Tonga, a microcosm of church accountability and accuracy?
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:15 pm
A member of our ward was a former mission president in Tonga. Last night he invited some Utah-based Tongans to perform at our ward Christmas party. It was excellent. Part of their performance was a retelling of the Joseph Smith story in traditional song and dance. I was impressed with the way they sidestepped the church's efforts to totally supplant their local traditions and instead integrated Mormon ideas into their existing culture.
Anyway, afterward Mrs. Hagoth did some research on Tonga. She stared with church sources, which claim that 60% of the 108,000 people in Tonga are LDS. Then she looked at at non-church sources where she saw that, according to the latest census, More Tongans claim to be Methodist, and Mormons make up about 19% of the population.
How to account for this? My guess is that it might be a lot easier to baptize Tongans than to keep them but the church counts baptisms and children of record as lifetime members. Also, there are probably a lot of members of record who died before they reached the assumed death date of 110 who still get counted. More interesting to me is that if my wife knows what the census says I'm pretty sure the COB does too, but chooses to stick with their own methods.
What does this tell us about how they deal with numbers for the rest of the world?
Anyway, afterward Mrs. Hagoth did some research on Tonga. She stared with church sources, which claim that 60% of the 108,000 people in Tonga are LDS. Then she looked at at non-church sources where she saw that, according to the latest census, More Tongans claim to be Methodist, and Mormons make up about 19% of the population.
How to account for this? My guess is that it might be a lot easier to baptize Tongans than to keep them but the church counts baptisms and children of record as lifetime members. Also, there are probably a lot of members of record who died before they reached the assumed death date of 110 who still get counted. More interesting to me is that if my wife knows what the census says I'm pretty sure the COB does too, but chooses to stick with their own methods.
What does this tell us about how they deal with numbers for the rest of the world?