The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arkansas refers to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and its members in Arkansas. The first branch in Arkansas was organized in 1890. It has since grown to 35,405 members in 73 congregations.
Official church membership as a percentage of general population was 1.00% in 2014. According to the 2014 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey, roughly 1% of Arkansans self-identified most closely with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[3] The LDS Church is the 9th largest denomination in Arkansas.[4]
History
Membership in Arkansas
Year
Members
1914
~100
1930
944
1974
5,355
1980
9,878
1990
13,753
1999
20,077
2009
25,878
2019
32,307
2022
35,405
Source: Windall J. Ashton; Jim M. Wall, Deseret News, various years, Church Almanac State Information: Arkansas[1]
Graph of Arkansas LDS membership history
Elders Wilford Woodruff and Henry Brown arrived as missionaries in Bentonville on January 28, 1835. They held their first meeting four days later and preached to an attentive congregation. Later they were confronted by an apostate member, Alexander Akeman.[5] Akeman had earlier endured severe persecution in Missouri, but later turned bitterly against the Church. However, he died suddenly, and Elder Woodruff preached his funeral sermon. This event, along with Woodruff's teachings, led to the baptism of a Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Hubbel, the first converts in Arkansas, on 22 February 1835.
In 1838, Elder Abraham O. Smoot was called to a five-month mission to Arkansas where he preached frequently with varied results.
The year 1857 marked a tragic era in Church history in Arkansas. Elder Parley P. Pratt was murdered on May 13, 1857, near Alma, Arkansas. He had just been acquitted by a court in Van Buren of charges pressed by Hector H. McLean, the former husband of Pratt's wife Eleanor. At the trial, she testified that her former husband frequently physically abused her. Disappointed with the verdict, the McLean followed and assassinated the apostle.[6] (On April 2, 2008, Crawford County Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell gave the Pratt family permission to move Parley Pratt's remains to Utah.)[7]
Negative feelings, and later the U.S. Civil War, kept the Church from the area for the next two decades.
After the war, the Church again sent missionaries to Arkansas in 1876. In 1877, Elders Henry G. Boyle and J.D.H. McAllister visited a member in Des Arc. By 1877, 27 families totaling 125 converts emigrated west. Through the 1880s, converts continued to join the main body of the saints in Utah.[8]
A permanent presence of the church was established on May 30, 1890, when the first Latter-day Saint meetinghouse was built in White County. Benjamin Franklin Baker, an early influential convert, helped establish the Barney Branch (about 5 miles north of Enola) in 1914 with over 100 members. Rufus Black Tyler was one of the first branch presidents (called March 1915). By 1930, three branches had been organized in Arkansas (Barney, El Dorado, and Little Rock) with a total membership of 944.
The first Arkansas stake was created on June 1, 1969, in Little Rock. This was known at the time as the Arkansas stake and later renamed to the Little Rock Arkansas Stake.[9]
On July 20–22, 2006, over 1,000 Latter-day Saint teens from all five of the Arkansas Stakes gathered for a three-day multi-stake youth conference. Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve and former associate dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Business Administration at the University of Arkansas spoke to the youth and encouraged them to live by high moral standards.[11]
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, several thousand Latter-day Saint volunteers, from a seven-state area (including Arkansas), went to Louisiana and Mississippi. Many of them took time out of their jobs or came down on the weekends to help anyone needing assistance regardless of faith.[12][13]
Arkansas Latter-day Saints volunteered relief in their own area on several occasions, including the April 2, 2006 Tornado Outbreak[14] and the 2008 Super Tuesday tornado outbreak.[15] In September 2008, Arkansas Latter-day Saints went to the Baton Rouge area to aid cleanup efforts following Hurricane Gustav.[16] Church members from northwest Arkansas and West Plains, Missouri Stake assisted in the Joplin, Missouri tornado cleanup in 2011, completing over 7,400 work orders.[17] Arkansas members from Little Rock, North Little Rock, and Searcy Stakes provided volunteers to help clean up homes in the Baton Rouge area following the 2016 flood, completing over 1,400 work orders.[18]
On October 5, 2019, plans to construct a temple in Bentonville were announced during the Women's Session of General Conference.
Red = Operating temple Blue = Temple under construction Green = Stake center Both temples on map are adjacent to a stake center. The Searcy Stake offices are located in Jacksonville.
A Latter-day Saint meetinghouse in Conway, Arkansas
As of January 2024, Arkansas was currently part of 12 stakes. Seven of those stakes have their stake center within the state. In 2014, the Searcy Arkansas and Bentonville Arkansas stakes were established, making it the seven stakes with a stake center in Arkansas.[citation needed]
The North Little Rock Stake Center is also home to the mission office for the Arkansas Little Rock Mission.
The Arkansas Stake was renamed the Little Rock Arkansas Stake.
The Jacksonville Arkansas Stake was renamed the North Little Rock Arkansas stake when the stake center was moved to North Little Rock.
The stake center for the Searcy Arkansas Stake is located in Jacksonville.
Missions
Arkansas formed part of several church missions. Originally a conference of the Southern States Mission, it later became part of the Indian Territory Mission. Southwestern States Mission, Central States Mission, Texas-Louisiana Mission, Gulf States Mission, and ultimately the Arkansas Little Rock Mission formed in 1975 with Richard M. Richards as president.
The northwest part of the state is in the Arkansas Bentonville Mission, renamed in 2015 from the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission. The far south and southwest parts of the state are in the Mississippi Jackson Mission and the Texas Dallas Mission respectively.
Elder David A. Bednar is a former associate dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Business Administration at the University of Arkansas. While at the University of Arkansas, he served as a stake president for the Fort Smith Arkansas Stake and then for the Rogers Stake. He later became the president for Ricks College in Idaho and ultimately was sustained a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 2004.[22]
Amy Daniel of the Benton Ward, Little Rock Arkansas Stake, is a former president of the Arkansas School Boards Association.[23]
Dottie Zimmerman, then 24, of the Ash Flat Branch, North Little Rock Arkansas Stake, received three bronze medals in powerlifting at the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Dublin, Ireland, June 16–29, 2003. She had been trained in the bench press, deadlift and combination-bench and deadlift. Her team spent four days in Belfast before traveling to Dublin for the opening of the games. Zimmerman completed earlier that year in the Arkansas Special Olympics in Searcy, Arkansas, at which she received three gold medals.[24]
Elder Taniela B. Wakolo, of Fiji, served as president of the Arkansas Little Rock Mission from July 2014 to June 2017. During the April 2017 General Conference, he was sustained as a General Authority of the Church.[25]
Elder Michael V. Beheshti, of Little Rock, was sustained as an Area Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at General Conference on 22 April 2016. He serves in the North America Southeast Area.[26]
Elder David J. Harris, of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, was sustained as an Area Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at General Conference on 31 March 2018. He serves in the North America Southwest Area.[27]
