L
lax16
Guest
Hi Parker - Sorry I have not responded to your earlier post. I will do so and I hope your daughters are doing well.
Is this what you would call “progress”?
It seems the church is responding to the falling numbers by having to tell the truth about the less than savory facts of Mormon history that younger members can study about online.
How are they going to address some of the more “sensitive issues”?
Why was it hidden in the first place?
Only 5 million practicing Mormons…wow…that must be concerning.
(edited for length;bold mine)
Special Report: Mormonism besieged by the modern age
By Peter Henderson and Kristina Cooke
Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:10am EST
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - A religious studies class late last year at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, was unusual for two reasons. The small group of students, faculty and faithful there to hear Mormon Elder Marlin Jensen were openly troubled about the future of their church, asking hard questions. And Jensen was uncharacteristically frank in acknowledging their concerns.
Did the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints know that members are "leaving in droves?" a woman asked.
“We are aware,” said Jensen, according to a tape recording of his unscripted remarks. “And I’m speaking of the 15 men that are above me in the hierarchy of the church. They really do know and they really care,” he said.
“My own daughter,” he then added, “has come to me and said, ‘Dad, why didn’t you ever tell me that Joseph Smith was a polygamist?’” For the younger generation, Jensen acknowledged, “Everything’s out there for them to consume if they want to Google it.” The manuals used to teach the young church doctrine, meanwhile, are "severely outdated."
These are tumultuous times for the faith founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, and the rumbling began even before church member Mitt Romney’s presidential bid put the Latter-Day Saints in the spotlight.
Jensen, the church’s official historian, would not provide any figures on the rate of defections, but he told Reuters that attrition has accelerated in the last five or 10 years, reflecting greater secularization of society. Many religions have been suffering similarly, he noted, arguing that Mormonism has never been more vibrant.
“I think we are at a time of challenge, but it isn’t apocalyptic,” he said.
The LDS church claims 14 million members worldwide – optimistically including nearly every person baptized. But census data from some foreign countries targeted by clean-cut young missionaries show that the retention rate for their converts is as low as 25 percent. In the U.S., only about half of Mormons are active members of the church, said Washington State University emeritus sociologist Armand Mauss, a leading researcher on Mormons.
Sociologists estimate there are as few as 5 million active members worldwide.
In Africa and Latin America, however, Jensen said that interest in the LDS was so strong that the church has cut back baptisms in order to better care for new members.
THE RESCUE
With defections rising, the church has launched a program to stanch its losses. The head of the church, President Thomas Monson, who is considered a living prophet, has called the campaign “The Rescue” and made it his signature initiative, according to Jensen. The effort includes a new package of materials for pastors and for teaching Mormon youth that address some of the more sensitive aspects of church doctrine. “If they are not revolutionary, they are at least going to be a breath of fresh air across the church,” Jensen told the Utah class.
Not since a famous troublespot in Mormon history, the 1837 failure of a church bank in Kirtland, Ohio, have so many left the church, Jensen said.
“Maybe since Kirtland, we’ve never had a period of - I’ll call it apostasy, like we’re having now,” he told the group in Logan.
Then he outlined how the church was using the technologies that had loosened its grip on the flock to reverse this trend.
“The church has a very progressive research and information division, with tremendous public opinion surveyors,” he said. Among other steps, it has hired an expert in search-engine optimization to raise the profile of the church’s own views in a web search.
Researchers note a rising tide of questions from church members about the gospel according to Joseph Smith’s The Book of Mormon, the best known of the Latter-day Saints’ scriptures. Over the years, church literature has largely glossed over some of the more controversial aspects of its history, such as the polygamy practiced by Smith and Brigham Young, who led the Mormons to Utah.
Moreover, church leaders have taught that the Book of Mormon is a historical document – not a parable – so the faithful are startled to find articles on the internet using science to contradict it.
The church is particularly concerned, however, about its younger members – the ones who are asked to dedicate two years of their life to spreading the Mormon gospel.
“It’s a different generation,” Elder Jensen told the group in Logan. “There’s no sense kidding ourselves, we just need to be very upfront with them and tell them what we know and give answers to what we have and call on their faith like we all do for things we don’t understand.”
