Crypto-Mormons or Pseudo-Mormons?

EXPLAINING THE ORIGINS OF THE RUSSIAN "MORMONS"

Latter-day Saints and American scholars of Russian religion encountering reports of pre-1990 Russian "Mormons" have generally assumed them to be Latter-day Saints who operated secretly and separately from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the decades of Communism (Steeves 2000). There are several reasons to believe that underground communities of Latter-day Saints theoretically could have survived for many decades. Despite Orthodox efforts to restrict religious diversity and Soviet efforts to eliminate all religion, limited religious practice did exist within Russia. Religious people became adept at secrecy, keeping their faith communities alive under harsh conditions. We heard personal accounts of religious life from Molokans, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Seventh-day Adventists who had survived just as precarious an existence as Latter-day Saints would have had to endure. Outside Russia, Latter-day Saint communities are known to have continued during long periods of isolation and separation from the official Church, for example from 1852 to 1892 in French Polynesia (Britsch 1986:16-23) from 1862 to 1888 in Samoa (349-54) and from 1924 to 1945 in Japan (Britsch 1998:76, 84-91). Doctrinal deviation and reluctance to rejoin the "mother church" often characterized such cases. It would be remarkable if long-isolated Russian Latter-day Saints, if indeed they existed, did not show similar patterns.

The reemergence of pre-perestroika Saints would not be the first case in world history where religious groups have surfaced after long periods of secrecy. In fact, the whole spectrum of Russian religious belief could be said to be emerging from just such a context. In Japan, after over 250 years of living underground, the Kakure Kirishitan (hidden Christians) around Nagasaki reemerged in 1865, much to the surprise of Japanese authorities and returning Christian missionaries alike.6 Some of these communities reincorporated into their mother churches. Others continue independent today with Buddhist-Christian syncretic traditions. In such situations, habits of secrecy continue despite the disappearance of oppression-sometimes as mere tradition, sometimes as a prudent precaution, and sometimes as an integral part of the religion itself. It is also noteworthy that a sacred text called the Beginning of Heaven and Earth, made up of Bible stories and local religious lore, circulated clandestinely among the Kakure Kirishitan much like The Book of Mormon is said to circulate among indigenous Russian "Mormons" (Whelan 1996).

However, recent developments in the scholarly study of crypto-Jews provide a useful caution to anyone who might hope for the reemergence of lost Mormons. From the time of their forced conversion or expulsion from the Hispanic world in 1492 to the present, Jews who have secretly held onto vestiges of their religion (crypto-Jews) have allegedly been reemerging in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Recently, folklorist Judith Neulander has pointed out serious problems in the methodology used to identify purported Jewish cultural traces among the long-established Hispanos of northern New Mexico (Neulander 1996). (For example, dreidel-like four-sided spinning-tops found among the Hispanos have long been regarded as evidence of Jewish origins even though many nearby non-Jewish cultures also use them. Also, while Ashkenazi Jews used dreidels, they are unknown among the Sephardic Jews from whom crypto-Jew Hispanos are supposed to have descended [22]). Neulander's evidence suggests Hispanos' ostensible Jewishness has a stronger basis in the romantic imagination of Ashkenazi travelers to New Mexico than it does in the Southwest's actual history and culture. Neulander warns that overeager interpretations of artifacts, words, and practices within a limited frame of reference often cause interpreters to overlook more plausible accountings for what seem to be reemergent cultural continuities. "[The] propensity to find what one is seeking, regardless of what is actually there, clearly distinguishes the imaginative 'traveler' from the academic ethnographer, not only in terms of method, but in terms of motivations to discover" (23) .7