200 year fad

[_Maxrep]

"Brother Brown, as you come to know the truthfulness of the principles we've shared with you, WILL YOU obey the law of tithing by giving ten percent of your income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?" Crickets chirp as Brother Brown shows the Elders to the door.........

Why is that a more onerous burden now than it was in the past?

To aswer your question, Economics. With the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer there is a great recession waiting in the green room. In times like this there will be the retraction I wrote about. After the banks make it difficult to borrow money and purse strings get tighter we will collapse and return to a different model. Some of the wheels that turn the prosperity we have enjoyed over the past 20 years will come and any system, rel;igious, political and educational institution will keep bowing to the economic institutions we rely on. For most with a middle of the road income the loss of ten percent (plus interest!) was a bad idea 5 to 10 years ago. Commodities are not as cheap in America as they are in China. And now we are seeing the strains on China as well, as money shifting between american, chinese and other banks in between go back and forth over the Pacific. eventually that income will shift and stay in between China and America (US, Mexico and Canada included). OK, enough Economic daydreaming.

So to conclude, the sillyness of Mormonism is unveiled to the entered initiate. It seems folly to invest money that could be going to a 401k. All the money wasted on my mission when I could have been getting an education. The church will die because selling your soul to a farcical institution for ten percent of your income is insane. I'm serious. its insanity.

What Mercury said, and in this day and age the burden is more transparent. Intelligent people may not see the same correlation as individuals did decades ago with paying money to a certain brand of religion to bring about supernatural blessings.

[_Bond...James Bond]

I doubt it will completely go away in 25 years....but I think it's going to be painfully obvious that the church isn't growing and instead shrinking. But I doubt it will be gone completely.....there are just to many dumb blinded by faith people in this world.

[_Nephi]

I give the church 25 years as a carny philosophy version of a mainstream institution. Romney is going to unleash the first cork. This election is going to spell doom for Salt Lake City. It will be a Mormon Armageddon. This generation is swaying closer to reason. Eventually it will reach a tipping point wherein the decline of the LDS church will be hemorrhaging resignation letters and the rolls of the lost sheep file will fill the missionaries blue pocket calendars.

Mormonism has already lost the battle to the internet. Thank god I got in on the ground floor. Missionary numbers are declining because of reduced rolls, lower births and maturing of the LDS middle class. the great spooky world is outside inviting peace from a life locked in personal discomfort and limitation. Eventually the retraction will hapen and once again all Mormons will be fundamentalist nutjobs with too much power instead of businessmen with too much power.

I'd take that bet. We may shrink someday but we'll survive. Likely the nutjobs will be the survivors. We call them the 'faithful' in the Church though.

If you are taking that bet, does that mean you just left the church? :P j/k, of course...

[_The Nehor]

I give the church 25 years as a carny philosophy version of a mainstream institution. Romney is going to unleash the first cork. This election is going to spell doom for Salt Lake City. It will be a Mormon Armageddon. This generation is swaying closer to reason. Eventually it will reach a tipping point wherein the decline of the LDS church will be hemorrhaging resignation letters and the rolls of the lost sheep file will fill the missionaries blue pocket calendars.

Mormonism has already lost the battle to the internet. Thank god I got in on the ground floor. Missionary numbers are declining because of reduced rolls, lower births and maturing of the LDS middle class. the great spooky world is outside inviting peace from a life locked in personal discomfort and limitation. Eventually the retraction will hapen and once again all Mormons will be fundamentalist nutjobs with too much power instead of businessmen with too much power.

I'd take that bet. We may shrink someday but we'll survive. Likely the nutjobs will be the survivors. We call them the 'faithful' in the Church though.

If you are taking that bet, does that mean you just left the church? :P j/k, of course...

I did actually, Institute was very good tonight.

[_Mercury]

I doubt it will completely go away in 25 years....but I think it's going to be painfully obvious that the church isn't growing and instead shrinking. But I doubt it will be gone completely.....there are just to many dumb blinded by faith people in this world.

Exactly, hence a retreat to a fundamentalist church as they become ever increasingly marginalized.

[_mocnarf]

I doubt it will completely go away in 25 years....but I think it's going to be painfully obvious that the church isn't growing and instead shrinking. But I doubt it will be gone completely.....there are just to many dumb blinded by faith people in this world.

Yes, people, even well educated people believe dumb stuff. I watched a PrimeTime Special that told the story of this preacher in Florida that claims to be Jesus Christ incarnate. He, preaches that there is no sin because he has already forgiven everyone. So, eat, drink and be merry. He has quite the following, several very wealth people have given him multi-million dollar donations.... Go figure....

[_Runtu]

The idea that the church will noticeably shrink in the near term is, I believe, wishful thinking. True, the days of convert growth in the developed world are over. As beastie mentioned, the peak came in the 1980s-early 1990s. But you have a core of members who are heavily invested in the church, its teachings, and its practices. They are raising children who are also heavily invested. The only way the church is going to lose this core is to make itself irrelevant to the lives of these members. Granted, the leadership is doing a pretty good job of alienating people, but the social investment and the indoctrination are powerful tools that will keep a lot of the core in the church. On the flip side, that degree of investment makes it that much more painful for those of us who find out what the church really is.

The trick for the leadership is to maintain the degree of investment and control the flow of damaging information. Judging by what I see every day here in Provo, the church is not going to go away anytime soon.

[_Mercury]

The trick for the leadership is to maintain the degree of investment and control the flow of damaging information. Judging by what I see every day here in Provo, the church is not going to go away anytime soon.

The driving force is the ease of both communication and availability of information of any type. How long did it take the printing press (and subsequent literacy) to redefine the established authorities and norms? THis redefinition were now in will take much less time to shuffle things a bit. Its going to be a rough decade 30 years from now.

Above all else I wonder if we are on the cusp of a renaissance in fundamentalism, with Mormonism playing a minor part in the bigger implosion of the far right.

[_Jason Bourne]

Dream on dude.

I give the church 25 years as a carny philosophy version of a mainstream institution.

In 25 years we can talk. I bet you are so far off on this.

Romney is going to unleash the first cork. This election is going to spell doom for Salt Lake City. It will be a Mormon Armageddon.

First I doubt Romney will win, he might but I doubt it. But you and all the others that are drooling that this will somehow expose all the "embarrassing" things LDS are just in lah lah land and are irrational about this due to your distorted antagonistic projections. Most people just don't really care about the things Mitt believes. And as I have noted, the only reason Protestant believers that are president are not paraded around about their odd beliefs is because they have been around longer. It is going to be a non issue.

This generation is swaying closer to reason. Eventually it will reach a tipping point wherein the decline of the LDS church will be hemorrhaging resignation letters and the rolls of the lost sheep file will fill the missionaries blue pocket calendars.

I know this fantasy excites you but like I said dream on dude.

Mormonism has already lost the battle to the internet. Thank god I got in on the ground floor. Missionary numbers are declining because of reduced rolls,

Missionary numbers over 55,000 are the envy of every other religion. The reason they dropped below 60,000 is because of the Raise the Bar deal that the Church put into place. There is a direct correlation.

lower births and maturing of the LDS middle class.

Lower births my reduce the missionary force over time.

[_Jason Bourne]

If the church grows, it is the "rough stone rolling."

If it stops growing, it is just separating the "chaff from the wheat!"

;-)

My guess is that it will take longer than twenty-five years... more like a hundred or so.

If I recall correctly, seems the rise and fall of countries, organizations, and possibly religions is roughly a bell curve. I think the LDS church hit its peak about ten or fifteen years ago.


~dancer~

The Church still nets almost a million members every three years. That is growth.