Salt Lake City, USA - Thankful for the opportunity, an LDS Church official in Kazakhstan presented tenets of his faith to the central Asian nation’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, a tough former Communist labeled by detractors as corrupt and ruthless.
General authority Paul Pieper, who represents the area for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke in both Kazakh and Russian as he outlined support of traditional family values, education and the authority of local governments — as well as the faith’s taboos against alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs.
“You don’t drink?’’ Nazarbayev interrupted. “There are places in Russia where they live to be over 100 and drink like fish.”
Then, apparently sensing Pieper’s discomfort, Nazarbayev chuckled and added, “I hope you understand that’s a joke.’’
The striking July 2009 exchange was captured in one of nearly 100 confidential State Department cables mentioning Mormons abroad, among a trove of more than 270,000 U.S. diplomatic documents released by the controversial whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks. Reflecting the Salt Lake City-based faith’s scope, the LDS-related cables span church activities in 40 countries across Africa, Europe, North and South America, the Middle East and Asia.
Only one — on Libyan-related terror attacks in 1986, including the bombing of a Mormon meetinghouse in Venezuela — is considered secret, though many of the rest are officially deemed confidential or classified.
The cables paint a fascinating picture of a far-flung faith coping with obstacles to its religious mission and of U.S. diplomats pressing on behalf of Americans and human rights around the world. The documents recount U.S. efforts in dozens of countries to address bureaucratic limits, tax inequities, political antagonism, hostile rumors and even physical threats against LDS Church personnel.
According to an expert at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, advocacy for religious freedom has gained importance within the State Department under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. Before that, the issue sometimes lost traction as embassy officials pursued more egregious human-rights violations such as torture or human slavery, said BYU law professor Cole Durham.
The law, among other things, authorized U.S. diplomats to respond to religious-freedom violations in other countries and required embassies and consulates to report annually on the status of the issue in host nations.
“Religious freedom has always been a little bit of a back-burner issue,’’ Durham said, “but if you leave it on the back burner too long, it explodes.’’
Many of the cables mention Mormons in the context of their ability to worship and proselytize on foreign soil. Others reference the church and its members only in passing or as part of work-a-day monitoring of news accounts. A few deal at length with LDS logistics and concerns, restrictions on its congregations abroad, and, in some cases, emergencies confronting missionaries in the field.
U.S. Embassy officials in Guyana mobilized in September 2009 when police detained and expelled 41 Mormon missionaries without formal charges on orders from the South American nation’s Ministry of Home Affairs. The arrests — which diplomats said caught even Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo by surprise — were officially blamed on discrepancies in their work permits.
Privately, a top criminal investigator was more blunt about the government’s intent. “The Minister wants them out,” the investigator reportedly said.
Their passports confiscated, the missionaries — including an elderly couple — were held in jail all day while police “failed to provide them with basic necessities such as water, food and toilet paper,’’ a Sept. 3, 2009, cable detailed. Though the Mormons were freed at Jagdeo’s behest, U.S. diplomats called the episode “deeply disturbing.’’
Embassy officials pushed back in a series of high-level meetings aimed at cutting through work-permit red tape and removing quotas on LDS missionaries allowed in Guyana, decrying the rules as “arbitrary.’’
Similar patterns emerge in cables from around the world, with U.S. diplomats pressing foreign governments over encroachments on religious liberty affecting Mormons as well as evangelical Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other faiths.
In response to a request for comment on this story, the LDS Church issued a statement calling religious freedom "a very important issue" and "a bedrock for many of the freedoms Americans enjoy."
"We are concerned about the erosion of this freedom as are many others," the statement said, "and are grateful for the efforts of those who seek to protect it."
A State Department spokeswoman in Washington refused to comment on the contents of the WikiLeaks cables, but said embassy officials place their highest priority on ensuring the welfare and safety of expatriate U.S. citizens whatever their faith, while also advocating globally for a range of basic human rights that includes freedom to practice religion.
In dealing with governments abroad, department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said, "we can’t make them change their laws on an American citizen’s behalf, but we constantly advocate for rights we believe are universal, unalienable rights."
The WikiLeaks documents reveal State Department officials as often deeply knowledgeable about LDS activities — indicating a steady flow of information between church leaders and diplomats and a gathering of U.S. intelligence through media reports and local contacts.
In one cable dealing exclusively with Mormon affairs, a Shanghai-based diplomat offers detailed information on member numbers in Shanghai, Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan; the nationality mix of the Shanghai LDS congregation; weekly meetings; meeting site infrastructure and security; and proscriptions from the pulpit against proselytizing among Chinese nationals.
And, in a policy reference echoed in several other memos, the same January 2010 cable also offers a top LDS official’s approach to local authority.
The comment, from Mormon Shanghai International District President Stayner B. Lewis, came in light of a Chinese announcement loosening restrictions on meetings by religious groups not officially recognized by the government. The edict by the Shanghai Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) amounted to one of the first official documents issued in mainland China giving expatriate members of a religious group official permission to gather.
Lewis, the cable said, "not only wanted to toe the line, as the authorities have drawn it, but he wanted to stay well within it, so as to prove to the Shanghai RAB that the Mormons are trustworthy."
Church leaders showed similar deference in Vietnam, according to a 2003 cable penned in Ho Chi Minh City. At the time, Mormons based there sought to open an LDS branch (a small congregation) as they worked through registration requirements for official government recognition for their faith.
"By carefully adhering to the parameters of whatever permission they receive from local officials," the cable said of LDS leaders, "they hope to convince the GVN [government of Vietnam] that they are not a threat to the country’s political stability."
Other cables show Mormons working diligently to surmount constraints.
When Slovakia decreed that some religions had to file 20,000 signature petitions to secure official recognition, LDS officials organized a monthlong, 30-city effort and swiftly gathered the signatures, according to a cable issued in September 2006. But their efforts faced opposition.
Police threatened Mormon signature gatherers with fines in the western Slovakia city of Trnava — seat of the Catholic archbishop in Slovakia — and kicked them out of the city. And in Zilina, in the northwest, "nuns staged protests urging passers-by not to sign the Mormon petition," according to the Sept. 26, 2006, cable.
"The Catholic Church in Slovakia," the cable noted, "had issued a statement urging its members not to sign the petition."
U.S. diplomats showed similar sensitivity, cables show, to caustic statements made against Mormons by religious authorities of orthodox Christian sects in Egypt, Bulgaria and Russia.