- Good afternoon, my name is Fred Axelgard
and again, I'm happy to welcome you
to this concluding panel for the conference.
The purpose here is to talk about methodologies
involved in doing Global Mormon Studies research.
We have a distinguished panel here.
I will briefly mention their names.
You have their biographies in front of you.
Professor Henri Gooren is an Associate Professor
at Oakland University in The State of Michigan,
not the Bay Area.
We need to clarify that.
Caroline Kline is a PhD candidate here at Claremont.
She has been focusing on women's studies in religion.
Matthew Martinich, I almost got that pronounced correctly,
has a doctorate in psychology
from the University of the Rockies,
has engaged in providing mental health services
in Colorado, where he lives.
Also very active online
in tracing the global growth of Mormonism
and at Cumorah...
Dot...
- Cumorah.com.
- Cumorah.com is an amazing array of resources
providing information on the international church.
We're very happy to have
all of these distinguished scholars here.
The plan is to be interactive.
What I will do is ask a question
designed to stimulate some conversation.
We'll move down the panel and they'll answer the question
and then respond to each other's answers before moving on.
We've had a chance to coordinate a bit
in the last week or so.
We hope the questions seem interesting to you,
but there will be time at the end, again,
for your involvement.
So let me go ahead and begin.
Here's the first question by way of background.
How did you get started doing research on Global Mormonism?
Why did it or why does it interest you?
And or why do you feel it's important?
Professor Gooren, could you start for us?
- That's right.
Oops, yeah, I was told to speak in the microphone.
I guess this works.
When I was an anthropology undergraduate
at Utrecht University in Netherlands,
I really wanted to study Pentecostal growth in Costa Rica
but my supervisor, Professor Walter Van Beek,
who was a Mormon,
said while those pentecostal churches
don't always like anthropologists,
why don't you study a Mormon congregation?
And he just happened to be a stake president
in Utrecht in The Netherlands and he said,
"Well, I'll write you a letter of introduction."
in english which we translated in Spanish.
Then I went to Costa Rica
that opened all sorts of doors for me.
Later I was asked to do a PhD study
because of my experience in Costa Rica
looking at small-scale entrepreneurs in Guatemala City
where I studied Catholics, Pentecostals, and Mormons
so I was able to use that experience
and from then on, it just seemed the Mormons
kept cropping up in my life.
Now again, as an anthropologist,
I was of course interested first of all, at that time,
we're talking early 1990s in the growth in Latin America
but I also felt that behind the official church statistics
which we're gonna talk about I'm sure,
there were many other stories to tell
and as an anthropologist, I felt
we're gonna talk a little bit about methods
that I had a unique perspective,
talking to people, interviewing them,
doing ethnographic research,
but again, my original interest was simply,
this is a very different church,
I learned that very quickly.
It is very successful in Latin America.
Probably for the same reasons as Pentecostalism.
Partly for different reasons and for comparative purposes,
I thought that was important to study.
Now back to the other issue, access.
So I was incredibly fortunate
to have that connection through my supervisor
who happened to be a stake president that I could get access
because otherwise, there's no way I could've had access
to that ward in San Jose, Costa Rica or in Guatemala City
or later in Managua.
The relevance of Mormonism, I don't wanna talk too long.
We'll get all into that but I am interested, I'll repeat,
in the comparative perspective.
Mormons are not as unique as they'd like to think.
They have things in common with other religions,
with Pentecostals, with Charismatic Catholics
and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal,
and I think it is important to study that comparatively
using rigorous research methodologies
and I'll leave it there.
- Thank you.
Caroline, please.
- Hello, everyone.
For years, I had been reading and writing
and thinking about issues of gender within Mormonism.
I, myself was raised in the Mormon church.
I was married in the Mormon temple,
and I think I spent most of my 20s
grappling with questions of gender
before I decided to enroll in CGU
in the Women's Studies in Religion Program here.
As I took classes here in Women's Studies in Religion,
I came to be very interested in
the ways that context and culture and race and class
impact one's experience with gender in a religion
and I was pretty familiar with the ways
that white, Mormon women in North America
in navigated Mormonism, white Mormon feminists,
I knew that world pretty well
but I was not so familiar with how race, class, and gender
intersected together outside of white North America.
So that is what I decided to focus on for my dissertation.
I decided to examine this question
by looking at three different communities of women
in different locations.
One location was in Veracruz, Mexico.
One location was in Botswana,
and one was women of color in The United States.
I felt like this was a really important contribution
because so many of these voices and perspectives
had not been
heard before outside of their immediate communities
and I felt like they were absent
from a lot of academic conversations
and that they deserved a voice at the table
when we were talking about Mormonism and gender.
So I felt like it could speak internally to Mormon studies
in important ways and internally to Mormons in general
but I also saw that there was potential
for speaking outwards to the academy.
I was hoping that these voices could enrich and critique
feminist critiques of religion in new ways.
- Thank you very much.
Matt, please, go ahead.
- So I first became interested in
the international church
and the study of Global Mormonism when I was in high school
and I had the thought one day,
I remember thinking back to looking at a Enzine article
and it had a map where all the temples were in the world.
I thought to myself,
"I wonder where all the temples are now."
because President Hinckley had announced like,
100 or something like that
and they're all over the place now.
So where are these temples at?
And one thing kinda led to another
and I became familiar with
David Stewart's website, cumorah.com
and I just developed a very intense interest in the subject
and looking at the growth of the church and
where the church had the most members,
where there weren't any members, how come,
and
in about 2007,
I decided I should really organize my thoughts
and put it together in some sort of online format.
That way, I can publish my ideas
and get people's feedback as well on that
and so, that's when I started LDSChurchGrowth.blogspot.com
and I've maintained that site now for over 10 years.
I got together with David Stewart in 2009
and since then, I've been working at the Cumorah Foundation
where we conduct research in regards to
what contextual factors affect the growth
of Global Mormonism as well as...
Just also looking at the effectiveness
of the missionary program and publishing resources on that
during that time so, since that time,
I'm still working on different articles and books
in regards to that topic
and it's just continued to grow as a major interest of mine
even though it's not my day job.
- Thank you.
Anything somebody forgot to say
or wanted to follow up with?
Okay.
I'd like to ask, what are the questions?
What are the main research questions
that you have tried to address in a large sense?
What are the important issues or concerns
that have driven you in your research?
You've eluded to that to some degree
but if you could elaborate as needed.
Please, Henry.
- Like I said,
the enormous growth of the church in Latin America
and the feeling that there were many other stories
and elements to the statistics,
just looking at the growth, maybe also add that.
Of course, the Mormon church being so North American
and connected to The United States,
having success in Latin America,
a continent that people tend to think of as very Catholic
although you can debate just how Catholic it was,
but certainly, Mormonism is very different from Catholicism
so I was intrigued by that whole process of conversion.
When I looked at the growth issue,
what I found that people weren't attracted to Mormonism
for all sorts of reasons.
From very practical, to spiritual,
to related to doctrine, to social reasons
essentially reflecting a lot of what we know
from the conversion research in general why people convert
but what I found when I actually did the research
in the wards, previewed some very interesting issues,
kind of the stories behind the growth to put it in context
or what I would like to call
in some of the dialogue articles I published,
'the growing pains'.
So I noticed, for instance, that in my study
of Mormonism in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua,
the very limited knowledge of new LDS members
after they had six discussions at that time,
now it's only four discussions,
they knew very little about the church or the doctrines.
The problems they had with tithing,
living up to the word of wisdom in Latin America
and the gendered aspects to that
especially between man and woman
I thought were very fascinating.
The problems many people had functioning in callings.
Part of the policy at that time was for bishops
to put new members almost immediately in callings,
sometimes very irresponsible callings
and that was a struggle.
Sometimes, it worked out well.
I think it also caused a lot of inactivity frankly
in Latin America.
Problems with
lingering cultural issues
like machismo and authoritarianism of leaders
and I say a lot of the leaders, again, were very young,
not that well prepared,
so you had a lot of leadership issues
which, again, people have published
about an early research on Mormonism in Latin America
thinking especially Wesley Craig and Evlo Montolis
have both documented that part also
and again, last main issue, the inactivity race, right?
The fact that so many new members drop out
that you really get what I called in one piece,
three types of members.
You have the disaffiliated members,
you have the affiliated members
with the minimal kind of involvement,
and you have the core members
that live up to all the expectations
and the ones who have a temple recommend
but that's just a tiny minority in Latin America.
So really, when we talk about Mormonism in Latin America,
apart from country and class
and ethnicity issues and gendered issues,
what kind of Mormons are we talking about?
I think that's an important question
that we need much more research on.
- Over time, has the question evolved
or have the questions that you understood and evolved,
there's been a consistent focus on?
- That has been a pretty consistent focus.
The only thing that changed,
well, changed, that I added more on
was the comparative aspect.
Not just looking at Mormonism in isolation
which I think, frankly, is a problem
especially in Latin America but even in The States
but seeing how Mormons compete with other main religions,
whether successful or not, like Pentecostalism,
I've written about comparing Mormons and Adventists in Chile
in a dialogue article which I think is very useful.
Jehovah's Witnesses also have certain elements
that I think for comparative purposes, again,
from a social science perspective, right?
I'm not talking theology, I'm an anthropologist.
I think that's very important to bring out both
the elements where Mormons are actually quite unique
and the elements that they have in common
with Pentecostals or Adventists or Witnesses
or other what I would just call strict Christian religions.
- Thank you.
Caroline, same question.
The questions that you've had.
- My main research questions have been:
How do questions of gender,
and by that I mean male leadership, genderal prescriptions,
gender theological ideas and so forth,
how did these questions of gender
register to women outside of white North America?
That was probably my dominant question
as I went into the dissertation.
- [Henry] Can I ask this?
Did you have a suspicion that it was a different resonance?
Did that drive you?
- Certainly,
my vision was opened
by the end of this project in new ways.
I suspected things would register differently
but the things that came out surprised me a lot of ways.
For instance, and I'll get to that in just a second,
another dominant question
which will go right to what you asked
was what kinds of liberation and power
did women in the global south find in Mormonism?
Those things really surprised me that came out.
For instance, I talked to women in Mexico
and it turned out that Relief Society
was this amazing vehicle for economic empowerment.
That was something that I had no clue.
I wasn't expecting that.
But their experience with Relief Society
in which they were taught crafts and cooking skills
and how to do haircuts,
they would learn these things
and then they would turn them into businesses
and through these businesses,
they would get really important economic uplift
in their families,
and so, I loved finding these kinds of trends
as I was asking these questions.
Other questions that I was interested in
as I was doing this project
was what were the places of tension and conflict
as they adopted and adapted Mormonism
into their particular context.
I also, and this was a big one,
I really wanted to understand
what their ethical and moral imperatives were.
Like what was driving them?
When they came across a moral decision
that they had to make, what were their priorities?
And I think that in the end,
answering that question
might be one of my biggest contributions
as I look back on this dissertation.
I was also, throughout,
interested in questions of female agency
and how they negotiated in really complex ways
between various loyalties,
how they would at times push against things
but other times, they would uphold it
and they would do everything in between.
I think that that complexity
really came out in the project as well.
- Great, thank you.
Matt, please.
- With my questions like I had mentioned earlier,
I was really wanting more information about the church
and what that growth really looked like
in terms of size of the church,
how rapidly the church was growing
in different areas of the world and
especially when I was writing the almanac with David Stewart
where we look at the growth of the church
in every sovereign country of the world,
that really provided a lot of very interesting information
in looking at things that I would have never thought of.
I never would have thought that there'd be a
higher percentage of members of the church in Pakistan
than there is in India
or
Indonesia or whatever.
So it's just interesting to see what's affected that growth.
Even things like religious freedom restrictions.
That can actually accelerate growth in some countries
because it requires the members of the church
to do that missionary work
and not to have full-time missionaries do it.
So, like I was saying, a lot of it had to deal
with really understanding where the church was growing
and why and also just how we measure that growth too
was a big part of that
and looking at effective ways to really see
how many members there are
because there are some significant disparities
between church reported membership numbers
and government reported membership numbers
in terms of census they have collected
for self-affiliating members.
So looking at that, those disparities
can be very interesting and really give a lot of information
about the health and the status of the church
in different countries around the world.
Really, a lot of it is just sort of understanding
the contextual factors.
What's encouraging growth, what's not, and why is that
and what things do missionaries and church leaders do
that encourage growth or that unfortunately stifle growth
and making sure that people are aware of that.
It's really kind of where things are at now and says,
a lot of people now,
these are effective ways of handling things,
these are really ineffective ways of handling things.
- Matt, as time's gone along,
as you've learned,
have you been able to ask better questions,
more sharply focused questions
about
the wise,
- [Matt] Sure, yeah! - To the growth
and non-growth? - One of those is
why is the church is so limited
in where it does missionary work.
Most countries in the world only have a church presence
in a handful of cities.
So why is that?
And then you learn of the center of strength policy
which most members of the church don't know anything about
and that is really determined how missionary work
has been carried out in the church
for the last 25, 30 years.
The mat, the patterns for missionary work we saw
in England
in the
1830s and 1840s,
those don't have hardly anything
to do with the patterns of missionary work today.
Back then, it was going to the rural areas,
establishing congregations in small villages,
today is very difficult for mission president
to get approval to open a village to missionary work.
It never happens, pretty much.
- Thank you.
Matt, let's come back to Nigeria a little bit later,
could we do that?
Okay, thank you.
Next question, again, it's related but maybe to distinguish
between the research questions you've had in mind
and the methodologies.
The methods you've been using or maybe, again,
how they might have changed over time
and what are the main challenges that you've had
in trying to use these methodologies, okay?
Please, Henry.
- So again, I am a Dutch culture anthropologist
doing research on Mormonism
and other religions in Latin America.
So as a anthropologist,
I do ethnographic research
which means I do a lot of hanging out with people.
With Mormons, that's mostly hanging out in church.
The regular three hour on Sunday
but also any kind of other meetings
that basically they allow me to visit.
Hang out, take notes, figure out what's going on,
and then interview people both informally
and more formally in a not-recorded setting and recorded
and making transcripts.
I think it's a great method.
The main problem is access which I already explained.
I was incredibly fortunate to have that first access
which has served me basically throughout my life
to have access to those Mormon wards.
Not everybody cooperates, that's always a problem.
But the people you talk to
and especially if you just hang out in any ward
or Mormon ward or in any Pentecostal or Catholic group,
if you're there hanging out long enough
even though, of course, you look different
than most people since I do research in Latin America,
they forget why you're there,
you become part of the networks, people tell you things,
and then the other part, of course,
I also had access to the missions.
So I could go with the missionaries,
I would go with them when they're tracking,
I would go when they're doing visits,
I would interview the mission president.
In the beginning, they allowed that.
After a while, it became actually impossible
to interview mission presidents
which I thought was interesting
or it was possible to interview them
but they didn't say very much.
Not to a Dutch anthropologist anyway.
(Fred laughs)
So I think that is one thing to keep in mind
how that evolves.
You asked about challenges.
Again, it's been a while.
I wonder would I have the same kind of access nowadays?
I'm not sure.
The last couple of times, it seemed to be getting harder.
My main puzzle here that I'll just throw up
even though I'll get back to it a number of times is
my main puzzle here for the Global Mormon Studies,
why are there not more studies on the international church?
Why is it so limited?
Why is it that in the 90s,
there were basically three people doing research
on Mormonism in Latin America,
Mark Grover, David Nolton, and Henry Gooren,
and it's still pretty much.
Now I know, there's some exceptions.
There's some other research
that part of which we've heard here,
there's studies on Mexico,
there's studies on Latinos in the U.S.,
but as far as studies on Mormonism in Latin America,
the big growth area where a big chunk
of the membership lives,
it's amazing to me that there is not much visible
and I will throw that up as a question here.
Why is that?
What can we do to change that?
- [Fred] Do you have any speculative answer on your part?--
- Well as I, talking to Patrick about it,
money is an issue, (chuckles) right?
It's hard to do research on Mormonism.
You fall between the cracks
on the whole budget funding sources very hard.
The other issue is access
and let's just say the sensibility of the church
on being scrutinized, especially by social scientists,
whether those are LDS or non-LDS as you probably surmised,
I am not LDS which I think has been a great help for me.
If you get the access as an outsider, as a non-member,
I think it's a great value. - [Fred] Extraordinary.
- Yeah. - [Fred] Extraordinary value.
- Because it means you're much freer to write about it,
on the other hand, it's kind of frustrating
that I share all my information
and the good folks of the research information division
that's some of which I know very well,
of course have very detailed information
but they cannot share it.
Yet, of course, they can use my information
and my research because it's all in the public domain.
So my point is, I'm sure there are fascinating studies
being done but within the church
that are not shared with a wider audience
which ties, of course, to the question
of what is Global Mormon Studies, right?
Is it about helping the spread of Mormonism
or is it about studying Mormonism?
And those are two different things obviously.
- Thank you.
Caroline, please.
- My main research
method was the oral life history interview.
I'd sit down with women for one to two hours
and I would ask them about the whole arc of their lives
starting from childhood going through the present.
I'd also throw in a few questions about gender
and what it was like to be a woman
in the church and so forth.
And then, I would transcribe these interviews
and study them and look for themes
and I also did some participant observation
so ethnographic methods also.
In terms of challenges,
I think that you brought up
some really important issues with access.
I was lucky when it came to Botswana.
I was part of a research team that had an in
with the church, and so, they got us access in Botswana.
So I just worked through the church
and it was actually the missionaries over in Botswana
that arranged all of these interviews.
So that was amazing.
When it came to Mexico,
I did not work through the institutional church.
I just worked through informal networks.
It's a challenge to find these networks
where you have this in, where you can find someone
who will open this community to you
and facilitate interviews.
It worked out in Mexico.
I think that the leadership of the ward where I was at
was a little weary but the woman actually just took control
and they said, "Look, she's coming
"and you better give her a room to talk to people
"and you better welcome her."
and so, the bishop did and so, it worked out
even if it wasn't through institutional channels.
Another challenge
with my method
and this is something I think about a lot.
It's the fact that
my positionality as a white, North American,
middle-class American woman
was different than that of the women
I was talking to
in Mexico and Botswana
and the women of color in The United States.
And so there was very much, like a very real possibility
that when I was doing these interviews,
they were selectively sharing stories
like they were deciding what to tell me as they should
because I am coming from a different place and position
than they were.
That is something that I always had to keep in mind
and to realize as I was writing up what I was finding.
An example of this is when I was in Mexico,
I really wanted the women to reflect on race.
I really wanted them to reflect on power and privilege
and white leadership in America
but I could not get them to talk about that.
And I think it might have been out of a sense of politeness
because here I am as a white, North American lady.
But I felt like that was a real gap and it just,
it brought home to me this idea that
positionality really matters
and if it was a different person
who was doing the interviewing,
if it was not an outsider,
if it was an insider from their community
doing these interviews,
a very different document could've emerged
and so, I think that's just like a really important thing
to be keeping in mind when you do this kind of work.
- [Fred] Great, thank you.
- So, I would agree that really
one of the biggest challenges
is the lack of access to the data that's out there
to study Global Mormonism just because the church releases
such a limited amount of data on it's membership
and it's activity
and just different statistics
that give us a good idea of how the church is doing
in terms of it's growth and member activity rates.
So initially, about 10 years ago,
the main way I would
gather
data
to analyze the methodology at use would be
doing whatever I can
to analyze such as those statistics
that were released by the church
and also to thoroughly browse the web
looking for social media websites
and blogs from missionaries
and that was actually very helpful and very interesting
to get a lot of those personal accounts
and also a lot of actually fairly detailed information
about activity rates
and more qualitative data
about leadership and how that's functioning
and different challenges going on.
And then, most recently,
surveys have been one of the greatest way
that we've been able to gather a large amount of data
and when I first launched a survey about five years ago,
I used my own blog to try to get that
as well as read it and different things like that
to get responses and I get a few hundred after a week or two
and then it would all kind of fizzle out
but in the last few years,
I've been using Facebook advertising
to target people who liked the LDS church on Facebook
and I've gotten about 6,000 responses now
in the last five years from all over the world
from Laos, Pakistan,
Nigeria,
Belarus,
I mean everywhere so that's provided us
with a huge amount of data to analyze
and the questions we ask in the survey
are very specific and ask questions about
why people come to church anymore?
Why is it difficult for people to be retained?
What does member missionary participation look like?
What are some cultural factors
that you believe encourage growth?
What are some that deter growth?
So, really surveys have been a major part of that
but also, the urge of the established personal contacts
in different countries.
My favorite one I have right now is in Mali
and he's been a part of the creation of the first branch
in Mali last year
as well as the first convert baptismal service
to happen last month in Mali.
Some of those personal contacts
have provided a rich amount of information
that we can mine (chuckles) and analyze so,
but we also use other sources that are available
in the public domain.
Ethnolog.com has a lot of great data
on language use.
Also, the government censuses which I mentioned before.
Just kinda whatever we could find and put in all together.
- Henry, as a social scientist, take a whack, would you?
- You know, I don't wanna jump ahead
to the question number four but limitations, yeah.
Accesses can be a limitation, right?
I have to get permission.
Now I said, I've been lucky
but occasionally, I do get to wards
where the bishop doesn't want an anthropologist
there hanging around.
And of course, yeah, I have to go through IRB
and an official approval
so I do have to tell people, right?
You don't have to agree to be interviewed with me
and if you're uncomfortable talking about something,
you don't have to talk about it.
I think that actually strengthens the research, right?
But it's true.
A lot of it depends on the people I get to talk to,
how representative is then the information I'm able to get
because the people who say no,
there's no way I can go around that, right?
If they say no, then I can't interview them.
I'd be lucky in being able to interview a lot of bishops
and people on the Elder's Quorum and Relief Society
and all sorts of people.
What people forget, and here again,
I think that there's a link to doubling and being an artist,
a lot of the quality of interviews
and participant observation depends on the quality
and skills of the researcher.
So I hope I'm a good (mumbles)
partisan observator.
- [Man] Observer. - Observer.
I hope my interview skills are good.
I hope my language skills, right?
Keep in mind, I'm a Dutchman speaking english here,
doing interviews in Spanish
and then writing about it in english again.
So, there's some challenges there.
People also forget
in the environment of middle-class America,
the issues of race and ethnicity,
I interview mostly poor people.
Low income, middle income people in Central America.
Yes, most are mestizo, right?
Mixed blood.
Some are white, some are very true or native american,
so yes, how they respond to me,
what always helps I think
is that I can always present myself
as the ultimate outsider, right?
I am not LDS.
I am a social scientist.
I am not Costa Rican or Nicaraguan
but I'm not North American either.
So I'm kind of an outsider and I'm an anthropologist.
Which for the times I'm able to explain
what anthropology is about,
it really helps drive home the fact that I'm an outsider
and I'm interested in understanding people.
I want to understand the situation
and I'm sure Caroline Kline have found the same thing
that when you interview people
who are very different from you,
who are poor, who belong to different class,
ethnicities, different countries,
they welcome that attention.
They're happy to tell their story.
So I also do a lot of history interviews
but again, it all comes back to the skills of the researcher
and the selections we make and how well we represent it.
And there's a problem of course, a political problem
in that we're representing other people, right?
Because as what's mentioned here,
I'm sure there's plenty of people
who could do research in Latin America, in the wards.
Whether they're LDS or not, that doesn't matter.
But doing that research, I think it'd be great
if we could get more of that.
A bit of that is happening
but that'd be a different discussion
on why isn't more happening of that?
And I assume part of it is to simplify very much
the LDS people who want to do the research
are uncomfortable about getting in trouble with the church.
The non-LDS people are probably more interested
in studying their own church or studying other churches
but not necessarily Mormonism
because it is kind of an odd religion
in many countries still in spite of the membership growth.
I'll keep it there for now.
- Great, thank you.
Anybody wanna make any comment about quantitative methods
at this point?
Either use of statistics, we've talked a little about
a use of quantitative data--
- [Woman] Ooh, math.
We don't do math.
(everyone laughing)
- Well, I like quantitative methodology
but unfortunately, the numbers that we have access to
are quite limited to be able to perform any meaningful,
statistical analyses other than,
you can probably do some different
studies in terms of comparing country to country
with the limited data that are available
but it's just so limited.
You'd have to get it all yourself and crunch your numbers.
- Okay, okay, thank you.
Basically then, to ask
how successful do you feel you've been in your research
and getting answers?
Again, this has come through
in some of what you've said already
but how successful has your research been
in addressing the questions that you set out to address?
- Again, considering all the limitations I have
as an outsider and anthropologist, a Dutchman,
and a non-LDS, I think it has been quite successful.
I think it's actually helped being an outsider
and as I mentioned,
I think it's actually helped being non-LDS
because I was lucky to get the access.
But I agree, the access is a big problem.
People being comfortable to talk about issues is a problem.
I actually was surprised to find,
one of the things I really remember
is that a lot of the leaders I interviewed
especially in Costa Rica and Guatemala
were actually among the most critical
about the church institutionally.
The rise of the management class
as it was mentioned earlier, right?
The whole North American perspective,
the middle-class perspective,
from visuals to the assumption that people live near church
or can just drive over there,
which again, in many parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia,
is totally not true.
People have to travel for hours to get to church,
to get to simple meetings.
So that creates whole different circumstances, right?
Getting back to that, I think it's been an advantage.
Now,
talk about
limitations.
I think you have to be aware of the fact
that you are interviewing people
and you're doing it in certain situation
where you're hoping that you're making them comfortable
and that they'll share what they want,
it's a matter of trust, building up rapport
is what anthropologists call it.
But ultimately, you have to combine
a lot of different sources, different type of research,
and like I said, I would just hope
that there'd be more research coming out, right?
On Mormonism, on other religions,
so we can compare across line different countries,
different wards, different stakes,
the issue I hinted at, different types of Mormons.
I am particularly fascinated, yeah.
Why do people drop out?
And that will be something to study
but it's just impossible to access
because for starters,
a lot of those inactive members are hard to find
for me, personally as an anthropologist.
What I am fascinated by,
what I called the affiliated members.
So they still consider themselves LDS
but they don't go to church every Sunday,
they may occasionally drink alcohol or coffee,
they're kind of in this liminal, in between phase
yet they still self-identify as Mormon.
I find that very fascinating and then, yeah,
the other fascinating part, of course,
the quorum members, right?
The people who have the temple recommends
and how do they deal with all the cultural contradictions
and the different stresses and tensions
that they have to deal with in daily life and in church.
So again, I think
dabbling and being an artist
can be combined with doing science
in a comparative, theoretical framework.
I think we're just at the beginning of it.
Like I said, we'll need a lot more studies,
need a lot more data,
we know the limitations of the quantitative data
and we need the qualitative data
to go together with that to get ahead.
- Thank you.
Caroline, please.
- In terms of so, how successful do I feel I've been
using these methods?
I think I was able to gather a lot of really great,
illuminating anecdotes and insights
from the women I spoke with.
I think this is one reason why I love oral histories.
There's this potential of illuminating
the thoughts and insights of people
who are not usually considered in institutional histories.
And so, this is, I think, one of the most wonderful things
about oral life history methods.
That said though,
there were certainly moments of disconnect.
As I was doing these interviews, I kind of...
I'm a little embarrassed now
and I'm a little uncomfortable by the fact that
in every single interview I did with these women,
I asked them every single time
if they felt equal to men in the Mormon church.
And sometimes, they were quite happy to answer that question
but a lot of the time,
they would kinda furrow their eyebrows
and look at me and pause and not really know what to say.
And this was a moment of disconnect
because that question was coming from me
and my questions and my issues
and it did not reflect their questions and their issues
and they knew it.
The second I asked that question,
they knew I was coming from a different place.
So there were these moments of disconnect
that could come out but actually in the end,
it was these moments of disconnect
that helped me to articulate maybe one of the problems
with
the ways
feminist critiques of religion
has been framing itself for over the last several years
and I came to understand actually,
and this is one of the things
that hopefully my dissertation will really contribute to
is that the moral imperatives of the women I spoke with,
if I had to generalize, they were not gender equality.
That would be my moral imperative.
Their moral imperatives turned out to be different
and the phrase I came up with
to try to describe their moral imperatives
was non-oppressive connectiveness.
They were interested in relationships,
they were uplifting and positive,
they were interested in communities
that they could be a part of and healthy ways,
they were interested in great marriages
and good relationships with children,
and in great relationships with the divine
and with themselves
and they had to be non-oppressive and non-violent.
That's what they wanted
and that is what often Mormonism
seemed to deliver for them.
These communities, these relationships
that they felt were positive and uplifting.
I feel like I did get a great answer
from some of the work I did using these methods.
The minuses I think have been addressed to some degree
of this kind of methodology.
It's not highly systematic when you're doing ethnography.
You don't get great quantitative data
from doing oral life histories.
There's also, and no one really tells you this beforehand,
but transcribing
is horrific.
Tanalyn, you're laughing back there.
You know this.
It takes so much time.
I think I spent a whole year of my life transcribing
and so, this was extraordinarily time consuming.
And finally, of course, just another limitation is
ethnographic methodologies are wonderful,
oral life history methodologies are wonderful,
but just to go in with a lot of caution
because like you mentioned, when you represent people
and especially when you're coming in as an outsider
and representing people,
you have to be so careful to be ethical
and fair and not be exploiting them
and not be extracting them
because there's a long history of research that
exoticizes or demeans people from other countries
and I'm speaking as a white, North American person.
So this is something that I've always kept in the background
and we have to be very careful of, I think.
- So I would say I think it's been really successful
for me with the methodology I've used.
Especially when you get 6,000 surveys,
you learn all about all sorts of interesting things going on
with that much data from so many different areas
of the world.
But some of the findings I think
that are pretty significant are
we have a good idea of how many active members there are
in the church worldwide.
There's about 5.3 million active members in the church
of about 16 million members.
So that's, I think, valuable to know.
We know that inside The United States,
the activity rate's about 40% of members are active.
Outside of The United States, more like 20% to 25% active.
So I think we got some good information
on what the activity rates look like.
Convert retention, most-- - [Man] Matt, can you repeat
those numbers again?
- All of 'em?
(everyone laughs)
- [Man] The activity rates.
- [Fred] He needs some transcribing, go ahead.
- Sure. - [Caroline] 20% to 25%.
- So 40%, United States,
about one third of members worldwide
and about 20%, 25% outside The United States are active
meaning they go to church usually.
Like most weeks, they go to church is defined activity
in that way.
I think that's been really important
and then convert retention rates worldwide,
it's about half stay active a year later.
Some areas, it's actually close to 100%, believe it or not.
In other areas, it's more like 10%.
A lot of variability there in terms of convert retention
but some of the other findings
in terms of what really drives growth in the LDS church.
High baptismal standards are really important
because if you have people that are baptized too quickly,
they just become a liability
and they don't really provide,
they don't become a resource in the congregation
and it just drags on the leadership
especially internationally
where leadership's so limited as it is.
Opening new areas of proselytism
is a huge factor for growth.
That's one of the reasons why the church in West Africa
most recently has grown so rapidly.
Places like in Cote D'Ivoire, in Ivory Coast.
Ten years ago, there were only about six, seven cities
with a church presence and now there's about 45
which is a dramatic increase.
Another one is self-sufficiency and leadership
so using Cote D'Ivoire as an example again,
mission presence in Cote D'Ivoire
from the past 10 or so years,
10, almost 15 years have been all Ivorian.
They haven't been from North America.
So that's also been a big driver for growth
and up until just this past year or so,
missionaries that serve in Cote D'Ivoire
are only from Africa.
So, self-sufficiency is huge for growth in the LDS church
for that being growth that continues
and that can accelerate as well.
Sense of LDS community is also very important.
If there's not a sense of LDS community to church,
people immigrate to The United States
or another country that's a strong church presence usually.
And also, some of the comments earlier about
why don't we have a more diverse body of general authorities
and also on the Quorum of the Twelve.
A lot of that also, I would argue it
based on a lot of the findings that I've done
with the Cumorah Foundation is because
the church struggles in most countries in the world
just to staff their local needs,
if they call people into those positions
then the local needs suffer more
because they don't have a local leader to meet that need
and there's many countries in the world
where the church is strongly dependent,
if not almost entirely dependent on four missionaries
to properly function.
I think those are some of the big findings
that we have sound so far.
- Thank you, we have about 35 minutes left.
I have one more question.
I think I might hold fire on that.
It's kind of a general question, kind of lessons learned.
I think you've done actually
a good job of setting the stage for that.
But I think we'll, at this point,
turn to you as the audience.
I know there are researchers here,
some of you so-called scientists.
You, Meddler, and others who are--
(Matt laughs)
Political scientist.
- [Man] So that's an oxymoron.
- But again, there are others with research experience
and background in this area.
If you're gonna ask a question
or if you are a researcher,
wanna make a comment
addressing some of the questions I've raised,
identify yourself because there are people here
who would like to follow up, know what you're doing.
So with that, let's go ahead and turn to Q&A, please.
- [Man] When you threw out a time bomb
about hold off on Nigeria
unless I slept through it, was it Kenya?
- It was Nigeria.
- [Man] I think there was a story to be told
that we haven't heard.
- Well, the way I was gonna frame the question,
so recently, you've written that in Nigeria.
There are now three different areas
where missionaries are now being deployed
in the north of Nigeria which is typically
or dominantly or heavily Islamic.
So my question is, explain that
and or how did you find that out or both?
That was my question.
Is that of interest?
Should we go there?
Okay, go ahead, Matt.
- Sure.
In Nigeria this past year in 2017,
there was 100 and, I think it's 101
or it's 102 new congregations created in one year
which is the most new congregations created
in a single country outside of The United States
since The Philippines in the year 2000.
So that's a pretty significant development.
A very rapid growth in West Africa right now
but in terms of addressing your question
about the northern part of Nigeria, so,
I believe it's the very first time
in Kaduna State we've had missionaries assigned.
They just split the ward in Kaduna.
There's a branch there now, too,
and also in Jos and Bauchi,
there was a mission that was created in Jos in 1992
and the church relocated to Enugu in 1993.
That was due to concerns, mainly,
my understanding was with the Christian-Muslim violence
in the middle belt of Nigeria.
But the way I found out that information
about those areas opening the missionary work
was through surveys that were completed by local members
or return missionaries that served
in the Nigerian Enugu Mission
and they reported on those areas opening to Protestantism.
Some of them appears to be the first time
and there's been branches in those cities
since the early 90s but because of those safety concerns,
no missionaries have really been serving there
for the past 25 years.
- [Fred] Does that imply
some kind of change in policy that go along
with the early year coming? - The church in West Africa
is becoming more and more comfortable with proselyting
in traditionally Muslim areas in West Africa.
Now they're not targeting Muslims.
They're targeting Christians in those areas to proselyte to
but more comfortable moving in those areas.
So Senegal just had missionaries assigned about a month ago.
Also, in Mali right now the church is working towards
getting something worked out with the government there
with assigning full-time missionaries to Bamako
and also, a branch was just created in Guinea
for the first time.
So we're seeing the new chapter in growth
in West Africa to these traditionally Muslim countries.
Really, the biggest development
with multiple countries like this we've seen
since the rest of the Balkans opened a missionary work
about five, six years ago like Kosovo and Macedonia,
Montenegro, so that's pretty significant.
- [Fred] Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Please.
- [Woman] What mission?
They aren't their own missions.
I was a peace corp volunteer
in Guinea-Bissau as a young woman.
At that time, the corp,
the Vertical Lisbon Missions sent missionaries
rotating in and out in Cape Verde,
and nobody in Guinea-Bissau or
what did you just say?
Senegal,
Mali, - Mali.
- and so, are they their own missions
or are they part
of Nigerian missions? - No, in those countries
we're unassigned missions until recently
and only a couple of them are,
and actually in Mali, only the area in Bamako
is assigned to a mission.
The rest of it's assigned to the Africa west area.
But yeah, Guinea-Bissau, some of that assigned a mission--
- [Woman] Oh, it will be a while.
- Yeah.
- [Woman] It's missionaries that are there,
under the authority of the area authority?
- Well, once they're assigned to a mission,
that mission will supervise the proselyting there.
So Senegal's assigned to the west mission
in Abejon and Cote D'Ivoire
and then Mali is assigned to the regular
Cote D'Ivoire Abejon mission.
In Guinea, there's a scientist, Sierra Leone.
- [Woman] Wow, Sierra Leone has a mission?
- Yeah, it's had a mission since 2007.
- [Woman] Wow.
- Please.
- [Man] We heard of colonialism earlier in the conference.
- [Woman] Right.
- [Man] Do you see the church simply
transplanting
American
franchises
in each of the little units
or as something more organic grown?
- Anybody in particular or just
for the panel as a whole? - [Man] All!
- Who'd like to take a whack?
Henry, please.
- I mean there's two sides to that.
On the one end, you can look at something like
what we tend to think of the most standardized
kind of globalization effort, global corporations,
franchise holders, take Mcdonalds.
Mcdonalds you tend to think is totally standardized.
The food is, but not the eating experience.
In The U.S., I noticed here,
people go to Mcdonalds, they're in 10 minutes,
they sometimes don't even take their coats off
and they're out or they do the drive-in.
In Latin America, I've seen whole families
on Sunday afternoons, two, three hours at Mcdonalds,
children playing there, some uncles draw in,
aunts drop in, they're gonna leave again,
so my point is, what looks standardized
may have totally different uses locally.
So that's one thing.
The Mormon church, we all know
looks the same all over the world.
The main use are the same.
It's all thanks to correlation and the managers,
it's all heavily standardized
but what happens on the ground, right?
We heard from at least a part of that,
we know there's plenty of sides from Latin America,
John Hawkings years ago wrote a wonderful little article
about the problems of Guatemala that said,
"Let's have the single meets on the weekday night."
Except that in many towns in Guatemala,
that was very dangerous and you don't wanna do that.
So my point is,
there is probably a lot of local things changing
but if we don't study it,
we're not gonna know about it, right?
That's the problem.
The other issue I think still is
so it's an international church and what does it mean?
Is it still totally wants to truant-based
the way it's managed,
I'd say, you know, I had a bet with Mark Grover years ago
how long it would take to have a Latin American,
not just general authorities, we have plenty of those,
but the Quorum of the Twelve.
Not to mention a president, right?
And that issue itself, I think, once I brought it up,
the only people who openly talked about it
in Central America were actually bishops
in Costa Rica and Guatemala
and they were pretty critical about it.
They'd thought it didn't help the church
that it was so North American
and even was a truant in it's orientation.
They wanted more involvement.
I think the decentralization that of course
has happened in the Mormon church
and the increased role of the area office
I think is part of a recognition
that there has to be moral local adaptation
but, you still see,
there's so much standardized going on, right?
How it works out?
Again, you won't know until you do a search on it
or until some member feels that they can write about it
but
I think,
what puzzles me is that I'm still not entirely sure
what the church wants to do
and I suspect part of the reason is
because the upper membership of the church
is probably not entirely unified in what they want to do
and this has happened, of course, throughout Mormon history
is that you have different people on the 70, on the 12,
and you have different tendencies
and the combined effort of all of that
swings the church kind of back and forth
and sometimes, most people,
the Mormon would just know who are the more liberal,
who are the more conservative,
who are the more open, who are the more standardized,
and the problem, of course, not just to Mormonism
but in many religions
that is totally not accessible to research.
So frankly, we don't know.
We see occasionally signs when the church takes a stance
on immigration for instance.
I think that was a big thing.
So we see signs and it's kind of like reading the signs
but it's kind of like within the old days
was called kremlin watching, right?
Kremlin, kremlinology, right?
What was happening in the kremlin
or with the election of the new pope?
I mean, that is all hidden from site and is not accessible.
It'd be great if we could do research on it
but some issue that briefly came up
that's already forgetting back to it,
it's true that on the 70, The First Quorum,
there are Latin Americans but there are, as far as I know,
maybe one or two North American Latinos,
and it's totally true what Soo-hey said
that the Latin Americans who are on the 70
are all mostly business people or professionals
from higher classes
and I think it's not done on purpose
but that's the way the church leadership system
works out in the end.
The people with that kind of background
tend to be the people who gravitate
towards the upper leadership positions.
As social scientists, it's up to us
to analyze why that happens.
- Thank you.
Any other comments in response
to the question about quorum?
Caroline, please.
- Yeah, I would say
that when I think back to my time in Mexico,
people would when they gave talks in church,
they were carrying those teachings
of the presidents of the church manuals
and they would use them and they would quote from them
and from talking to them,
it seemed like most of the people said that,
they found that these things
were more helpful than oppressive.
Like these manuals.
If you look at it in one way,
it is so colonial and imperial to be shoving these messages
down on them and quoting all these white men
but talking to people on the ground,
they didn't seem to have problems
with the standardized manuals.
But what did come out in Mexico,
the one place
where they articulated tension
and where they articulated feeling the imperial weight
coming from the Utah church
was when the high school, Benet Merito
was closed about five years ago.
This was very upsetting to the Mexican women I spoke to.
This is an LDS boarding school
where they sent all their kids
and they loved this place so much
and it was closed without
- [Woman] Consultation. - any consultation
with the community in Mexico.
And so, that was the one place where they felt like,
yeah, there was a power issue going on
and they wish they had been consulted.
- And one thing I wanted to add too
to answer your question is,
I would say that the two main ways I see that kind of
colonialism with the growth of the churches
in regards to language use and meeting houses
because you see, the meeting houses
that
maybe fit in
in
The United States
being built in places like The Democratic Republic of Congo
or Mongolia and they really stand out
and they do not look like they fit at all.
They're also not very cost effective either.
I've had previous mission presidents inform me about that
and say, this very expensive meeting house,
the materials weren't even from our country,
they were brought here and now we have this meeting house
that doesn't fit in the neighborhood
and it gives people this wrong impression
of the local church there.
And then language use is another major issue.
There are many countries in the church
where missionaries will only teach people
that speak certain languages.
If you don't speak that language, then they won't teach you
unless there's somebody who can translate perhaps
but that's been another challenge for growth
is because the church has been very selective
on what languages it will proselyte
and translate materials into
and which ones it will not.
- Thank you.
- [Man] Alright, so...
One question for Matt, (speaker audio unclear)
and another one for the whole panel.
So Matt, and actually both of these
are kind of about the relationship and responsibilities
of the researcher to your subjects, okay?
So Matt, I can imagine
a setting in which some statistics
or some information about the church can be sensitive
and could actually possibly,
the accurate reporting of data could be problematic
for church members in a particular locale.
So I want you to talk about the ethics of that--
- Absolutely, yeah.
So there's sensitive countries
where we won't publish information on where church units are
like in Mainland China for example.
We have that information but we don't publish it
'cause it's sensitive and the church has a very...
They're very careful with that
to make sure the members there are safe
and they make sure everything's done legally
or for example,
in terms of
where in our convert retention rates
maybe in some areas or member activity rates
but even that,
usually we don't have too many issues with that
is because people don't know where it is.
We're not gonna publish the activity rate
for a specific unit
necessarily because for one,
I don't know if anyone would really care much about that
but also might be used in some malicious way
perhaps by a counter-proselyting group
or something like that.
And then also, a lot of it to just sort of
we'll get information that's very detailed
about particular church leaders or
situations within the congregations
that are pretty sensitive that we just don't report on.
We might just say, "This country's had issues
"with proper handling of church finances by local leaders."
but not indicating where exactly perhaps
or something like that.
- Others?
Wanna comment on the same question?
- Well I am a social scientist
but I also try not to hurt my interview subjects, obviously.
I also make it anonymous.
Though, you run into problems, right?
So you have to anonymize basically the ward
or where it is and the leaders
because if you don't, even if you just describe it,
like in Costa Rica or Guatemala,
some people might be able to figure out where it is
so you have to figure out ways to do that.
Now, to recognize themselves in it, I must admit,
I have shared my findings mostly with LDS leaders.
Bishops, people on The Elder's Quorum, The Relief Society,
and they got it.
They really were interested in my research
and some, not always, but in some cases,
they recognize themselves in it
but interesting enough,
if I'd been somewhere over a long time,
I'm talking at least half a year longer,
and I've built up kind of what I,
I might almost call 'friendships' in the church.
Although it's not real friendships
because I'm a researcher
and I'll be gone in another half year,
but sometimes, my 'friends' felt a bit hurt
because they were looking at things
in the church very differently
and when I let them read, for instance,
an article in The Tico Times,
a Costa Rican english language newspaper.
Some of my 'friends' were a bit hurt
because they suddenly realized
that even though they thought of me basically as a member,
as an in-crowd person,
that my perspective was totally different.
That I was writing about leadership,
machismo, and cultural issues.
Whereas, they just thought about the spiritual aspects,
salvation, God's kingdom on Earth, the after life.
So they suddenly realized,
it brought to them very much how I'm like,
"Okay, yeah, Henry is a nice guy
"but he's really an anthropologist
"and his way of looking at the world
"is really different from our way."
That can be a shock, right?
And I think it's a shock that happens to many o-no-gra-firs.
I think it's also a good thing in part.
There's different ways of looking at the world.
I am uncomfortable with the idea
that there's only one lens, only one theory,
only one way, only one approved perspective.
I like diversity.
I am a theoretical eclecticist.
I am proud of that.
Some people in my department think that's
really a very bad word
and they are what I would call theoretical fundamentalists
but they don't like it when I call them that.
(audience laughs)
I think I'll leave it there.
- That question you asked, Patrick
is something that as you know, has kept me up at night,
how to be responsible to the people
who have shared with me their stories and their lives.
One thing I've done is that
after I've transcribed in oral history
is I'll send it back to the person
and tell them, "You can do whatever you want with this.
"You can cross things out.
"If you are uncomfortable with what you said,
"you can change it and then I will quote
"from your
"revised version.
"I want this to be something
"that you feel comfortable with."
That's the first step I've taken to try to be ethical
to them and to give them a chance to amend or take back
what they said if they were uncomfortable with it.
What will happen next, I think, is before I publish,
like you, I think I would probably send them my paper
and say,
"What do you think?"
and "Is there something you have an issue with
"in terms of my interpretive lens here?"
and I would have that conversation with them
and I would probably try to hash it out
and come to a point where we can agree on something.
I actually don't know.
This is something I'm gonna have to figure out
when the time comes if it ever comes to this.
But I think in the end, it might have to be something like,
"Here's my interpretation of it.
"However, it's important to know that the interview subjects
"had this interpretation of it."
And I might just put those two interpretations
right side by side right in the article.
and I am not afraid of doing that
because part of feminist research methodology
is to use the first person.
It is to reveal
the researcher and who she is
and where she's coming from
and to not be afraid of using the first person.
So I think I could do that
and I think that might be an ethical solution.
- We have three researchers burning desire to say something.
Please identify yourself first.
- [Woman] (states her name)
and I do a Mormon film in India.
So I'm thinking in terms of representing
a lot of Christian nations
and some of these questions about
how transparent you can be
in things and in (audio becomes unclear)
transparent the church is as well as
just the work itself varies.
So maybe I could just open it up
to people that are working in Asia and in other areas
to talk about how that changes
when we're dealing with non-Christian populations?
- Do you wanna share a thought about that?
How it does change?
- [Woman] Not a changed thought (laughs)
because it does become complex
because you have a resistance to the conversion itself
which is super problematic
and so if your work is influencing the work
of the church's proselytization
and it can do that in very negative ways.
That keeps me up at night.
What I'd write could affect
the work of the church in India.
The lives of the members,
the safety of the missionaries,
those kinds of things.
- Thank you.
- [Woman] I thought it'd complicate things too.
- No, no, please.
That's welcome.
Madelaide, did you wanna... - [Man] No.
- Jump in, okay.
A-koo?
- [Woman] If I can please just say that
everything else ought to be clear
about the audiences that we're writing for, right?
So I gave my book to my family
and they still didn't--
(everyone laughs)
- That's too much information.
- [Woman] At times, they didn't have advice.
I think part of it too
is just like who are the audiences we're writing for?
When I'm writing for
American (mumbles),
that's an academic audience.
Unless someone in my family, my community, whatever
is going on to higher education,
they're not going to encounter this.
And I'm speaking to a particular audience
and so I'm using terminology and language
in already a particular way
to speak to that particular audience
and so, I think you also have to think about that
while doing your work.
And then also, I think
for me,
because I was interviewing people
who I consider to be my aunties and uncles,
that kinda sends a "Who am I obligated to?"
Can I
go home
and not get in trouble for this?
In regard to those things,
(speaker audio unclear) to ask that question themselves?
It's like, you know,
am I gonna shame the family for this one?
And will I get to sleep at night?
And will it also be recognizable
and meet the standards of the academy
'cause honestly that's part of it too
is that it's an industry and the requirements
of meeting expectations of that industry
are also very different than in meeting expectations
of family and community.
It's a lot to negotiate and navigate
and I think positionality where folks are at
and it's also (mumbles) your viewers
to help us see what we can't see
because they're so close to research.
- Thank you.
Please.
- [Woman] Just an additional comment.
I know you've been talking so much about
the void of information and
the dark mass that is Global Mormon Studies at this point
and I think understanding that to open up the doors
and to open up the additional research that we need
in order to really fill gaps that exist
is that the audience has to be,
the institutional church to the certain extent
in order for that community to come forward
and for the church's institution to be more comfortable
to outsiders coming in to do extra strong research
to move the church forward
because there have been so many wonderful things
that we've discussed over this conference
that need to make movement in institutional church.
I think that, as a research is also a heavy burden to carry
that I've cheered on
the quadrant of the wanted research designs.
- Thank you, thank you.
Please, Carter.
Or, no, gentleman next to you, please.
- [Man] I would like to say that
(speaker's audio becomes unclear )
I have
published
my
thesis,
my research
in the time
and
life as a member of the church,
I think it's good to be learning
Moses's doctrine.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
and I appreciated the merriment of this.
I
have
been a professor,
I've been analyzing most of my career
and
I see that this is
more of (speaker audio becomes unclear)
understanding
the other side of research.
The gender
resonance,
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
the
standard issue
which I think is very important.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
I think we
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
under that worth more than anything else.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
you can do everything.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
I would to really extend
the scope of geographical
and
what were you talking about
to all differences that we have.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
The
health, mental and physical,
that's another big problem of our mission.
This industry will be recognizably ill.
I have gone there because
I'm very interested in the Mormon activity.
I have a French wife
so
I'm afraid
in
regression
and
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
- Thank you very much, appreciate that.
Do we have one more comment from the audience?
Carter, did you want to make a point
or perhaps yield the floor
to the gentleman in the gold coat?
- [Carter] You know what, I want to be the last.
- Okay.
- I (speaker audio becomes unclear) til the last word
but there are definitely a lot of things
that
I would like to comment on.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
I just wanted to...
I've been pondering a bunch of the questions on methodology
and also the things that we
would like to see
as
Mormonism includes global,
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
as we are steadying it globally.
We have also to see the challenges
both for our modernism
and also the challenges to us as researchers.
We talk about the (speaker audio becomes unclear)
what if we as researchers,
we are also agents of that.
That is
when we
do
a study
what I mentioned
in
a saying like,
"Hey,
"I thought it was quite interesting
"how alarmed you brought up the question
"that's in the lead of women."
They wouldn't address questions
that were of interest to you with gender or race.
Could it be that it wasn't only because you were buying
and when you were asking the question,
could it be that it wasn't relevant to them?
That what was relevant to them in my religion
was
daily
concerns
in terms of
"How can I become a better model in my context,
"in my culture?"
So I'm asking myself that
because sometimes,
I
wonder if we do not activate problems
that are not there.
- Caroline, do you mind taking a minute,
maybe restating your finding about moral imperatives
'cause I think it might be timely, right?
Just to-- - Yeah, well,
what you just mentioned
is actually one of the big insights I had
as I was doing this dissertation
and that, yeah, the thing that was of concern to me
which was gender equality
was not generally of concern
to many of the women I spoke with
because like you said,
they had different moral imperatives.
They had a different paradigm
through which they viewed the world
and it's certainly not any worse than mine,
it's different than mine.
It was a different moral imperative
and it was one,
the way I articulated it,
there was one about they privileged building healthy
and vitalizing relationships with their communities,
with their families, with their husbands,
with their children, with their God, and with themselves.
That was sort of the driving moral imperative
that seemed to affect so many of their decisions
in the way they interacted with the world
and now it's different than the paradigm of gender equality.
When I, as a feminist, view the world and the church,
I look for structure on equity and I see it.
But
that was not their concern.
So I think you brought up a really, really important thing
as researchers to be aware of these spaces of disconnect
and to sit back and to let them tell their stories.
That was one thing I really did wanna do
even though I came in with something of an agenda
in terms of wanting to understand
how people navigated patriarchy.
I also came in wanting to know their stories
and I was many times,
I sat back and I let them tell their stories
and I didn't ask the questions that I wanted
I was personally a little more interested in
but I felt like that was the more ethical way
to let their stories emerge,
to let their agendas emerge,
rather than me pushing my agendas onto them.
- [Man] This right here,
If I may, this is why I think it becomes
very interesting to be
an outsider somehow
and even an observer.
Not like I mean the cover is not anymore that I remember
in my early days was to give you time to pretend
that I'm not a Mormon,
I would see it over 10 and ask questions
here and there and observe.
(speaker audio becomes unclear)
I'm just here observing.
I'll take whatever I can get
and then we'll see what to do with that
and sometimes, it's also the better we end up
a rewarding thought to see the kind of things
that just shows who (speaker audio becomes unclear)
Thank you.
- We've come to the end.
I'm gonna take maybe 60 seconds
to make two quick points and then we'll thank the panel.
Just about the importance
of Global Mormon Studies.
My mentor while I was at BOIU
is a professor named Lamon Tolis.
He's now in his
early 80s
and because of his efforts I think almost single-handedly,
you can go to the Mexico
page
of LDS.org
and find
about 25
articles
on
local,
if you will, LDS members of the church,
important
to
Mexican
history
of the LDS church in Mexico
and also a collection of lessons for use on the fifth Sunday
that have to do with local church history in Mexico.
So the idea, the notion, again, of the historians
kinda kissing up to Patrick here
but the change that has come about in
the church
because of the focus on history is significant.
I think the decentralization of church history
that I think is under way, is it ongoing, yes?
Or is it just underway?
Anyway
is significant.
But one person, again, like Lamon Tolis can do.
Secondly, I've been part, almost 30 years
and now part of a discussion on national security
and Mormon perspectives on war, peace, and national security
and it is painful how polarized
that debate,
how,
I don't think toxic is yet the word but it's close
and it just struck me that in undertaking a project
with participation of some of the people
in the stream a few years ago,
how important it is to get non
North American perspectives
on what war means.
Most of the membership of the church,
whatever activity rates you assign to them,
there are significant
percentages of the church
that don't have the experience with war
that North Americans do.
Since Pearl Harbor, you can probably count in minutes
the number of
times that large-scale violence
has erupted on our soil
and that's not the case with Nicaragua.
It's not the case with Democratic Republic of Congo,
Kosovo, wherever else.
So the importance to get non
North American,
LDS perspectives on important topics
that will affect us as a church
and affect us as a society along with robotics
and artificial intelligence.
Just so important so whatever you might do,
however you might feel, you can contribute.
It's an important thing.
And just salutations and thanks to our panel
for their efforts in this regard.
If you'll join me.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you, Fred.
Thanks to this terrific panel.
We've reached the end of the conference.
For me, it's been a very stimulating and rewarding two days.
I'm really grateful for all of you,
for your attendance and especially grateful
for all of the conference participants as well.
So one more round of applause for the participants
and also all of the support staff that made this possible.
(everyone applauding)
Before we adjourn, Carter asked me to make an announcement
of a conference that will happen exactly
one year from now.
So March 7th through 10th in Port Au Prince, Haiti
called De-centered Mormonism:
Assessing 180 Years of International Expansion.
So it will consider many of the similar themes
that we had here today.
Looks like they'll be looking for papers
from both well-established scholars
but kind of young and upcoming scholars as well
and I think looking for new voices
and so, Carter, is there gonna be a website
or how are people gonna learn more about this in time?
- [Carter] Again, I got all of this set up
but we wanted to start letting you guys know about this.
- Okay, good.
So put that on your calendars
and we'll all see each other in Haiti in one year.
So, again, thank you all for being here.
Thanks for your participation and your support
and safe travels home.
Thank you very much.
- [Woman] Thank you, Patrick.
(audience applauding)
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