Salt Lake City: Not very Bible Minded!

[_zeezrom]

Stak,

I'm riding the assumption that two boyfriends are better than one. While we enjoy the benefits of more fun dates, we also have the struggle to make one the star of our life at the expense of the other.

Why else would the church continually emphasize the whole 2nd witness and complement to the Bible bit? They are afraid of making a star.

I was taught that the Book of Mormon was pure and the Bible was contaminated. That said, I was smart enough to see the Bible as a very important script.

[_EAllusion]

I echo Gad''s thoughts. It's difficult to make anything of this until we see what questions were asked to determine "Bible-Mindedness." It's Barna, so the actual survey sampling probably was done with scientific rigor, but the survey questions themselves could easily load in "born-again" phrasing and ideas about the Bible. I strongly suspect there's a question that leads one to think of Biblical inerrancy that Mormons might bristle at.

[_sunstoned]

It's no surprise. Salt Lake City is very left wing which means a significant percentage of Mormons there are apostates.

What is your definition of "left wing". I don't thing that you can paint people with such a broad brush.

[_KevinSim]

It's no surprise. Salt Lake City is very left wing which means a significant percentage of Mormons there are apostates.

That settles it; I need to move to Salt Lake City. Droopy says I can't get my copy of the script I need to use in High Priests Group unless I turn in my required list of local apostates. If I move to Salt Lake there'll be lots of local apostates I can rat out, and then I can get my script.

Of course I'm not all that right wing myself. I consider myself a moderate, though people have called me a "flaming" liberal. Does that mean to get the script I have to rat out myself?

[_MsJack]

In a similar vein to what Gad and EA said, I think this probably has to do with Mormonism's lack of belief in the inerrancy of / infallibility of the Bible. My experience has been that, when push comes to shove, Mormons tend to treat what the Bible says as expendable if it makes them uncomfortable or they cannot reconcile what it says with current LDS teaching. In my Bible-bashing days at BYU, I can't tell you how many times I'd corner a Mormon with something in the Bible that they couldn't explain only to have them reply, "Well, our doctrine is that we believe in the Bible in so far as it's correctly translated." Translation: "I can't reconcile what you've just shown me with my beliefs, so the Bible must be wrong."

Just look at this comment that was left on my blog today (in response to a post satirically pointing out that the account of Zelophehad's daughters in the Old Testament contradicts what Elaine S. Dalton was teaching about women not lobbying on their own behalf within Mormonism):

Using the scriptures only to attempt to prove a point is a bad idea. Do you know how many messed up things are in the Bible? I mean, for example, what is Psalm 137:9 all about (“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock.” (ASV))

That’s messed up!

Mormons believe in modern revelation and interpretation of scripture.

Does that sound like a "Bible-minded" person?

If you got a comment like that from a Roman Catholic or Protestant, it would probably be a fairly liberal-minded one. But you can get comments like this from Mormons who are very politically, socially, and religiously conservative on the LDS spectrum of things. A high view of the Bible just isn't a standard part of Mormonism, and even very conservative Mormons feel free to disregard it at will.

All that said, I doubt most Mormons care about not being "Bible-minded" in this regard. What their leaders are currently teaching is their rule of faith, not the Bible.

[_Tchild]

When you have Mormonism, the Book of Mormon trumps the Bible. What concept or teaching does the Bible have that the Book of Mormon didn't borrow and improve upon?

I read the Book of Mormon a dozen times, cover to cover. The Bible? Never, not once. The most useful parts of the Bible were incorporated into the Book of Mormon...with footnotes and all.

[_ldsfaqs]

Salt Lake City: Not very Bible Minded!

Not surprising because Salt Lake City is only about 20% LDS and likely less who are actually active.
It's a city full of ex-mormons, anti's, atheists, etc.

How did Provo rank? Then you'll have a useful stat.

[_EAllusion]

The Mormon belief that the Bible is inerrant only insofar as it has been translated and passed down accurately is identical to the prevailing view among Bible inerrantists. Verbal plenary inerrancy of, say, the KJV is a fundies' fundie position that most inerrantists reject. When LDS apologists contrast themselves with evangelicals for not believing in inerrancy, I chuckle because their views on it usually are the same basic position.

There is a real difference here is in how both cultures approach the same basic theological position. LDS traditionally are very willing to chalk up disagreements or potential inconsistencies they see with the Bible to translation corruption and lost truth. This flows directly from the tradition of seeing their modern relevations as directly revealed from God and thus free from this problem of ancient handing down of texts. Evangelicals, on the other hand, as a group tend to be extremely skeptical of errors and will require a massive, if not impossible, burden of proof to challenge any specific text as anything but the inerrant word of God.

Humorously, more sophisticated Book of Mormon apologetics relies quite specifically on there being translational errors and problems in direct contradiction to the tradition of seeing the Bible as corrupted by this problem but the Book of Mormon not because of the immediacy of the divine revelation. The "as far as it has been translated accurately" caveat only gets applied to the Bible in the 8th article of faith for a reason.

[_MsJack]

Not surprising because Salt Lake City is only about 20% LDS and likely less who are actually active.

Within the city limits of Salt Lake City, Utah's capital, the population is about 55 percent non-Mormon. However, the city limits circumscribe a very small part of the county of which Salt Lake City is the county seat. In the suburbs surrounding the city, the population is overwhelmingly Mormon.

As Stak would say, "SAUCE." (Yeah, it's cooler than he says it.)

On top of that, what % of the cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington DC do you think are Christians of some sort? And what % within that subset are active, practicing Christians? As someone who spent the second half of her childhood in the Puget Sound, I'm pretty sure there's a greater % of practicing Mormons in Salt Lake City than there are practicing Christians in Seattle.

While I agree that Provo would be a better gauge for the pulse of Mormonism, SLC hasn't ranked as "poorly" as it did because of atheists and ex-Mormons within its limits.

[_honorentheos]

This from the link is interesting in it's own right:

How do you get the data?

Every year, we interview thousands of people nationwide through random, representative polling. For these reports, we used our most recent interviews and sliced them into the various cities (or markets) and states in which respondents live. This database is made up of more than 42,000 interviews. With this information, we can create a substantial faith profile of 96 markets and 48 states.

Who are these reports designed for?

The complete, comprehensive Cities and States reports are crafted for organizational leaders who have responsibility for a national audience or constituency. Leaders in media, ministry, marketing, television, magazines, publishing, non-profit, and advocacy have used these reports and have found them to be extremely useful. We have been thrilled to hear their responses. Here’s one example, from Lisa Pang of World Vision:
“World Vision has used Barna’s Cities and States reports in several of our strategic initiatives when we needed to understand and pick the best markets for fundraising or building awareness. The theolographic® attributes are extremely helpful and are probably the best available in the country. Those attributes provide a great picture for us as we try to ascertain the religious segments in each of the markets. These reports are user friendly and very thorough—a cost effective way of getting helpful faith-related information very quickly.”

Hope someone told them SLC already has a Jesus mall.