Item Detail
-
27723
-
0
-
0
-
English
-
Building the Latter-day Kingdom in the Americas : The Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission
-
Gainesville, Florida
-
University of Florida
-
474
-
Ph.D. Dissertation
-
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is expanding globally but nowhere more prominently than in the Americas where eighty-five percent of members reside. Despite the fact that Mormon missionary work is a prominent identifying institution, there is little research on Mormon missionaries in operating missions. The Mormons employ a unique mission enterprise, which they call the three-fold mission - proclaim the gospel, perfect the saints, and redeem the dead. In this dissertation I argue that through the three-fold mission of the church Mormons employ the ancient Hebraic covenant to restore what for them is the true church of Jesus Christ. By using the concept of covenant, they structure their religio-cultural institutions and identity, and simultaneously mobilize their missionary movement. The Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission (FFLM) provides a case study in the Americas of proselytizing missionaries who proclaim the gospel; and among returned missionaries and converts who perfect the saints in local stakes. Based on their faithfulness, the FFLM is the site of a new temple to open in 2014 where they will redeem their dead.
Understanding themselves to be a new covenant people, they invite all people universally into their Mormon identity through their three-fold mission. In so doing, the Mormons demonstrate features of the old and new paradigms in the sociology of religion and they utilize ongoing revelation as entirely rational to guide their work as they restore what they believe is revealed only to them - the original church of Jesus Christ in the modern world.