‘Forever Families’; Christian individualism, Mormonism and collective salvation.

Latter-day Saints are only truly saved when they are saved together, as a “forever family.” Unlike most forms of Christianity (and much American mainstream thought), Mormonism is monistic; body and spirit are of one nature. Mormonism also reframes the temporality of kinship, since family relations in this life may reflect choices and connections from a premortal existence before birth on earth. As a result, conversion to Mormonism usually downplays the element of solitary Pauline “rupture” central to the analysis offered by Joel Robbins and others, emphasising instead conversion as the “grafting” of new families onto a sacred root.