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10. Reprise [The missionary] had gone out to change [the world] and was returning, himself a changed man. . . . The conversion of the missionary . . . results in his being not only a missionary but an internationalist, an intermediary between . . . civilizations. Abroad he represents a universal religion . . . ; at home he is constantly changing the attitude of the millions of his constituency, . . . bringing to them something of his new breadth of vision. . . . —Earl H. Cressy, 1919 The epigraph comes from a book whose general theme is the enormous impact that Protestant missionary work in China had on the missionaries themselves during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth (Xi 1997).1 As the history of imported religions might lead us to expect, their Christian message gradually underwent certain syncretic modifications under the in- fluence of the ancient religions of the Far East. As Lian Xi observed, this changed outlook of the missionaries carried a cost for their proselyting enterprise : “because syncretism appealed to humanistic principles and often to scholarly refinement; rather than seeking to evoke religious enthusiasm, it tended to become the victim of its own persuasion, arguing its way out of the missionary cause . . .” (1997, 228). Furthermore, and probably more serious , this missionary experience, the author argued, transformed the general theology of many of the missionaries from the traditional (especially Calvinist ) particularism with which they began to the liberal and universalist expressions of Christianity that came eventually to dominate the mainline denominations and seminaries of America. The consequences of this change thus extended well beyond the mission field to the home denominations themselves, as the syncretism and relativism brought back by these missionaries contributed greatly to the conflict and eventual schism throughout America between the “modernists” and the “fundamentalists.” No such dire consequences have occurred in the wake of a century and a half of Mormon missionary work—at least not yet—even though much of the Mormon proselyting has been carried on far outside of the American homeland.The susceptibility of Mormon missionaries to syncretic and unorthodox thinking has been greatly constrained by the short 268 all abraham’s children length of the standard mission (rarely more than two years, three for mission presidents),as well as by the tight controls imposed by church headquarters over the missionaries’ activities and teachings. Yet Mormonism has not remained untouched by the changes in missionaries , mission presidents, and traveling church leaders as they have returned from overseas assignments. Such is the main “story line” of this book, as indicated in the very first chapter. While missionary work did not have the divisive and schismatic impact on institutional Mormonism that it apparently had on mainstream Protestantism, it certainly did bring about changes in the ideological framework governing Mormon missionary activity. The change of greatest concern in this book, of course, has been the steady decline in Mormon thinking about the importance of some lineages over others in the divine plan, as well as an erosion of other racialist understandings and explanations for the world’s many ethnic differences. Such old notions from early Mormonism (and early America) simply could not be sustained in the face of the manifest eagerness of various peoples to embrace the Mormon message. This purging of the preoccupation with lineage has been the gift of the world’s peoples to Mormonism. Religious Ideas and Constructions of Identity A subplot in this story about the impact of Mormon missionary engagement on the religion itself can be seen in the ongoing negotiation and renegotiation of lineage or ethnic identities. The general nature of this process was described in chapter 1 with a theoretical explanation and a historical illustration from post-exilic Judaism. The Mormons’ construction of their own identity was forged in the fires of calumny and persecution. This might seem at first unexpected for such a thoroughly American innovation. Earliest Mormonism and its followers, in the very beginning, would have been difficult to distinguish from other Calvinist-inspired restorationist movements emerging out of the nineteenth-century American frontier.2 The theology in the Book of Mormon or early Mormon discourse was not very different from that familiar to the Campbellites, the Methodists, and other Protestant strains of the time. Also like their neighbors, the Mormons were all of Anglo-Saxon stock, not German Anabaptists or French Huguenots. Moreover,Joseph Smith was very much in the mold of a Jacksonian folk-hero, an American everyman who rose from among the people to become a new prophet, not just another reformer...

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