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http://janariess.religionnews.com/2016/03/04/jesus-less-joseph-changes-mormon-general-conference/ ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://janariess.religionnews.com/2016/03/04/jesus-less-joseph-changes-mormon-general-conference/ I’ve read some of Jana Riess’s stuff before, I hadn’t heard of the Shepherd twins. I might be mildly interested in the book. At any rate, based on research by the Shepherds this blog reviews General Conference topics over 30 year (generational) periods dating back to the the 1830s. The point seems to be that while Jesus Christ did not crack the top 10 as a topic in the early church, over the past 60 years He has been the top discussed topic in GC. At the same time, Joseph Smith as a topic has dropped out of the top 10.
A few things I found interesting:
Us vs. them:
Quote:Gary: What we call “utopian” themes are not mentioned anymore with any frequency whatsoever, such as persecution, Zion, enemies, or Gentiles. All of these terms that connote an “us versus them” contrast are gone.
Second coming/end of times:
Quote:Gordon: Why has this become less and less frequent? With the passage of enough time, any religious community that in the past has put an emphasis on the end times is going to have to adjust their theology. You can’t keep talking about it as though it’s going to happen tomorrow when you said that fifty years ago. Another thing is that the LDS Church is at the present time very much concerned with its members being actively involved in carrying out all the programs that constitute what it means now to be a Latter-day Saint. There’s a more focused concentration on the programs of the church, not the end of the world.
As a side note here, we did have a testimony yesterday about the end of times from an older lady who clearly believed it was coming any day now.
Book of Mormon:
Quote:Gary: And throughout the nineteenth century, there’s very little mention of the Book of Mormon. Both Gordon and I found it very interesting that Joseph Smith himself virtually never referred to the Book of Mormon after it was published. It didn’t emerge as a topic of interest in his speeches or writings, nor those of his associates in the earliest times of Mormon history.
They do point out in this section there was a blip of BoM emphasis during the ETB administration.
Just some food for thought with GC approaching. We discuss areas of emphasis and de-emphasis fairly frequently here. These things seem to take a long time to filter through though – as is evidenced by the kinds of things we hear in our local sacrament meetings, perhaps particularly F&TM. I’m not sure how to change that. I saw a discussion about this on a more orthodox board where there seemed to be a lot of apologetic statements – things like “Jesus may not have been the main topic but that doesn’t mean He wasn’t mentioned.” In my experience these same types are fine with talks where the only mention of Christ is the obligatory “in the name of….”
Back in 1998 the Shepherd’s published “Mormon Passage: A Missionary Chronicle” a memoir based on their missionary journals when they were in adjoining missions in Mexico. Along with a fascinating look at the day to day mission experience from the MTC to the end was one incident when one of them tracted out Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster bus. A review of Amazon shows they have a pretty impressive body of work. Quote:RNS: Another thing that shows up in recent years is the importance of marriage, family, and children. How does that compare to previous generations? Gary: The topic of parenthood and responsibilities did not emerge among the top themes until the third generation, according to our measure – 1890 to 1919. Prior to that, it wasn’t a topic discussed with any great degree of emphasis at all. But in the late twentieth century, 1950 to 1979, parenthood and marriage and family – all three – were among the top three for the first time. RNS: Why this new focus? Gordon: The message is that the LDS Church sponsors the same kind of family and marriage that at least in the mid-twentieth century was the national ideal. Mormons promote the idea that these family values are what is most characteristic about Latter-day Saints. Which in more recent decades has dovetailed with conservative Christianity. Gary: Even people who don’t hold the LDS Church in high esteem for religious reasons will typically comment on the great appeal of Mormonism being its emphasis on families. So that message has obviously come out of the LDS Church and rebounded very advantageously for the Church’s reputation.
Interesting how the doctrine and emphasis on families has evolved. I agree that this has become a favorable selling point.
DarkJedi wrote:…based on research by the Shepherds this blog reviews General Conference topics over 30 year (generational) periods dating back to the the 1830s. The point seems to be that while Jesus Christ did not crack the top 10 as a topic in the early church, over the past 60 years He has been the top discussed topic in GC. At the same time, Joseph Smith as a topic has dropped out of the top 10.
A few things I found interesting:…Us vs. them:
Quote:Gary:
What we call “utopian” themes are not mentioned anymore with any frequency whatsoever, such as persecution, Zion, enemies, or Gentiles. All of these terms that connote an “us versus them” contrast are gone. Just some food for thought with GC approaching.
We discuss areas of emphasis and de-emphasis fairly frequently here.These things seem to take a long time to filter through though – as is evidenced by the kinds of things we hear in our local sacrament meetings, perhaps particularly F&TM. I’m not sure how to change that. I saw a discussion about this on a more orthodox board where there seemed to be a lot of apologetic statements – things like “Jesus may not have been the main topic but that doesn’t mean He wasn’t mentioned.” I wonder how exactly they counted these results because I have only read or listened to very many conference talks since about 2009 and as far as I can tell the idea of us-versus-them and a distinct persecution complex are still alive and well at the highest levels of Church leadership. Furthermore, it seems like we still hear about obedience, worthiness, testimony, temple ordinances, porn is bad, etc. every bit as much as some of their top-10 themes listed for 1980-2009. Maybe the recent talks didn’t use the specific terms obedience, worthiness, or testimony but if you really pay attention to some of them that is the gist of what they are really talking about in many cases. That’s why I would like to know how many categories they used for this study and how they kept track of the relative rank of each. Did they assign entire talks to a category based on the main topic or was it more like bingo where every time a specific term or phrase was used they counted it?
For example, Dallin H. Oaks gave a recent talk that was technically about the atonement but in it he also talked about enduring suffering caused by such things as disabilities, unemployment, rejection of peers, addiction to porn or drugs, and the “painful affliction” of being single. So rather than thinking about how this was a great example of Church leaders focusing on Jesus Christ more than Joseph Smith I mostly wondered how the atonement really helps with any of that assuming it exists in the first place and thought that Oaks and other leaders should ask themselves why it is that things like porn and being single seem like they are so much more of a serious problem within the Church culture than they are to the outside world. Could it be that the Church itself is actually making these into more of a problem than they need to be or would typically be without the Church in the picture?
In their results the WoW only made the top-10 for 1920-1949 but personally I would interpret that as being mostly because that’s when the WoW really transitioned from being a suggestion to an expected and enforced LDS standard and it doesn’t mean that it is being de-emphasized now as much as simply having Church leaders take it for granted that most active members already obey the WoW now so it’s not as important to talk about as other things that supposedly still need work or special attention. For example, in recent years we have heard things like “frankly pathetic”, “can ye feel so now”, “doubt your doubts”, “stay in the boat”, “skepticism is easy”, “give brother Joseph a break”, etc. that all sound like they are reactions to a significant number of members losing their testimonies largely due to the impact of the internet on business as usual for the Church.
My understanding, DA, is that they did not do a word frequency but rather they looked at what the main topic of each talk was. That weeds out things like a mention of Joseph Smith or Jesus Christ as opposed to an entire talk on the subject – hence the obligatory “in the name of…” does not affect the place of Jesus Christ on the list because the talk was not about him. Likewise, mentioning following the prophet in a talk about parenting would not affect the results. I don’t think the Shepherds use this resource, but on the GC page for each conference you can get a list of topics by picking topics from the left side menu. Here’s the link to October GC:
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2015/10?lang=eng ” class=”bbcode_url”> https://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2015/10?lang=eng If anyone is interested in word frequency, BYU maintains a page where you can search for any word back through 1851 and it will give you frequency of use of the word along with its context and who said it. Putting Jesus in there will give you thousands of returns, but it is interesting that even doing that sort of mirrors what the Shepherds are pointing out – in the 1850s there were only 1665 mentions of the word Jesus while in the there were 3762 – more than double. However, it’s not clear that talks were closed “in the name of” in earlier times. Still using this resource can give an indication of whether the talk was about Jesus of if he was simply mentioned and it can be fun to play with because you can put in any word.
http://www.lds-general-conference.orghttp://www.lds-general-conference.org” class=”bbcode_url”> This to me is an indication that church teaching/emphasis has changed over the years. I think a good example of this is food storage. BY had taught the church that they should stockpile 7 years worth of food (with a nod to the story of Joseph of Egypt). There was also an expectation at this time that the millennium was around the corner and plagues/devastation would wipe out the world. At some point the suggestion was reduced to a stockpile of 3 years. I remember when I was a kid that the 1 year number was used all the time. I was playing an old LDS trivia game and answered confidently that we church members had been advised to save 1 year of food. I got the answer wrong as it said that we should save 3 years.
Now we are counseled to save 3 months and that these things should be things that we actually eat on a daily basis to provide for rotation. The teaching also has been completely separated from the impending millennium and instead taught as just personal self-reliance.
To me this is a good example of how church focus/teaching can change over time.
Roy wrote:This to me is an indication that church teaching/emphasis has changed over the years.
I think a good example of this is food storage. BY had taught the church that they should stockpile 7 years worth of food (with a nod to the story of Joseph of Egypt). There was also an expectation at this time that the millennium was around the corner and plagues/devastation would wipe out the world. At some point the suggestion was reduced to a stockpile of 3 years. I remember when I was a kid that the 1 year number was used all the time. I was playing an old LDS trivia game and answered confidently that we church members had been advised to save 1 year of food. I got the answer wrong as it said that we should save 3 years.
Now we are counseled to save 3 months and that these things should be things that we actually eat on a daily basis to provide for rotation. The teaching also has been completely separated from the impending millennium and instead taught as just personal self-reliance.
To me this is a good example of how church focus/teaching can change over time.
I agree, Roy. Even in the 80s there was this sense of “doomsday prepping” with the Millennium being any day now. Food storage is more of an emergency preparedness thing now – and it makes much more sense to me having had a flood with no power for a week.
I actually think there are many teachings the church has evolved on, but this is a great example.
This probably was never a “top 10” but I remember a time when we didn’t want to label ourselves as Christian, presumably because we were “super duper Christian” and didn’t want to be associated with other religions. That’s obviously changed. As others have mentioned in the 80’s there seemed to be a huge emphasis on the Book of Mormon, 2nd coming, and food storage. I like that there is some evidence of changing, hopefully for the better. Putting aside questions about how this was quantified, it’s embarrassing that in some time periods Jesus Christ didn’t crack the top 10.
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