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When the value proposition of church membership is such that costs exceed benefit, then the growth projections are not sustainable. In an effort to become a world church with a uniform product, the correlation committee has bred out any real social or cultural enjoyment out of the church. I sat through a priesthood meeting where new rules about being reverent before, during, and after sacrament meeting were laid out. I pointed out that with a three hour block, no-one gets to church early, and when the three hours are up, everyone wants to get home quickly. If you don’t allow for simple social greetings, then what is the value of ‘community’ in the church?
Because of my less-than-fully-active status, I’ve been paired up with a more ‘active’ home teaching companion — a high councilor I’ve known for years… yet every month is a perfunctory go out an shoot a message at the families in the last week routine. Duty is more important than substance… “to obey is better than sacrifice”, I guess… yet in the context of that scripture, when the lord commands genocide, he doesn’t provide exceptions for women, children, cattle or sheep.
There is absolutely no way that effective non-biological growth rate of the church is greater than zero. The problem is that no-one outside of the the COB really knows the non-biological growth rate — know that there are more people leaving my ward than being brought in by baptisms, and we’re in a relatively active DC-suburban area.
Spanish wards in our area are the only ones who have >10 people joining per year on average…yet after 25 years of observing the spanish ‘branch’ in our stake, the size hasn’t grown in terms of attending members at all, and there has definitely been biological growth in these families. What does that say? It says that fall-out rate not only exceeds the non-biological conversion rate, it also nearly exceeds both biological and non-biological growth rate.
Not a pretty picture. And not any way that such delusional growth projections will ever come to pass.
cwald wrote:
This is so, well, so ridiculous, that it amazes me every time I hear it. Europeans did not embrace Christianity because it was gushing with “compassion, and brotherhood.” Europe embraced Christianity because it was conquered.
I was not talking about Europe. I was talking about the Roman Empire in the first few centuries of the common era, when Christianity put down its first roots. The world of 492 was vastly different from the world of 1492.Yes, it was, oasis – but cwald still is correct. The explosive growth happened when the Holy Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the official sate religion. Without that official acceptance, it very well might have died in its adolescence. Christianity, as an organized religion, hasn’t seen radical, sustained growth based on compassionate outreach at very many points in its history. That sort of growth (long-term fast growth) almost always has been by force.
We are in a different age now, where areas like China and India have the potential to see explosive growth simply due to astounding population numbers that didn’t exist back in the day, but there also are hundreds of denominations now competing for that population. It’s one thing to predict explosive growth in places like that for Christianity as a whole and quite another to do so for one particular denomination – no matter what that denomination is.
I do expect to see numerical growth when those countries are opened fully, but even the current leadership has mentioned in General Conference recently that our scriptures imply, at least, that the Church always will be relatively small as a percentage of total population. I believe that was in direct response to articles like this and the unrealistic expectations of members who use growth rate as a measure of “truthiness”. My own beliefs and testimony have almost nothing to do with conversion rates, and I also know that the top leadership is more concerned right now (and for the last 15-20 years) on retention than conversion, statistically speaking.
cwald wrote:If Mormons want others to quit generalizing and falsely demeaning their religion and morals and values and practices…than Mormons need to quit doing the same thing to other groups of people they don’t understand.
I hope I am not generalizing or falsely demeaning anyone, but I sincerely apologize to anyone who interpreted my comments as generalizing or falsely demeaning to any group. I do not claim that most atheists engage in sexual harassment or that non-atheists are without sin.The topic of sexual harassment at atheist conventions is a red-hot topic right now. White-hot, actually. I know, because I read atheist forums all the time to get different perspectives. I’m just relaying what I read on the Web. Google it yourself and you’ll see the fiery discussions. I think it’s a really interesting question of how atheists can claim that sexual harassment is objectively wrong when morality is simply a human convention.
http://archives.religionnews.com/culture/gender-and-sexuality/do-atheists-have-a-sexual-harassment-problem ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://archives.religionnews.com/culture/gender-and-sexuality/do-atheists-have-a-sexual-harassment-problem Your recent comments do not make me feel welcome on this site, so this is my last post. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice on my other questions.
cwald wrote:Okay. I can’t just let this go.
Quote:However… I also once read an article about the growth of Christianity in its first four centuries of existence. Christianity was microscopically small in AD 33 and went on to sweep the Roman Empire within a few centuries… against stupendous headwinds in the early days. The author claimed that slow but steady growth over a few centuries could turn the world upside down.
He also claimed that Christianity won converts because the Christian culture embraced compassion, selflessness, and brotherhood of all men (or siblinghood of all humans,if you prefer…
This is so, well, so ridiculous, that it amazes me every time I hear it. Europeans did not embrace Christianity because it was gushing with “compassion, and brotherhood.” Europe embraced Christianity because it was conquered.
And for that matter, my wife’s ancestors “embraced” Christianity at the end of bayonet. Compassion? No. Compassion had nothing to do with a mass genocide of an entire race…
And lets not even talk about our African American brothers and sisters…who embraced Christianity at the end of a chain.
South America got to choose between strangulation, burning or Christianity…understandable how quickly it caught on there too.
oasis wrote:Your recent comments do not make me feel welcome on this site, so this is my last post. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice on my other questions.
Really?
Well, I’ve been on some boards where I have encountered “cyber bullies” and I don’t want to be one. So I apologize for my tone and “demeanor” and for offending.
You said some things that were offensive to me and others. I disagreed with you and responded and said some thing that didn’t make you feel welcome.
I’ll get over it. You can to…you will not find a “nicer” middle way board in the bloggernacle. But you can’t expect people to just agree with everything you say. This is a site to help people who are struggling with their Mormon beliefs find a middle way to navigate the faith. One issue I have with the mormon church is the Christianization and Mormonization of the native American people…especially the Navajo people during the 70’s and early 80’s…as well as the entire genocide of a continent by Christians all in the name of god. You hit nerve…I called you on it.
I also do not think it is a good habit to start criticizing “atheist” and putting them all in the same box as amoral. That is a very “mormon” thing to do. Ray won’t let me do that in regards to LDS people…so lets not do it to the atheist either…perhaps you missed the thread yesterday where I got “moderated?” It happens.
Lets move on.
But if you do decide to leave. Good luck on your journey. As I told you in your introduction, “Find peace brother. Peace.”
oasis, fwiw, I am a former history teacher, so historical accuracy is important to me. I also am a moderator and admin at a site that is focused on respecting others – and where the Golden Rule is something we try to encourage. Thus, as cwald said, I will call people out when they over-generalize and paint with too broad a brush – largely because I don’t like it when others to that to us as Mormons.
We are here to show that it’s cool to look at lots of things differently when it comes to matters of faith, but, again, as a social studies teacher at heart, there is a huge difference between matters of faith (which are almost completely subjective) and matters of history (which are subjective much more than most people realize but which include elements that are not subjective at all). When those two areas converge and start to overlap, I believe it is extremely important to not let the historical facts get mushy – or we end up with things like the justifications for the Priesthood ban that were and continue to be rejected by the Church leadership.
I don’t want you to leave, since I want as wide a diversity of thought and belief as possible, but it takes a bit of a thick skin and open heart to remain here for an extended period of time. cwald is a good example of that on one end of our spectrum at the moment; some of the other regulars are good examples of that on the other end. We are like the Island of Misfit Toys in a lot of ways, so if you can stick around and see how we operate, I’d like you to stay.
cwald wrote:Quote:Oh… and one other shaping force is in play here. Atheists have really low birth rates. I guess atheists stick to this nutty idea that we live briefly and then kick the bucket with no more meaning or importance than a squashed cockroach. Well, yeah, if I believed that, I would gravitate toward hedonism and away from changing diapers, too. (There are a lot of negative aspects of atheism that are not reported; apparently sexual harassment of women at atheist conventions is a real problem.)…
No.
If Mormons want others to quit generalizing and falsely demeaning their religion and morals and values and practices…than Mormons need to quit doing the same thing to other groups of people they don’t understand.
-sigh-
This forum needs a like button.
The ‘Sunday School’ idea that if we were all Atheists we’d be anarchists really bugs me.
When this is mentioned in lessons I usually say “our presumption that without a belief in God we’d all collapse into immoral degenerates is probably a greater reflection out own character than it is of atheists.” It’s often met with a stoney silence, but I’ll keep saying it anyway.
Joseph’s revelation that the Church would fill North and South America and fill the world is sometimes intepreted as majority of people on the planet but if you consider being in that small group of 6 or so individuals at the Isaac Morley Farm in Kirtland and Joseph having said that and then looking around today at the congregations and Temples and people…. I see the revelation as fulfilled for the most part with a little work to do in some countries yet to allow us. mackay11 wrote:cwald wrote:Quote:Oh… and one other shaping force is in play here. Atheists have really low birth rates. I guess atheists stick to this nutty idea that we live briefly and then kick the bucket with no more meaning or importance than a squashed cockroach. Well, yeah, if I believed that, I would gravitate toward hedonism and away from changing diapers, too. (There are a lot of negative aspects of atheism that are not reported; apparently sexual harassment of women at atheist conventions is a real problem.)…
No.
If Mormons want others to quit generalizing and falsely demeaning their religion and morals and values and practices…than Mormons need to quit doing the same thing to other groups of people they don’t understand.
-sigh-
This forum needs a like button.
The ‘Sunday School’ idea that if we were all Atheists we’d be anarchists really bugs me.
When this is mentioned in lessons I usually say “our presumption that without a belief in God we’d all collapse into immoral degenerates is probably a greater reflection out own character than it is of atheists.” It’s often met with a stoney silence, but I’ll keep saying it anyway.
Great point. I work at a large tech company Oregon and I know multiple atheists who love their families, reach out to help others, home school their kids out of a deep sense of responsibility…all based on making their world a better place. Yeah they also drink (not to excess), occasional strip club, etc but I have to say….some are much less selfish then some “very righteous” LDS people. I have met my share of b@stards of every creed….Philosophy is a hammer, bad people use their philosophy hammer to justify tearing down those around them, good people use their philosophy hammer to build up those around them. In my experience the shape/weight of the hammer is less important than the intent of the hand holding it.
Johnh
johnh wrote:Philosophy is a hammer, bad people use their philosophy hammer to justify tearing down those around them, good people use their philosophy hammer to build up those around them. In my experience the shape/weight of the hammer is less important than the intent of the hand holding it.
I sometimes think that the best religion for a particular individual varies greatly depending on the personality, circumstances, experiences, and temperament of the individual. It is hard because I wonder if by not acting like Mormonism is the only ticket in town, I might be depriving them of really giving the LDS way a chance through full immersion (like what I had in my youth). OTOH, I don’t want to shove it down my kids’ throat only to suspect later that they might have been happier with a different philosophy. Alas, life and parenting are often like that.
I suppose it would be simpler if I felt that my primary duty was to get them into the CK at any cost. But I don’t know that this attitude would have been any better for my kids.
oasis wrote:There may be hundreds of millions of Mormons by 2150, but it will be a “multiracial” form of Mormonism that differs in important ways from the Mormon church of 2013. I think you are going to see a lot of revelations and changes in church doctrine that sweep away some of the debris that is today a stumbling block for so many Mormons and investigators. The church will redefine its relationship to women and gays, perhaps in ways that nobody can predict. The role of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon will be different in 2150. Not weaker, just different and purer and more welcoming to LDS investigators who hear the word “polygamy” and run for the exit.
Oh… and one other shaping force is in play here. Atheists have really low birth rates.
I find two interesting ideas in this statement.1) I absolutely believe that the growth of the church will create changes (and has already created changes) as the church becomes more diversified and multinational. I believe that there are marks left in the church culture, practice, and doctrine from the individuals and groups that joined the church at different intervals and from the circumstances and events that happened to the church during these periods. Perhaps the “Mormon Moment” will change us more than it changes the world.
2) I don’t know anything about Atheists, but I do understand that the category for “spiritual but not religious” is the fastest growing category in the US. This appears to be a strong trend in developed nations.
Quote:Koltko-Rivera argues that the “high growth” model of sustained annual growth of 5.5 percent is more likely, putting the global Mormon population at more than 24 million by 2030 and 2.6 billion by 2120
Firstly, I think that the world’s population will be much bigger if it ever is… and secondly, I think this growth will NOT be in the West, but in South America, Africa and Asia.
Africa’s going to be the big growth area of the next century. Some evidence that China will be too.
I don’t actually think the LDS is truly an American church anymore, and the coming century will reflect that.
Most Corporations do financial projects that are from 3 to 5 years out. The portion that is 3 years out is reasonable & conservative based on current financial conditions.
The portion that is 4 to 5 years out is considered “a shot in the dark”. It is used to set “general” guidelines & goals.
None of these projections are published for public consumption. It is only used for internal purposes.
If the Corporation tried to set a projection that was 90 to 100 years out, it would be a gigantic waste of time & effort.
In my opinion, to project the growth of the Church to 2120, falls into this last category.
There are too many variables to consider to make it realistic & reasonable.
Well…100 year projections based on fuzzy math are a good idea if you want to sell a book 👿 Who believes that the human race will still be around in a hundred years? I wouldn’t put money on it.
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