The LDS Church traces its origins to western New York state in the United States and was formally established by Joseph Smith in 1830. The church's early history was defined in part by its missionary activities and, due to the shared language, England was one of the earliest places to be proselytised. Some early members were also English, or of English origin, living in the US.
1837–1841: early missions To England
In 1837, Smith approached Heber C. Kimball in the Kirtland Temple and called for him to proclaim the gospel in England. This calling was then also extended to Orson Hyde, Willard Richards, and Joseph Fielding. They left Kirtland, Ohio, for New York on 13 June 1837 and were met by three other missionaries (John Goodson, Isaac Russell, and John Snyder). On 1 July, this group of seven set off together for Liverpool, England, on the vessel Garrick and arrived on 20 July 1837.[4][5][6][7]
Two days later they went by coach to Preston where Joseph Fielding had a brother, Reverend James Fielding, who agreed to allow them to preach in his Vauxhall Chapel during the morning service on 23 July 1837. Kimball and Hyde both spoke at the meeting and the missionaries would return to Vauxhall Chapel to speak further at that afternoon's service and on the following Wednesday. However, after that, James Fielding became aware some of his congregation had requested to be baptised by the missionaries and they were stopped from giving any further speeches there.[8][9]:34[10][4]
Nine of Fielding's congregation were baptised on Sunday morning 30 July 1837 in the nearby River Ribble, before a crowd of thousands. The first to be baptised into the LDS Church in England was George D. Watt.[11]:34[10] On 6 August 1837, the first branch of the church was established in Preston, which remains today the oldest continuously functioning unit of the LDS Church.[12][13][14]
In September 1837, the group obtained access to a building, "The Cockpit", by way of the Preston Temperance Society and meetings began to be held there regularly, including the first general conference of the LDS Church in England, which was held on Christmas Day 1837.[15][4] By the time this conference was held, there were several branches, or small congregations, established in Alston, Bedford, Whittle, Daubers, Hunter's Hill, Chatburn, and Penwortham, among other places.[16]
On 8 April 1838, a second conference was held at which Joseph Fielding became president of the British Mission, with Richards and William Clayton as counselors. On 20 April 1838, the other members of this first mission, who were not staying on, left Liverpool to return to the US aboard the ship Garrick.[4][17] In that first year of proselytising there had been around 1600 baptisms in the United Kingdom, and nearly 1500 were mostly attributable to Heber C. Kimball alone.[18]
In 1838, Joseph Smith announced that the Quorum of the Twelve should travel to the United Kingdom on a mission.[19] They arrived between January and April 1840. Among the church's first apostles to arrive was Wilford Woodruff who, in March 1840, was introduced to leaders of the United Brethren and began preaching to their congregation. A constable had been sent by the rector of the parish with a warrant to arrest him. At the close of the meeting, seven people offered themselves for baptism, including four preachers and the constable. Within 18 days, two of the most influential members of the United Brethren, John Benbow and Thomas Knighton, were baptised. 30 days later, Woodruff had baptised 45 preachers and 160 members of the United Brethren, who put into his hands their Gadfield Elm Chapel and 45 houses licensed for preaching. By 1841, nearly 1,800 additional people had converted, including all but one of the 600 United Brethren.[20] The Gadfield Elm Chapel became the church's first chapel in the United Kingdom and is the oldest extant chapel of the LDS Church. It was restored between 1994 and 2000.[21][22]
In May 1840, the first issue of the Millennial Star, a magazine for British Latter-day Saints, was printed.[23] It would be published regularly until 1970, becoming the longest continuously published periodical of the LDS Church.[24] By the end of 1840 there were 3,626 church members in Britain.[25]:19
1841–1900: growth, emigration and decline
In 1841, richly-bound copies of the Book of Mormon were presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert by Lorenzo Snow, who received an audience with Her Majesty. On that occasion Queen Victoria autographed an album of Snow's, which became a prized possession in his family.[26]
By 1850, British membership had risen to 30,747 members (which was slightly more than the total in the United States at that time)[28] and a further 7,500 had already emigrated to the United States. John Moon had brought the first company of 4 converts with him on the ship Britannia from Liverpool in June 1840.[29] By the end of 1840 at least 290 converts had emigrated to the US and another 800 members made the voyage the next year.[30] Writing of the members preparing for one such ocean voyage, Charles Dickens described these pioneer Latter-day Saints in chapter 22 of his book The Uncommercial Traveller as, by his estimation, "the pick and flower of England".[31] Following the death of Joseph Smith and the subsequent migration west of the Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City, migration from the British Isles to the United States increased greatly.[25]:20 This emigration was aided by the church's Perpetual Emigration Fund.[32]
In 1877, half of the 140,000 Latter-day Saints in Utah were of British origin.[33] This migration would leave its mark upon Utah, which as of 2000 had the highest percentage of population claiming English descent (29%) of any state in the US.[34] Beginning in 1891, Latter-day Saint leaders in America increasingly began to encourage the European members to remain in their homelands and build up the church in those countries.[35] By 1892, the church membership still in the British Isles had fallen to only 2,604, despite around 111,330 baptisms occurring between 1837 and 1900.[30][36] In a similar period of time at least 52,000[30] and up to 100,000 members had emigrated to the United States.[28]
The Emigrants statue, located in Albert Dock, Liverpool, commemorates Mormon emigration from the port of Liverpool
1900–1950: new growth and stability
The first decade of the 20th century was a period of rapid expansion unlike any the church in the UK had seen since the 1860s. However, increased visibility led to a new wave of opposition and persecution.[38]
A well-organised 'anti-Mormon' campaign was mounted by various ministers and Latter-day Saints who had turned from the church. They lectured and published pamphlets accusing the missionary programme of being a disguise for Americans to enslave British girls as polygamous wives.[39] Missionaries were sometimes attacked. In February 1913, an anti-Mormon riot in Sunderland possibly led to the death of an American missionary, Ralph H. Hendricks,[40] though his death certificate stated he died from fever[41] and the LDS Church's own publication's obituary stated he died after a two-month illness.[42] Opponents of the LDS Church demanded that Home SecretaryWinston Churchill and the Home Office persuade Parliament to expel Latter-day Saint missionaries and refuse entry to more. Churchill opposed exaggerated claims and collected favorable police reports from key cities. When the 'Mormon question' came up in Parliament again, Churchill said that although he had not completed his investigation, he had found nothing against the LDS Church members.[43]
When the First World War began in 1914, all American LDS Church missionaries in the United Kingdom were evacuated back to the US.[44] The Lloyd George ministry banned the church's missionaries from reentering Britain in 1918 after the war, despite mission presidentGeorge Albert Smith's protest that they had peacefully worked in Britain for more than 80 years. Missionaries would not return in significant numbers until mid-1920, after United States SenatorsReed Smoot and William H. King caused the American State Department to intervene.[45][46] The movie Trapped by the Mormons, inspired by Winifred Graham's book of the same title, led to widespread anti-Mormon rhetoric throughout the British Isles.[46][38] The ban on LDS missionaries was in part because of fears of the prewar anti-Mormon violence resuming, but incidents were minor. Although Graham and other anti-Mormons continued to denounce the church, the government told them that there was no evidence that missionaries were acting in a way to justify deportation.[45]
In 1937, leaders in the United Kingdom celebrated the church's centennial in the British Isles. During the first 100 years, 126,593 people had been baptised, and at least 52,000 of these had immigrated to the US.[30]
After the outbreak of the Second World War all the church's American missionaries were again evacuated. This was completed by early 1940 when Hugh B. Brown, then serving as president of the British Mission, returned to the US. In his place, a local Latter-day Saint, Andre K. Anastasiou, was appointed. Brown returned to the UK on 29 March 1944 and again began serving as the mission president. American missionaries would begin to return in 1946.[47]
1950–2000
The Hyde Park Chapel which includes a meetinghouse, visitor center, and family history center
In the 1950s, emigration to the US began to be discouraged and local congregations proliferated.[48]
In the late 1950s through to the early 1960s, a new focus on growth in convert numbers led to the introduction of "Youth Baptism Program", which became colloquially known as the "Baseball Baptism Program". This used baseball and other team sports as a way to bring young teenage boys into the LDS Church. Introduced by mission president T. Bowring Woodbury, who led the British mission from October 1958 to January 1962, it dramatically increased the baptism rate for new converts (in 1962 there were 12,000 converts alone) but controversy over the focus on numbers, the pressure on missionaries from the British Mission headquarters and the use of deception to get boys to agree to baptism led to the program being ended by 1965, and ex-communications (which was the process of cancelling membership at that time) of most of the inactive new converts followed.[49][50]
During the same period, the LDS Church engaged in a massive building program. Prior to the administration of church president David O. McKay, most British congregations met in rented rooms and buildings. This was considered a detriment to the LDS Church's proselytizing and in the early 1960s, a large number of chapels were constructed around the British Isles.[51]
Based on studies of information submitted to the Genealogical Society, it was estimated in 1971 that 80 percent of the members of the church in the world were of British extraction.[4]
In the early 1970s, the Mormon sex in chains case brought the church some unwanted publicity in national newspapers. A young missionary, Kirk Anderson, went missing in 1977, in Ewell, Surrey, after he was abducted from the steps of a church meetinghouse.[52] A few days later, a freed Anderson made a report to the police that he had been abducted, driven to Devon, and imprisoned against his will, chained to a bed in a cottage, where Joyce Bernann McKinney (b. August 1949) — a former (1973) Miss Wyoming World[53][54][55][56] — had abducted and then raped him.[57][58] The case became known by many sobriquets, including "The Mormon sex in chains case" and "The Case of the Manacled Mormon". The coverage was extensive in part because the case was considered so anomalous, involving as it did the issue of rape of a man by a woman. In 2010, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris made Tabloid (2010), based on the media sensation surrounding the story.[59]
The second LDS temple in England was the Preston England Temple, dedicated in 1998. The temple is located in the town of Chorley, 10 miles (16km) south of Preston, in Lancashire, England.
It is the centrepiece of a 15-acre (6hectare) complex that includes a stake centre, a missionary training centre, a family history facility, a distribution centre, temple patron housing, temple missionary accommodations, and a grounds building.[60] The temple itself has a modern, single spire design and an exterior finish of Olympia white granite from Sardinia.
The white granite exterior and zinc roof have caused it to be described as reminiscent of England's old churches.[61] The angel Moroni statue atop the spire is known as, "one of the landmarks of the M61".[62] The temple has four ordinance rooms and four sealing rooms, and is the largest Latter-day Saint temple in Europe, at 69,630 square feet (6,470m2).[63]
Since 2000
In 2012, the LDS Church's Hyde Park Chapel in London was reopened following extensive remodeling for worship services and as a visitors' center, featuring a replica statue of Thorvaldsen'sChristus which can be seen from the roadside.[64]
Thorvaldsen's Christus
In 2013, the Tony Award-winning Broadway production called The Book of Mormon opened on London's West End. The musical was widely interpreted to be provocative by both its creators and church members.[65] The LDS Church reacted by putting advertisements on the London Underground and buses, many of them pointing to a website associated with the "I'm a Mormon" campaign. Many English members posted their own views and testimonies on this website.[66]
In 2014, Tom Phillips, a former church stake president, brought a private prosecution for fraud against the current church president, Thomas S. Monson, through the English and Welsh court system.[67] After a summons for Monson was issued by Westminster Magistrates' Court, the case was thrown out by Senior District Judge Howard Riddle[68] who ruled that the case was "an abuse of the process of the court" and that "the court is being manipulated to provide a high-profile forum to attack the religious beliefs of others".[69][70]
The LDS Church has two temples in England. The London England Temple serves the south of Britain. It was dedicated in 1958 by then-church president David O. McKay.[74] Its public open house was attended by 76,324 people.[75]
A second temple was completed in 1998 in Chorley, near Preston and is known as the Preston England Temple.[2][76] It serves northern England, north Wales, all of Ireland and Scotland. It was dedicated on 7 June 1998 by then-church president Gordon B. Hinckley.[77][78]
Gordon Bitner Hinckley was an American religious leader and author who served as the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from March 1995 until his death in January 2008 at age 97. Considered a prophet, seer, and revelator by church members, Hinckley was the oldest person to preside over the church in its history until Russell M. Nelson surpassed his age in 2022.
Heber Chase Kimball was a leader in the early Latter Day Saint movement. He served as one of the original twelve apostles in the early Church of the Latter Day Saints, and as first counselor to Brigham Young in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for more than two decades, from 1847 until his death.
In the Latter Day Saint movement, a temple is a building dedicated to being a house of God and is reserved for special forms of worship. A temple differs from a church meetinghouse, which is used for weekly worship services. Temples have been a significant part of the Latter Day Saint movement since early in its inception. Today, temples are operated by several Latter Day Saint denominations. The most prolific builder of temples of the Latter Day Saint movement is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS Church has 350 temples in various phases, which includes 189 dedicated temples, 52 under construction, and 109 others announced. Several others within the movement have built or attempted to build temples. The Community of Christ operates one temple in the United States, which is open to the public and used for worship services, performances, and religious education. Other denominations with temples are the Apostolic United Brethren, the Church of Christ, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the Righteous Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Jonathan Golden Kimball was a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as a member of the First Council of the Seventy from 1892 until his death in 1938. He is considered one of the most colorful and beloved of the church's general authorities. In the years since his death, "Uncle Golden" has become a near legendary character among church members, possibly comparable to what Will Rogers or Mark Twain are to the general American public.
Joseph Fielding was an early leader of the Latter Day Saint movement. He served as the second president of the British Mission (1838–1840), coordinating the activities of missionaries in sections of the United Kingdom and parts of Europe. He was the brother of Mary Fielding, the second wife of Hyrum Smith, and an uncle of Joseph F. Smith, the sixth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
George Darling Watt was the first convert to Mormonism baptized in the British Isles. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Watt was a secretary to Brigham Young, the primary editor of the Journal of Discourses, and the primary inventor of the Deseret Alphabet.
Since its organization in New York in 1830, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had a presence in Canada. The church's first missionaries to preach outside of the United States preached in Upper Canada; the first stake to be established outside of the U.S. was the Alberta Stake; and the Cardston Alberta Temple was the first church temple built outside of the boundaries of the United States.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a temple is a building dedicated to be a House of the Lord. Temples are considered by church members to be the most sacred structures on earth.
Lorin Farr was a Mormon pioneer and the first mayor of Ogden, Utah.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had a presence in Mexico since 1874. Mexico has the largest body of LDS Church members outside of the United States. Membership grew nearly 15% between 2011 and 2021. In the 2010 Mexican census, 314,932 individuals self-identified most closely to the LDS Church.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members in Utah. Utah has more church members than any other U.S. state or country. The LDS Church is also the largest denomination in Utah.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in Japan in 1901 when the church's first missionaries arrived on August 12. Among them was Heber J. Grant, who was then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve and later became the church's 7th president. Horace S. Ensign, Louis A. Kelsch, and Alma O. Taylor accompanied Grant. The LDS Church's first baptism in Japan was on March 8, 1902, when Grant baptized Hajime Nakazawa, a former Kannushi. The Book of Mormon was translated three times. The first translation, which took over six years, was completed by Taylor in 1909. It was then recommended that the Book of Mormon be translated into bunshō, a more elegant literary style, which was done by Chōkō Ikuta in 1909, shortly before it was published and distributed. The third translation in 1957 was done by Tatsui Sato. In 1995, the Book of Mormon was translated again into a more colloquial style.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in Brazil in 1926 with the opening of the South American Mission. Missionary work was focused on small German immigrant colonies in South Brazil. The LDS Church was forced to expand missionary work to Brazilians and Portuguese speakers when non-Portuguese languages were banned in public meetings in 1938. The Brazil Mission was opened on February 9, 1935, with Rulon S. Howells as mission president. The first Portuguese translation of the Book of Mormon was published in 1939.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has had a presence in the island of Ireland since at least 1840, when the Elder John Taylor first preached in Newry. He and other missionaries converted a number of Irish people, forming a branch in Hillsborough, County Down. Many of the converted Irish saints emigrated in order to escape poverty, as well as to live in majority Latter Day Saint communities. Missionary efforts continued in the 1850s, and a small branch was established in Dublin, but many members emigrated to Utah or lost interest in the church. In 1867, the Irish mission was placed in the care of the British mission. A new branch was formed in Belfast in 1884 and a Dublin branch was reestablished in 1900. All of this occurred despite anti-Mormon disturbances by local Irish people.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Scotland is the Scottish branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members in Wales.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Isle of Man refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members in the Isle of Man. As of 31 December 2022, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported 281 members in one congregation, the Douglas Ward, in the Isle of Man. In 2019, the Isle of Man had the 2nd most LDS Church members per capita in Europe, behind Portugal. Despite their small numbers, Manx Mormons have a heritage going back over a hundred and fifty years, which is obscured by their tendency to emigrate to the US and by the LDS Church administering the Isle of Man as part of England, when it is not actually part of the United Kingdom.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
↑ Brittingham, Angela; Cruz, C. Patricia de la (June 2004), "Ancestry: 2000", Census 2000 Brief(PDF), United States Census Bureau, United States Department of Commerce, page 6, table 3, archived from the original(PDF) on 20 September 2004
↑ Fernandes, Fatima (1999). "Sex scandals". In Peter Childs and Mike Storry (ed.). Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture. Taylor & Francis. p.489. ISBN978-0-415-14726-2.
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