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Weasel articles will do little. They know the statistics. I can only guess at them.
15 million members; yeh, right. 10-12 million inactive.
Reasons why? Quite a laundry list.
If we can draw any credibility from the 2011 Mormon disbelief survey: the top 4 reasons, all cited by more than 30% of the 3000 survey participants included; disbelief in doctrine, problems with church history, loss of faith in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Various familiar political issues came next.
Something like 1/3 to ½ were active. And those were the ones still engaged enough to bother with a survey. I wager a huge chunk of those 10-12 million wouldn’t even admit to being Mormon.
It seems reasonable to conclude that if they disseminate the kind of information in these articles thoroughly and effectively among the remaining faithful 2-3 million members, they might expect to keep less than about 1/3 to ½ of them. We might be looking at less than a million active members when the dust settles. !950’s was when the church hit one million and it was in a much better position then than it is now.
I can’t even guess how to calculate the loss in tithing since not that high of a portion of our people ever paid it. But I suspect the 2-3 million still active always did pay a lion’s share and that is probably starting to seriously erode.
There are those who say the LDS church is between a rock and a hard place because of its decade’s long practice of white washing and keeping everything sweet. If they turn on the lights, many will leave. But the rising sun of internet light is coming up anyway. They say the LDS church has no good alternatives.These obscure articles are an attempt to thread a needle with a seahouser rope (that holds ships on the dock).
Horse feathers. I say there is a third way. Offer active, inactive and nonLDS people alike an attractive alternative. In other words make the worship experience at church fundamentally better for everyone. It is too late for this to happen incrementally, it will require sweeping reform. Ignore the intractable problems of the past and focus on a future of success. The problem is that our collective vision of the future has become incompatible with an unfolding reality. But with a new and realistic vision we could build a bright future in the realm of reality.
I have no confidence that I possess this vision. But it might look something like this:
Better music.
Sincere heartfelt prayers.
Engaging interesting sermons.
Informative Sunday school classes that actually teach how to find information and not indoctrinate.
Better youth programs, both at the primary and teenage levels.
Better activities for the family.
Better inclusion of the growing number of singles.
Better community service.
More focus on internal values like integrity, patience , charity instead of external commandments and privileges and such.
Stop the emphasis on our moral superiority , exclusivity and judgmentalism.
Start being nicer to our enemies or those who disagree with us. And our critics from within.
Ignore, scrap or down play every obnoxious thing that has proven to drive people away.
Really put worship and study of Christ at the center, indisputably.
We will all know when we are on the right track when we don’t need 80,000 zealot missionaries out there hard selling or soft selling our faith. When decent people start to beat a path to our door instead of the other way around. Only the leadership has the power to do this, if they are not too old and beholden to each other, none of us in the trenches could without starting a destructive schism.
church0333 wrote:Why don’t we just read and discuss them in PH and RS and let the chips lie where they fall.
Because the inevitable would happen and many people would have their shelves broken and leave.
While I agree with your general premise, Porter, I think your numbers are a bit skewed and unprovable. Cadence wrote:church0333 wrote:Why don’t we just read and discuss them in PH and RS and let the chips lie where they fall.
Because the inevitable would happen and many people would have their shelves broken and leave.
They might have their shelves broken and leave but they could do it knowing that the church came clean. I am trying to stick around longer and it would be easier if I felt I could be honest at church and if I felt like the church was repenting from their bad deeds. I have had many people tell me they can live with mistakes but the constant whitewashing and down right deceit is what is causing the most heartburn. The church has things to offer without it being the one and only true church and people need and want a home and that home doesn’t need to be perfect. My ward is like family and I just want a working relationship with a caring community and I don’t need the doctrine to be true to have that.
1) The activity rate in the LDS Church worldwide is around 30%-40%, which means there are around 5-6 million active members. I would love it if it was higher, but it’s actually one of the higher rates among Christian denominations. I did the research for a post on another blog. Most denominations have rates that are lower. 2) I agree there would be a lot of people who would face crises if they read everything at once (especially the most hardcore traditionalists who want a return to the past in some way and don’t approve of change), but a lot of people would assimilate the new information and move on without a crisis. I also believe there are quite a few members who would LOVE to read everything at once – people who stay from a spiritual witness of some kind or for the community and/or families but who aren’t orthodox and want things like the explanations written.
I hear you loud and clear church0333 – in so many ways. You wrote – Quote:I don’t need the doctrine to be true to have that.
From my chair there is so much
doctrinealready in place that could be used to hold the church in a positive place and put the past behind it. You begin by building on the 11th Article of Faith – you support changes like – temple sealings, tithing and other stuff under 9th Article of Faith, Uchtdorf has already set that in motion.
Next you pull out Joseph Smiths more universal messages – “living a religion without being trammeled” “important part of the kingdom is friendship” “find all the truth or you will not come out true Mormons” “Mormon means more good” –
It could be done and most of the damage everyone fears would be saved.
Two points about the heads popping off: 1) there are a few people whose bubbles could use some bursting, and 2) doing this in church makes it a thousand times less likely that it proceeds to faith crisis. On the contrary, they see all the smiling, believing fellow members who are dealing with nuance and controversy while not freaking out, and pretty soon they think “Oh, this is no big deal.” Psychologically, seeing people deal with it is better than hoping each individual person who encounters it alone will be able to deal with it. Porter wrote:There are those who say the LDS church is between a rock and a hard place because of its decade’s long practice of white washing and keeping everything sweet. If they turn on the lights, many will leave. But the rising sun of internet light is coming up anyway. They say the LDS church has no good alternatives.These obscure articles are an attempt to thread a needle with a seahouser rope (that holds ships on the dock).
Horse feathers. I say there is a third way. Offer active, inactive and nonLDS people alike an attractive alternative. In other words make the worship experience at church fundamentally better for everyone. It is too late for this to happen incrementally, it will require sweeping reform. Ignore the intractable problems of the past and focus on a future of success. The problem is that our collective vision of the future has become incompatible with an unfolding reality. But with a new and realistic vision we could build a bright future in the realm of reality.
I agree.
How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.
Members will be exposed to the information one way or the other, everyone in the church is going to have to cross this bridge at some point. IMO it’s better to go ahead and meet the issues head on. Delays or even perceived delays will only make the bridge that much harder to cross.
hawkgrrrl wrote:Two points about the heads popping off: 1) there are a few people whose bubbles could use some bursting, and 2) doing this in church makes it a thousand times less likely that it proceeds to faith crisis. On the contrary, they see all the smiling, believing fellow members who are dealing with nuance and controversy while not freaking out, and pretty soon they think “Oh, this is no big deal.” Psychologically, seeing people deal with it is better than hoping each individual person who encounters it alone will be able to deal with it.
Yes, very good point. My experience lends weight to this strategy, things go much better when the questions are addressed openly in church. The answers given may not always be as straight forward as some of us would like, but the recognition of hard questions in church by faithful members can go a long way toward supporting those who struggle.
It’s great they are publicizing the essays a little more. Although I always feel a little cynical when people come “clean” because they have to. If we had a world without Internet, which is responsible for making the truth so widespread to our own members, would we have the articles? Nonetheless, I don’t want to discourage transparency. I suppose people from my generation who joined in the days of highly inadequate information will have to take time to heal. The next generation will at least have the full truth at their disposal.
So much gets glossed over in discussions though, with non-members. Rather than saying we will become gods we say we will become “like Him”, which is a very watered down, vague allusion to our progression toward Godhood. As a missionary I used that phrase constantly, only to find people were shocked when they learned about our progression toward Godhood from their friends and wondered why I hadn’t told them earlier.
I think I stated up front about my inaccurate estimates: “They know the statistics. I can only guess at them.” I am in no position to be anything but inaccurate and this is not my fault. This is part of the transparency problem, obsfucating numerical information in hopes of gaining more weasel room. Doesn’t usually work because people can make it worse than it would have been without the clouds of fog. So I say lets start with transparency of statistics.
For one example in my case a few years ago, I would have wished to know as EQP the worldwide church percent of hometeaching. I would wish to know the same figure more locally. And how much lying about it. (Difference between visits reported by home teachers and families who were actually asked if they were visited). Even that number for other wards in my stake could have been shared and discussed at some of those endless stake leadership meetings with those tedious reruns of old conference talks.
I thought of a possible short cut method of determining the size of active membership in the LDS faith. I will define active members as those who allow their newly-born children to be included on the membership roles of the church. That isn’t much. It doesn’t require attendance every month or temple recommend holdings. This number is reported in the annual statistical summary during spring general conference and I would hope it is not fabricated. Then assume the average Mormon woman lives 81 years and has 3 children. Also for this simple calculation assume an approximate similar number of people in each age bracket and an aproximate similar number of men and women (both assumptions admittedly not accurate but more about that in a minute).
This means in a large group of Mormon women, the group averages one child every 27 years for each woman present. Then we multiply the number of new births reported in conference by 27 to get the total size of the group. That number has been running around 100,000. This gives us 2.7 million women and maybe 2.7 million men. Or 5.4 million active members.
Back to the assumptions, the demographics is probably skewed in the direction of more younger people around to be having those children making the estimate artificially high. Therefore our estimate of 2.7 will be high. And generally more women remain active than men so this again will make our 5.4 estimate high. By how much I have no idea. I think this is close to the figures given by Old-Timer after much research, of 5-6 million.
The other number under discussion, how many people would remain active if all the dirty laundry was suddenly shoved in their face? We have no data. My guess based on how upset most people get when I start taking about these things is about 20% would stay and 80% would leave. I have posed this question to more than a dozen of my relatives and faithful friends: What would you do if President Hickley stood in conference and admitted the history of the Book of Mormon was pure fabrication and proceeded to show evidence from the archives that you could not deny? Would you leave the church or stay and try to build a new church from the pieces. Usually they try to deny the question by saying this would never happen. But when forced to consider it hypothetically almost all say that they would leave immediately. The foundational “truths” are too important to them. Assuming President Hinckley was about 20 times more skillful and diplomatic than I am, I get about 20%. That is the weak basis of my <1 million member guess. Admittedly a pure guess.
I agree with Hawkgrrrl that it might be an easier pill to swallow at church with the support of others, than alone with the malignant digital screen glowing sickly green in the dark. But there is another danger, the herd effect. If a few key social trend setters bolt, then most of the herd might stampede. We have not considered the real danger of a schism which too often happens when a church is forced to make a major change. Schism is the usual protestant response to change.
This is why we need to take the third option. Build a better church. Strong enough that weekly participation far outweighs these burdens. That is going to require prophetic leadership unlike any we have seen since the Kirtland days, to misquote the Elder Marlin Jensen statement on 11/11/11 in Logan about the depth of this current apostasy. I pray that they are up to it.
Porter wrote:
This is why we need to take the third option. Build a better church. Strong enough that weekly participation far outweighs these burdens. That is going to require prophetic leadership unlike any we have seen since the Kirtland days, to misquote the Elder Marlin Jensen statement on 11/11/11 in Logan about the depth of this current apostasy. I pray that they are up to it.:clap: :clap: :clap: SilentDawning wrote:Porter wrote:
This is why we need to take the third option. Build a better church. Strong enough that weekly participation far outweighs these burdens. That is going to require prophetic leadership unlike any we have seen since the Kirtland days, to misquote the Elder Marlin Jensen statement on 11/11/11 in Logan about the depth of this current apostasy. I pray that they are up to it.:clap: :clap: :clap: I agree with this, it is essentually to create an environment where people would want to spend time even if they do not believe in the doctrine (at least initially).
Unfortunately, this seems to be the opposite of our model. People sacrifice and endure much that is uncomfortable for the sake of their gospel convictions. This is turn makes them even more committed.
We see corporations try to reinvent themselves. Sometimes they are successful – many times they are not. I imagine a church reinvention to be more difficult by a factor of 10.
church0333 wrote:Why don’t we just read and discuss them in PH and RS and let the chips lie where they fall.
These would make great Teachings of our Time lesson subjects. I think I’ll suggest that to my Bishop
I don’t disagree these should be discussed in priesthood/RS or SS, but the instructions for TOFT are specific that they need to be conference talks.
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