To address the specific issue you bring up. Since the 1970s a number of Americans have pleaded to define “Mormon core doctrine” or “the essentials of the gospel”, around which national or regional mormonisms could then develop. Or a core around which “more individual expressions of faith” would be permissible. I’m afraid it’s wishful thinking, and, moreover, not desirable. Our strong correlated, monolithic church requires a universal, handbook-driven and top-down “gospel culture”. Elder Oaks gave several talks in which he insisted on this identical gospel culture around the world. When the church allows “local cultural expressions” it is limited to folklore on “cultural presentations” for the amusement of American visitors. Not even local music is allowed in a church meeting. Also, it is an illusion to think that any national or regional Mormonism could develop, and it is also undesirable, because (1) such an idea is based on stereotyped representation of nations and regions, and (2) our wards, all over the world, are already very multicultural and multiracial. See my article on this topic here.

You mention as positive developments “Mormon Pioneers in Every Land, and the decentralization by the Church History Department of the collection, preservation and sharing of church history back to local areas”. That is true, but – sorry to be critical – the efforts to identify pioneers and preserve their history, as well as to preserve documents, are, as far as I have seen, incoherent and irregular, depending on temporary goodwill and on attention by local leaders (and it is usually the least of their concerns). Not to speak of the lack of proper facilities and professional management to preserve such history. Plus, all this only concerns the past and has no effect whatsoever on diversity in the present.

Back to our topic: “diaspora” is a nice term, but it tends to reflect only the geographical movement (who went from where to where) and does not cover well the internal social varieties, nor does it reflect the world of the converts nor of the second and third generations who never moved to another place. I continue to opt for “peripheries” as general term, with supplemental terms for specific areas and realms.

But the difference Catholics make between ultramontanists and non-ultramontanists remains alive inasmuch as ultramontanism is now less a geographical concept but all the more an ideological one. Rome’s Curia is strong and conservative, and even a more liberal pope cannot do much about it. The Polish catholic church is conservative, the Dutch liberal, and so on. So Catholics too have their peripheries, in much more diverse formats than Mormons do. What time will bring is difficult to foresee. In its relation to peripheries, the Catholic church opened the doors to more freedom and diversity at the time of Vatican II, and in that same time frame the Mormon church moved to correlation. The exact opposite direction. It explains the vast differences in the field between Catholics and Mormons around the world. Any Mormon knows what to expect on Sunday in any ward in any country. A Catholic traveler will be in for some surprises.

I am more informed about Russian Orthodoxy, which is still Orthodox but definitely has its own cultural flavor, compared to Greek Orthodox, for example.

I like diaspora (there we go, using a Greek word to describe the Jews again) but see the problems there. Maybe we should standardize church properties to include a soccer field (basketball in Australia?!!). Went to church in Australia and NZ in 95, and loved our experiences, in Auckland it as tough to find an English speaking ward, which we loved. Periphery could also be a good choice.

I wish there was significantly more flexibility in the music department; so many beautiful traditions that are non-Western. Can someone write an Indian hymn?

“the spread or dissemination of something originally confined to a local, homogeneous group, as a language or cultural institution”

It could work, were it not that in mormonspeak “Diaspora” (capitalized) is already so much tied to “the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile”. Generalizing from that prime connotation, Merriam-Webster extends “diaspora” (not capitalized) to
a) the movement, migration, or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland b) people settled far from their ancestral homelands.

As a matter of fact, “diaspora” has been used in that context for the “Mormon outmigration” from Utah to other parts of the U.S. See Johnson, G. Wesley; Johnson, Marian Ashby, “On the trail of the twentieth-century Mormon outmigration”, BYU Studies 46, no. 1 (2007) 41-83.

So, because “exile” and “moving away” is already so much part of the Mormon connotation of “diaspora”, I think the term may not square well with most Mormon peripheries where converts were baptized and remained in their homeland. ]]> https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2016/01/international-satellites-peripheries-global-in-search-of-a-name/#comment-536189 Thu, 28 Jan 2016 02:34:14 +0000 http://timesandseasons.org/?p=34717#comment-536189 How about ‘Diaspora’?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/diaspora

A belated thanks to Tim (21) for adding his nuances to the discussion. Indeed, geography “outside the US” will not suffice to make appropriate distinctions. Samoa, Tonga, and parts of Canada are already “cas à part”.

But already abandoning the dichotomy seems like an important step. Thanks, Walter!