Breaking Down Prejudice

In the 1850s, when the first groups of Latter-day Saints emigrated from Sweden, they were part of a wave of roughly 15,000 Swedes to immigrate to the United States over the course of the decade. But by the late 1800s, emigration had increased to as many as 50,000 people per year. In the face of such dramatic population change, some Swedes lashed out against emigrants. “Have you heard about love of fatherland, love of one’s country, love of parents, sisters, relatives, and friends?” one 1903 editorial asked. “If you had God in your mind you would never think of abandoning your fatherland.”

Many Latter-day Saints had exactly the opposite opinion: they believed God wanted them to help lay the foundation for Zion by gathering together with the body of Saints in the American West. Frequently, men who had joined the Church in Sweden and emigrated later came back to share news of the Restoration and to help other converts emigrate. That work continued into the early 1900s. In the decade after 1905, when the Swedish Mission was formed out of the larger Scandinavian Mission, 40 percent of Church members in Sweden left the country.

After the Swedish government launched an inquiry into the causes of emigration in 1907, broader anxieties over the number of Swedes leaving the country combined with misinformation about the Church in the press and political debates. P. E. Åslev, a Swedish pastor who had spent time in Salt Lake City, led the charge; he printed antagonistic articles in the papers, lobbied government officials to take action against the Church, and even interrupted Latter-day Saint meetings.

Church members also attempted to take action to explain and defend the faith. In early 1911, Andreas Peterson, a Swedish convert who had emigrated and then returned to serve multiple missions, sought an audience with King Gustav V. When granted the audience, Peterson presented a letter from Swedish Saints living in Utah that refuted negative claims made about the character of the Church and its members. The king agreed to give the issue some study.

The issue of what to do with the Church was eventually taken up by the Riksdag (parliament). From 1912 to 1915, the body debated whether to appropriate funds in an effort to counteract Latter-day Saint proselytizing. Though heated public debate continued, in 1915 the Riksdag declined to take action against the Church.

Efforts to resolve misunderstandings continued in the coming decades. In the early 1920s, when some foreign missionaries were denied entry to Sweden due to lingering rumors about plural marriage, two members of the Stockholm Branch presidency made an appeal to the king to request a resolution of the situation. In time, public opinion began to improve. In 1939, Gustive O. Larson, a son of Swedish converts then serving as mission president, reported, “We have made some progress in Sweden during the time we have been there. Especially in the breaking down of prejudice against our people.”