There are definitely some LDS that fall into the trap of taking offense when someone leaves the religion and then don't treat that person well. They take it as a personal slight that someone else is claiming their religion is wrong. Either by actions or in words.
But I have also noticed that many ex-mormons are like vegans. They want to tell everyone about it and preach to everyone else that is still "eating meat". There are also quite a few that are extra sensitive and seem to try to make themselves feel better by bashing their ex-religion and those that are still adherents.
They got caught the first time and it was minorly bad PR. They haven't been caught since.
Note this is what the central organization does, of which most of the congregants are naive or deliberately uninformed. When I taught missionaries how to be Mormon missionaries several decades ago, "BRT" was part of the sales principles--build a relationship of trust. Why? To get people to buy what you're selling. This is also taught to congregants not actively serving missions, though not as deeply. Consider the calls of "Every member a missionary" (McKay, 1960s), "Lengthen your stride" (Kimball, 1980s), "Hasten the work" (Bednar, 2010s) where membership is exhorted to use sales practices on their neighbors.
It's not ascribing bad motives or pretending to know what motivated people, it's having grown up in it and now seeing it outside the organization, objectively and after years of therapy and deprogramming.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150219201604/http://www.bonnev...
[1] http://johnlarsen.org/podcast/Archive/MormonExpression250.mp...
I was taught about building a relationship because it is more than just an attempt to 'convert' someone—what things in life do you _not_ build a relationship of trust with others? You need to have empathy, understand them, to be able to help (if so desired), etc. I met with people who in the end, after understanding them and their situation, we simply helped out in other ways (more material) ones.
We weren't trying to sell things or increase numbers, but genuinely trying to help others. I had people who say they didn't care about the church, but because they trusted us, we helped them in other ways (finding work, overcoming alcohol addiction, etc).
Were there others who just wanted to convert/baptise a million people? Yup, but they're missing the point.
If you're willing to not suspect the worst, sometimes you can appreciate somebody like the person described in these posts and admire their goodness and the general goodness of everyone.
I could BRT with my work team, not just so they will all switch to my favorite PL. I could BRT with my neighbor so they might feed my goldfish while I'm on vacation. And I could mow their lawn when they're in the hospital. Not just so they'll will me their house.
I can BRT a person with the specific intent to get them to check their weight gains because they look unhealthy. That would entail a lot of judging on my part, and a lot of people would take some exception to that. But as the relationship builds, they might understand that I've seen diabetes close up and I don't want that for them. They can frankly tell me that it's none of my business and they don't fear diabetes. I could switch and warn them about heart disease. Again, none of my business and they don't care. If I keep nagging, I could destroy the relationship. That's the opposite of BRT. Let's call it BFRT, building fake relationships of trust.
Some people BFRT. Some people BGRT (build genuine relationships of trust). I'd like to believe that most Tesla fans don't BFRT with their Chevy-loving friends just so Elon can get richer. I'd like to believe that most Rust advocates don't BFRT with their C++ co-workers just to inspire a PL coup. I'd like to believe that my neighbor isn't being nice to my goldfish just to convert me to Catholicism.
Of course my Tesla friend would love me to buy a Tesla. Of course my Rust friend would like me to at least dabble. I don't see why members of a particular religion would be any different.
Now imagine that you were bad-mouthing your high school around fellow graduates. What if some of them offered to buy you a beer just to shut you up and maybe get you to lighten up. Are they BFRT? Maybe. But take the beer and say thanks. Depending on how ex-Mormon you are, that would be root beer, of course.
- People baptized and confirmed
- People with a baptismal date
- People who attend sacrament meeting
- New people being taught
Some missions track hours of community service, but typically to ensure they are kept under a cap, not maximized.
These are sales funnel goals given to missionaries. This unfortunately discredits your point that lots and lots of other people have different goals -- organizations track those things they care about. And the Mormon church wants to continue growing membership, as that was seen as successful during the formative years of her oligarchy.
As an employee (I suppose technically a volunteer employee) you can have any motivation for showing up you like. But that doesn't mean you have any say whatsoever in what your managers and leadership want to accomplish. And the goals your holding to a pedestal are certainly noble, but not aligned with what each of these young volunteer salespeople are being encouraged to accomplish.
I believe you have conflated BRT with normal friendship and friendliness, which is not what BRT was used for. BRT (no longer specifically called that) was step one in a commitment pattern to grow membership in the Mormon church. There is a big difference in the two, which is where I contend you're conflating -- friendliness isn't something used to sell people a lifestyle group, but BRT is.
[0] https://www.ldsdaily.com/church-lds/major-changes-to-preach-...
But that is not the only purpose in having such a program filled with (let's be honest) kids. Do they learn self-discipline? How to manage their time? How to socialize with people? How to study their own religion? How to empathize with others? How to speak multiple languages? How to lead peer groups? What their religion actually believes and if and how it makes any sense? How to manage their money? How important their parents have been in their lives?
Are these things learned just for the next year or two? Or do these missionaries go back to regular life with amazing skills that they can use to be better employees, co-workers, parents, teachers, and citizens? Is BRT just to trap people into the religion? Or is it an important life practice?
If it's just a sales technique, too bad. As a life practice, it's incredibly enriching.
>> I believe you have conflated BRT with normal friendship and friendliness, which is not what BRT was used for.
I find your defense of the institutional practice to be deliberately obtuse because it focuses on the rose-colored glass elements while ignoring the negatives in an attempt to gloss over the commercialism, colonialism, and other troubling aspects of Mormon corporate policy. I'll not comment further on the matter. Thank you for engaging.
A large portion of my Mormon friends fall on the spectrum of belief that would range from "less devout" to "completely lapsed", and none of them have had issues with the church as an organization or with individuals. But as such they don't really care or look for communities of disaffected ex-mormons for support, so their perspectives aren't heard.
And then I'm just in the corner as an atheist who has an anthropological fascination with LDS history and culture.
I grew up in an area of the country without many Mormons, and was perhaps one of a dozen Mormon kids in a high school of well over a thousand students. I wouldn't say I was ever bullied over my religion in the traditional sense, I found it to be a pretty consistent source of discomfort and a feeling of being an "other". Often it could be innocuous (and often very fruitful) classroom discussions about Mormonism after the subject would come in class and the teacher would discover I was Mormon, and therefore became the focus of the discussion. Other times it would come in the form of other students asking me if I wore funny underwear or if my dad had lots of wives, and usually wasn't hostile in nature but made me feel pretty ostracized or defensive. And unfortunately I would get someone assuring me their pastor said I was going to hell, or accusing me of being in a cult, or offended that I could possibly be a Mormon when Joseph Smith/Brigham Young/Some other church figure said/did X without realizing that being Mormon for many people is as much a part of their cultural makeup and heritage as it is their religious belief, nor did I, an individual Mormon, of high school age, completely understand my own personal views, let alone be able to answer for everything ever uttered in the realm of Mormonism (which still is the case, now that I'm older). I found I bonded quite a bit with the handful of Muslim, Jewish, and Atheist kids as they were also in the minority and felt on the outs at times in my school.
It probably also has to do with the 2 year missions many Mormons serve. It's a very unique and strange experience that opens your eyes to the world in a way that is hard to do otherwise. Because its missionary work people may assume the opposite, but for me, serving as a Mormon missionary in Japan made me realize how much I didn't know about people and the world, and the depth and breadth of human culture and individuality. It made me re-contextualize my beliefs and consider what I truly believed and what I had only been telling myself I believed. I think this is in part the reason why there are a decent number of Mormons who serve missions for two years and then eventually move away from the church. But for those who don't it provides an opportunity to learn about and get to know other spiritual and cultural perspectives that is hard to match.
At least for members of the church living in Utah, many (no not all!) have some pioneer heritage. We frequently remind ourselves that persecution is a terrible thing and that we must be tolerant and respectful of other’s beliefs.
But yes, there is the stereotype of a humble/reserved successful Mormon businessman. (E.g. I'd put Mitt Romney in that category too)
For example, they had massive problems fully accepting blacks until the seventies, which was long after most mainstream religions got over their issues. But most mainstream religions (at least the protestand ones) had all kinds of trouble themselves in the forties.
The LDS church isn't unique in its problems, it's just decades behind.
For example, we Americans stereotype Catholicism as reflecting some European immigrant communities like Irish, Italians, Polish... But it's always been ok for an African American to be a Catholic. Probably in prior eras especially some of those communities of white Europeans would not have been terribly welcoming to such a person to say the least. But you couldn't say the international organization with HQ in Rome was against them being members. Or maybe I am wrong.
I suspect this is why, even though there was much by way of explicit prohibition of races in many churches throughout the US, most churches seemed to have ended up segregated anyways.
But if you're comparing it to churches that have been around only 10, 30, or 50 years, sure.
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It used to be that the LDS Church was "too" pro-black by society's standards.
That was a large reason for Missouri's infamous Mormon "Extermination Order":
> We believed them deluded fanatics, or weak and designing knaves, and that they and their pretensions would soon pass away; but in this we were deceived...In a late number of the Star [the Mormon newspaper], published in Independence by the leaders of the sect, there is an article inviting free Negroes and mulattoes from other states to become "Mormons," and remove and settle among us. This exhibits them in still more odious colors...the introduction of such a caste among us would corrupt our blacks, and instigate them to bloodshed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Executive_Order_44
Yes somehow, very few discussions of Missouri immediately turn to its history of racism.
It's actually a fascinating story. Mormons largely supported suffrage, but had to fight the federal government tooth and nail to get it.
In 1869, Utah was under territorial rule, and the federally-appointed government was determined to limit the influence of the LDS Church and end polygamy. The legislature even passed female suffrage during their efforts to rid polygamy from the state.
But it had exactly the opposite effect; most woman voted in favor of allowing polygamy. Thereafter, some national supporters of women's rights actually became opposed to women's suffrage in Utah because of it was being used to support polygamy. (Enfranchisement all fine and well until someone disagrees with you.)
In 1887, Congress redoubled its efforts to end polygamy, and revoked the ability of woman to vote that the legislature had granted earlier.
The LDS Church supported the creation of the Utah Women's Suffrage Organization, to try and restore the right to vote. A Utah Territory judge sided with the women's movement, but the Supreme Court rejected it, citing Congress' law.
Not until the Church renounced polygamy, Utah obtained statehood, and the women's right to vote was included in the state constitution, were Utahns able to undo the Congress' targeted repeal of suffrage.
Utah women then helped secure the Nineteenth Amendment[1].
[1] https://www.utahwomenshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02... (The man in the picture was Senator Reed Smoot, who was also an Apostle in the LDS Church.)
AFAIU, in the LDS Church all men are ordained priests. So whatever their stance regarding African-Americans in the social and political sphere, institutionally the church was very unique, even in the modern era. And that was the original point.
Contrast that with the Catholic Church at least formally having no trouble ordaining LGBT people[1], notwithstanding the male-female clerical role dichotomy[2], but does institutionally (and doctrinally) oppose many forms of practiced sexuality. (Notably, all clerics and monastics are celibate in Roman Catholicism, which they often used as a rhetorical shield.) This distinction matters because doctrinally Catholicism distinguishes behaviors from "what you are", and with the exception of male-female sex roles there has never been any classification system that treated people differently based on their inherent characteristics. This is true more generally in Christianity, although various denominations, especially in the South during the American slave period, flirted with such theological distinctions. Again, the LDS Church stood out from a theological perspective.
Churches are more than doctrine, of course. They're communities. And some communities deviate from the letter and spirit of their doctrine more than others. The more authoritarian (top-down) the church, the less likely such deviations occur, at least facially. Again the LDS Church stood out for a governance structured similarly to the Catholic Church, but with a racial system that resembled that taken up by niche, Protestant sects of the period.
Anyhow, things aren't the same today. And without trying to sound cynical, religions have wonderful ways of carefully papering over past sins and moving on. Ways that the secular world would do well to better appreciate and even, on occasion, mimic. This history of the LDS Church doesn't need to be denied or excused because the church has its own theological devices for setting things straight without prejudicing objective facts. The LDS Church seems a very beautiful religion with many devoted members who deserve respect and admiration.
[1] Indeed, likely for the entire period of the modern distinction of homosexuality the Catholic Church knowingly accepted gay men and women into religious orders. This has been used by conservatives, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, who conflate homosexuality with sexual perversion, to argue such knowing ordinations as being causative of child molestation. And, FWIW, seemingly by some liberals whose arguments effectively seem to say that that a celibate priesthood inviting homosexuals had the effect of providing an enticing shelter to pedophiles, because of the supposed of dynamics of sexual repression. It's a weird argument and just goes to show that the line which we use to label and distinguish conservative and liberal seems to wrap around at the edges.
[2] Technically, many if not most Catholic clerics are careful to avoid arguing that women could never become priests or that being female is incompatible with the role of a priest. Certainly most Vatican leaders are careful to walk this line. Women are barred as a matter of church law, justified by tradition, but there's no fundamental theological basis for it except that as a general rule deviations from tradition (e.g. the Apostles all being male) require strong positive justification. A failure to deviate isn't an affirmation or disaffirmation of anything. It's an exceedingly tenuous position, especially in the modern era, but it's worth pointing out. And if you listen to Catholic officials make their arguments, especially in prepared statements, you can see these distinctions very clearly.
A. Celibate clergy.
B. Official policy of no homosexual priests (despite the fact they are celibate anyway) [1]
C. All-male clergy, and the excommunication of any violators [2]
D. Complete ban on contraceptives
E. Political and moral opposition to same-sex marriage
The Catholic Church's stances on sexuality go far past those of the LDS Church.
I will grant that the Catholic Church is more racially diverse; it's one of the consequences of its vast colonial legacy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_Concerning_the_Cri...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordination_of_women_and_the_Ca...
A: Celibacy as a nominal choice is part of the emerging asexual ‘sexual norm’ found mostly in Asia but spreading to the west.
B: This point is usually a confusion of terms. Men who are attracted to men but are celibate are currently priests in many parts of the world.
C: True
D: The Catholic Church has no power to ban anything.
E: Also a confusion of terms between secular and religious groups. It’s analogous to arguing about whether everyone can physically become pregnant, because the religious definition of what they call ‘holy matrimony’ involves more than just feelings.
1/5 objective truth points :)
> As many as 87% of Christian churches in the United States are completely made up of only White or African-American parishioners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_of_churches...
LGBT acceptance will be a much, much tougher slog for them, given the central and critical importance that eternal families play in its doctrine and view of spiritual progression.
Although the intolerance often manifests itself as the kind of fake niceness found in movies when an old lady character needs to belittle someone with a sweet smile or calmly shut them out of polite society, not the fire breathing intolerance that wants to wage holy war.
Members in Utah are different to members outside of Utah, haha.
That said, the Salt Lake Valley is now under 50% LDS- the previous Mayor is Lesbian and its pretty progressive generally.
See also: echo chambers, which are probably a societal plague more than anything.
I have no opinion on whether Mormons are racist, sexist, or tolerant of different beliefs. My limited experience with them suggests that they're easy-going and work hard, that's about all I've got.
You live in Boise. So...
I know many black Mormons, but only in places with a significant black population.
FWIW, Utah had a black LDS Congresswomen for the past several years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mia_Love
The LDS Church is headquarted in Utah, and the whole state is literally 1% black.
I'm a Mormon and grew up in Florida, and the LDS Church had a typical blend for a "mostly white church." (Realize that virtually every church has a clear racial majority of some kind.)
Boisean myself, it’s not exactly like we have much diversity here to begin with - on any given day it feels I’m as likely to spot a non-Caucasian individual as I am a unicorn.
That said, I’ve known plenty of LDS members over my life, and just like any religious group you can see ones that are actually tolerant of other beliefs and ones that put on a mask and speak differently behind your back. Then there’s the ones that would speak poorly directly to your face.
Imagine joining and/or believing in a church that said "because you are black, you can't go to our glorious temples that we talk so much about. And you can't go to the highest form of heaven because you are black."
This is literally the way it was (not exaggerating whatsoever). Luckily the NCAAP started to attack the church since they were one of the most blatantly open racist institutions going into the 1980s. The leadership of the church realized they wouldn't win this fight and changed the rules.