Item Detail
-
27185
-
2
-
0
-
English
-
International Legal Experience and the Mormon Theology of the State, 1945-2012
-
Out of Obscurity : Mormonism Since 1945
-
New York, NY
-
Oxford University Press
-
17-36
-
After 1945, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went through some of the most dramatic changes in its history. Over the course of two generations, it transformed itself from a community concentrated overwhelmingly within the confines of the Intermountain West into a global institution with ambitions to expand into every nation. This international expansion has created one of the unappreciated ironies of Mormon history. The postwar decades represent something of a high-water mark for the level of protection and autonomy enjoyed by the LDS Church within the American legal system. Yet at precisely the moment when the church successfully located itself within the legal culture of the United States, it found itself increasingly confronted by non-American legal systems. International expansion spawned a host of legal difficulties, and in trying to minimize itself as a target of potentially hostile governments, the church crafted an apolitical theology of the state that has largely come to dominate internal and external Mormon discourse on the relationship between Latter-day Saints and legal authority. This late-twentieth century approach, however, has never entirely minimized the church's exposure to legal hostility as it faces a diverse array of political arrangements in its attempt to expand its reach around the world. [From the text]