Media Constructions of the Mormon Menace: Religious Othering in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

This paper examines how Mormonism was constructed as a religious and social threat in the mid-nineteenth-century Swedish press. From the moment Mormonism entered public awareness, newspapers played a central role in shaping its image, portraying the movement as fanatical, immoral, and politically subversive. Such representations were closely tied to broader concerns about dissent and social stability within a confessional Lutheran state that still legally restricted alternative modes of religious practice. Drawing on national and provincial newspapers, complemented by ecclesiastical and civil records relating to prosecutions of missionaries and converts, the study traces how narratives of danger and disorder circulated between media, church, and state. By situating anti‑Mormon discourse within debates about religious freedom and modernization, the paper shows how Mormonism became a touchstone in negotiating the boundaries of toleration in nineteenth‑century Sweden, thereby contributing to the growing field of Global Mormon Studies.