Churchill — yes, that Churchill — investigated Mormon missionaries to see
if they were just shopping for wives
Peggy Fletcher Stack
First
Published Jun 20 2016 07:27PM • Last Updated Jun 20 2016 07:27 pm
In July 1910, Mormon missionaries were expelled
from Germany amid allegations they were recruiting women to become polygamous
wives in Utah. That move prompted the British Parliament to wonder whether
England should follow suit.
The politician assigned to oversee the investigation?
A young man named Winston Churchill.
The future prime minister took to the task with
his usual aplomb and thoroughness, but the final report was lost — until it was
unearthed recently by Utah researcher Ardis Parshall.
"Churchill did take seriously the request
that he investigate Mormon missionary practices," Parshall explained in a
paper during the recent Mormon History Association conference at Snowbird.
"Churchill's inquiry took several forms. First was an investigation of
actual Mormon proselyting activities in England. How extensive were those
activities? Who were the men who conducted them? What did they teach?"He
instructed the police to contact missionaries' landlords to ask about the
preachers' "habits and visitors," she said in the presentation.
"They interviewed mailmen about missionary correspondents. Both lines of
inquiry seem aimed at learning whether the elders corresponded with or
entertained young women. They collected missionary tracts, counted the number
of Mormons in the neighborhood and asked how aggressively elders pursued
proselytes, and how many of those proselytes were young women."
Detectives attended Mormon meetings, Parshall
said, to listen for sermons on polygamy or whether the missionaries urged
emigration, especially by single women.
In the end, Churchill's inquiries produced no
reason to expel the Mormons.
"There is nothing sensational in [the
files]: no lurid accounts of kidnapping or white slavery, no missionaries using
hypnotic powers on innocent girls; no despotic Mormon leaders exercising force
to curtail the rights of free Englishmen," she concluded. "It is ...
a jewel of an illustration of British commitment to the rule of law."
The file is rich with details for Mormon
historians, Parshall said, but "confines itself solely to a consideration
of whether Mormon activity violated British law in any respect."
It did not, Churchill concludes, "so no
action, whether legislative or executive, was called for."
The Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints had officially sworn off plural marriage in 1890 and had
issued a "Second Manifesto" against the practice in 1904.
Parshall found the Churchill file while
researching her forthcoming book, "She Shall Be an Ensign," which
tells the story of Mormonism through the eyes of its women.
She hopes to publish that book as well as the
Churchill report late this year, she said, or in early 2017.
Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune
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