How does their religion spread beyond the borders of the United States?

How does their religion spread beyond the borders of the United States? It seems like it would be impossible to convince non-Americans to convert to such an Amerocentric religion, and yet there are substantial populations of Mormons in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, etc and I've encountered Mormon missionaries from even non-English speaking nations like France or Poland. What brings these people to Mormonism rather than simply being a standard Catholic or Protestant Christian of some kind?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because it's based and true

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    There have been Mormons in the uk since the beginning

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Exactly, which is what’s so strange about it. I can see how, in the age of the internet and globalisation, random Europeans could end up converting to any outlandish sect they please. But how were Mormon missionaries managing to convince British people - who were already devout Christians - in the 19th century, that a bunch of Americans had only now discovered the true form of Christianity?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >British people - devout Christians
        I think this might be stretching it a little

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          At the time when Mormon missionaries were first coming to Britain, they absolutely were.

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    it's not more odd than Scots or Germans following a religion whose holy texts mostly take place in the Levant

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >it's not more odd than Scots or Germans following a religion whose holy texts mostly take place in the Levant

      Why is that?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        If you think about it 21st century Europe is already in the American Empire

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          woah... so deep...

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            It explains OP's question.
            Interesting point, there's a specific LDS mission to Kosovo.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Reminder that Joseph Smith said he can boast because he did more for the church than Paul, Peter and Jesus(!)
    He is nothing but a heretic and a false prophet, his teachings are absurd and the story he created about the Book of Mormon he was planning since he was a child (according to his mom, he would describe the indian civilization, their housing, food, clothing, way of life etc)

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      needs poster of bubblepr0n in background for authenticity

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Forgive my ignorance, but what does the jelly/jell-o have to do woth Mormonism?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Mormons eat more jello than the rest of America combined, Utah and its surrounding area are sometimes called the jellobelt.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    For the community and because they want to be gods and have their own planet when they die.

    My question is why FLDS hasn't spread to Europe. There's one location in Southern Canada but it's not really in Europe and the rest are in the USA. Surprising because Euros may want to convert to Mormon for the polygamy factor which FLDS allows but mainstream LDS doesn't.

    It was estimated to have 6,000 to 10,000 members residing in the sister cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona; Eldorado, Texas; Westcliffe, Colorado;[25] Mancos, Colorado; Creston and Bountiful, British Columbia; and Pringle, South Dakota.[26] However, in recent years, membership has suffered due to purges by Warren Jeffs, and members leaving. There are also developing communities near Benjamín Hill, Sonora (south of Nogales in the state of Sonora);[27]:219[28] Ensenada, Baja California (south of Tijuana);[29][irrelevant citation] and Boise City, Oklahoma.[30] Members of the FLDS Church have owned machine shops that have sold airplane components to the United States Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency; from 1998 to 2007 the receipts from these components totaled more than US$1.7 million.[31]

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      FLDS are extremely insular, they don't take converts. Even other less whack fundamentalist churches don't really proselytise because one of the lesser known fundie doctrines is that missionaries must preach without purse or scrip, in practice this means missionary activity is nonexistent.
      The AUBs on the other hand double dip in the mainstream church as a matter of praxis and basically see the LDS as a missionary tool to spread the religion with the hope that one day the schism will be mended. It's not unheard of for AUBs to go on mainstream LDS missions,

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        AUB also has polygamy like FLDS and AUBs like to proselytize more. Do you think it's not catching on in Europe because of polygamy or are there lots of Euros who would want to join AUB for the polygamy factor?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          2bh I'd join the AUBs if they were around but in Europe the mainstream LDS are the only horse in the race.
          The kind of Europeans that aren't bothered about mysterious new additions to the bible would not be bothered about polygamy, in many European countries it's already legal to have multiple wives if you were already married in a polygamist country.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Idk but I'm enjoying these Mormon threads. Fascinating people and I honestly think they hold some possibility for reinvigorating America in the future. I suppose it's not entirely certain given their recent fertility trends, but they seem to have accomplished a sufficient middleground of a culture that promotes worldly involvement, while still retaining community cohesion and most importantly fertility. The Amish are impressive in this regard, but they're very much people living on a kind of reservation, and I don't think represent any meaningful future for America at large.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      What's impressive about the Amish is it's like looking at a time capsule from the 1800s. You get to see the 19th century in action.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The Amish are going to be BIG in the future.
      They have about 7 kids per woman and a youth retention of about 80 percent. They've got a higher fertility rate than every single country in Africa.
      People are sleeping on the Amish because they don't vote, they barely spend money and they all work on their own communes, wider society would barely even notice they exist but they're growing at a literally exponential rate with no end in sight. Every 20 years or so the Amish population doubles, by 2200 there's going to be BILLIONS of Amish.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah but the problem is their entire mode of living is so divorced from contemporary society, I frankly don't see how they'd be capable of integrating into most of it's mechanisms, or exerting any significant influence. Not that they should necessarily, but I don't see them being able to take over the reigns of industry, business, politics, etc... Mormons I find interesting because they seem to have found a model that's capable of worldliness and significant fertility, though perhaps that remains to be seen.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          If the people of contemporary society don't have kids, but the Amish do, then in the long run the Amish win.
          The don't need to integrate, their society isn't going anywhere. The real question is how can mainstream society figure out how to integrate them because some day it might have to.
          >Mormons I find interesting because they seem to have found a model that's capable of worldliness and significant fertility, though perhaps that remains to be seen.
          Imo the big problem for Mormons is youth retention, a little over 1/3rd of them leave and this seems to be growing. If they have an average of 3 kids and an average of 1 leaves then that's just enough for replacement. They're basically following the same path as white Catholics but a few decades behind.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Hmm, good point I hadn't considered the retention rates. It seems to be an inexorable problem then. One thing that really concerns me is how well educated, innovate and productive groups as a whole tend to have far below replacement fertility, and so I've been interesting in possibly see what model or models exist for producing an innovative class of peoples that is yet able to resist the various ills of modernity. Maybe it's not possible though, and for instance it's specifically the virtue for peoples like the Amish that they're involved with the world so little as

            If they integrate, they lose though. They want a society that replicates the 1800s and if they integrate then that's gone.

            this anon mentioned. I really respect the Amish and their lifestyle that being said.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Modernity isn't the problem, the problem is the church authorities insist that the BOM is literal when it has been historically and academically demolished.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            The LDS church also is cooking the books on their membership. They continue to count people who have explicitly deconverted or been inactive for decades as members of the church; it takes getting a lawyer involved to make them take you off the rolls and stop sending people to quite literally stalk you and your kids. Go to the actual wards and almost all of the congregations in reality consist of a handful of old people despite on the books being full of members. A contributing factor is that they keep the really crazy shit mostly under wraps until you get married and go to the temple to get "sealed" - it's a ritual meant to guarantee you and your spouse and kids go to the same planet in the afterlife. Before then it just seems like a kinda weird Christian denominations, but after being "sealed" a lot of people get freaked out by the experience and bail.
            I think the sheer amount of land and businesses the church owns and the wealth they've accumulated from making Mormon youth work on those businesses for free will mean they will always exist at some level, but the claims that the LDS are avoiding the decline of other Christian denominations is a mirage.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            From my anecdotal experience, at least half of the youth from the ward I grew up in ended up inactive or apostate

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          If they integrate, they lose though. They want a society that replicates the 1800s and if they integrate then that's gone.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    There's always going to be a section of the populace who have nothing going on in their lives and are desperate for the structure and order religion gives them.

    They can't find it in the world they live in, so they turn to whatever foreign and exotic thing turns up first.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    here in australia the churches are filled with mostly islander types like people from samoa or kiwis

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because they're idiots and want a sense of belonging and identity is today's international world that is obsessed with "individualizing" everyone.

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