, only 1,111 people (.02 percent of the population) self-identify as Latter-day Saints. Because this book is the first sociological work focused on Mormonism in the Republic of Ireland, O'Brien must cover a lot of ground: she has to explain Ireland's complex relationship with religion and colonization to a largely non-Irish Mormon audience and the history and organization of the LDS Church to a largely non-Mormon Irish audience, all while mapping her contribution to the sociology of religion literature that is largely focused on non-Mormon, non-Irish case studies. O'Brien effectively illustrates the unique situation members of the church find themselves navigating in today's Ireland: a country that has experienced rapid economic growth accompanied by quickly liberalizing social and political attitudes as the country becomes more secular and differentiated from the Catholic Church. Latter-day Saints in Ireland, she argues, have to negotiate between their dual identities in order to affirm both their Mormonism and their Irishness; this contestation often leads members to downplay their religious belief in order to assert their national identity and further supports the Irish understanding of Mormonism as a foreign religion.This book is the product of a year of ethnographic fieldwork and thirty interviews in two congregations of the LDS Church in the Republic of Ireland. O'Brien divided her time between two small congregations pseudonymously referred to as Appleby and Sweetwater. Sweetwater, the younger congregation, is housed in a former trade union branch office of a smaller town and has a regular attendance of about thirty people. Appleby is older, with a larger—though still quite small—congregation of about seventy active members and meets in an office park. Neither congregation was housed in a purpose-built church. O'Brien attended weekly Sunday meetings, including both Relief Society and priesthood meetings, participated in congregational activities during the week, and even joined missionaries out in the field, fully immersing herself in each congregation. O'Brien also has a keen sense of her own positionality: she often brings up how her outsider status as a non-religious non-Latter-day Saint influenced her interactions in the field, as well as how her identity as White Irish impeded her ability to connect with some members of the congregations.Ireland's small LDS population is the result of many factors. The LDS Church did send missionaries to proselytize in what is now Northern Ireland in the 1840s, with missionaries arriving in south Ireland, what is now the Republic, ten years later. However, the largely Catholic population of the south was more hostile to the missionaries; missionaries struggled to find converts and also faced threats, abuse, and violence. By 1867, the LDS Church closed its mission in Ireland. The mission did not reopen until 1963, forty-one years after Irish independence in 1922. The LDS Church's struggles in Ireland have often been understood as an extension of the Protestant versus Catholic narrative that is often used to explain Ireland's history of and response to colonization by the United Kingdom: the LDS Church was seen as another Protestant faith, and Protestant faiths are decidedly not Irish. O'Brien's data somewhat supports this argument: she argues religious diversity is not celebrated in the country and may even be seen as a colonial threat. But, she argues, the LDS Church also held its own anti-Catholic bias that affected its missionary work in Italy and likely influenced its outreach in Ireland. This is the beginning of the hypothesis at the heart of O'Brien's book: if Irish cultural memory is so historically tied to Catholicism and resistance to colonialism, Irish Catholics will likely be less accommodating to minority religions and less interested in converting to them, and members of minority religions will struggle to feel accepted by their compatriots as fully Irish.Although the LDS Church has a global presence, it is also headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and members outside the United States often lack centralized, top-level representation. O'Brien discusses the church's policy of correlation that standardized church curricula and programming across all localities and argues that while the policy did create uniformity for church members everywhere that some find comforting, correlation also implicitly prioritizes the tastes and preferences of Latter-day Saints in the "Mormon Culture Region," reinforcing its perception by outsiders as an "American" religion. White Irish Mormons thus experience a "dual insider-outsider position in Irish society" (22). Their race affords them a sort of religious invisibility, meaning they are not visibly identifiable as a "religious other." This may allow them to avoid uncomfortable interactions with strangers or acquaintances who do not know their affiliation, but it also makes recognition and accommodation for religious differences (especially for parents with children in the largely Catholic school system) difficult to obtain. Irish Mormons also find themselves constantly explaining their religion to others who know little about the faith, and many find this constant monitoring and questioning so exhausting that they refrain from calling attention to this aspect of their identity.The centrality of ancestry and the family in the LDS Church also requires negotiation on the part of Irish Mormons. Irish cultural memory, O'Brien asserts, is grounded in Catholicism. Even though Ireland has secularized and more Irish than ever identify as religiously unaffiliated, a "cultural Catholicism" largely divorced from religious practice remains a salient aspect of national and often familial identity. The family is, of course, also central to LDS Church doctrine and culture. Many aspects of salvation in the afterlife require a married couple be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity; in order to be sealed, both partners must be active, temple-worthy members of the church. Because of the small number of members in general and the national diversity of the membership (many Latter-day Saints in Ireland are immigrants to the country), Irish Mormons often have difficulty finding compatible marriage partners who also share their Irish heritage. One participant in O'Brien's study correctly predicts that her son will marry a British or American Mormon woman in order to fulfill the sealing ordinance, and another participant discusses her attempts to navigate tensions she worried would arise when her family found out she was getting sealed in the closest temple, which happens to be located in England. Other participants choose to marry outside the church, forming "part-member" families; this can lead to tension between spouses if one refuses to convert or if the couple struggles to decide in which faith to raise their children.The sixth chapter of Irish Mormons, "We Preach That Culture," addresses a particularly intriguing question: is "Mormon Culture" solely a product of church doctrine, or is it inextricable from wealthy White American values? According to O'Brien and her data, the universalism of Mormon culture, especially the constant striving for progress and perfection, is not a natural aspect of the gospel but rather a product of the top-down policies established by the church headquarters in the United States. In fact, O'Brien argues, Irish Mormons are more likely to push back against ideas and traditions many American Mormons would not question. Some participants felt uncomfortable with attempts to celebrate the church's pioneer narrative, believing the tradition to be disconnected from their history and experiences as Irish Mormons. Other participants felt their Irish heritage and culture were sidelined by attempts to "support" a more global church that embraces the experiences of non-Irish migrants in leadership and cited experiences attending church on other continents that prioritized local culture. (One participant said, "I've attended church in Nigeria and the Nigerians are not expected to behave as anything other than Nigerians" [117].) Even small things could be alienating; a couple reported their tendency to tease each other made American Mormons uncomfortable because their cultural understanding of marriage placed high importance on sweetness. Some Irish Mormons took it upon themselves to encourage the celebration of Irish culture in their congregations: O'Brien describes a St. Patrick's Day celebration organized by Suzanne, an Irish woman who often felt her national identity was being sidelined, in Sweetwater. The event included traditional Irish foods like leek and potato soup and shepherd's pie, painting Irish symbols and flags on faces, a bingo game of various Irish iconography accompanied by explanations of each reference, and ultimately culminated in the singing of the Irish national anthem in the Irish language. Irish Mormons attempted to center their own cultural touchstones rather than acquiesce to American Mormon culture.Finally, Irish Mormons were more likely than American Mormons to question, dispute, and adapt church guidance on issues ranging from keeping hot tea and coffee in your home to offer to guests to support for the Irish referendum to legalize same-sex marriage. Irish Mormons drew on various sources of authority to justify their adaptations, including their personal relationship with God and even the church's teachings itself, inventively modified to support their interpretations. Irish Mormons are also more likely to present themselves as more laid-back and liberal in their Mormonism, in direct contrast with the more legalistic, conservative interpretations of American Mormons. This presents an interesting question: whose authority matters here? In a faith that encourages a personal relationship with God and recognizes continuing revelation, who is the ultimate authority on matters of faith and policy? In order to be a truly global church that accommodates and embraces its members of all backgrounds, the LDS Church in Ireland will likely have to loosen its grip and encourage such localizations.Readers of Mormon Studies Review will likely derive the most benefit from O'Brien's explanation of the Irish religious landscape rather than her explanations of Latter-day Saint belief and doctrine. O'Brien's writing is vivid and enjoyable, and her strengths as an ethnographer are especially visible in her sixth chapter where she describes the fervor and emotion of Latter-day Saint Apostle M. Russell Ballard's visit to the area during her fieldwork. This work may also be useful to scholars of religion and migration as it illustrates the difficulties of adaptation and flourishing minority religions face in monocultural contexts.