Global Mormon Studies 2025 Conference
“The Place of Alienation”: Mormonism on the Margins
Online, 27th-29th March 2025
Conference Committee
- Elizabeth Mawlam, Claremont Graduate University
- Rex Wilkins, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
- Michelle Graabek-Wallace, Church History Department
In her book Sacred Struggle, Melissa Inouye wrote:
The place of alienation is familiar. All paths through eternity loop through here, more often than any of us would like… Christ was here. This place is sacred.”
The place of alienation and marginalisation is particularly familiar in global Mormon studies. Our research often dwells here.
This manifests in many ways. Within Mormonism some take pride in identifying as a ‘peculiar people’ and emphasise being separate from the world. Mormonism and the wider context of Abrahamic religions has a history of divinely mandated translocation and migration, both born of, and causing, alienation and conflict with other groups. Mormons in global contexts experience marginalisation in communities and cultures, feeling very far from a religious centre in Salt Lake City, and at times culturally at odds with the American roots of Mormonism. Opinions on a variety of subjects such as gender, family structure, LGBTQ, and politics can also cause alienation and marginalisation both within Mormonism and in relation to wider communities.