During January 2015, Mormonthink issued a Response to the “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo” essay, published by the Mormon Church 22 October 2014. As always, the meticulous consideration of each point is well worth reading.
Meanwhile, on 9 January 2015, the Salt Lake Tribune reviewed an article it published last year.
The following are some of the observations derived from editions of the Church Almanac. The entire article is well worth reading. The first observation below firmly establishes and confirms what we have always known. ‘Active’ membership is very low indeed.
- About 30 percent of Mormons worldwide — or 4.5 million — regularly attend church meetings.
- There are at least seven countries or dependencies with member activity rates of 15 percent or less — Chile, Portugal, South Korea, Panama, Hong Kong, Croatia and Palau.
- Tribalism has been a challenge in some areas of the world. In the South Pacific’s Vanuatu, the LDS Church must obtain permission from village chiefs to engage in missionary activity and hold services. Tribal conflicts have resulted, at times, in the church closing member groups and withdrawing missionaries.
- In Spain, assimilating Latin Americans and Spaniards into the same congregations presents the most widespread ethnic integration issue. Some congregations with an overrepresented Latin American presence may run into difficulties baptizing and keeping active a Spaniard minority.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, there have been many instances in which individuals cannot get baptized in some countries because they participate in polygamous marriages per local customs and traditions. These individuals have to divorce polygamous spouses to become Mormons — apparently a rare move. The LDS Church stopped practicing plural marriage more than a century ago.
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Confirmation that people practicing polygamy (once deemed an essential lifestyle in order to enter the Celestial Kingdom), cannot now be baptised, is both strange and ironic – and at the same time somewhat humorous.
Mormonism is a hard sell in the modern world and some of the very young Mormon men and women find two years of highly disciplined missionary work beyond them. Apparently, the percentage returning home early (and therefore ‘without honour’ in the Mormon mindset), “is now into the double-digits, and it turns out the folks in Salt Lake City are already well aware that we have a problem.” This August 2014 ‘Times and Seasons’ article ‘Salt Lahe City, We Have a Problem‘ examines the problem.
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Also during January, the Mormon Church won a court case regarding the use of its formal title. It doesn’t like other organisations using its precious name – but this Canadian polygamous group, which is a Mormon schism, can use an earlier Mormon name: ‘The Church of Jesus Christ‘.
The Church even has a published ‘style guide’ to help people use the Church name ‘properly’.
The Mormon Church is fussy about what we now call it, yet it “…was informally known as the Church of Christ during 1829 and legally instituted with that same name on 6 April 1830, [the day D&C 21:11 was penned “…unto this church of Christ, bearing my name–” Here Jesus confirms the name of the Church as the “church of Christ” which is how it started out]. It became the ‘Church of the Latter Day Saints’ in 1834. Note that it then no longer bore Christ’s name even though Jesus himself had declared that it should. Later it was to change to the ‘Church of Jesus Christ’ and then the ‘Church of God’, once again losing the name of Christ, before the Lord eventually got round to giving a further revelation in 1838, stating that it should be called “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (D&C 115:3). If it had really been the Lord speaking the first time, he would have given that name in the first instance. Had it been the Lord speaking the second time, he would not have contradicted his first revelation. Ergo, it does not take a genius to work out where all five names came from.” (The Mormon Delusion Vol. 5:139-40).
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I am not even going to comment on the Mormon Church’s latest (attempted) assault on common sense and reason in a ridiculous news conference concerning the LGBT community. This NYT article explains just how transparent the Church has become and exposes the real underlying Mormon agenda. Church leaders must be insane if they think the public will be taken in by this. Mormon Church Wants Freedom to Discriminate.
Jim Whitefield 