Review
Title: Radiant Mormonism: Using our Faith in Christ to Power World-Changing Service
Author: Warner Woodworth
Publisher: BCC Press
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: 392
Binding: Paperback, Kindle
ISBN-13: 9781948218511
Price: $16.95
Reviewed by Richard Ji for the Association for Mormon Letters
Radiant Mormonism, by Warner Woodworth, is part manifesto, part tribute to the author’s impressive legacy of humanitarian work, and part how-to start a non-governmental organization (NGO) with microfinancing being a primary modus operandi. The title “Radiant Mormonism” was inspired by a 2017 opinion piece for the Deseret News written by Professor Richard Bushman entitled “Embracing a ‘Radiant’ Mormonism.”[1] This article cited Woodworth’s work in encouraging Latter-Day Saints to improve society. Woodworth has spent decades in humanitarian service while also teaching as a university professor at BYU, the University of Utah, and several other universities as a visiting faculty member. These professorial engagements spawned many of the NGOs profiled in the book.
The title Radiant Mormonism and the cover design suggested to me the book would be about applying our LDS faith in ways to offer world-changing service. I was expecting to find a 360-degree view of a myriad of ways one could seek to make a difference outside of traditional Church circles. However, it quickly became clear that the book focused on Woodworth’s accomplishments. These efforts were mostly focused on addressing humanitarian needs in underdeveloped nations using the establishment of NGOs as a primary vehicle for raising funds and executing the work while focusing on microfinancing as a key tool for addressing hardships. The book is mostly written in the first-person singular form.
Following the Table of Contents, Acknowledgements, Preface, and Glossary; there are 10 chapters followed by Appendices. While there are common threads of manifesto, legacy tributes, and how-to throughout the book, I would say the manifesto is found in chapters 1 and 10, legacy tributes in chapters 2-8, and how-to in chapter 9 and the appendices. The book is written so that a reader can selectively pick certain chapters and comprehend them without reading in chronological order. In fact, the unique Table of Contents provides chapter summaries to aid a reader in deciding which ones may be of most interest. When flipping through the book, I was excited to see that one of the organizations profiled was one I had participated in, a humanitarian expedition to Ecuador along with my son and neighbors. I was interested to learn how those efforts began as I came away highly impressed with the leadership and dedication of our expedition leader, Melissa Webster.
I read the book in chronological order. I found that themes and statements were often repeated throughout the book due to the way the book was organized. For the chapters with NGO profiles, which make up a bulk of this work, the pattern was that the author would see a need, work with his students to form an NGO to address the need, raise funds, travel to the affected area to understand the needs better, form a plan (which mostly focused on microfinancing as a key tool), implement the plan, and seek to establish infrastructure to sustain the NGO. It seemed common that there were macro headwinds such as war, drought, disease, etc. that prevented the NGO from achieving its highly ambitious objectives. But there was no doubt a lot of good came from those efforts. While there were differences in problems, clients being served, and the make-up of the NGO, the themes seemed largely indistinguishable to me.
The metrics presented were largely leading indicators such as the number of NGOs formed, capital raised, clients served, etc. Lagging metrics to showcase the outcomes tended to be more qualitative, anecdotal, or perhaps snapshots in time. This is likely due to the difficulty in tracking such metrics when serving the masses in these underdeveloped nations. The book also appears to have been a compilation of the author’s previous works as there were several citations from his own works and many citations were from 10 to 50 years ago. This was a disappointment to me as this is a modern book on this subject but relied heavily on statements and statistics from decades ago. My disappointment stemmed from the impression it left me with that not much has changed in decades. Or perhaps interest by notable figures in this subject has faded and hence quotations from modern-day figures are lacking in comparison to those cited from decades ago.
Woodworth clearly has a passion for this work and walks the talk. He and his wife have raised ten children, including children adopted from America, Mexico, and Brazil (p. xiii). They have also donated roughly half of their income to serve the poor, not to mention the countless hours of service over decades. There are not too many examples of folks who have done that. Woodworth’s tone and words suggest he is a maverick for the cause of the poor. The poorest of poor on this earth have a giant of an advocate and do-er in Warner Woodworth. I respect his zeal and example of truly serving the underprivileged. His accomplishments are legion which is quite clear from the book.
However, in my opinion, Radiant Mormonism would have been more successful if it was written as a memoir. As a religious non-fiction work, it lacked consistency of clarity, focus, and depth. It also presented numerous sophomoric anecdotes and terms which I found distracting. As a religious non-fiction book, it would also have benefited from having an editor establish clarity on the objective of the book and the targeted audience (which appears to be LDS folks within academia). This would have been beneficial to keep the book on point, reduce the redundancies, and improve the tone.
There are some additions that I feel would have made an invlaubale contribution to this book. These include: having a chapter to review the humanitarian landscapes, such as where organizations (large, small, public, private, religious, non-religious, etc.) generally participate, what problems are they seeking to address, and what is the “state of the art” so to speak as to effective tools and approaches to addressing these problems. This might help a new NGO to see where there are unmet needs and gaps in service. From the book, I would assume that microfinancing is key, but it would have been helpful to spend more time outlining how this issue ladders up to the most pressing.
Also, it wasn’t clear to me how small NGOs like the author focused on are more effective than the larger organizations in addressing microfinancing issues. The author seemed to suggest ethical reasons (profiting from the poor) on one hand against the larger organizations but also stated the realities of the lack of capital from smaller organizations to have the scale desired. The interest rates offered to the poor by his NGOs also seemed high >15% even though they were below the market in those countries. So, having a chapter to explore these in more depth these issues would have been helpful. Also, having more depth of exploration as to the challenges and failures would have been informative. There were several anecdotes on these matters but not enough for a reader to gain an adequate understanding. There wasn’t enough detail to serve as a reliable how-to book. The framework outlined in chapter 9 and the appendices give one a place to start, but that is all.
At times, it seemed to me the author had a love-hate relationship with the wealthy. He would cite how he relied on the wealthy to fund many of his ventures but also spoke in disparaging tones about those who have wealth. He cited a statement made by Elder Cannon in 1878 and suggests that wealthy Uthans are “proud and greedy” with their expensive homes and automobiles while the poor struggle (p. 281).
Woodworth also has little patience with administrative “bureaucrats” who tended to be anyone in leadership within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or at BYU who did not fully support his efforts. The author seemed gleeful at his sometimes-subversive efforts to move forward despite them. This is not an approach that would work well within most organizations if one is seeking to gain sustainable support as the author advocates for. But it can be entertaining within a memoir.
Furthermore, the author was liberal with his usage of the word “Mormon” to describe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (not to describe the body of Restoration faith traditions) despite the current Prophet’s counsel. I wasn’t sure if this was meant as indirect criticism of contemporary leaders as there are also few citations from them.
For all these reasons, I believe the book would have been more successful and a better read if it were written in a memoir format.
Radiant Mormonism by Warner Woodworth is a tribute to the awe-inspiring legacy of the author’s humanitarian work. The book has caused me much contemplation about the immorality of poverty. This is a topic that has been of much interest to me for the better part of the last decade. I have been partial to what Michael Porter, a Harvard professor, calls ‘shared value.’ The basic idea being that capitalism can be a source of great humanitarian value if channeled well. Woodworth frequently used the term ‘social entrepreneur’ but I believe he meant this on the non-profit side. Both philosophies share the same concept of “a hand up versus a handout.” But I found enough distinction between the two after reading this book that it has broadened my perspective. After reading that the author will give to every panhandler he sees, I promptly gave to the very next one I saw. So, the book has influenced me to be more ‘radiant.’ The bottom line is that we should all seek to be more like Warner Woodworth, get off the couch, and seek ways to help improve the lives of those poorest amongst us.
[1]“Richard Bushman: Embracing a ‘radiant’ Mormonism” Deseret News, Nov 16, 2017. https://www.deseret.com/2017/11/16/20623103/richard-bushman-embracing-a-radiant-mormonism