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What is the real denominator? Is it the 15 million members worldwide so we can assume about 5 million in Sacrament meeting on an average Sunday? Or is it the number on your ward roster after an aggressive clerk has cleared out all the lost sheep and shipped them off to the great big computer in the tops of the everlasting hills.
In Utah when my dad was the ward clerk about 40 years ago, he could walk past the houses of every member in the ward and all the few non-members each week and check to see if they had cut their grass or shoveled their snow. He often knew early if there were any problems and he knew exactly how many people lived in that area and who went to each meeting, etc. One of my aunts as the RS president went so far as to use a step ladder to peek in people’s windows. She saw a young wife in bed with a man not her husband. She fell off the ladder and broke her leg. I think those days are gone.
About a half a million people live in my ward boundaries. For awhile they were reading in the names every week of new members, 20 or 30 at a time. Weeks would go by before anyone on those lists was actually there. I think our rolls carry about 2 or 3 times as many names as attend church. But I think many times that number live quietly under the radar and off the rolls. It is hard to know how fast they move around but it has got to outnumber the people we have on the rolls.We have no mechanism to clear them off the 15 million roster until they live to be 110 and are assumed to have died.
I live in the South. We are stronger here than in populous New England and across the midwest, but weaker than in the far west and obviouly Utah. If I assume I live in a statistically average ward and that 7.5 million of the 300 million Americans are Mormon, that predicts 2.5% LDS in the half a million in my ward. Our ward should have 12,500 attending it. Last week we only had six there sitting in the congregation; in addition to those on the stand and doing the sacrament. About 60 or 80 did trickle in at various stages of late and later. I take that 36% number as more a measure of how fast the ward clerks are clearing them out in comparison to how fast the missionaries are dunking them.
I remember sitting in a meeting with an EQP who was functionally illerate. He had a heart as big as Texas but he could only read at about the third grade level and he could not do fractions or percents. He was asked by some visiting authority what the home teaching percent was in our quorum and he asked me if I had done mine last month. I said, no. He looked up at the ceiling for a minute and then said 36%. I asked him later how he made the calculation, and so quickly without paper or a calculator. He replied that if I had said yes, it was going to be 63% and if I had said no it was going to be 36%. That was about as accurate as he could get factoring in all the lying and faking going on anyway. I guess he was onto something.
We can’t keep kicking this can down the road indefinitley. It will only get worse. A single figure without any context is meaningless. Is anyone capable of just telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth any more?
The final words of Christ, go ye into all the world, should ring loud and clear in the ears of the zealot. They have taken upon themselves the obligation to put themselves out there. For example, the LDS church demands (not requests) that as a crucial rite of passage into adulthood that all men and increasing numbers of women in the church pay them to work for them for 2 years as full-time missionaries, to teach with exactness and boldness, and while under unrelenting pressure to perform better. Failure to comply results in life long second-class citizenship and severely decreased access to marital partners. In my opinion part of this includes being willing to take it as much as give it. I am recommending consideration of the opposite course of action as described by others. Take off the kid gloves. Tell them what you think. Loudly and clearly. Swear. Use the old tribal language of J. Golden Kimball. Then laugh at them. And come back boldly for more, don’t slink fearfully out the back door.
We are not the ones trying to promote outrageous customs and fill the earth with them. We are not the ones who created an over-demanding religion that in some cases verges into cult-like behaviors. We are not the ones who require strict obedience to an aging oligarchy while the rest of the world moves towards democracy. We are not the ones who have white-washed our history to the point where it is almost unbelievable to anyone. They are and they deserve full responsibility for the goods and the ills that flow from it. Who better than our own internal voices to do the scrubbing needed to cleanse this wickedness.
We owe it to the LDS church to respond in the way they expect others to respond to them. Either fervent acceptance and 100% commitment to every point of this gospel lifestyle or a similar vigorous rejection of the aspects we honestly find obnoxious for good reasons. Mormons are (or once were) strong and certain people; they will require strong medicine to correct the ills currently infecting the faith. People who roam exclusively in black and white pastures see no grey and need to be fed black and white hay in copious amounts until they choke on it like most of us have.
My goal isn’t to come to some sort of quiet comfortable truce with Mormonism that allows me my petty little exceptions. My goal is nothing short of victory over them on every point of truth. Admittedly I am not winning but that doesn’t mean others won’t.
I’d say this is pretty typical and mild. We used a professional approach to raising children called positive discipline and I think it made these sort of problems quite a bit less. It requires years of laying a foundation to be really effective. It would be unproductive to make drastic changes in the way the family functions at this late stage. No parent is perfect and all could stand to improve, but I’d give you at least a 95% based on what you describe.
This might not be exactly what you want to hear but at this point, even if the problems were very severe there is little you could do about them except make them worse. By about age 15 or 16 the children are not really children any more and are on a track to do what they are gonna do. They are genetically programmed to pull away from parents. They might listen to another trusted adult or youth but they mostly harken to their own internal voices which at this age are still confusing and vague. These internal voices are based on experiences and perceptions that have now been developing for several years but need to be sorted out. Don’t discount hormonal surges in the mix which can drive even the most stable mind off track.
This will pass in a flash and they will be gone so soon and leave you feeling old and lonely. So I’d say enjoy it while it lasts, even the rough patches.
Everyone has their own individual surroundings, experiences, personalities, and agendas. Here in the South where I live, it most assuredly is not hard to be openly religious these days. The passage in Romans, the one about not being ashamed of the gospel of Christ (Romans 1:16) rings loud in many ears. This might not be your style, Willbe1993, but I would have responded, “Hell yes I ‘m Mormon and I hate Mormons too.” After a moment I would continue: at least our bad apples; the rich, self-righteous, judgmental, iron-rod up the arse types. (Maybe leave off the last dig). As J. Golden Kimball would say, “to hell with the likes of them.”
This will immediately win friends of your enemies. (Matt 5:25) Then you ask them, with sincerity not defensiveness, what is the worst thing a Mormon has ever done to you? Then you listen and then you apologize. No excuses, no arguing. It will undoubtedly be exaggerated, partially not based in truth. That doesn’t matter. You save that for later.
I agree with you that it is hard for many of the rising generation to stand up for what they believe, but in a way that is not obnoxious. I think I have the first part down pretty good, still working on the second part. I also happen to believe one of the unintended side-effects of the correlation movement is that over time it socially castrates the members of the church. If you look up the definition of castration it can also be applied to females. So it is no wonder to me that you admit that you need to “grow some balls;” it is not completely your fault, the correlators want us all (except a few) to act like steers and heifers. Easier to herd and better meat.
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I am sorry but I think it is completely outrageous to call for fairness by comparing Mormons with Jews. Our histories are not the same, not even close and history does matter to both of us. We had 18 people killed at Haun’s Mill the bloodiest event in our history. As for the handcart companies, courage and fortitude was demonstrated in the face of hundreds of deaths, but we did that to ourselves due to the ineptness of our own leaders. The Jews had 6 million or more murdered in the Holocaust. That is probably greater than the entire active membership of the LDS church today. The Jews have suffered many similar atrocities throughout their long history.
Salt Lake had federal troop tromp through it once, no deaths and little property destroyed. Jerusalem was burned to the ground, plowed up, all residents killed or put into slavery, people reduced to cannibalism of their own children, suicide a rare luxury to escape the vexations. All this and more, and maybe half a dozen times (leave it to real historians to correct the count, probably upwards).We had a decade or two where life and limb was in any danger for more than a few of us. The Hebrews (Abraham being the first Hebrew) gave us a religion upon which is based all three of the modern covenantal clusters of religions of the west. We have given the world the Book of Mormon which, in spite of all the hype from our leaders, has only had a very small amount of influence, and that confined to a few million people. How many great scientists and artists have the Jews given the world in comparison to Mormons?
When you make a comparison like that suggested above, between Mormons and Jews, you sound like you are seriously whining. When we have survived 40 centuries of abuse and suffered as much as the Jews and given the world as much, then maybe we can whine and cry with real tears. Otherwise, this reminds me more of the athletic thugs from the ‘hood in my daughter’s high school crying because a 90 lb girl whacked them with a violin bow. It does hurt. Except when I think about it the home boys never did whine about it, they just winced and laughed.
The truth is that people too often dislike us for good reason. We have not been as nice as we could have been. Our missionary tactics employed systematically over the last few decades predictably result in the reputation we have earned .The only way to correct our reputation is one person at a time, owning our history and changing the future instead of white-washing the past.
In closing, we will all sing together: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9D03w0MXqQ About a decade ago I was having similar trouble at church. This weekend my children now in their 20’s came home for a visit and they are such accomplished, pleasant, interesting and amusing people. They exceed all expectations even though many in the ward thought that by this time they would be on drugs, in jail, etc. You have a bright future. A Jewish friend told me a proverb I can’t recall exactly but something like- when suffering, count your blessings, it could be worse. My children were kicked out of church dozens of times, physically abused at church (slapped, shaken and hair pulled by adults). At times they would not attend meetings or were very disruptive. A good friend in the ward came to me seeking forgiveness for his part in ward counsel when they talked about my family, saying horrible untrue things about us and made specific plans to try and save our children from us by doubling down on them at church since we parents were beyond redemption.
Very early in the game (age 1 of the oldest) my wife and I realized we were incompetent parents and we sought professional help. We learned a child rearing approach called positive discipline from the field of cognitive therapy which requires more effort but works better in the end. Most traditional approaches rely heavily on negative disciple, threats, raised voices, appeals to authority instead of reason, and are associated with various problems such as meanness in the children. Our children were not trained to respond to negative discipline; when people at church used it, they didn’t react as expected. If you hit one of my children hard enough to hurt them, they will not cower but immediately recognize this as inappropriate; they will fight back like wildcats, get more sassy, and tattle to parents whom they trust are on their side even when wrong. If you appeal only to authority (because I say so and I am in charge) they will immediately challenge you to give them a sensible reason, etc. If a teacher is positive and respectful to them and their thoughts and needs they respond in kind.
Your problems might be partially due to raising your children in a different way in comparison to the others in your ward, (I might hazard a guess- probably a better more Christ-like way). Many affluent people are high-octane driven types and not the best parents. Regardless, we can all benefit from additional help, just like a top athlete still benefits from a good coach.
As for your husband’s challenge with what appears to be a Nazi Mormon witch, realize that not only are angels silent notes taking, but so are many good but quiet people. When a person verbally massacres a teacher at church, many notice and might be more sympathetic than you think. I would have said in his situation, Well, J. Golden Kimball taught: there are those who preach to put you to sleep and those who preach to wake you up. Appears, by hell, I at least woke someone up. Smile and agree with thine enemy. But in the end stick to your own integrity and convictions. This would make me want to return to the battle field eventually, armed with the sword of truth and the shield of faith, or whatever the analogy says.
Children are different. Adults can give; children by necessity take. I would apply the same reasonable standard to church activities as anything else they do. What would you do if your child was a good soccer player and joined a team and came home crying? Would you not have a conversation with the coach? How many times would you keep going before leaving a team with a toxic social environment that left a child crying most of the time? The same applies at LDS church activities. This is a question our rowdy boy scout troop has discussed. How many times can a boy be hazed and be expected to return? For many, once is enough to push them out. More than a couple of negative episodes and almost all will leave. If more than a few leave they can sink the reputation of the troop in the rest of the community and it can die. This drives the policy of zero tolerance. We know this from sad experience.
Joining another ward might be the best solution if you live where the church is strong and dense. But you are never going to be fully accepted and will be vulnerable to new leadership. If that is your choice, then do not let a bishop or anyone else say you cannot do it. You do not need their permission to attend the church of your choice. Ask him if he has guards at the door of the church armed with machine guns. If not, say: then we will be there. If you have to drive long distances to another ward it will not be worth it, just saying from experience.
I would not rule out attending a few of the activities of another church for a season. People in Protestant churches move from one to the other easily and causally for trivial reasons. Their programs are therefore subjected to strong market forces and have to be good to survive. They are not usually out to convert you initially. Their youth activities might be viewed as more of a community service /outreach than a direct way to preach their gospel. And like us they will roll out the red carpet for visitors.
This might be even more daring, but consider helping your youth take an LDS friend with her for a visit to an activity at another church. One who is being tormented in a similar way. Don’t let them perpetrate the lie that you are the only one crying and everyone else is happy. Not true if you look hard enough. Even the meanest girl in a snotty clique is probably lonely or will be eventually. They exploit and feed on each other. Taking a LDS friend will help maintain both of their LDS identities.
I have found the effect of taking other ward members to another church on the ward leadership to be immense, nothing short of a crisis. They might be willing to allow the pushing of a rare outspoken person out one at a time on their own terms, but when someone starts taking others out with them on their terms, this raises the issue to a new and threatening level. It forces them to at least think about the problem from whatever perspective they take. The decent among them will be eager to make major concessions at that point and rein in the zealotry and the snobbery to a degree. If they further retrench it will only create even more resentment and increase the probability of additional people wanting something better. The existence of many good churches out there puts you in a position of power in your ward when you don’t even realize it.
Then after you have been accepted as a friend in another church community, it will be quite easy to bring many of your non-LDS friends with you back to the LDS activities. They will visit causally a few times because they do not have the same expectation or hope (or fear) of this leading to conversion that many of us harbor. My daughter took as many as 30 non-LDS kids to a stake dance once. Nothing makes misbehaving Mormons shape up faster than having non-Mormon visitors around. My daughter took non-LDS friends to church with her to almost every activity for a few of those worst years and she called it “protection. “ You can judge the difference between good Mormons and bad ones by how much they have to alter their behavior when non-Mormon visitors come around. This is not hypothetical, it describes what we did and how my daughter eventually owned the ward youth.
I would not rely on the church to provide for any more than a few of your youth activities. Fully invest your children in other worthy activities. For my daughter it was playing classical violin and she has so many more friends and such a richer life than if she had remained in fortress Mormon with those narrow judgmental prudes exclusively, ever fearful of any of those outside influences. Her concerts came before church attendance although usually we could do both and she often played at church. It also landed her a scholarship to an ivy league college with the $60k per year tuition we could have never afforded otherwise. (Like anything at BYU could compete with that.) And her ideal job. She is currently pretty thick with a really good non-LDS guy and those at church do not approve. But he adores her and appreciates her and treats her better than any RM ever has. At this point he respects and likes Mormons and I have to believe she could convert him if they ever find themselves in a half decent ward.
For my son it was boy scouts at a non-LDS church and he did everything that a strong, active and edgy troop could provide. The things I did with my son in real scouting collectively are, I would guess, 20 times more valuable and formative and memorable than the entire experience we shared together at the LDS church (including their lame scouting program). These were the best times of my life. He might not be on board with all of Mormon doctrine (although he can be pretty zealous in a quiet way). But he lives the principles of the scout oath and scout law to such a degree that he is a better man and a far better leader than almost all Mormons I know and certainly far ahead of his father. Those are not shallow slogans to him but bedrock principles by which he lives.
One mistake I made was inaction in the name of patience. It seems like a long time when you are raising children, but they are only young and impressionable for a moment. Then it is gone. I would not waste even one week hoping for things to get better without taking some action or moving in some direction, even if it is measured.
Another opposite mistake I made is that at times I let my temper get the best of me. I told the bishop once (right after his first counselor had slapped my daughter across the face hard enough to leave a mark) that if another person laid hands on my children I was going to exercise the gift of the laying on of hands on them; as understood by one of my ancestors who was an avenging angel and who hunted down a couple dozen of the men in the mob that murdered Joseph Smith and slit their throats. (This is all family folklore and probably not even historically accurate). I told him I held this forgotten hereditary Priesthood gift, to avenge the blood of the innocent, currently inactive but easily restored when needed. I was about 2 inches from his nose with fire in my eyes.
On another occasion, I tangled with the HPGL and HC monitor and former bishop. They claimed the SP had cancelled an activity I as the EQP felt strongly inspired to do and he had not. (In fact when queried the SP thought it was a good idea). In ward counsel I trapped them and exposed their deceit. I called them “a bastardly pair of sniveling liars” and told them in a loud voice that “you could go to hell as fast for lying in church as for adultery in a whore house and it didn’t matter whether you opened it with prayer or not.” Not one of my wiser moments. Might have worked in the days of J. Golden. But most of these modern leaders were not raised on the brisk mountain air and cayenne pepper of pioneer Mormonism and won’t take to being called to repentance like this. Of course they will (and did) take it out on the kids. Avoid the temptation to do anything like this.
It is a difficult needle to thread between weak inaction and overbearing over-reaction. I still struggle with it. God bless you.
One problem I have experienced is that if you call me, you get me! Not some person you have conjured up in your imagination and expect to conform to your expectations. Ultra-orthodox are supposed to all be clones. The apostates call us Morgbots. Not true! We had a new EQP called several years ago, a real ram rod as it turned out. He had lived in the ward for about 6 months and been in the nursery about 5 of those months. On Sunday I work or go camping with non-LDS scouts frequently so he had never met me. He was sitting there, in cognito, the week before being sustained, looking the quorum over for counselors while the instructor droned on about the lesson topic , family home evening. I made one smart remark trying to liven up the discussion: “How do we keep family home evening from turning into family home screaming?”
This did launch a somewhat interesting discussion. (For me it was supposed to be a joke, perhaps for him it was a real and timely issue). After church he pulled me into a room and asked me to be his first counselor. He did not know that: I have repented of home teaching and will not motive (torment) others into it. I am not there that often. I don’t follow lesson manuals when teaching. The quorum should do more community service which is most efficiently organized by other bigger churches. Terminate the moving committee. Pot luck dinners after church every week. Tear the basketball standards down in the gym and get some soccer goals for the front lawn…. If this is what he thinks the Lord wanted, this is what he was going to get.
But, but, but,… He had been so inspired! I told him perhaps he needed to go back and pray some more. Which he did and after talking to others in the ward he called someone else and avoided me for months.
This problem is of great enough magnitude that it is not going to be solved by a general conference talk. The solution will need to be of a magnitude as great as say, the correlation movement. A conference talk would be like a band aid on lung cancer and whether we put it on the head, hand, stomach or foot is not going to matter. I witnessed a minor miracle at the non-LDS scout troop last night germane to this discussion. Like our church this scout troop, once one of the best in the area has seen a load of trouble. Because of remote problems we have no scouts in their last two years of high school, only a handful in the 9th and 10th grade and about 75% of the 60 boys in the troop are in the 6th and 7th grade. There is tension between the older and younger scouts.
We have kicked out a couple of the worst younger scouts recently for multiple episodes of physical violence (and parents who would not cooperate in correcting it), a painful process. But things have been getting worse with rest of them. At the camping trip 2 weeks ago we had quite the display of misbehavior. A number of dangerous pranks, explosions, and fires in unacceptable places were experienced. An example: I was driving the older scouts home on a multilane freeway and smelled smoke. One of the firebugs had set the rim of his 20 oz paper cup half-filled with ice and coke on fire and claims this is a perfectly safe practice since it will burn down to the level of the drink and then go out. He says he has tested all the fabrics in a car and none of them are flammable, they just smolter or melt. The other 6 scouts dog piled him. The freeway was too crowed and unsafe to stop and kick his ass. As his mother arrived to pick him up he set another fire in a large water drain in the parking lot with dry leaves on top of soggy ones that extinguished itself but not before she saw it and well before I could talk to her. I could see smoke coming out of her ears. She gave him a good paddling and I think his father warmed his britches up again when he got home.
We had several episodes of bullying at the camping trip especially late at night that went over the line of funny practical jokes to pulling younger scouts out of tents and making them cry. The worst episode included tormenting the son of a very wealthy attorney to the point he had a complete melt down cursing adults and throwing things around and had to be physically restrained. The younger scouts at baseline swear like sailors and tell dirty stories and are lazy. We had a couple of additional emotional breakdowns in the middle of the night when 11 year olds couldn’t get their tent door unzipped or couldn’t find a flashlight and began to sob and curse and run uncontrolled into the pitch dark woods barefooted falling over logs into mud and poison ivy.
The next day we had a talk with the older scouts and frankly the adults are at their wits end. It felt like the troop was going to spin out of control to the point where the good people would leave and the bad scouts would get worst and we would have to disorganize the troop. We told the boys we didn’t really know what to do. It was their troop and its fate was in their hands.
Last night we installed a new 15 year old senior patrol leader (SPL) with a fresh start. He has the backing of the two previous SPLs and won the election a week ago in a landslide. Last Friday night we had an all-night leadership training session for the new leadership, with a movie and basketball mixed in with instructions on how to lead and then a goal setting session. These are the scout’s goals not those of the adults. He spent the last few days thinking and talking to people about how to lead this troubled troop.
Last night I was astonished at the leadership I saw emerge in our new SPL. He is laying down the law. But with the right amount of compassion. He dismissed all the parents and everyone except two adult scouters. The two previous SPLs then gave a stern slap down on fire safety more effective than anything adults could do. The new SPL then made it clear the bullying will stop. Period. Confessions and apologies were made. The new chaplain is the most athletic scout in the troop and a devote catholic. He has redefined the position to be that of an inquisitor and he will tolerate no swearing, no dirty stories and no infractions of the 12 points of the scout law. It was amazing to see these older scouts discipline the younger scouts and yet to see them do it with a deep appreciation for their feelings and the long traditions and history of greatness in our troop and with the desire to get us all back on track and unified together with a commitment to excellence of character. A new spirit of brotherhood fills the scout hut. The future seems bright and the adults are breathing a sigh of relief for the moment.
I felt so discouraged after the last camping trip and now I am excited again and marvel at the magic of boy leadership in scouting. And it brought back memories when my son was elected SPL after 2 defeats and became the driving force of a previous reformation and discipline of his peers which seems like ancient history now almost forgotten only 5 years later. I realized then he acquired more leadership ability through scouting than I did after 10 years as an EQP.
I know that many people have a variety of opinions and experiences with scouting, not all of it good. But if 15 year old boys can step up and exercise this level of leadership and build a new and better scout troop this effectively, then I have the confidence that our apostles and prophets, men of enormous experience and ability can do it.
I think I stated up front about my inaccurate estimates: “They know the statistics. I can only guess at them.” I am in no position to be anything but inaccurate and this is not my fault. This is part of the transparency problem, obsfucating numerical information in hopes of gaining more weasel room. Doesn’t usually work because people can make it worse than it would have been without the clouds of fog. So I say lets start with transparency of statistics.
For one example in my case a few years ago, I would have wished to know as EQP the worldwide church percent of hometeaching. I would wish to know the same figure more locally. And how much lying about it. (Difference between visits reported by home teachers and families who were actually asked if they were visited). Even that number for other wards in my stake could have been shared and discussed at some of those endless stake leadership meetings with those tedious reruns of old conference talks.
I thought of a possible short cut method of determining the size of active membership in the LDS faith. I will define active members as those who allow their newly-born children to be included on the membership roles of the church. That isn’t much. It doesn’t require attendance every month or temple recommend holdings. This number is reported in the annual statistical summary during spring general conference and I would hope it is not fabricated. Then assume the average Mormon woman lives 81 years and has 3 children. Also for this simple calculation assume an approximate similar number of people in each age bracket and an aproximate similar number of men and women (both assumptions admittedly not accurate but more about that in a minute).
This means in a large group of Mormon women, the group averages one child every 27 years for each woman present. Then we multiply the number of new births reported in conference by 27 to get the total size of the group. That number has been running around 100,000. This gives us 2.7 million women and maybe 2.7 million men. Or 5.4 million active members.
Back to the assumptions, the demographics is probably skewed in the direction of more younger people around to be having those children making the estimate artificially high. Therefore our estimate of 2.7 will be high. And generally more women remain active than men so this again will make our 5.4 estimate high. By how much I have no idea. I think this is close to the figures given by Old-Timer after much research, of 5-6 million.
The other number under discussion, how many people would remain active if all the dirty laundry was suddenly shoved in their face? We have no data. My guess based on how upset most people get when I start taking about these things is about 20% would stay and 80% would leave. I have posed this question to more than a dozen of my relatives and faithful friends: What would you do if President Hickley stood in conference and admitted the history of the Book of Mormon was pure fabrication and proceeded to show evidence from the archives that you could not deny? Would you leave the church or stay and try to build a new church from the pieces. Usually they try to deny the question by saying this would never happen. But when forced to consider it hypothetically almost all say that they would leave immediately. The foundational “truths” are too important to them. Assuming President Hinckley was about 20 times more skillful and diplomatic than I am, I get about 20%. That is the weak basis of my <1 million member guess. Admittedly a pure guess.
I agree with Hawkgrrrl that it might be an easier pill to swallow at church with the support of others, than alone with the malignant digital screen glowing sickly green in the dark. But there is another danger, the herd effect. If a few key social trend setters bolt, then most of the herd might stampede. We have not considered the real danger of a schism which too often happens when a church is forced to make a major change. Schism is the usual protestant response to change.
This is why we need to take the third option. Build a better church. Strong enough that weekly participation far outweighs these burdens. That is going to require prophetic leadership unlike any we have seen since the Kirtland days, to misquote the Elder Marlin Jensen statement on 11/11/11 in Logan about the depth of this current apostasy. I pray that they are up to it.
Weasel articles will do little. They know the statistics. I can only guess at them.
15 million members; yeh, right. 10-12 million inactive.
Reasons why? Quite a laundry list.
If we can draw any credibility from the 2011 Mormon disbelief survey: the top 4 reasons, all cited by more than 30% of the 3000 survey participants included; disbelief in doctrine, problems with church history, loss of faith in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Various familiar political issues came next.
Something like 1/3 to ½ were active. And those were the ones still engaged enough to bother with a survey. I wager a huge chunk of those 10-12 million wouldn’t even admit to being Mormon.
It seems reasonable to conclude that if they disseminate the kind of information in these articles thoroughly and effectively among the remaining faithful 2-3 million members, they might expect to keep less than about 1/3 to ½ of them. We might be looking at less than a million active members when the dust settles. !950’s was when the church hit one million and it was in a much better position then than it is now.
I can’t even guess how to calculate the loss in tithing since not that high of a portion of our people ever paid it. But I suspect the 2-3 million still active always did pay a lion’s share and that is probably starting to seriously erode.
There are those who say the LDS church is between a rock and a hard place because of its decade’s long practice of white washing and keeping everything sweet. If they turn on the lights, many will leave. But the rising sun of internet light is coming up anyway. They say the LDS church has no good alternatives.These obscure articles are an attempt to thread a needle with a seahouser rope (that holds ships on the dock).
Horse feathers. I say there is a third way. Offer active, inactive and nonLDS people alike an attractive alternative. In other words make the worship experience at church fundamentally better for everyone. It is too late for this to happen incrementally, it will require sweeping reform. Ignore the intractable problems of the past and focus on a future of success. The problem is that our collective vision of the future has become incompatible with an unfolding reality. But with a new and realistic vision we could build a bright future in the realm of reality.
I have no confidence that I possess this vision. But it might look something like this:
Better music.
Sincere heartfelt prayers.
Engaging interesting sermons.
Informative Sunday school classes that actually teach how to find information and not indoctrinate.
Better youth programs, both at the primary and teenage levels.
Better activities for the family.
Better inclusion of the growing number of singles.
Better community service.
More focus on internal values like integrity, patience , charity instead of external commandments and privileges and such.
Stop the emphasis on our moral superiority , exclusivity and judgmentalism.
Start being nicer to our enemies or those who disagree with us. And our critics from within.
Ignore, scrap or down play every obnoxious thing that has proven to drive people away.
Really put worship and study of Christ at the center, indisputably.
We will all know when we are on the right track when we don’t need 80,000 zealot missionaries out there hard selling or soft selling our faith. When decent people start to beat a path to our door instead of the other way around. Only the leadership has the power to do this, if they are not too old and beholden to each other, none of us in the trenches could without starting a destructive schism.
Another meaningful question: Did you have your colonoscopy every 10 years after age 50?
This is definitely nobody’s business. But I might point out that President Hinckley and Elder McKonkie both died of colon cancer which was preventable. Those deaths became everybody’s business. So did a man who lived 2 doors down the street die of colon cancer and his sons were my sons good friends.
What a great oportunity missed to prevent literally thousands of deaths and suffereing.
Sister R, now in her 80’s, is one of the luminaries in my ward. She has been the RS President a couple of times in the last 2 decades, one of the best in my opinion and president of all the other organizations that women are allowed to lead when she was younger. Her husband has been a bishop, high counselor, stake Presidency, EQP, HPGP, etc. One would be hard pressed to find a more respected and active couple in our ward. Sister R grew up in the same neighborhood as one of my relatives which happened to be the east bench of Salt Lake where several previous apostles lived and so we feel a special connection with her. At a recent wedding reception I was joking around about my FIL who is an entrenched coffee drinker and Sister R shared a little secret with me. She has been drinking coffee all of her life. She admits it to the bishop during interviews and says she is “working on it.”
For half a century now, wink wink.
I don’t want to get any specific church leaders in trouble, but Sister R mentioned several familar names of leading church leaders of her generation who had immediate family members drinking coffee and some even kept it in their house. She told of a party when one of the apostle’s daughters announced her engagement to her friends and uncorked a bottle of champagne in her parents home and many of her friends had a little. Yep, Sister R drank champagne in the house of a well-know apostle with his daughter. Her father did not find out about it, until latter. Of course, the Mormon people could not resist that tasty morsel of gossip.
I don’t drink coffe but I do like the smell of it. If coffee abstinence is a way for you to demonstrate commitment to God or church authority and that works for you, then great. If you want to drink coffee then I do not see it as a moral issue and definitely not a health issue. Neither does Sister R nor her husband. If you are as tactful and skillful as Sister R you can get away with it for a very long time. At least that was true in the past. As the LDS responds to stress with retrenchment it might not work as well in the future.
Camera phones change everything at the sleep over. For better and for worse. I would encourage the youth to have sleep overs and the more people present the better, if they have camera phone options.
Your burden has been heavy on my mind. I remembered another experience that might be more helpful in this situation than the saga of my cousin’s tragic death. My now 21 year old beast of a son was once a small mischievous 6 year old boy in primary. A new family moved into the ward with a little girl about his age and they seem to like each other. We had the family over to our house for dinner. The parents were devoted zealous recent LDS converts from evangelical families that had rejected them. The LDS church was central to their entire life and really their only social network. We are free-thinkers but that is no reason not to reach across any differences and be their friends. Their reasons for moving here seemed nebulous. I suspected some mildly embarrassing employment problem.
As they left after a wonderful evening, my son was in the habit of hugging people pretty hard and sometimes this was a veiled attempt to tackle them which he found amusing. He hugged their little girl of his same age and she almost but not quite toppled over. Her mother absolutely freaked out.
“Don’t touch my daughter,” she screamed. She knew she was being completely irrational and she fled immediately to the car with all 3 of her daughters where she wept profusely. The husband lamely explained that sometimes his wife over reacted to normal childhood playfulness and made his belated escape. We apologized and sent my son to his room.
I sensed that something more was going on. They were new and we were the first to reach out to them and thus were their social network at that point. I went to the car which remained parked in the driveway and apologized again and related I would make sure my little boy didn’t touch their daughters again, that he meant no harm but really was out of line. I would explain some families have different rules and he was to follow them. And not hug anyone else until he knew they were permitted to be hugged.
At that point the mother opened up to me and explained that her 6 year old daughter had been sexually molested in the church nursery on a Wednesday night and that was what prompted their move across the country. She said to her husband that we can’t just keep running away from this. Turns out this was their third move in as many months. I inquired if the police were involved and they said no, they would never do that to the church. I asked if they had gone to a counselor and they said only briefly to their original bishop who did not disagree with their desire to move away.
I am aware of the requirement by law to report such incidents. I was hoping they had reported it which was not the case. But I also did not want to disrupt their fragile hold on life any more than necessary. I said a silent prayer for guidance, knowing I was going to do something, but exactly what?
I knew that a member of the Stake Presidency was also a pediatrician and guessed that from their perspective he would probably be their least traumatic and most professional avenue of getting the help they needed and having the perpetrator arrested. They did concede they could use some spiritual support from a good church leader. I convinced them to give my friend a call mentioning to them that he was going to have to report this to the police. I also explained it was in the best interests of the church to make certain this did not happen again so this was actually helping not hurting the church.
I inquired a few days later of the pediatrician and he told me they had met with him and he had alerted law enforcement in their previous state and he had gotten them scheduled for an appointment with a therapist and he was seeing them weekly in the role of a church leader. He thanked me for pointing them in the right direction and advised me to not say anything further about it unless contacted by police and to continue to treat them as friends in the normal fashion. This did not become common knowledge.
A few years later an incident at middle school involved a couple of bullies who tricked this same girl into going behind the school to take some advantage of her sexually. Who knows how far they intended for it go, perhaps not very far. My son noticed her missing from the group waiting for the car pool and somehow sensed where there was trouble. Generally he avoids problems but he happened to come around the corner as they were pushing her to the ground screaming. He ran and threw himself on top of them and roughed them up pretty bad while she made her escape. All three boys were expelled from school for fighting for a few days. The parents of the bullies tried to sue us for the damage requiring some medical care my son did but that didn’t go very far. From the school’s perspective this was 3 boys fighting over a girl.
During this uproar my daughter told me that all the youth at church knew about what happened to this little girl back in the nursery and knew to be discrete and not gossip about it and they did everything they could to be protective and just be her friends. They were a pretty tight knit, inclusive and non-judgmental group. The little girl could only vaguely remember it by then and was also not very upset at the incident behind the school because she had escaped and knew there were people around who would protect her. Her mother went crazy when she found out and re-experienced some of the previous outrage again, except not that much really happened to her daughter and this was not at church, so it was not nearly as bad.
Here is why I relate this story: My daughter said that the original violence ended up hurting the parents far more than the child!This because it violated so much more than a single physical and moral law. It threatened the sense of extreme trust and security the parents placed in the church and it shattered their ability to protect all of their children. The violence to the child was over in a few minutes. Children more easily heal and move beyond their problems. The violence to the parents lasted for months and years. This collateral damage can run far deeper than the physical damage. This realization also helps bring healing to the proper place.
I can relate to how you feel. In 1974 my cousin disppeared. A week before his execution in 1989 Ted Bundy claimed he killed her. The body was ever found. I cannot begin to describe how this ripped our family apart. Her mother became mentally unstable and sometimes believes her daughter ran away and is still alive somewhere. She still searches for her on the streets of big cities. My father knows another mother of a Bundy victim, now over 85 years old and she is extremely looney.
Many good people stepped forward to try and find my cousin and to help in many ways. But there were the evil, self-righteous ones you describe, in and out of the church, who blamed her father or her brothers or even her mother. Or alleged she was a slut/drug addict who ran away.
In another disturbing case, of JonBenet Ramsey, the confusion was so severe that it exceeded the capacity of the police to deal with it and they never did figure out who murdered this little girl. As outsiders we will never know or be able to sort out the facts. (Maybe it really was her mother).
What my parent’s generaton did to cope:
First, they imagined what their ancestors would do. Find the guilty swiftly. Take matters into their own hands. Torture and kill them. Make them pay. Frontier justice.
Then they would carefully plan out what they intended to do. For example, another cousin in a motorcycle gang was promised a large sum of money to find and take care of the person responsible for the disappearance ofour cousin. (He was perfectly willing to do it for free). Other less rational plans were hatched.
Then (this is critifcal) at some point REASON has to prevail. You have to figure out and do the sensible things.
Get the right help. Don’t bear these burdens alone.
Put away the recurring violent fantasies and ignore the naysayers who are not helpful.This is the most difficult step and it can be a process which goes on for years and years.
After about 20 to 40 years (or sooner in some cases) comes forgiveness. It is not something you just choose, or force or fake. It comes from God as a blessing. But don’t think about that now. It is probably too soon. Focus on doing the sensible and reasonable things, blocking out the extraneous and unhelpful.
Another fascinating case is that of Elizabeth Smart. I don’t think her family did everything exactly right. Mistakes were made. And they were lucky that the Mitchell freak who kidnapped their daughter didn’t kill her, as often happens. But in so many ways they did the right things. It helped in finding her. What is astonishing to me is how good her recovery has been. She was a strong, devastating witness against him in court and is an example of hope and courage to everyone who has suffered anything like what she endured. Her final revenge is living well while her tormentor rots in prison, waiting on a delusioal version of God to rescue him.
