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Roy wrote:
I would advise caution before changing things to be more palatable to the fringe disaffected, the inactive, or the non-member. It is possible that no policy change will bring these people back (or get them to convert in the case of the non-LDS), but any policy change faces the risk of upsetting the apple cart and your primary base of support.
I think this is why the church may never relax on the coffee/tea bit. It’ll upset the apple cart too much. From what I understand it was downright embarrassing to be a member in the 1970’s because blacks were not able to hold the priesthood. Social pressures like that are enough to make a policy change, but coffee/tea…. meh. Not so much.
Roy wrote:Optimal for who? For persons in faith crisis? For new investigators? For TBM’s with pioneer heritage? For the majority (50%+) of currently active members?
For me…that’s all I can speak for. I hit my threshold a few years ago…I also think it behooves the Church to make sure the perceived benefit (the numerator of your benefit/sacrifice ratio) is believable…dissonance between actions and words on the part of leaders can reduce the numERATOR and make it so the ratio is just not favorable any longer.
Quote:Though I am no sociologist nor statistician, I can’t help but wonder if the church’s current sacrifice/benefit ratio isn’t already optimal for the majority of currently active members. Each individual may have different preferences and comfort levels as to how much sacrifice they feel should be asked from their religious organization. But as much as I am on board with “concern for the one” stuff, I would advise caution before changing things to be more palatable to the fringe disaffected, the inactive, or the non-member. It is possible that no policy change will bring these people back (or get them to convert in the case of the non-LDS), but any policy change faces the risk of upsetting the apple cart and your primary base of support.
It’s a highly personal thing, and I think people convince themselves that the benefits are sufficient to keep the ratio sufficiently high. Faith keeps the numerator of the benefit/sacrifice ratio high enough. Hurt the faith, then the ratio crumbles and so does commitment.
Quote:I can’t help but wonder if the church’s current sacrifice/benefit ratio isn’t already optimal for the majority of currently active members
Well, Sisos would say based on the rise of Mormonism, it definitely hit the winning formula. Likewise for Islam in the 7th century.
The problem with loss of faith is that you want logical reasons for things that don’t have logical reasons or they no longer seem worth the sacrifice. The WoW isn’t necessarily in place for logical rational reasons. And that’s why it’s difficult for us to be too far afield from societal norms – it puts us in a position to have to defend the indefensible. I don’t mean there’s no defense for it, but doing it is an act of personal sacrifice and faith and declaring ourselves as part of the Mormon team.
Another part of Haidt’s book that was interesting explained that we act based on our feelings & intuitions (what we are inclined to do), and then our mind creates justifications for those actions. While we can be persuaded otherwise by someone who has a good set of reasons to do something different, it’s just as likely that we will follow the crowd we think is acting in a more reasonable manner. So with blacks & the PH, members were uncomfortable because the church’s path seemed less rational and defensible than pretty much everyone else. With the WoW, it’s not that inflammatory. We’re not called on very often to justify why we aren’t having a coffee or a tea. Here in Asia I can just ask for a hot water or chamomile instead of a tea (hot water is also a common drink). Basically, nobody cares.
Yes, given its rise, it did hit a winning formula — but let’s not forget a few things: 1) The rate of growth is declining in America….we had a meeting about this three years ago in our combined PH RS meeting. I have not heard whether this has changed, but the winning formula may not be as winning as it once was.
2) While the growth and survival of the Church has been positive since its inception, it certainly hasn’t paralleled the success of other religions like the Pentacostals.
For me, the LDS church hit a “niche” winning formula, but it didn’t knock it out of the park.
Along with creating a stronger community, I think that it can create stronger individuals. The basic concept of every religion is that there is a divine something, and that there are things we do to get closer to, and connected with the divine. Fasting is a great example. First of all, it’s not limited to the LDS faith, but it is something with which we are all aware. The idea of fasting is to deprive yourself of something that you clearly want. By doing so, you gain a certain amount of “hey, I’m strong enough to overcome base desires” realization, and if you turn that toward God, you can make a spiritual growth experience out of it. On a much smaller scale, observing WoW restrictions is the same thing. Whether or not you think the WoW is a true commandment, or direct from God to the Prophet’s mouth is really inconsequential. If you decide that for you, you want to use this as a test of yourself, then you have an opportunity to gain from it… you can make it part of your discipline or discipleship.
From my own history… when I was a young person, I’d say, “I can’t drink or smoke”. When I got older, and a little more self-aware and self-directing, I would say, “I don’t drink or smoke”… it had become my own choice. Even though I’m no longer a believer, myself, and I do not have a TR, I continue to observe the WoW… it’s part of who *I* am.
So, if you decide to make it a part of your personal religion, it has value. You (scooter), talked about wanting to make it back to the temple, and the WoW as a delineator. Great… so observe the WoW and make that part of what you sacrifice personally in order to make the temple experience more personal.
Having said all that… if you DON’T find any value in the WoW, you should feel free to drink coffee, tea, and alcohol and to smoke. It has to have value to you, or there is no point. Aside from debatable health benefits, that value may come from A) not rocking the boat with family
staying associated with the larger Mormon community C) observing rules required for going to the temple D) making it a part of your inner religion. If none of those resonate with you, then there is no need to observe it.cwald wrote:hawkgrrrl wrote:
3 – coffee breath….Really? I kind of have no problem with coffee breath. Yeah, it’s not mint gum, but it is better than just “bad breath” I think?
Depends it can be bearable, but mixed with cigarettes, it’s plain horrible.
hawkgrrrl wrote:…Sisos would say based on the rise of Mormonism,
it definitely hit the winning formula.Likewise for Islam in the 7th century…The problem with loss of faith is that you want logical reasons for things that don’t have logical reasons or they no longer seem worth the sacrifice. The WoW isn’t necessarily in place for logical rational reasons. Roy wrote:Though I am no sociologist nor statistician,
I can’t help but wonder if the church’s current sacrifice/benefit ratio isn’t already optimal for the majority of currently active members. Each individual may have different preferences and comfort levels as to how much sacrifice they feel should be asked from their religious organization…I would advise caution before changing things to be more palatable to the fringe disaffected, the inactive, or the non-member. It is possible that no policy change will bring these people back…or get them to convert…but any policy change faces the risk of upsetting the apple cart and your primary base of support….Some would argue that it is not our place to widen the path of salvation, only to proclaim the standards set forth by He who made The Way possible. Those same people might draw comparisons between possible loosening of standards and the process of apostasy that occurred in the primitive church…the point being that you can’t please all the people all the time.If it was all by design to aim for a relatively small and highly committed group of followers then maybe it would make sense to continue to preach that the outside world is evil and wrong and specifically ask about the WoW in baptism and temple recommend interviews. However, I strongly doubt that most top Church leaders have really put that much thought into it or that they somehow stumbled onto or were inspired to find some magic formula for success. Almost all popular churches in America supported the temperance movement in the past but most of them moved on from this pet cause after the prohibition experiment failed without much of a lasting impact that I can see. There are still more Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Evangelicals/Pentecostals, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians in the US than Mormons (that self-identify as such) and it looks to me like none of these churches other than a few of the most extreme Evangelical sects ask for or get nearly the same level of sacrifice out of their followers that the LDS Church does.
I understand that Church leaders will typically be more concerned with what most active members think than what any non-Mormons, ex-Mormons, or inactive/disaffected Mormons think but I also believe there are many active Mormons that are not necessarily happy with their overall experience in the Church but they continue to go along with it mostly because of family/peer pressure and/or they think that’s what they are supposed to do (sense of obligation). I know there are many that actually like the WoW that wouldn’t know what to think if the Church ever “lowered” its standards in a highly visible way but I still think the risks are lower in this case than what will happen if they continue to do everything the same exact way we always have while the world around us continues to change (similar to the Amish).
The problem is that the LDS Church has taken things that most of the rest of the world considers to be normal and expected behavior or at least not so bad that they are impossible to live with and turned them into completely unacceptable sins that simply cannot be tolerated. The Church’s growth so far has depended heavily on entire families remaining Mormon their whole lives and passing these Mormon traditions on to their children and grandchildren while the retention rate for converts has typically been very low. Well now members are starting to wait longer to get married and have fewer children on average than before. On top of that, the internet is exposing information that will make it increasingly difficult to recruit new members and retain members that would have remained active in the past. That’s why I don’t think you can take the Church’s relative success so far and project similar results into the future and the out-of-balance cost-benefit ratio will become increasingly problematic the longer Church leaders try to ignore it and uphold tradition at all costs.
Roy wrote:any policy change faces the risk of upsetting the apple cart and your primary base of support.
I’m not sure about the “upsetting the Applecart” thing. For the faithful, all they need is the word from the prophet that we know more now then prophets knew in the 1800s, and then stress the importance of the spiritual essence of the commandment, and I think they’re would be 100% buy in from TR holders.Look, if they can do it with polygamy, Word of Wisdom would be an easy change to make.
It just would make them look like they are bending to the world, when they are trying to teach how the world is getting further off track and the church needs to stand as a beacon and example.
But they could do it with one letter to bishops.
Quote:Heber13: “For the faithful, all they need is the word from the prophet that we know more now then prophets knew in the 1800s, and then stress the importance of the spiritual essence of the commandment, and I think they’re would be 100% buy in from TR holders. Look, if they can do it with polygamy, Word of Wisdom would be an easy change to make.”
Polygamy did in fact cause a HUGE schism. 55K went with Brigham Young, but 40K refused to go and stayed behind with the non-polygamous Strangeites. Ironically 15 short years later, the Strangeites also adopted polygamy which led to them dwindling down to less than a thousand members today. The next major commitment members were given from upper leadership was the Word of Wisdom (delivered by JS in 1833 but not “enforced” until 1921) – even after 1921, it took a long time to get general compliance. So, in reality, 1) we don’t get asked to do a lot of new stuff that causes a major life change (a fact for which I am grateful), and 2) when we have in the past, it’s caused schism and disruption. Many people have fallen away or not adopted it.
You may be right that loosening up the WoW would be easier than getting people to adopt it was. The same was *kind of* true for polygamy. But then again we have the FLDS. Would we have some fundamentalist schism that kept a more extreme WoW law? It could happen. It more or less is the same as the Jain religion vs. the Hindu faith: taking a non-violent idea and food code to a further extreme.
Great link on the history of WoW:
http://www.lifeongoldplates.com/2007/09/development-of-word-of-wisdom.html I find it odd though that our “dietary rules” are only applied in respect of drinks (and tobacco). Quote:Polygamy did in fact create a HUGE schism
I guess I was thinking more in terms of when they stopped the polygamy, not when BY instituted it. It took a while and some people were in the closet still practicing it, but the church moved on. The WoW could have that kind of change if the word came from salt lake, I think, if it was no longer needed in our day. That’s what modern prophets are for.
Heber13 wrote:Quote:Polygamy did in fact create a HUGE schism
I guess I was thinking more in terms of when they stopped the polygamy, not when BY instituted it. It took a while and some people were in the closet still practicing it, but the church moved on. The WoW could have that kind of change if the word came from salt lake, I think, if it was no longer needed in our day. That’s what modern prophets are for.
Yep, well said Heber.
I think Heber has it right. All it takes is for someone in authority to say “this is the new inspired version of the law” and the msot committed members will agree wholeheartedly. Not only that, they will start inventing and promulgating reasons why the new policy makes sense. GA’s will put their own spin on it in local visits and this will then be quoted among the membership. Remember when missions were cut back to 18 months? And then after a couple years, they switched them back to 2 years again for the males? I heard so many people inventing reasons why “the Lord” did this. One that stuck out in my mind was that it was because “during that period there was likely a high proportion of rowdy missionaries hitting the field, so the Lord limited their negative impact by letting them serve only 18 months”. There were a host of other reasons given as everyone battled cognitive dissonance but that one stuck out as the most ridiculous.
No, as a membership, we revere the Prophet, the GA’s and treat every word that falls from their lips as having come from God himself — so they can make sweeping changes like that and still keep the committed core.
Quote:Not only that, they will start inventing and promulgating reasons why the new policy makes sense.
That’s the central issue, imo – not necessarily the changes themselves, but the hedges that get built up around the changes.
The mission length is a pretty good example of something foundational; the 18-month length didn’t last long enough for the speculation to become institutionalized, so it was simple to change back without getting people’s underwear in a knot due to their long-term investment in it.
Heber13 wrote:Roy wrote:
any policy change faces the risk of upsetting the apple cart and your primary base of support.
I’m not sure about the “upsetting the Applecart” thing. For the faithful, all they need is the word from the prophet that we know more now then prophets knew in the 1800s, and then stress the importance of the spiritual essence of the commandment, and I think they’re would be 100% buy in from TR holders.
I think it is fair to say that people are leaving the church all the time. To return to the anology of the “Applecart” – people are tumbling out all the time. If we take the view that everyone of these people are in danger of hellfire, then we would want to minimize these losses. It would seem that even changes that were important for the church survival and progress (such as cessation of polygamy and extending the priesthood to all males) caused some otherwise stalwart members to fall off. You might liken these to bumps in the road. If I were in a position of leadership, I would try for a smooth journey with no sudden movements.
Sometimes the path ahead becomes so rocky that a change of course is prudent despite that percentage of membership that may feel betrayed by the change – I just don’t forsee this with the WOW.
Did God change his mind about alcohol being sinful? – so much so that it kept people out of the temple for decades and then it gets downgraded to good spiritual advise like reading scriptures or remembering to pray? What about all those arguments that Jesus only ever drank unfermented grape juice and not wine? Doesn’t that suggest that in the minds of some of the church membership, the ban on alcohol is an eternal principle?
I absolutely believe that it can be done, but I just don’t think it pays off in a cost benefit analysis. How does it benefit the church for members to start smoking and drinking.
Now perhaps a more subtle way to do this would be to simply stop asking it as a TR question. The teaching/doctrine would remain the same, it would just be a policy enforcement issue that would change.
:thumbup:
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