The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom

As of 31 December 2014, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) reported 186,193 members[1] in 45 stakes, 335 Congregations (286 wards[2] and 49 branches[2]), six missions, and two temples in the United Kingdom.[3]

History

Early missions

The oldest Mormon Chapel in the world: Gadfield Elm Chapel, near Pendock

The first Mormon missionaries to proselytise in the British Isles were seven men, led by Heber C. Kimball, who arrived in Liverpool aboard the ship Garrick in July 1837.[4][5] Joseph Fielding, a member of the party, had a brother in Preston and it was to here that they quickly moved operations. Fielding's brother briefly allowed them to preach in his Vauxhall Chapel which led to the baptism of their first convert George D. Watt and 8 others in the River Ribble on 30 July 1837.[6]:34[7] 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.[8][9]

In September 1837 the group obtained, through the Preston Temperance Society, access to a building in Preston known as The Cockpit where meetings began to be held regularly, including the first general conference of the LDS Church in the UK on Christmas Day 1837.[10][11] On 8 April 1838 a second conference was held at which Joseph Fielding became president of the British mission and Willard Richards and William Clayton became counselors. On 20 April 1838 the other members of this first mission, who were not staying on, left Liverpool to return to the United States aboard, once again, the ship Garrick.[6]

Two native Scots, Alexander Wright and Samuel Mulliner, became the first missionaries to Scotland after they were converted whilst living in Ontario, Canada. They arrived 20 December 1839 and on 14 January 1840 Mulliner baptised the first converts in Scotland, Alexander Hay and his wife Jessie, in the River Clyde at Bishopton near Paisley.[12]

In 1838 Joseph Smith, the leader of the LDS Church, had announced that the Quorum of the Twelve should travel to the United Kingdom on a mission.[13] They arrived between January and April 1840. Among the 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. Ultimately all but one of the congregation converted to Mormonism and their chapel in Gadfield Elm became the first chapel of the Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom. The Gadfield Elm Chapel in Worcestershire is the oldest extant chapel of the LDS Church and was restored between 1994–2000.[14]

As part of this second mission, Orson Pratt headed to Scotland and, on 8 May 1840, he founded a branch of the church in Paisley.[15] Arthur's Seat, a hill in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, has a particular significance to the history of the Latter-day Saints in the UK, because this is where the nation of Scotland was dedicated in 1840 by Pratt "for the preaching of the gospel".[6]

In May 1840 the first issue of The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, a magazine for British Latter-day Saints, was printed.[16] It would be published regularly until 1970 becoming the longest continuously published periodical of the LDS Church.

The first official Mormon missionary activity in Northern Ireland occurred on 28 July 1840 when John Taylor and two Irish men, converted in England, preached in Newry. On 31 July 1840 they baptised the first Mormon convert in Ireland, Thomas Tate, in a lake near Loughbrickland.[8][17]

On 6 October 1840 Henry Royle and Frederick Cook became the first missionaries to enter Wales and reported 32 baptisms within two weeks of their arrival at Overton[18] By the end of 1840 there were 3626 church members in Britain.[19]:19

Expansion and emigration

The Emigrants statue, located in Albert Dock, Liverpool, commemorates Mormon emigration from the port of Liverpool

In 1845 a missionary named Dan Jones arrived in Wales. He would become one of the most successful Mormon missionaries to work in the United Kingdom. In December 1845 there were 493 baptised members of the LDS church in Wales, in January 1846 Dan Jones was placed in charge of the LDS missionary efforts there and by the time he left Wales in February 1849 there were 4,645 baptised members in Wales. He also led at least two emigrant parties from Wales to the Salt Lake Valley.[20][21] He initiated publishing pamphlets and other magazines in the Welsh language that ultimately led to the publication of a Welsh translation of the Book of Mormon in April 1852 by John Davis.[22]

By 1850 British membership had risen to 30,747 members (which was slightly more than the total in the United States at that time)[23] and a further 7,500 had already emigrated to the United States. 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.[19]:20 This emigration was aided by the church's Perpetual Emigration Fund.[24]

The Pearl of Great Price, now part of the Standard Works of the LDS Church, was first compiled in Liverpool in 1851 by Franklin D. Richards. Within a year it had been translated into Welsh.[25]

Opposition to Latter-day Saint missionary efforts in United Kingdom existed from the earliest missions but intensified in South Wales and the West Midlands in the 1850s, leading to some violent incidents.[26] In February 1913 an anti-Mormon riot in Sunderland possibly led to the death of an American missionary Elder Ralph H. Hendricks[27] though his death certificate stated he died from fever[28] and the LDS Church's own publication's obituary stated he died after a two-month illness.[29]

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[6][30] In a similar period of time at least 52,000[6] and up to 100,000 members[23] had emigrated to the United States.

In 1877 half of the 140,000 Mormons in Utah were of a British origin.[31] 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 USA.[32]

World Wars and later developments

When the First World War broke out in 1914 all American LDS missionaries in the United Kingdom were evacuated back to the USA.[6] They would not return in any significant numbers until mid-1920 when the Home Office relaxed immigration controls, which had been in place since the end of the First World War.[33]

View of London, England temple from front gate

Prior to 1922 all Latter-day Saints in Ireland were organised as the Irish Conference. With the creation of the Irish Free State causing a split, the Latter-day Saints in Northern Ireland, which remained with the United Kingdom, were organised under a newly formed "Ulster Conference" on 1 October 1922. David O. McKay formalised this split 30 September 1923. However the LDS Church would later reunite the two conferences under a newly formed Irish District 31 March 1935 organising Latter-day Saints in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland together.[34]

After the outbreak of the Second World War all American LDS missionaries were again evacuated. This was completed by early-1940 when the then British Mission President Hugh B. Brown returned to the USA. In his place a local Latter-day Saint, Andre K. Anastasiou, was appointed. Brown returned to the UK on 29 March 1944 and took back the Presidency. American missionaries would begin to return in 1946.[35]

In the 1950s emigration to the United States began to be discouraged and local congregations proliferated.[36]

The first LDS temple in England was the London Temple, now known as the London England Temple, dedicated in 1958 and located south of London in Newchapel, Surrey.[37]

A second LDS Temple was completed in 1998 in Chorley, near Preston and known as the Preston England Temple.[38][39]

According to D. Michael Quinn, 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 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 excommunications (which was the process of cancelling membership at that time) of most of the inactive new converts followed.[40]

During the same period the LDS Church engaged in a massive building program. Prior to the Presidency of David O. McKay most British LDS 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.[41]

In 1977 a young Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson went missing from the steps of a LDS meeting house in Ewell, Surrey.[42] 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[43] (as Joy McKinney[44]) — had abducted, attempted to seduce, and then raped him. The case became known by many sobriquets, including "The Mormon sex in chains case" and "The Case of the Manacled Mormon."

In 1998 the LDS Church opened a new Missionary Training Centre in Chorley, Lancashire.[9]

In 2014 Tom Phillips, a former LDS Stake President, brought a private prosecution for fraud against the current President of the Church Thomas Monson through the British courts.[45] After a summons for Thomas Monson was issued by Westminster Magistrates' Court, the case was thrown out by Senior District Judge Howard Riddle[46] 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".[47][48]

Membership statistics

Table shows LDS membership statistics as of 31 December 2011 for various regions and nations of the UK, along with British Crown Dependencies.[8]

Country/Dependency/ Territory Membership Stakes Wards Branches Total Congregations Missions Temples
England 145,385 36 230 28 258 5 2
Northern Ireland 5,297 1 8 3 13
Scotland 26,598 5 26 13 39 1
Wales 9,491 3 18 6 24
Bermuda 156 1 1
British Virgin Islands 150 2 2
Cayman Islands 204 1 1
Falkland Islands 10 1 1
Gibraltar 16
Guernsey 46 1 1
Isle of Man 300 1 1
Jersey 307 1 1
Turks and Caicos Islands 92 1 1

Missions

There are currently 6 missions serving the British Isles:

The nation of Wales does not have its own mission.

Temples

 12. London England

Location:
Announcement:
Dedication:
Rededication:
Coordinates:
 Size:
Style:

Lingfield, Surrey, United Kingdom
17 February 1955
7 September 1958 by David O. McKay
18 October 1992 by Gordon B. Hinckley
51°9′45.23759″N 0°3′7.851599″W / 51.1625659972°N 0.05218099972°W / 51.1625659972; -0.05218099972 (London England Temple)
42,775 sq ft (3,974 m2) and 190 ft (58 m) high on a 32 acre (12.9 ha) site
Modern contemporary, single spire - designed by Edward O. Anderson

 52. Preston England

Location:
Announcement:
Dedication:
Coordinates:
 Size:
Style:

Chorley, Lancashire, United Kingdom
19 October 1992
7 June 1998 by Gordon B. Hinckley
53°40′20.91360″N 2°37′52.59″W / 53.6724760000°N 2.6312750°W / 53.6724760000; -2.6312750 (Preston England Temple)
69,630 sq ft (6,469 m2) and 159 ft (48 m) high on a 15 acre (6.1 ha) site
Modern, single-spire design - designed by Church A&E Services

Notable British Latter-day Saints

John Taylor, Third President of the LDS Church

William S. Godbe – A British convert who went on to found the Church of Zion (Godbeites)

John Taylor – Third President of the LDS Church and the only one to be born outside of the USA.

William Bickerton – A follower of Sidney Rigdon who went on to found his own church

William Law – Publisher of the Nauvoo Expositor

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Facts and Statistics". Newsroom. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
  2. 1 2 LDS Meetinghouse Locator, LDS Church, retrieved 22 August 2013
  3. ↑ "Summary Information Return 2012: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Great Britain)" (PDF). Charity Commission.
  4. ↑ Kimball, Heber C. (1882). President Heber C. Kimball's Journal. Faith Promoting Series, Book 7. Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor. pp. 13–15. OCLC 13970641.
  5. ↑ "Media – 175th Anniversary of the arrival of first Mormon (LDS) Missionaries in Britain", BritishPageant.org (LDS British Pageant), retrieved 2014-01-15
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Evans, Richard L. (1984) [1937]. A Century of "Mormonism" in Great Britain. Salt Lake City: Publishers Press. ISBN 091609507X. OCLC 866138200.
  7. ↑ Whitney, Orson F. (1992) [1945]. Life of Heber C. Kimball. Bookcraft. p. 135. ISBN 0884948331. OCLC 27254377.
  8. 1 2 3 "Country information: United Kingdom", Online Almanac (Church News), 1 February 2010, retrieved 2014-01-15
  9. 1 2 Rohrer, Finlo (5 February 2008). "Welcome to Mormon heartland... Chorley, Lancs". BBC News. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  10. ↑ Kimball, Heber C. (1882). President Heber C. Kimball's Journal. Faith Promoting Series, Book 7. Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor. p. 28. OCLC 13970641.
  11. ↑ Evans, Richard L. (September 1971). "History of the Church in Great Britain". Ensign.
  12. ↑ Cuthbert, Muriel (October 1978). "The Saints around the World: Strong Saints in Scotland". Ensign.
  13. ↑ Doctrine and Covenants 118:4
  14. ↑ "Do you know where the oldest Mormon chapel in the world is?". BBC News. 30 March 2005. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
  15. ↑ Mays, Kenneth (12 December 2012). "Picturing history: Paisley, Scotland". Deseret News. Retrieved 2014-01-05.
  16. ↑ "Prospectus". Millennial Star 1 (1). May 1840.
  17. ↑ Whittaker, David J. (2009). "John Taylor and Mormon Imprints in Europe, 1840–52". In Woodger, Mary Jane. Champion of Liberty: John Taylor. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University. pp. 111–142. ISBN 9780842527361. OCLC 437048087.
  18. ↑ Dennis, Ronald D. (2 March 2005), "The Beginnings of Mormonism in North Wales", Welsh Mormon History (Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University), retrieved 2014-01-15
  19. 1 2 Stark, Rodney (1994). "Modernization and Mormon Growth: The Secularization Thesis Revisited". In Cornwall, Marie; Heaton, Tim B.; Young, Lawrence A. Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06959-5. OCLC 28721262.
  20. ↑ Christensen, Rex L. (March 1982). "I've heard that a Dan Jones was one of the most successful missionaries of the early church. Can you tell me more about him?". I Have a Question. Ensign.
  21. ↑ Dennis, Ronald D. (April 1987). "Dan Jones, Welshman: Taking the Gospel Home". Ensign.
  22. ↑ Dennis, Ronald D. (2002). "Llyfr Mormon: The Translation of the Book of Mormon into Welsh" (PDF). Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 11 (1): 45–49.
  23. 1 2 "Mormon emigration from Sheffield". http://www.bbc.co.uk. BBC. Retrieved 6 September 2014. External link in |website= (help)
  24. ↑ "Information Sheet 29: Mormon Emigration", Maritime Archives & Library Information Sheets, Merseyside Maritime Museum, 19 February 2004
  25. ↑ Whittaker, David J. (1994), Mormon Americana: A Bibliographical Guide to Printed Material in the British Library Relating to The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (Bibliographical guides), The Eccles Centre for American Studies, British Library, p. 6
  26. ↑ Thorp, Malcolm R. (1998). "SECTARIAN VIOLENCE IN EARLY VICTORIAN BRITAIN: THE MORMON EXPERIENCE, 1837–1860" (PDF). Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 70 (3): 135–147.
  27. ↑ Bartholomew, Ronald L. (2012). "Origins and Development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints in Historic County Durham, 1843—1913" (PDF). INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MORMON STUDIES 5: 38. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  28. ↑ "Sunderland church kept the faith through troubled and violent times". Sunderland Echo. 13 September 2013. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  29. ↑ "Millennial Star". Millennial Star (9, Volume 75) (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). 27 February 1913. Retrieved 12 July 2015.
  30. ↑ Baugh, Alexander L. (2007). "The Church in Twentieth-Century Great Britain: A Historical Overview". In Doxey, Cynthia; Freeman, Robert C.; Holzapfel, Richard Neitzel; Wright, Dennis A. Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: The British Isles. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University. pp. 237–59. ISBN 9780842526722. OCLC 181088736. Archived from the original on 7 November 2011.
  31. ↑ "Mormon emigration from Sheffield". http://www.bbc.co.uk. BBC. External link in |website= (help)
  32. ↑ 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
  33. ↑ Parrish, Alan K. "Turning the Media Image of the Church in Great Britain, 1922–33". Brigham Young University. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  34. ↑ Barlow, Brent A. (1968). History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ireland since 1840. Brigham Young University. p. 128. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
  35. ↑ Boone, David F. ""The King of Kings Needs a Few Men": British Saints during World War II". Brigham Young University. Retrieved 4 September 2014.
  36. ↑ Prince, Gregory; Wright, William Robert (2005). David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. pp. 365–366. ISBN 0874808227. OCLC 57311904.
  37. ↑ "London England Temple", LDSChurchTemples.com (Rick Satterfield)
  38. ↑ "Facts and Statistics: Statistics by Country: United Kingdom", Newsroom (LDS Church), 31 December 2011, retrieved 18 October 2012
  39. ↑ "History of the church in the UK". lds.org.uk. LDS Church. Archived from the original on 2012-03-06.
  40. ↑ Quinn, D. Michael (December 1993). "I-Thou vs. I-It Conversions: the Mormon "Baseball Baptism" Era" (PDF). Sunstone Magazine 16 (7): 30–44. Retrieved 8 December 2013.
  41. ↑ Prince, Gregory; Wright, William Robert (2005). David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. pp. 202–205. ISBN 0874808227. OCLC 57311904.
  42. ↑ Fernandes 1999, pp. 489
  43. ↑ Dobner, Jennifer (2008-08-10). "Cloned-dog owner is '70s fugitive". The Associated Press. Retrieved 2014-03-17.
  44. ↑ http://www.pageantopolis.com/nat_past/World-USA.htm
  45. ↑ "Thomas Phillips -v- Thomas Monson". Courts and Tribunals Judiciary. Retrieved 28 June 2015.
  46. ↑ "Mormon leader Thomas Monson fraud case thrown out". BBC. Retrieved 28 June 2015.
  47. ↑ Stack, Peggy Fletcher (20 March 2014), "British judge tosses fraud case against Mormon prophet", The Salt Lake Tribune
  48. ↑ Walch, Tad (20 March 2014), "British judge rejects case, calls it an 'attack' on LDS", Deseret News

External links

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