James wrote a
review of a book which in turn got me thinking because he mentioned the
Utah War. This was the clash between Mormons in Utah under Brigham Young vs the Buchanan administration in DC, which little actual fighting took place and there were few deaths for something of an armed conflict of the time, save for the
Mountain Meadows Massacre.
One of the contingencies Young planned was to move the Mormon community north on yet another exodus. In this case, the plan was actually for the island of Vancouver. For the moment, let's assume the US government has decided to rid themselves of these troublesome missionaries and Young triggers the exodus.
Young showing up in British Columbia with more people than would have been in Vancouver until the 1900 would have really alarmed the Brits. There would be three different possibilities here.
The first is the least likely, IMO, and the border gets scarier in the late 1850s. However, that's tempered in a big way by the fact the American Civil War was about to go boom. On the other hand, it might not be after the Civil War since the President Grant tried to exploit the Red River Rebellion and Louis Riel to try to take Manitoba for the US. On the gripping hand, if the Mormons had been harried out of Utah to Vancouver, they are not likely to be big fans of America.
The next most likely event is the Mormons becoming fervent Canadians. The Mormons get the spin of the Loyalist being persecuted by the damned Yanks and get used to anchor the western seaboard from American encroachment. Vancouver becomes a Canadian Utah and Mormon Zion.
Honestly though, with the reputation the Mormons had and their particular doctrines of the time, its more than likely the Brits are going to see them off. I'm sorry, chaps, time to move along. But where to? After all, the Go West, Young Mormon! Go West! kinda runs into the end of the continent. They could go north, but...
Historically, Mormons when proselytizing in Polynesia and the Pacific Ocean islands. Hawaii is probably the most noted of those missions. So, harried from Missouri, harried from Utah, harried from Vancouver, the Mormons go West again...to Polynesia, but especially to Micronesia during the American Civil War while the Brits feel they can uproot the weird Americans with less chance of something going wrong.
Missonary work still goes on in Europe and elsewhere, but Zion is now the atolls and islands of Micronesia. Guam would get a coral block temple and there they would stay for 30 years. The world would not be done with our ATL Mormons.
The Spanish American War and the Imperial expansion of the Japanese would bring more misery to the ATL Mormons. The Mormons would attempt to help the Spanish hold off the Americans, and it would have consequences. The Americans would chase the Mormons from Guam and the Mormons would set up in the surrounding islands. While already present in many places, they ended up concentrating in the Northern Mariana Islands.
When the Japanese took them in 1914, things did not go well. Increasingly wondering whether or not the Mormons were a 5th Column for the Americans, the Japanese packed up the lot of them and deported the Mormons to Taiwan at first, emptying the South Pacific Mandate of the potential guerilla army threat. This is declared a success in 1925. Once in Taiwan, the Japanese kept them apart in separate, dedicated colonies. When the Kominka Movement kicked off, it was decided the Mormons were unredeemable and could not be remade into Japanese citizens. The 60,000 of them were deported to Manchuria to work camps.
They would suffer through the deprivations of WW2 and come out the other side. Unfortunately, the Chinese Communists, Mao especially, were not overly fond of them. They were then moved to the Chinese West, Xinjiang, in the early 1950s. Their numbers were now 50,000. There they would stay and slow grow over the next 15 years. Unfortunately, the Cultural Revolution would strike and being the most western (albeit very mixed at this point) group, the Mormons would suffer again.
However, this time the Mormons would make their own move. The Prophet, Hyriam Hattig, would organize the exodus of the majority of members across the Chinese border into Afghanistan. In 1968, the Mormons left China. They would take up farming for a time in the mountains of Afghanistan. The Afghanis were suspicious but also sympathetic. At least until 1978.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a disaster. For the Afghanis, the Soviets and now for the Mormons. It would kill a number of Mormons. It would also cause the Great Schism. The Mormons had finally broken through 100,000 people at the start of the war in their settlements in their valleys. However, Mormons had become very apolitical and only out for their own survival rather than to change or convert the world. Most followed the 'render unto Caesar...' When the communists took over, they rendered until caesar, or at least 75% of them did. The rest, sick of their being the narrator of the world's dog, moved south, across the Hindu Kush and became the partisans everyone feared they would. They would even spawn rival Prophets. Those who moved south became the Abandoned (the Fallen as called by the Wanderers), in the Mormon terminology, and those who remained, the Wanderers (the Lost as called by the Abandoned).
When the Soviet Union began withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Wanderer Mormons pleaded with the Soviets. Gorbachev took them in and placed them in Crimea. It did not make them popular with their new neighbors. However, when the coup came in August 1991, Mormons took it on themselves to free and hide Gorbachev. It would not stop the fall of the Soviet Union, but it would make the Ukrainians even less fond of them.
They would cross into Europe and Wanderers would become a traveling people in the 1990s making their name a reality. They would wander in their RVs there for another 24 years. They would reunite once every three years for 'General Conference.' Each band of Wanderer's is called a Ward. Given how few Wanderers there are, each country has a Stake. All of them report to the Prophet and Quorums. The biggest change to the church and people would be they took up missionary work again. Unfortunately, this didn't help their image. A wandering group seeking converts. Great.
Back in Pakistan, the Abandoned would slowly evolve their own way. Their own revelations would state that
Christ visited the Kashmir like he had the Americas. They migrated to Kashmir and integrated, albeit roughly into society. However, they were far, far more rough than their Wanderer cousins. If someone knocked heads with them, they knocked them right back. They built their own temple up in the glaciers. It's been blown up twice. But each time rebuilt.
In 2016, Jackson Tanner, an aspiring politician, would begin, successfully, to lobby for bringing the Mormons back to the US. He succeeded in 2024 having argued the Mormons were US citizens by birth. The genealogical records the Mormons kept were key.
The Wanderers had always had the saying, "Next Year in Nauvoo" and in 2024, it came true.
