Latinos report that they felt like "infiltrators" in a "white" culture when they attended integrated wards. Anglos, in their habits of shaking hands rather than hugging and kissing, and leaving immediately following worship, seemed "cold" and "all business." Those in the Spanish-speaking community who continued to attend were called "traitors" and "Gringo lovers" by their fellow Hispanic Latter-day Saints. Although since 1977 church leaders have assured immigrants that "the church will never require you to learn English," that "our prime role is not to teach people how to become American," that "we declare Christ, not English," it still remains to be seen if this can last, given a clear preference for assimilation.

Jessie L. Embry is the director of the Oral History Program at the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies and an instructor of history at Brigham Young University. She is the author of Black Saints in a White Church: Contemporary African-American Mormons, "In His Own Language": Mormon Spanish-Speaking Congregations in the United States, and Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle, and is co-author of After 150 Years: Latter-day Saints in Sesquicentennial Perspective and Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1894-1994.