Michelle Louise Toxværd Graabek: I’m a Pilgrim, I’m a Stranger

from A Thoughtful Faith for the 21st Century

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When you are in the wide world

Hans Christian Andersen is a famous Danish writer of beloved fairy tales, such as the ugly duckling and the princess and the pea. As a native of Denmark, I grew up with his fairy tales and poetry as a staple of my cultural and literary diet. It was while I was in Italy studying toward my PhD that I came across one of his poems that resonated deeply with me, titled “Er du I Verden vide” (“When you are in the wide World”). Andersen wrote this poem when walking alone in the mountains near Setubal in Portugal in 1866. The first stanza reads,

“Er du I Verden vide”

Er Du I Verden vide,

Du er dog Hjemmet nær,

Gud aander ved din Side

I Luft og Blomst og Træer;

Du høre kan hans Stemme

I Dig og rundtenom,

Og føle du er hjemme

Hvor Du i Verden kom!

”When You Are in the Wide World”

When you are in the wide world,

You are yet close to home,

God breathes by your side

In Air and Flower and Tree;

You can hear his voice

In you and all around,

And feel that you are home

Where in the world you’ve come!

In many ways this poem encapsulates some of the key tenets of my belief in God. Regardless of where in the world I might find myself and the state-lines that humankind has drawn on its maps, this beautiful world was created for us as our home during this mortal journey. And wherever I may be both physically and spiritually on this journey, God breathes by my side and I hear his voice.

I grew up feeling that I was indeed in the wide world. From the age of one I was an immigrant, moving from Denmark to England to Ireland, back to Denmark and then back to England again. While living in Denmark as a teenager, I had the dubious honour of attending a school that Hans Christian Andersen himself had attended, which he apparently hated. I was often not fond of it myself, as it was here I was made to feel that because I had lived elsewhere, suddenly I wasn’t Danish enough. I found myself constantly having to justify my own heritage. It pained me to feel that something so core to most people’s identity as their nationality was in some sense taken from me.

Something my father said eventually changed the way I viewed my cultural identity. Perhaps because his own mother was a German emigrant and he too had grown up juggling his Danish and German heritage, he concluded over time that, while he thought of himself as a Dane and more broadly as a European, the most important identity to him was that he was a Latter-day Saint. This made me reflect on how I myself rooted my identity in my relationship to my religion and my God. It would also lead to my studying history, in particular where migration, religion, and gender overlap.

As I started university in England, I grew interested in how migrants historically constructed, enacted, and negotiated their cultural identity. I began to be more aware of the role that culture plays in our daily lives. I discerned that many truths or norms we hold as essential are instead rooted in our cultural upbringing. For example, as a child in Denmark I had a teacher tell me that eating rye bread was the only way I’d grow up healthy and strong. Not until much later did I see that, while there may be health benefits to rye bread, this commitment was rooted not in some eternal, universal principle, but in a Scandinavian dietary habit. Few of the children I grew up with in England ever ate rye bread; despite that, I’m confident most of them grew up quite healthy. Similarly, in Denmark the norm is to cycle to work, to school, to the beach, to most everywhere. My mother still tells me it gives her a sense of satisfaction every time she sends us off somewhere on a bicycle. However, in England when my brother cycled to school as a child, complete strangers called the school to complain about it, as a child cycling to school on his own was construed as parental negligence. In England walking is the cultural staple. People love to walk, and ancient footpaths that people have trod for centuries are protected so one may walk across them freely, even if they happen to cut straight across a farmer’s field. The more I saw these contrasts in different places I lived, the more I began to question most practices and beliefs, curious to know which were a universal part of the human experience and which were embedded in mere cultural norms.

Naturally, I later began to apply this orientation to my religion. Some things seemed obvious. In Europe, drinking root beer is the Mormon thing to do. (Here I use the term “Mormon” purposefully in a cultural sense separate from the teachings and religious life of the Church of Jesus Christ). However, root beer isn’t commonly sold in Europe. We could get imported root beer only at one of the few Latter-day Saint bookstores that existed in Europe. Even today one only finds root beer in specialty international food stores. Not until I was an adult did I realize that, to Americans, root beer was just another kind of soda. It wasn’t anything especially ‘Mormon.’ But to me growing up in Europe it had been a special treat, the “Mormon Beer.” It is part of a European Mormon culture, influenced by its American roots.

But there are other things in our religion that are less obviously cultural rather than universal eternal truths. Just as root beer became associated with Mormon culture, many other practices and ideas also cling to the faith because the history of the gospel's restoration took place in North America, and church headquarters is in Utah. This affects, for example, what we deem appropriate clothes to wear to church on the Sabbath. I have known Bishops who insisted only those wearing a white shirt and tie could bless the sacrament, thereby excluding African immigrant members who came in their own beautiful ethnic costumes. While I believe in keeping the Sabbath day holy, and in reverence for the Sacrament, this exclusion is rooted in Western culture of what“Sunday best” looks like. Another example is the way in which the United States Constitution is held in reverence in the church. I understand that this is rooted in a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants and diverse comments by General Authorities of the Church, and I won’t dispute that the writers of the Constitution were at times inspired by God. However, I will assert that this is not equally true of many of the constitutions of other nations. For example, the Danish Constitution in June 1849 granted Danes religious freedom, only months before Latter-day Saint missionaries arrived in Denmark in 1850. One of these early missionaries, Erastus Snow, wrote in his journal, “Thus we saw that the Lord had been preparing the way before us in a manner that we knew not of.” I believe that the Danish Constitution was inspired by God, but it was only ever the inspired U.S. constitution of which I was taught in seminary and Sunday school lessons growing up. These often unintentional “Americanisms” can leave those of us who reside outside the United States feeling alienated. That can present a bigger problem for some than for others, but given that an increasing majority of members live outside the U.S., it is a problem for the church as a whole.

Gender is another area in which we often confuse culture and doctrine.