Review
Title: Irish Mormons: Reconciling Identity in Global Mormonism
Author: Hazel O’Brien
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Year Published: 2023
Pages: 209
ISBN: 9780252087202
Binding: Trade Paperback
Genre: Mormon Studies
Price: $26.00
Reviewed by Kevin Folkman for the Association for Mormon Letters
A couple of decades ago, our family relocated from Davis County in Utah to Redmond, Washington. While we had many expectations about the Pacific Northwest, we assumed that attending church would be much the same as at home, just with different people. This was partly true, but many aspects were different. Our Utah wards were populated almost exclusively by white descendants of Scandinavian or British Isles ancestry, where having darker hair put you in the minority in a sea of blonde, blue-eyed children and adults. In our years in Washington, our wards have continually represented a more global sampling of church members. We have enjoyed getting to know people from Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Africa, Eastern Europe, and other nations. We also found ourselves living in an area where members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were a minority. We became “Others,” a new experience for us.
Consider then the situation of LDS members living in the Republic of Ireland, arguably the most Catholic country in the world. Irish identity is almost synonymous with being Catholic, most people self-identify as Catholic, and most children attend Catholic schools. In addition, non-Catholic Christians are viewed as protestants, further heightening the religious and cultural differences. The Church’s missionary efforts in Ireland found greater success in Protestant Northern Ireland but continually struggled in Catholic Ireland. Missionary efforts were abandoned there in the late 19th century and only were renewed in the 1960s.
Hazel O’Brien, author of Irish Mormons: Reconciling Identity in Global Mormonism, is a non-believing scholar of religion. Intrigued both by 21st-century changes in Irish religiosity in general and the growth of “foreign” religions in the Republic of Ireland, she spent a year attending LDS church services, interviewing members, and participating in church social events in both a small branch of some 30 members and a somewhat larger ward of about 70 members. These congregations included Irish-born members, new converts from Catholicism, immigrants from other countries, and a large number of non-Irish non-white members.
O’Brien’s research is summarized in Irish Mormons, a very insightful look at globalization, colonialism, religious identity, and building communal memory, all through the lens of contemporary Ireland. O’Brien writes about Irish and Mormon cultural influences, the status of minority religious groups in Ireland, and the differences between the Republic of Ireland and protestant majority Northern Ireland, where LDS missionary work has been more successful. Through her intimate work with the two LDS congregations, O’Brien was able to track both the external tensions of being a minority religion in Ireland and the internal tensions of a diverse group of LDS church members with very different cultural backgrounds. She was open with members in both congregations about her lack of personal religiosity and her interest in doing research into the complicated logistics of being Mormon in Ireland. She had contact with full-time missionaries, senior missionaries, members from North and South America, along with members from other countries in Europe, native Irish, and immigrants from Africa and Asia. She regularly attended sacrament meetings, Sunday School classes, Priesthood and Relief Society meetings, and various social events in both congregations.
O’Brien then is able to present both an outsider and insider perspective on the cultural and sociological forces at play. Globalism has changed Ireland over the last several decades, along with changes in the LDS congregations she attended. O’Brien describes how globalism is often viewed in Ireland as a modern-day relic of colonialism. Even though the LDS church currently has more than half its members outside the United States, the prevailing sense is that it is still a Utah-based American church. She describes how celebrations of Pioneer Day in Ireland are viewed both with admiration for the pioneers of the westward trek and bemusement about how that history relates to being Mormon in Ireland. Similarly, she describes similar reactions regarding a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in one of the congregations she attended, where the majority of members were not White Irish.
O’Brien writes how collective memory and traditions highlight many of the tensions present in Ireland. She found that Individual LDS Church members have very different views about traditions within the Church, and as in other countries outside North America, members of the Church are building new and different traditions and creating new collective memories about what it means to be Mormon outside the Mormon Cultural Region. As an example, she points out that though most Irish consider themselves Catholic, more than half of Irish citizens voted against the policies of the Catholic church to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015. Such views were also expressed by LDS members who personally support those marriages but still sustain Church leaders that oppose the practice.
O’Brien observed many instances where local traditions and cultural influences become points of friction. For example, one congregant, an Irish Army veteran and Irish convert says that it is easier to be a Mormon from Nigeria in Ireland than it is for him as an Irish native. Nobody expects the Nigerian to be anything other than Nigerian, he points out, while his status as an Irish Mormon seems confusing to others. Non-Christian religions, O’Brien found, are often more respected than the Mormon and protestant churches. This Army veteran frequently prayed in meetings in Irish rather than English, to show his Irish roots. Other members told her of friction between native Irish and North American members living in Ireland, who frequently overlooked or disregarded the Irish traditions of their fellow congregants.
With so few members in Ireland, the Church struggles to grow as in other areas of the world. Young LDS men and women often leave Ireland to find marriage partners who are members of the Church and end up settling in England, the United States, and other countries with their new spouses, rather than remaining in Ireland. While members appreciate having opportunities to attend the temples in England, the lack of a temple in Ireland itself is viewed as a slight by native Irish members. Church correlation is praised by some for enabling the Church to look the same throughout the world, while others decried correlation’s lack of recognition of local needs and initiatives. O’Brien writes that “…a White, wealthy and US-focused worldview continues to permeate Church culture. It is clear to me that this worldview must also shape understandings of worthiness” [p 150]. Church humanitarian and other efforts deemphasize national boundaries, but may also sustain “troubling trends that appear to cross those same national boundaries.” O’Brien writes of a member who said, “I guess I learned how to blend in,” revealing only one aspect of who she is “…in keeping with the accepted cultural norms of Mormonism” [p150].
The Army veteran described above spoke of his concerns about the narratives of Mormon history in creating a common identity. Regarding Pioneer Day celebrations, he said:
They expect or encourage people to go along dressed as pioneers. Now, I see that as an impingement on my national identity. I respect what those people did, and I think it was brilliant…but I will not be taken in and expected to behave as an American just because it happens to be based in America. Nor more than I would expect to behave as an Italian because the head of the Catholic Church happens to be in Rome. [p 152]
O’Brien’s focus is just on the LDS Church in Ireland, but she says it is likely that these same trends are being played out in all parts of the world, including the United States. Regional, cultural, and ethnic differences are realities that demand greater recognition. Irish Mormons opens a window into a small subset of Church members in Ireland and offers many lessons and opportunities for new perspectives throughout the LDS presence worldwide.