Globalization is a household word in our day. I
discovered this while serving my mission: as I sat in the Los Angeles apartment
of a Mexican immigrant family, my friends readily used the Spanish word globalización. I do not now remember the
bulk of our conversation, but I remember feeling astonished at the facility
with which this cognate seemed to be used across languages. Globalization is a
real subject of conversation throughout the world. Yet – even among members of
the Church – I have not been able to distinguish an overwhelmingly positive or
negative reaction to globalization. The general consequences of globalization
are indeed a subject of debate, so it is not too surprising that members of the
Church and students at BYU disagree on this point. Despite the differing
opinions of individual members of the Church, I propose that globalization is
helping the Church to progress, particularly through the globalization of
liberal politics and the culture of moral individualism.
In order to clearly uphold this argument, allow me to
define globalization here. By globalization, I understand the
international diffusion of political, economic and social institutions,
practices, values, and beliefs.
First, the Church has progressed as a result of political
globalization. Early on, Joseph Smith sent several missionaries among Native
Americans to preach the restored gospel to them, with the particular promise of
restoring the gospel to the Lamanites. The Church continued to identify native tribes
as modern-day Lamanites through the Indian Placement Program, which was active
from 1947 to 2000.[1]
However, the Church recently revised the introduction to the Book of Mormon to
teach that the Lamanites “are among the ancestors of the American Indians” where
it previously taught that the Lamanites were their “principal ancestors.”[2] While it may be argued
that this change is a result of new hypotheses regarding the origins of Native
Americans, it must be noted that the idea that Native Americans came to America
from the Orient is not a new one. The truth is that the Church has responded to
the research available on the subject due to an increasing need to recognize
political equality as part of the civil rights of all. While the original
missionaries thought of themselves as the sons of Ephraim restoring the
degenerate seed of Manasseh, Native American civil rights activism – spurred on
by international recognition of human rights – has caused the Church to
recognize the accuracy of research regarding native origins. Thus, political
globalization has improved the accuracy of Church historiography.
Second, cultural globalization has helped the Church to
discern between truth and error. As the xenophobia that followed the terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001 has died off, American Christians have seen an
increasing need to accept the legitimacy of Islam as a major world religion,
and have become increasingly accepting of other belief systems in general. As
members of the Church have experienced this shift to a global acceptance of
religious liberty, they have frowned upon the old anti-papal Mormon idea that
the Catholic Church was the church of the devil, described in the Book of
Mormon as “the whore of all the earth.”[3] Members of the Church have
come to cherish President Gordon B. Hinckley’s admonition to non-Church members
to continue to value what truth they have gleaned from their previous religious
experience and to then receive more truth as they enter the Church.[4] It is clear that the
Church is no longer a religious society located in and around Utah, but rather
a world-wide Church: one that has come to recognize – as a result of cultural
globalization – the presence of truth in various belief systems.
I would like to make two more observations regarding the
impact of globalization on the Church. First, it must be observed that the
Church abandoned more radical doctrines such as plural marriage early on, as
the frontier closed, that is, as mainstream (monogamous) American culture
diffused throughout the continent. Second, as the Church has stepped more and
more in line with traditional American culture, it has adopted the culture that
is currently dominating throughout the world as a result of globalization.
Thus, globalization may facilitate the expansion of the Church, since it
facilitates the assimilation of new members into Church culture.
[1] Matthew Garrett, "Mormons, Indians and Lamanites: The
Indian Student Placement Program, 1947-2000." Ph.D. dissertation, Arizona
State University, 2010.
[2] Moore, Carrie A. (2007). Debate renewed with change in Book of Mormon
introduction. Deseret News. Retrieved from http://www.deseretnews.com/article/695226008/Debate-renewed-with-change-in-Book-of-Mormon-introduction.html?pg=all,
04 Dec 2012.
[3] See 1 Nephi 14:10; McConkie,
Joseph Fielding (2003), “The Mormon Doctrine Saga, 1958 and 1966”, The Bruce R. McConkie Story: Reflections of
a Son, Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, ISBN 1-59038-205-6.
[4] Hinckley, Gordon, B. (Aug.
1998). Excerpts from recent addresses of
President Gordon B. Hinckley. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. Retrieved from
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1998/08/excerpts-from-recent-addresses-of-president-gordon-b-hinckley?lang=eng,
04 Dec 2012.
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