(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
Here’s some potentially interesting reading for you:
“From Catholic to Mormon: Why Latinos are joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”
(Photo from LDS.org)
Here’s something that, I think, merits very serious consideration: “Salt Lake Tribune: “Jana Riess: Why Americans, including Latter-day Saints, are leaving their churches: If even the LDS church is starting to bleed members, “that shows what a big issue this is for everyone else” In her article, Jana Riess reports on what may be an important new book, Stephen Bullivant’s Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America, which is due out any day now from Oxford University Press. A British sociologist, Bullivant is himself a counterexample to the trend that he is discussing, having been raised in a nonreligious family and having come to Catholicism as an adult convert. In any event, here is the passage from Riess’s article that caught my particular attention:
A second factor is the sudden appearance of the internet, which made it possible for like-minded people to meet one another. “If you were brought up in small-town Kansas, you probably weren’t going to find other people who were having religious doubts. The internet opened up those spaces for people to play around with ideas, hang out with other people, and get really deep into various subcultures.”
The internet has been particularly important for people leaving conservative religions such as evangelical Protestantism or Mormonism. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is actually the first main example Bullivant uses in the book, which is surprising because it’s such a tiny percentage of the population, around 1.5%.
Bullivant chose it because it’s a “canary in the coal mine” story — if even the Latter-day Saints are starting to bleed members, “that shows what a big issue this is for everyone else.” The erosion of Latter-day Saint attachment, he said, indicates “the breakdown of religious subcultures,” which has been especially profound in places such as Utah and southern Idaho where, in decades past, a person’s entire social and religious life could be spent around Latter-day Saints.
The internet chips away at that enclave. “This was important for many of the Mormons I interviewed, who were encountering new things about Mormon history online. But even more than this, they’re starting to hang out with non-Mormons and ex-Mormons, people who are very much in your boat, and that becomes this other world you can inhabit.”
I myself have noticed for years the way internet connections become ersatz “communities,” with people who seldom if ever physically meet each other becoming online “friends,” sometimes to the point of marginalizing or even eliminating more “real” relationships. The trend has concerned me, and far and away not only for religious reasons. But it certainly does have religious implications. And I don’t think that we in communities of faith — certainly in the Latter-day Saint community — have yet learned how to deal at all adequately with the acids of social media. (I’m very much thinking, right now, about what the Interpreter Foundation’s role ideally should be in this regard, and what we will need to have and to do in order to play that role.)
On a slightly different note: Since I was a an early adolescent, at least, I’ve been aware of biblical passages such as Matthew 24:24 (“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect”) and of prophecies such as this rather grim one, attributed by the late Elder J. Golden Kimball (who was never merely a comic character) to his father, President Heber C. Kimball:
After a while the gentiles will gather in Salt Lake City by the thousands, and this will be among the wicked cities of the world.
A spirit of speculation and extravagance will take possession of the Saints, and the results will be financial bondage.”
An army of elders will be sent to the four quarters of the earth, to search out the righteous and, warn the wicked of coming events.
All kinds of religions will be started, and miracles performed that will deceive the very elect, if such a thing were possible.
Persecution comes next, and all Latter-day Saints will be tested to the limit. “Many will apostatize, and others will stand still, not knowing what to do. . . .
The judgements of God will be poured out upon the wicked, to the extent that our elders from far and near will be called home; or in other words, the Gospel will be taken from the gentiles, and later on will be carried to the Jews. . . .
[T]he Saints will be put to the test that will try the very best of them.
The pressure will become so great that the righteous among us will cry unto the Lord day and night until deliverance comes.
Yes, we think we are secure here in the chambers of these everlasting hills, where we can close the doors of the canyons against mobs and persecutors, the wicked and the vile, who have always beset us with violence and robbery, but I want to say to you, my brethren, that the time is coming when we will be mixed up in these now peaceful valleys to that extent that it will be difficult to tell the face of a Saint from the face of an enemy against the people of God.
Then is the time to look out for the great sieve, for there will be a great shifting time, and many will fall.
For I say unto you there is a test, a Test, a TEST coming.
This Church has before it many close places through which it will have to pass before the work of God is crowned with glory.
The difficulties will be of such a character that the man or woman who does not possess a personal knowledge or witness will fall. If you have not got this testimony, you mist live right and call upon the Lord, and cease not until you obtain it.
Remember these sayings: The time will come when no man or woman will be able to endure on borrowed light. Each will have to be guided by the light within themselves. If you do not have the knowledge that Jesus is the Christ, how can you stand?”
J. Golden Kimball, Conference Report (October 1930), 58-59
And, last but certainly not least, here are yet more horrifying tales from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©:
“Church Donates 74,000 Fruit Tree Seedlings in Dodoma Region of Tanzania, November 2022”
Incidentally, I spoke last Tuesday to a small devotional meeting of young service missionaries who are working at the LDS Motion Picture Studio (MPS) in Provo. At the request of those who invited me, I gave a presentation on the witnesses, official and unofficial, of the Book of Mormon. I can’t speak for the audience, but I, at least, had a good time. And I’m grateful to Tom Pittman, who helped me with the tech. Among other things, I was given a more complete tour of the MPS than I have ever had before, and I learned some interesting things about both the coming Tabernacle Choir Christmas program and the forthcoming portion of the Church’s Book of Mormon film project.
Posted from Redwood City, California
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