No One Exists in Isolation: International Latter-day Saints and Their Neighbors
Coventry University, England, March 21-24 2022
Organizing Committee
- Julie K. Allen, Brigham Young University, Co-Chair
- Amy Hoyt, University of the Pacific, Co-Chair
- Alison Halford, Coventry University, host
Conference Theme
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has illuminated how profoundly each of us is affected by the people around us. While each person has the right and responsibility to make individual choices, they are also always responding to their neighbours’ choices and decisions as they do so. Such negotiations are not limited to public health crises but are an integral part of many social interactions that hinge on questions of political, ethnic, and religious identity. This recognition prompted the conference committee to alter the conference theme somewhat from “On the Outside Looking In” to “No One Exists in Isolation,” in order to foreground these kinds of negotiations.
The Global Mormon Studies 2022 Conference thus includes papers and presentations that examine how interactions between international Latter-day Saints and their neighbours shape both the lived experience of being a member of the Church and the church’s development internationally. Being a Latter-day Saint outside the continental United States can create a disconnect between the culture of a local community and the perception of church culture as fundamentally American. International Latter-day Saints are uniquely positioned to observe the ways in which an “American” culture both helps and hinders the growth of the global church, while also bringing new perspectives on familiar issues, such as marriage, family structure, gender roles, and sexuality. In a similar vein, those of other faiths also bring a valuable perspective from which they can bring to light aspects of church culture which may be difficult for its own members to recognise.