Mormons and Armenians in the modern Middle East: Conversion, Persecution, and Immigration

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course explores the contours, types, and impacts of encounters between Western Protestant Missionaries and the Armenian populations of the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East, particularly between Mormon missionaries and local Armenian populations. The status of Mormons and their Armenian converts in the late Ottoman Empire is best understood within a framework of "compounding marginalization." Mormons were extremely marginalized in the United States as a distinct religious community known for their controversial religious practice of polygamy. Mormon Missionaries were marginalized by other Western Missionaries, local Christian Clergies, and by the Ottoman administration. Armenians were a marginalized ethno-religious community in the late Ottoman Empire, and Mormon Armenians were doubly marginalized by the broader Armenian community and the Ottoman state. These intersecting degrees of compounding marginality greatly affected the LDS Armenian community, particularly in terms of increased persecution and hardship.