The LDS Church should...

[_zeezrom]

...teach free art classes. They should supply free art tools/materials and rent space in various cities across the world. They should hire professional artists to teach the classes.

"Why the hell should a church waste its money on this when they could instead spend it on feeding the poor in Africa?"

Because I feel this would end up providing needed benefit to the whole world.

[_Tchild]

in my opinion - There is only one "should" that I think would be important to the church, that would be hugely beneficial to itself and to the world.

I think that the church should scrap its proselytizing missions completely and convert wholly over to service missions.

Young LDS men/women would get to gain real life experiences in "the world" as they do now. The LDS mission would still be the rite of passage for young LDS men / womenT. The mission experience would still be the retention tool the church needs and wants for its young members. Best of all, the world would get something that it really needs and wants, and so would the church -- converts.

The church would probably end up with more converts, or at least volunteers to serve with them around the world.

What a good name Mormons could make for themselves serving instead of proselytizing.

[_zeezrom]

in my opinion - There is only one "should" that I think would be important to the church, that would be hugely beneficial to itself and to the world.

I think that the church should scrap its proselytizing missions completely and convert wholly over to service missions.

Young LDS men/women would get to gain real life experiences in "the world" as they do now. The LDS mission would still be the rite of passage for young LDS men / womenT. The mission experience would still be the retention tool the church needs and wants for its young members. Best of all, the world would get something that it really needs and wants, and so would the church -- converts.

The church would probably end up with more converts, or at least volunteers to serve with them around the world.

What a good name Mormons could make for themselves serving instead of proselytizing.

Thanks, Tchild. Like usual, your idea is perfectly practical.

[_Dr. Shades]

...teach free art classes. They should supply free art tools/materials and rent space in various cities across the world. They should hire professional artists to teach the classes. . . I feel this would end up providing needed benefit to the whole world.

What, exactly, would that "needed benefit" be?

[_sock puppet]

... start acting more like a religion, less like a corporation.

[_Quasimodo]

...teach free art classes. They should supply free art tools/materials and rent space in various cities across the world. They should hire professional artists to teach the classes.

"Why the hell should a church waste its money on this when they could instead spend it on feeding the poor in Africa?"

Because I feel this would end up providing needed benefit to the whole world.

I agree with those that say dividing the world into only two groups is foolish and simplistic, but what the hell. The world is made up of two groups. Artists and accountants (bean counters).

Most artists are only vaguely aware of accounting (I can attest to this personally). All accountants are completely unaware of the value of art. It never enters into their calculations.

The leadership of the LDS church is solely comprised of accountants.

[_zeezrom]

...teach free art classes. They should supply free art tools/materials and rent space in various cities across the world. They should hire professional artists to teach the classes. . . I feel this would end up providing needed benefit to the whole world.

What, exactly, would that "needed benefit" be?

Never mind. It wouldn't provide any benefit.

[_Morley]

...teach free art classes. They should supply free art tools/materials and rent space in various cities across the world. They should hire professional artists to teach the classes. . . I feel this would end up providing needed benefit to the whole world.

What, exactly, would that "needed benefit" be?

Never mind. It wouldn't provide any benefit.

Zeezrom, in many ways, on many days, you're my hero.

[_moksha]

I think that the church should scrap its proselytizing missions completely and convert wholly over to service missions.

Acting the gospel message rather than preaching it sounds way radical.

[_Blixa]

...teach free art classes. They should supply free art tools/materials and rent space in various cities across the world. They should hire professional artists to teach the classes. . . I feel this would end up providing needed benefit to the whole world.

What, exactly, would that "needed benefit" be?

Never mind. It wouldn't provide any benefit.

Don't back down from the first philistine comment, zeezrom. Of course it would provide a much needed benefit and that is why the Mormon church originally sponsored art missions.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7053 ... tml?pg=all

https://www.LDS.org/ensign/1988/10/harv ... n?lang=eng

Unfortunately, the program did not expand upon it's foundations and produce a Mormon culture in which literature, music and the visual arts attained the status of need, as man does not live by bread alone. Had the contemporary church retained even a smidgen of investment in the aesthetic, I might have held out longer than I did. My initial impressions of "church" was of something completely devoid of style and design. One could not read in contemporary LDS chapel architecture any sign of human creativity, or choice and judgement. Seemingly made by a factory, they looked like a factories and they functioned as ones: turning out endless church meetings each virtually indistinguishable from the other.

Of course, I was also aware that there existed older chapels and church buildings of fascinating structure and history. But as I was growing up I saw that being destroyed rather than preserved: the destruction of the Coalville Tabernacle serves as a reminder of that will to cultural uniformity.

I think there is currently some recognition of the desirability of preservation and yet the gutting Salt Lake's downtown and replacement by a garish mall is disheartening. As too, is the continued facile designs of current temples (oh Cardston Temple, are you destined to always be an architectural anomaly?).

Well, it's an interesting topic, zeezrom and needs much more exploration than I can give it in a single post. I've been thinking about it a lot recently as I've been immersing myself in what for lack of a better term I guess I call "religiously inflected" fiction. At the moment, Flannery O'Connor, Denis Johnson and Marilynne Robinson. Comparing these writers with Mormon-identified novelists is still quite a painful lesson. Well, again, I don't have the time and space to get very far into this here, but I'm hoping to take this up in an extended piece of writing once I get my head above water this semester and catch up with other obligations.

(of course there are other elements at play that transcend traditional Mormon aesthetic parochialism: American education has pretty much abandoned an art education in the public schools. Many Americans, students and adults, unlike their counterparts worldwide, have little comprehension of "art" in its broadest sense. Visual arts, film, and literature are probably not only non-existent pleasures for broad swaths of the population, but entirely incomprehensible to them as well.)