Mauss then outlines the current "costs of (LDS) membership" for Europeans, who face challenges their American counterparts likely haven't encountered to the same degree.

Among them:

• Government regulation of "new religious groups," as the LDS Church is sometimes labeled.

• "Defamation and fear-mongering" that uses blogs in particular to spread spurious information about the faith, leading to suspicion about the church and its motives.

• Legal discrimination in employment, adoption, divorce and child-custody disputes because of one's faith.

• Tithes and offerings represent a much larger percentage of personal income, based on higher tax rates in Europe.

After listing ways the church is already trying to reduce the "cost of membership" for potential converts, and suggesting new approaches, Mauss wrote, "There are good reasons to be optimistic about the future of the church in Europe. Old traditions and restrictions on new religions are breaking down.

"The religious market is stirring, and the LDS brand — with its innovative combination of the familiar and the novel — will find new 'customers' in the younger generations."

Having experienced local leadership to provide stability and a new cohort of general authorities emerging who are in their 50s and 60s (and younger) and who have more experience outside North America, are more native to those countries, and are more sensitive than ever to the inappropriate intrusions of American culture into LDS Church life in other countries, will benefit the church, he wrote.

Such leaders are "more open to the counsel and advice of Saints and leaders living in Europe," he wrote, adding that such openness has extended to the field of scholarship in Mormon studies, which blossomed under President Hinckley.

Citing a November 2007 statement by the church encouraging a "deeper and broader examination of its theology, history and culture on an intellectual level" with the confidence that "Mormonism has a depth and breadth of substance that can hold up under academic scrutiny," Mauss wrote that there is hope for a spread of such discussion in Europe.

He cited the new academic journal, the recently formed European Mormon Studies Association and a growing number of scholarly conferences on religion throughout the region as indicators that the faith could become less stigmatized as it is examined more deeply.

"If LDS scholars will present papers and join in the conversations at such conferences" in Europe as they have recently done at Princeton, Yale and other high-profile American universities, "the day may come ... when there will be courses in Mormon studies at universities across Europe," he wrote, quoting Dr. O. James Stevens, a Brussels-based spokesman for the church.