NOM

More temples...lots more temples. They're like Walmarts now. Mormonism: The Walmart version of salvation, only more expensive. Cheap religion at a high price. Years ago when one of my kids was a teen and still participating in some Mormon social activities I had to drive her to a dance at a Mormon ...

Depending on if the survey is done by telephone or some other method, it could skew badly toward older people because younger ones are better at blocking unknown callers or spam. Skewing toward an older population would get more who identify as Mormon, because more of the older generation still ...

moksha wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 7:16 pm Maybe lost Mormons have been found.

The lost 10 tribes?

Thanks for the thorough explanation, græy. That sounds like a lot of work for the adults running all of that, especially the amount of work foisted onto the bishop. Doesn't seem like a very good delegation model. I imagine the intent was to focus more of the bishop's attention on the youth, in order ...

The slight Mormon bounce from 1% to 1.5% could be explained by other religions losing members faster, or Mormons living longer. It's possible, though I doubt it. The Church counts members they have lost track of until they would have been 110 years old, which clearly skews their numbers beyond ...

The U.S. Flag Code states, "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free." This is one of the things that really annoys me about right-wing "patriots", how they proclaim their ...

The furor of the very idea of changing the flag is basic conservatism -- Someone is suggesting to change something that I've never ever thought of before. This is an assault on everything I've ever stood for. It's just these "others" trying to ruin everything for the rest of us. It's even worse when ...

Younger generations seem to be abandoning church in ever increasing amounts. But then, the churches seem to also be abandoning the younger generation in significant ways. One of the assistant scoutmasters in my troop, in his upper twenties, was talking with me a couple of months ago about how many ...

The PRRI has released their 2022 update to their Census of American Religion and it has a few interesting tidbits relevant to Mormonism. Mostly, though, it just shows that Mormonism is pretty irrelevant to most of the country. The PRRI graphs show that the percentage of Mormons in the country has ...

I'm curious about what the youth activities are like in the Church these days. My family is all out and even the youngest is past that age, but we have extended family that are very involved. When I was a teen and as a participating adult I was very involved in youth activities. I continue to ...

Right. They are relying less on divine authority and more on their own authority, simply by virtue of having been ordained to their offices. One of the big perspective changes I noticed after my testimony deconstruction was being more aware of what authority they state when they speak. When the Q15 ...

Hagoth wrote: ↑Tue Sep 20, 2022 11:50 am Does anyone know if the miraculous transformation of Brigham Young to the image of Joseph Smith is in the Saints novelization?

That's probably a significant question.

Much of LDS doctrine during the 70's and early 80's came from Saturday's Warrior.

RFM's latest podcast is a fascinating discussion about how the church is beginning to downplay miraculous events in church history. This isn't beginning. This has been going on for a long time. Indeed, we can say this has been going on since at least after Brigham's death. And definitely since I ...

In "Good Omens" (book by Pratchett and Gaimain, and later Amazon Video series) we learn the history of the angel with the flaming sword from the Garden of Eden, Aziraphale. In their retelling of it, the story is a little bit different from what actually shows up in the Bible.

This is a disappointment to see Oaks doing this sort of thing. Church needs to set up a damage control for this sort of thing. I can't say Oaks talk is really a disappointment. This is exactly what I expect from him, exactly what we've seen over and over. It does highlight just how disappointing ...

It's hard to tell just what Oaks is rambling on about. He doesn't want BYU / the Church to change because of "the world". But, the world is a very non-homogeneous place. And the Church and BYU have a very long history of changing to accommodate the world. Do you remember when women couldn't wear ...

An explanation may bring more attention to you than you want at the moment. Jeffret's line is all that is needed. Don't explain yourself to people who (incorrectly) claim to have god telling them what you need to do. Don't explain yourself to people that think they have the need, power, and ...

I would keep it simple and short.

"I'm not able to accept that invitation now or in the near future."

Yeah, they may come back in future, but it's easy to repeat that phrase when they do. And you get marked as one of those who won't give it their all so they tend not to ask again.

If they're adults they'll make their own choices. They have to and they should. You've really got to start from that foundation. (Even when they're younger than they'll still make their own choices, but that's not the discussion here, I don't think.) As parents of adults, we really cannot dictate to ...

Fifi de la Vergne wrote: ↑Fri Aug 26, 2022 9:58 am It is done. Thank you for giving me the information and push I needed to finally go through with it.

Exciting!