Item Detail
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29246
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0
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0
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English
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"True Christianity" : The Flowering and Fading of Mormonism and Romantic Socialism in Nineteenth-Century France
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Journal of Mormon History
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April 2018
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44
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2
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Champaign, IL
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University of Illinois Press; Mormon History Association
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75-103
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[2019 Mormon History Association Winner for Best Article on International Mormonism]
"In 1851, Pierre Isidore Bellanger, a romantic socialist and former Icarian communist, preached the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to a multitude of workers and farmers in rural France. A crowd of 'more than one hundred persons' in the small town of Le Grand-Luce eagerly gathered around this new missionary, listening to his message in the pouring rain 'from half-past two until ten at night.' John Taylor (1808-1877), the Mormon apostle who converted Bellanger and other romantic socialists in Paris, believed that this fascination with Mormonism served as evidence of 'the advancement of the Redeemer's Kingdom' on the European continent. The Mormon message, which flowered and faded in France from 1850 to 1864, was not only perpetuated by American missionaries..." [From the text]