One hundred years ago this December, a group of three general authorities dedicated South America for the preaching of the gospel while establishing a mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Given that this year is the centennial anniversary, there are a few ways in which the Church has been celebrating, such as the repeated visits by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square to South America. The contribution of the Religious Studies Center at BYU to those celebrations is the book Planting the Acorn: The South American Mission by Mark L. Grover.

Planting the Acorn is an important contribution to literature on Church history, focusing on a too-often neglected global portion of the story. In particular, the story focuses on the years that Reinhold Stoof was president of the only South American mission up until around 1935. Tensions between plans to proselyte among German immigrants vs focusing on the majority language groups of Spanish and Portuguese, struggles with the dominant Catholic culture and opposition to religious freedom, and managing a mission that was chronically given too few resources in its early years were central aspects of the narrative. The final parts of the book followed Stoof’s life story to its end and then briefly traced out the major contours of the history of the Church in South America, with particular mention of A. Theodore Tuttle’s leadership.

In narrating the early years of the South America mission, Grover provided a useful framework for understanding different visions of missionary work in the early 1900s. Drawing on the work of Armand Mauss (particularly All Abraham’s Children), Grover suggests that there were two dominant narratives behind decisions regarding missionary work during the 1920s. First, the idea that missionaries were gathering descendants of ancient Israel who would respond to their preaching. An assumption that Church members had behind this narrative was that regions like Britain and northern Europe that had historically seen high conversion rates had a higher concentration of Israelite heritage, while areas like southern Europe (where most of the immigrants to Argentina came from) had lower concentrations of those bloodlines. The second narrative was a more universalist approach that focused on taking the gospel to every country, regardless of heritage. While the latter would gradually become more prominent, the former predominated in the early days of the South American Mission, which helps to explain both the low priority it experienced among Church leaders’ prioritization of missionary distribution and the focus on German immigrants in the early days of the mission instead of  Spanish, Portuguese and Italian immigrants. It was an insightful observation by Grover that elucidated some of the worldview of Church leaders a century ago.

I had no major complaints about Planting the Acorn. The book was well-written, with a good narrative flow and historical solid analysis. It contributes to an area of Church history where academic literature is currently sparce. And while it fits within the BYU RSC’s usual devotional tone, it was not overt enough to cloy my appreciation of the narrative and discussion. It provides a solid discussion of the first several years of missionary work in Argentina and Brazil that will provide an important introduction to Church history in South America, while leaving plenty of room and direction for future studies on the Church’s development across the continent. I recommend it.