Pacific Apostle

Abstract

The year-long fact-finding mission of Mormon apostle David O. McKay and his traveling companion Hugh J. Cannon to the colonies of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of the most significant moments of the twentieth century for Mormonism. Although the contemporary church has grown to become a global presence, the early decades of the last century found missionaries struggling to gain converts abroad. For the church’s leadership, it was a pioneering endeavor to visit, observe, and fellowship with the church’s expanding global constituency in the Pacific. Other general authorities had visited individual church missions at various times—especially across Europe. None, however, had ever circumnavigated the globe, using the Pacific as a focal point of travel. In today’s information age, where such visits occur almost weekly for many senior church leaders, the significance of such an expedition is easy to overlook. When McKay was called in October 1920, no one knew the tour would eventually form many of the most important initiatives he had undertaken when he became church president three decades later. McKay’s rich and vivid account of his and Cannon’s 61,646-mile around-the-world journey illustrates the roots of Mormonism’s globalization. His diary account is without doubt one of the more significant texts in the historical cannon of global Mormon studies.