DiscussMormonism.com

I am in sac meeting and for some reason what is jumping out at me todays is the "one true church" mindset. In the opening prayer the person asked that god help people be "ready" to hear the truth. We are taught that pride and wealth and desire to do evil,among other things, all get in the way of people joining the church. I was thinking that from a very young age, Mormons and other "one true churchers" are taught that there is something "wrong" with the person who cannot see that their church is the one true one. Again, that something may be selfishness, pride, disobedience, or whatever. But it is something "wrong" for certain. No?

Any thoughts or memories regarding how the LDS or another church go about shaping the "one true church" mind? And how that mind views/interacts with the world?

When I read your post one thought jumped out in my mind immediately.

Saturday's Warrior.

I saw the musical in the early 70s in Arizona as a child, and listened to tapes of the soundtrack ad nauseum for literally a couple decades afterwards, at least up until my mission, where it was a staple of my meager supply of "acceptable" music.

Saturday's Warrior, for me personally, brought into full focus just how "lucky" I was to have been born Mormon. "One True Church" goes absolutely without saying in that particular worldview. All the Spirits born into "the Truth" are born Mormon, and everyone else in the whole world, well, they're missionary fodder.

Anyhow, I hear some mopologists and Internet Mormons softpedal the whole "One True Church" concept, and I boggle. Perhaps they are either too old, or too young to have been as impacted by worldviews like that encapsulated in "Saturday's Warrior" the way I was, but for everyone in the church I knew growing up, there wasn't the slightest shadow of a doubt that the LDS church was the one and only true church in the world.