In the early 1900s, anti-Mormon hysteria reached a new pitch. The media railed against LDS missionaries, some even warning people that the missionaries were simply trying to convert or kidnap women to provide more wives for Mormon men back in Utah, despite the Church having ended the practice of plural marriage in 1890.
Because of this bias and false information, LDS missionaries were expelled from Germany in July 1910. At that same time, missionaries in England were experiencing increasing prejudice and aggression—mobs disrupted meeting, threw stones through windows, and even tarred and feathered one missionary.
This prompted the British Parliament to investigate the LDS missionaries, and they appointed Winston Churchill to head up the investigation. Churchill’s detailed report seems to have gone lost or forgotten until researcher Ardis Parshall recently discovered it, talking about it at length at the Mormon History Association conference.
“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?” Parshall explains.
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