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Wow wow wow. Gee really exposes his motives when summarizing part II Quote:“If we want to help the youth keep their faith, equipping them with the tools to combat Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is one place to start.”
Unbelievable. …but so believable now i know who the author is.
Shouldn’t churches, especially thr LDS church be training youth to understand these concepts? It reminds me of quote by Ben Franklin, i believe? Something life this. …
Quote:“I want to go to church to become a better man. Not a better Presbyterian. “
Edited: here is the Franklin Quote: “… uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced, their aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than good citizens.”
From Gee…
Quote:” Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is about a few things.
First it “is about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one’s health, and doing one’s best to be successful” (Smith and Denton, Soul Searching)
Second it is “about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents. This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of a sovereign divine, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, . . . etcetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about felling th and Denton, Soul Searching”
“The restored gospel of Jesus Christ is simply not compatible with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
Gee states later that MTDs are parasites that attach themselves to religion, and are unsustainable by themselves.
I just don’t understand the LDS church anymore?
I’m going to bump this to bottom of thread so as to keep discussion on the survey itself. Though i will not apologize or shy away from pointing out the apostasy [emoji6] and hypocrisy of John Gee any time someone provides a link to his work. Obviously, the author of the blog would include my faith in the MTD belief category.
cwald wrote:As a Pantheist, I can relate to number 8. From my associations with self proclaimed spiritual people, it is the biggest factor in leaving religion.
” #8. Self-evident Morality
“They believe . . . religion plays an optional role in morally good living. The single thing in which it specializes–helping people to be good–is actually not needed in order for people to achieve that outcome. Religion thus serves a nonobligatory, noncrucial function in life. It does not have a corner on anything unique. Nobody has to believe in or practice it to live morally. As a result, its status becomes that of a lifestyle accessory. (Smith and Snell, Souls in Transition 83.)”
Icwald, Gee is wrong in the quotes you provided, and every Mormon I know would accept those things he mentioned as compatible with and even an important part of being Mormon. In this case, it’s not the LDS Church you don’t understand; it’s Gee with whom you don’t agree. I also don’t agree with him, and, as I said, I didn’t look closely enough at the blog post originally to see who wrote it. Let’s accept that Gee sees things in a way that we believe is wrong and damaging and focus on the survey itself, okay?
Okay. Already agreed to that and bumped my post on survey item #8. Roy wrote:I do not know John Gee. However, he probably believes 100% in what he is writing…He appears to have taken a study that was only loosely applicable to his target group (LDS youth and young singles). Then through confirmation bias he selects (perhaps unconsciously) the points that reinforce his preconceived notions while ignoring or giving reduced importance to points that detract from his theories…As easy as it is for me to see the holes in Bro. Gee’s logic, I know that I too use confirmation bias…I hope that because I am aware of my bias I may also be able to compensate for it. At least to the point that I realize that people like Bro. Gee may see the world differently but they are not the enemy. It does not need to be us vs. them, nephites vs. lamanites, nor any other manner of -ites. I suspect he is mostly trying to tell himself and others that some of the criticisms on the internet about things like the BoA translation issues are nothing to worry too much about and that business as usual other than maybe a few minor tweaks or increased emphasis on existing points of doctrine is an appropriate response (“The Caravan Moves On”). However, even though I can see where he is coming from to some extent I don’t think this means that he doesn’t deserve to be criticized because this kind of polarizing rhetoric encourages other Church members to have disrespectful attitudes toward less faithful members at a time when there are starting to be more mixed-faith marriages and long-time active members falling away from the Church without warning than in the past.
How was Elder Uchtdorf able to get past some of this? Certainly not by parroting ideas like this and ignoring critics or tearing down straw-man versions of their arguments; at some point he must have paid attention to what some disaffected members were actually saying with at least some empathy. Another problem I see with this attitude that the Church is already more or less on the right track and supposedly doing better than other churches is that it looks like the LDS Church currently needs to do much better at maintaining an unusually high level of commitment and depends more on its followers being married to other Church members and successfully passing these traditions on to future generations than some other churches that are able to attract more individual followers and also have full-time ministers to keep them running so it appears easier for some of them to scale up or down depending on the local demand than it would be for typical LDS wards or branches that cannot operate without a certain number of stalwart Church members.
I actually agree with the basic premise that more Church members leave mostly because they simply did not like the Church because of the WoW, chastity, tithing, general lack of interest, etc. rather than because of doubts and reading uncorrelated information on the internet. However I think what is significant about the members that are leaving largely because of doubts is not so much their total numbers as much as the fact that many of them are the type of members that in the past would have remained active in the Church while serving in callings and paying tithing year after year that cannot be easily replaced with converts or younger members. On top of that the trend of more members waiting longer to get married and having fewer children on average than in the past makes it harder for the Church to overcome some of these losses than it was in past decades regardless of the reasons why members leave. For example, I see grandparents now that are active Church members that are basically the end of the line for the LDS tradition and this is something that would have been much less likely to see 20 years ago.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:However, even though I can see where he is coming from to some extent I don’t think this means that he doesn’t deserve to be criticized because this kind of polarizing rhetoric encourages other Church members to have disrespectful attitudes toward less faithful members at a time when there are starting to be more mixed-faith marriages and long-time active members falling away from the Church without warning than in the past.
I agree, we can provide critical feedback without being adversarial. We are on the same page here.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:I actually agree with the basic premise that more Church members leave mostly because they simply did not like the Church because of the WoW, chastity, tithing, general lack of interest, etc. rather than because of doubts and reading uncorrelated information on the internet. However I think what is significant about the members that are leaving largely because of doubts is not so much their total numbers as much as the fact that many of them are the type of members that in the past would have remained active in the Church while serving in callings and paying tithing year after year that cannot be easily replaced with converts or younger members. On top of that the trend of more members waiting longer to get married and having fewer children on average than in the past makes it harder for the Church to overcome some of these losses than it was in past decades regardless of the reasons why members leave. For example, I see grandparents now that are active Church members that are basically the end of the line for the LDS tradition and this is something that would have been much less likely to see 20 years ago.
I agree with this as well. As the survey suggests, I believe a majority of people that leave a religion leave because it does not fit with how their behavior, lifestyle, and beliefs intertwine. I believe that many of these individuals would likely leave/become less active in their church regardless of what the church does to stop it because the whole church experience is not what these young people are interested in this phase of their lives.
I also agree that Bro. Gee was wrong to infer from this that LDS history skeletons are not a real problem. I agree that with a faith crisis we are likely looking at a smaller percentage of the overall people that leave but that these individuals are significant because they generally had all the ingredients that would have made them great lifelong Mormons. As Marlin Jensen said, “we are losing our best and brightest” in this subgroup of people.
The survey itself provides great information why young people in general are generally not too focused on the church experience in this phase of their lives. For many the issues of where one gets accepted to school, or what profession to choose, or who to marry – seem to matter so much more than denominational specific religious devotion. For good or bad, this is just where we are as an American society.
In regards to these studies, they are misleading and here is why. 1.) 66% of church membership is always inactive due to “non historical reasons” The Church like every other faith in the world loses more than 50% of it membership because most people simply are not that committed. The uncommitted people are what we see statistically but that is not who we are talking about in regards to “leaving in droves” (personally I don’t think it is droves though 1-3 people per ward struggling is a big problem)
2.) many of those we want to statistically find can’t be discovered in statistics of those who leave because they haven’t left. We need to go among the active members if we truly want to find them in the statistics.
3.) we brush the problem aside by showing that the LDS church hangs onto members better than almost any other and perhaps even better than any other. But that side steps the problem. being the best at something doesn’t diminish the possible room for improvement.
I grant that 66% of total church membership is at any given time inactive. Many within mormonism brush off the “losing their faith in droves” by simply referring us back to the 66% and saying “look, they didn’t leave over history”. Of course most of them didn’t. Many of them simply leave for the reasons made note of in the article cited. What we need to do is separate out that group because they have always left their faith and have been doing so for 100 years.
I am not sure it is possible, but we need to find a way to get responses and information from the remaining 34%
Asking all active members
– have you lost faith over historical issues in your church?
– Do you have strong disagreements with your church on social issues to the point it is hurting your faith in said church?
– Do you believe your church is true in the same way you feel it claims to be?
– Have you considered leaving the Church over these kinds of issues?
There will always be 66% (give or take) who leave for non historical reasons in any decade and likely in any church. the question is in the present or next 10 years going forward where there be another 5-10% who either leave over doubt and feelings of betrayal or who stay but do so on their own terms and not the Church’s
My question is what % of the remaining 34% have lost faith, stay for reasons other than testimony, stay in but on their own terms rather than the Church’s, and who are at risk for severing ties with their membership to some extent
DB Mormon + 1 :wave: I will raise my right hand for each of the 4 questions you asked.I do wish there was a survey like this.
DBMormon wrote:In regards to these studies, they are misleading and here is why…
The Church like every other faith in the world loses more than 50% of it membership because most people simply are not that committed. The uncommitted people are what we see statistically but that is not who we are talking aboutin regards to “leaving in droves”…I grant that 66% of total church membership is at any given time inactive. Many within mormonism brush off the “losing their faith in droves” by simply referring us back to the 66% and saying “look, they didn’t leave over history”. Of course most of them didn’t. Many of them simply leave for the reasons made note of in the article cited. What we need to do is separate out that group because they have always left their faith and have been doing so for 100 years…. There will always be 66% (give or take) who leave for non historical reasons in any decade and likely in any church.the question is in the present or next 10 years going forward where there be another 5-10% who either leave over doubt and feelings of betrayal or who stay but do so on their own terms and not the Church’s I don’t know; just because the Church has typically lost large numbers of members for various reasons for a long time that doesn’t necessarily mean that this is simply to be expected and there’s not much they can ever do about it. I have no doubt whatsoever that if the Church had continued to preach polygamy, the racial priesthood ban, or even that birth control is a sin as strongly as they did in the past then the Church would be even smaller and less relevant and influential now in terms of the big picture than it already is. Instead they modified their overall message in tone and emphasis at least, if not content as well, in order to adapt to the time and changing environment where they were quite simply no longer going to be able to get away with that anymore as easily as before.
The way I see it, organized religious groups are basically competing for people’s time and interest and it mostly comes down to what people think is important and worthwhile, enjoyable, etc. or not any why as far as most of these categories of reasons why we see organized religion losing ground to secularism. Up until now various religious groups have been able to compete with the alternatives farily well because many people would readily accept the idea that all this is automatically important simply because God supposedly said so through accepted scriptures, prophets, etc. and because others around them accepted it so they mostly just went along with the group they identified with. But now we are seeing more people that are not as reluctant to say no to this and go their own way as in the past. So what worked alright for religion in general and especially traditional Mormonism 50 or even 20 years ago will not necessarily continue to work anywhere near as effectively now and in the future because it looks like an increasing number of people are simply not going to buy into some of these traditional claims anymore as readily as in the past.
That’s why I think the best possible reaction to the current level of disaffection would be to at least try to morph into a kinder gentler church that would be less of pain and hassle overall so that most Church members would have less to legitimately complain about regardless of whether the major reasons for dissatisfaction have been around for a long time (unrealistically heavy demands, general lack of interest, etc.) or are relatively new (conflicting information on the internet, changing popular opinions, etc.) Instead, many Church leaders act like they couldn’t care less if members are satisfied with their experience or not as if it is entirely their fault if they don’t like it. Take home teaching for example, is feeling like we should be visiting all these people every month really better than visiting them once or twice per year if at all? But the Church continues to aggravate members with accumulated expectations like this often for no other apparent reason than simply because that’s the way we have always done it (in recent memory).
DevilsAdvocate wrote:That’s why I think the best possible reaction to the current level of disaffection would be to at least try to morph into a kinder gentler church that would be less of pain and hassle overall so that most Church members would have less to legitimately complain about regardless of whether the major reasons for dissatisfaction have been around for a long time (unrealistically heavy demands, general lack of interest, etc.) or are relatively new (conflicting information on the internet, changing popular opinions, etc.) Instead, many Church leaders act like they couldn’t care less if members are satisfied with their experience or not as if it is entirely their fault if they don’t like it. Take home teaching for example, is feeling like we should be visiting all these people every month really better than visiting them once or twice per year if at all? But the Church continues to aggravate members with accumulated expectations like this often for no other apparent reason than simply because that’s the way we have always done it (in recent memory).
The belief that church policy and culture are revelations from god and that god is the same yesterday, today, and forever slows change within the institution. The finger naturally points to the individual, we even point the finger at ourselves. If I’m unhappy at church, and the church is “true” there must be something wrong with me.
The question is “Why do they leave?” Perhaps people should ask “Why would they stay?” I’m sure there are ways to get people more engaged without sacrificing moral principles, since I’m sure that’s one of the primary concerns when leaders are confronted with the pressures to make changes to the institution.
The answers to the question “Why do they leave?” can be used to improve an organization, to inspire an organization to make changes. Sometimes it feels like the goal of the question “Why do they leave?” is to figure out what’s wrong with the person that left, more of a way to legitimize someone’s reason for staying. E.g. Oh, well they fell away because they were having premarital sex… I’m still good. I like to flip things so I’m going to turn that into: We drove them away because we have created a culture of shaming people that have premarital sex.
Why do they leave? vs. Why would they stay? To me it points the finger of blame back on ourselves. It’s not about what the other person is doing, it’s about what we’re doing. Lord is it I? not Lord, what’d they do?
One of the funner aspects of the human experience is that everyone wants to belong… but they also want to be unique. I think the scales are severely tipped in one direction in our church culture. It’s not about inviting you to the table, it’s about inviting a very delineated version of you to the table. Come sup with me… after you change into a white shirt.
I think boredom is another factor. People are curious by nature. The early church caught fire because everything was new and fresh, the church was providing thought provoking answers to the tough questions of the day. Organized religions eventually congeal, a finite box is built to attempt to contain the infinite. Questioning becomes discouraged rather than encouraged. People that still have questions will start to look to other sources to sate curiosity. Science is filling that role more and more these days.
Quote:I think the best possible reaction to the current level of disaffection would be to at least try to morph into a kinder gentler church that would be less of pain and hassle overall.
That is happening. It is painfully slow for many people, and it lags in some areas, but it is happening. The Church now is not the church of my youth, in many important ways.
nibbler wrote:…The belief that church policy and culture are revelations from god and that god is the same yesterday, today, and forever slows change within the institution. The finger naturally points to the individual, we even point the finger at ourselves. If I’m unhappy at church, and the church is “true” there must be something wrong with me…
The question is “Why do they leave?” Perhaps people should ask “Why would they stay?” I’m sure there are ways to get people more engaged without sacrificing moral principles, since I’m sure that’s one of the primary concerns when leaders are confronted with the pressures to make changes to the institution… Why do they leave? vs. Why would they stay? To me it points the finger of blame back on ourselves. It’s not about what the other person is doing, it’s about what we’re doing. Lord is it I? not Lord, what’d they do? The interesting thing to me about the question of why people stay in the Church is that it looks like some of the actual reasons are not very flattering for the Church. Beyond the crude carrot-and-stick motivation based on promised future rewards or punishments that could easily never be delivered in reality that are also used by many other religious groups (and various political fascists, communists, etc. as well), it looks like the Church has stumbled onto a number of ways to effectively get people to do things they don’t necessarily feel like doing and probably would not do of their own volition. So just because people continue to show up at church and outwardly go along with what the Church asks for and expects it doesn’t necessarily mean they actually enjoy it and want to be there.
For example, the Church directly asks people to do various things and basically forces them to make a choice whether to be in or out (covenants, full-time missions, temple marriage, the commitment pattern, etc.) and once they have agreed to something and other people expect them to honor their commitments many people are likely to continue to defend that choice rather than change their mind and face the possibility that any sunk costs resulting from the decision were not worth it. This basic technique works just as well for selling used cars and the like as it does for religious traditions according to some psychologists that have studied this.
Possibly the single most common reason people stay in the Church is simply that they are married to another active Mormon so it wouldn’t be very convenient for many of them to admit to themselves and/or others that they don’t believe in the Church anymore much less just walk away because they have to worry about how other people close to them would react in that case. In fact, this is such a strong motivation by itself that we now see Church members that don’t believe in the basic LDS doctrines at all continue to go along with the WoW, church attendance, etc. and in some cases even pay a full 10% tithing and keep their doubts to themselves year after year simply to avoid upsetting their family. Someone could probably write an entire book about different reasons why people stay in the Church (good, bad, and ugly).
I guess the Church uses many different ways to get people to stay simply because it works to some extent and in some cases maybe Church leaders aren’t even consciously aware of it and are simply repeating ideas they inherited from previous generations and it looks like the Church has evolved to rely heavily on some of these reasons to stay at this point. I just don’t see why some of this should be necessary if things really worked the way many Church leaders and members like to think. For example if what they repeatedly say is true then it seems like investigators should theoretically be able to pray to know the gospel is true and join and remain active in the Church even if they are single or their spouse doesn’t want to join just as easily as members raised in the Church or investigators dating or married to a member because living the gospel should supposedly make such a positive difference compared to before but that’s just not anything close to what I see actually happening at this point.
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