This research explores the unique and divergent experiences of LGBTQ+ young adults as they engage in identity and space-making practices at the intersection of gender/sexuality and religion. Utilizing queer theorists’ conceptualization of identity as a form of embodied and spatial labor, I critique the approach of existing scholarship that constructs LGBTQ+ and religious identities as incompatible or at least in need of reconciliation. Based on thirteen semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ young adults in Utah, my research makes visible how vulnerability and risk impact the strategies that LGBTQ+ young adults employ to navigate their identities and make space. It shows that they strategically navigate space wherever they find themselves, regardless of whether they encounter accommodation or belonging. In doing so, it comes to look beyond the narrative of visibility as the primary strategy for LGBTQ+ progress to recognize that LGBTQ+ young adults employ varied strategies of visibility and concealment to navigate the spaces where they find themselves.

Education and learning have ever been at the core of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Throughout its history that now extends nearly one hundred ninety years, the Church has made numerous attempts to provide educational opportunities for its members. Some attempts have failed, and others were met with some success—though limited, to be sure. In hindsight, most of these efforts were simply laying the foundation for something far greater. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the groundwork for global Church education had been laid, and the seeds planted. Beginning with a pilot administered through BYU-Idaho, a program known as “Pathway” grew into a worldwide effort that is successfully providing educational opportunities to individuals distanced from such occasion. The Church-affiliated university also created a robust online program, that coupled with Pathway, was providing a largely affordable, yet high-quality education to Church members and even a few other individuals across the globe. Not without its barriers, Pathway and the BYU-Idaho online degree program worked to overcome legal and other limitations in order to create and expand a vigorous offering across cultures, time, and space. Recently, these programs have given root to what is now a global education initiative, collaborating a united effort from each institution affiliated with the Church Educational System.

This study explores the impact of cultural competence on success in completing key missionary tasks. Qualitative survey results are supported by data from an intercultural effectiveness assessment and a Mandarin Chinese listening proficiency test to describe themes related to missionary communicative success and to explore correlations between intercultural effectiveness and listening proficiency. Missionary communicative tasks are clarified into themes:"obtaining referrals,"obtaining teaching opportunities," and"helping people make and keep commitments." Factors perceived as associating with communicative success include"feeling and communicating love" and receiving"spiritual guidance." The effect of training on intercultural competence is also described. The intercultural effectiveness subcategory of positive regard is shown to have significant correlation with listening proficiency and with missionaries' perceptions of their own awareness of Chinese culture. Suggestions are made for further research and program development.

Although the literary quality of women's poetry from the nineteenth century has long been criticized by literary scholars, recent work in reception studies has documented readers' aesthetic experiences with such poetry in order to appreciate its popularity and appeal (Stauffer). Extending this work in literary reception studies, I draw on scholarship in rhetorical studies, specifically rhetorical aesthetics (Clark), to demonstrate how conventional poetic forms and sentimental appeals can be used by marginalized communities to facilitate identification. I examine Songs and Flowers of the Wasatch, a collection of primarily Latter-day Saint women's poetry compiled by Emmaline B. Wells for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, as a case study in rhetorical aesthetics. The collection was compiled with the intent to change popular opinion about Utah woman and foster community within women's movements of the time, including suffrage. By analyzing how these poems operated rhetorically--facilitating aesthetic experiences through familiar poetic forms and sentimental appeals--I conclude that the collection helped change negative public opinion of Latter-day Saint women. I argue that rhetorical aesthetics and reception studies offer an alternative way for literary and rhetorical scholars to reevaluate the value of women's nineteenth-century poetry. This project invites additional scholarly inquiry into how women and other historically marginalized groups have used art to create rhetorically powerful aesthetic experiences that prepare minds for change.

This thesis is based on ethnographic data collected across two Mormon congregations in the Republic of Ireland. I explore the experiences of a religious minority who are part of a wider society experiencing rapid religious and social change. Engaging with concepts of tradition, continuity, and change, this research explores how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experience their status as a minority religion in modern Ireland. As part of a growing number of new religious movements in Ireland, Mormonism represents a simultaneous continuation and rupture of Ireland’s previous religious traditions. This research suggests that a continuing influence of Catholicism in Irish society shapes Irish Mormon perceptions of self, of others, and of faith. Yet, by identifying with a religion which is viewed in Ireland as a ‘foreign’ faith, Irish Mormons represent a clear break with previous religious tradition. Irish Mormons’ relationship with Mormonism as a global religion also demonstrates the complexity of continuity and change within modern religion. This research shows that Irish Mormons reject what they perceive as an Americanisation of Mormonism and often emphasise the uniquely Irish nature of Mormonism in Ireland. Thus, Irish Mormons are adapting Mormon tradition into new forms far from the Mormon heartland of Utah. This research concludes that Mormons in Ireland utilise complex and interconnected understandings of tradition, community, and Irishness to create and maintain a minority religious identity in modern Ireland.

This thesis will examine the surprising and delightful similarities between Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Eliza R. Snow's letters to the Woman's Exponent published in a book titled Correspondence of Palestine Tourists (1875). Snow traveled abroad from 1872-1873, five years after Twain went abroad in 1867 and three years after The Innocents Abroad was published. She clearly states in her early letters that she was reading Twain and his influence is apparent in her letters. A careful look at her letters will also show that they are not merely an imitation of Twain. Snow takes on a Twainian style to write for her audience, the Latter-day Saint women readers of the Woman's Exponent in Salt Lake City.Reading Snow's letters alongside Twain's The Innocents Abroad is beneficial in understanding the power and influence a popular text can have not only on other texts, but also on how writers describe their personal experiences. Marielle Maco states: 'Works take their place in ordinary life, leaving their marks and exerting a lasting power' 'Ways of Reading, Modes of Being,' 213). The lasting power of Twain's work is clearly shown here in Snow's letters.

There is limited data on the quality of life of individuals who exercise in a group versus individuals who exercise alone. The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference in the quality life between adults who attend an exercise class and those who exercise alone. Using the WHOQOL-BREF, 27 adult females were surveyed in Central California at two Church of Latter Day Saints locations. Ten females were enrolled in a group exercise class while 17 were individual exercisers. The data was analyzed using a t-test for independent samples to determine if there is a significant difference in scores. There was not a significant difference in overall quality of life, environmental domain, and physical domain, but there was a significant difference in the psychological and social domains. Further research is recommended and benefits are detailed.

The objective of most religious teachings and concepts is to change the student's attitude that desirable behavior may follow. The measurement of attitudes and the way people feel about certain religious concepts are, to an extent, determinative of their behavior. This realization has brought about a steady growth within the educational field of attitude and opinion measurement. It has also influenced religious educators to investigate this field in their efforts to get people to attain desirable religious goals.The problem, investigated in the present research, was concerned with whether the youth of seminary age in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have favorable attitudes toward temple marriage and whether these attitudes change significantly during the brief time that the students are in seminary.

This thesis is a textbook designed to assist LDS missionaries studying the Samoan language both in a two-month intensive language-learning school (the Missionary Training Center) and in individual study in the Samoan Islands. The thesis is prefaced with a rationale for and explanation of the Missionary Training Center language program and the design and purposes of the text itself.The textbook contains fifty Samoan language lessons, divided into ten units of five lessons each. At the end of each unit is a review module, or test. Except for two overview lessons (designed to introduce grammatical terms and pronunciation), each of the fifty lessons is either a grammar lesson (consisting of presentation and practice of grammar rules sequenced from simple to complex) or a Speak Your Language lesson (consisting of presentation and practice of phrases, patterns, and vocabulary required for competence in particular notions and situations, sequenced according to the communicative needs of the missionaries). Supplementary material included at the end of the book includes Extra Mile Lessons (additional information on grammar, phrases, patterns, and vocabulary) and two appendices (Samoan songs and a bibliography).

This study explores the teaching practices of recently returned Latter-day Saint (LDS) missionaries who voluntarily taught the English language on their full-time missions' serving for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout various parts of the world. The analyses performed in this research offer an insider's perspective by looking at a large selection of qualitative data gathered directly from these missionaries to provide evidential insight into what those practices are, including the most effective and the most ineffective teaching practices as principally perceived by the missionaries themselves. Thus far, there has been no research reported or data gathered on this topic on the same global scale, and to the same academic level. However, such a study is extremely necessary and beneficial towards refining the focus of the missionary taught English language classes, as well as the quality of teaching that the missionaries provide as they strive to serve and benefit the communities around them.