In Sterling Heights Ward Sunday School class today there was no mention at all of the 1978 Revelation on the priesthood. To me this was a major problem, considering this is what the first half of the lesson was about. I was also one of only three people present in the class who was born after the 1978 revelation. Most people in the class are old enough that they were adults at the time of the revelation.
In some ways I am glad that the topic was not brought up, I am not sure I was ready to hear false theories put forth. I did on the sides share the Race and the Pruiesthood Essay with a class member who was barely born at the time of the 1978 revelation. He had not read it, and had not realized that ordinations of men of African descent from 1830-1852 were fullly approved. Nor had he realized that Brigham Young had praised Q. Walker Lewis. More needs to be done to encourage people to read the gospel topics essays.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Each member needs to take responsibility for outreach
I have read people complaining of the need for church leadership to organize linguistic specific outreach in some areas. My response is that each member has the responsibility to do this. If Russell M. Nelson as a 50-plus year-old could undertake to learn Chinese we all can do something to advance the work.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
The evolution of missionaries in the 20th-century
At the dawn of the the 20th-century the missionary force was still largely composed of married men who left behind their families, normally containing young children, and traveled far from their homes to serve as missionaries.
This was the case with Joseph Fielding Smith, or as he was then often known Joseph F. Smith, Jr., who left behind his wife who had just had a miscarriage to go serve as a missionary in the United Kingdom. This was the case with Goege D. Benson, Jr, when he left behind his wife and children in about 1909 to go serve a mission in the United Kingdom. Brother Benson's oldest son was a boy they called T, who would later be known as Ezra Taft Benson.
The modern model of young, single missionaries serving before their marriage had began. On the first day of the 20th century the first marriage ceremony performed in the Salt Lake Temple was the marriage of David O. McKay and Emma Ray Riggs. Brother McKay was a graduate of the University of Utah, who had a few years before served a mission in the United Kingdom (mainly in Scotland).
Joseph F. Smith, Jr's cousin George Albert Smith represented all these trends in his missionary experience in the 1890s. First he had been called as a mutual improvement association missionary. He was sent from his home in Salt Lake City (where he went after completing high school at Brigham Young Academy, although as a child in school he had often put Lucy Woodruff's pig tails in the ink well in their Salt Lake City school.) to southern Utah where he served as a mutual improvement association missionary. At the dawn of the 20th-century Francis M. Lyman was serving as president of the British Mission. None of his wives had accompanied him on this assignment. Before the 20th-centuries first year (1901) was out, Heber J. Grant would open the Japanese mission. He was accompanied on this assignment by one of his two living wives (he had had three at once at one point, but his first wife, Lucy Stringham Grant, whose father was the man for whom Bryan S. Hinckley was named, had died a few years before, not long after the birth of their only son, they had a few daughters, who also died. Elder Grant traveled with his daughters throughout the US to get their minds off their mother dying, and one of his daughters fell ill and nearly died, but was saved by a blessing from George Q. Cannon in which he revoked the power of Satan and his having claimed the life of this child.
Geogre Albert Smith receieved the call to be a Mutual Improvement Association missionary on Sep. 7, 1891. In this capacity he traveled with a friend of his who was a grandson of Brigham Young, thus repeating their grandfather's being co-members of the first presidency. The were called by the first presidency and sent to Juab, Millard, Beaver and Iron counties to build up the mutual programs in those counties. Elder Smith was 21 at the time.
Elder Smith would after a few months return to Salt Lake City, where he married Lucy Woodruff, a daughter of Wilford Woodruff Jr and thus a granddaughter of Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe. Wilford and Phoebe had a daughter Phoebe who was one of the wives of Lorenzo Snow. So Phoebe Woodruff is probably the only woman to have been both mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law of presidents of the Church, sort of a slight difference from Mary Fielding Smith who was the only woman to be both a mother and a grandmother of president of the Church.
George Albert and Lucy were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 25, 1892. On June 23, 1892 George Albert left on a mission to the southern states, which he would mainly spend as the secretary to President J. Golden Kimball. The position of secretary was not like is found in most modern missions. President Kimball did not have counselors. Elder Smith was thus a cross between a one man pair of assistants to the president, a one man set of counelors to the president, and did many of the things missions secretaries, in modern missions often multiple men and women, do. Do make things more interesting, there were no stakes in the south (actually I think none outside of Arizona, Utah and Idaho, southern Alberta might have just gotten a stake, but even much of the inter-mountain west lacked stakes, Boise would not see a stake until about 1912. That is also the year Nevada got its first stake, although some areas had been part of the St. George Stake before then.)
So with no stakes, the Southern States Mission oversaw all the operations of the Church in the area it covered, which was Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and maybe Kentcky and Ohio. I am not sure how much of Virginia was in the mission.
After being in the mission from June to Novemeber, Lucy W. Smith came and joined her husband, and stayed with him for the remaining year and a half of his mission.
As the 20th-century progressed thins were beginning to change. When LeGrand Richards went out as a missionary in 1905 at age 19, he was ot yet married. Yet David M. Kennedy in the 1920s left on a mission the day after his married, leaving his wife behind. Hugh Nibley's father served as a mission pesident in the Netherlands as a young, unmarried missionary. Yet he was succeeded by 27-year-old LeGrand Richards, who was now a married man.
With the disruption caused by the World Wars, the Church started to move away a little from the model of relying on American missionaries.
Especially during and right after World War II, Germany saw many local missionaries, and due to migration controls, they became a key part of missionary efforts in places like Tonga by mid-century. In the 1930s LeGrand Richards was one of a large number of married men, mostly former missionaries, sent on short term missions. He had also been called to go to California to serve as a stake president, although this was a slightly different case because he remained gainfully employed.
By 1952 and the close of the Korean War the Church pretty much ceased to send out married men as missionaries unaccompanied by their wives. I am much less sure about the rise of the senior couple missionarires.
I know such missionaries existed by the late 1970s. I have little if any evidence clearly placing their emergence in earlier times.
During the 1950s while David O. McKay was president of the Church, it became standard to call counselors to mission presidents. While Mission presidents served full time and came from elsewhere, their counselors were most often local men called from the area. Local in the sense that they lived there, some were from that area, and some had moved there for work, but they were resident there as opposed to called from elsewhere.
More so than in other cases, these counselors were like Aaron and Hur, able to hold up arms about to drop. They tended to know the area much better than the mission president.
During the first decade of the 20th-century the standard term was "lady missionaries". I think this was still the common term when my grandmother served in the 1940s. I have not found a definitive time of the switch to "sister missionary" as the term, but guess it was never intentional and always gradual.
Ezra Taft Benson is to date the only president of the term whose wife served as a missionary prior to marriage. On the other hand for about half of his mission Sister Flora Amussen had her mother as her companion. Ezra Taft Benson was the first president of the church to hold a master's degree, and the first to have done work on a Ph.D. He is also the one who was most clearly notable for work done outside of being a general authority. He like President Smith was a young unmarried missionary (in Britian with David O. McKay as his mission president), a married missionary leaving behind his wife (in Europe as President of the European Mission just after World War II), and a married mission president with his wife along with him (in this case in the Germany based European Mission, with a house in Frankfurt, that they shared one Christmas at with the Hinckley family.)
To be fair, in both his assignments as mission president, Elder Benson was closer to an area president than a mission president. He was both times a member of the Quorum of the 12, both times he presided over all missions in Europe, not any specific mission. The first was in the days just after World War II. The second was in the mid-1960s when the long standing US military agreements with countries such as Italy and placment of US servicemen there were bearing fruit in the dedication of the land for the preaching of the gospel. On August 2, 1966 Elder Benson oversaw the reestablishment of the Italian Mission.
Starting in the 1970s two other trends emerge. The Church begins to centralize missionary calls and training. More and more missionaries are called through the formal channels of Salt Lake City, and the local missionary begins to become a thing of the past. Mini-missions, stake missionaries and some other such assignments fill in the force, but formal mission calls come from Salt Lake City.
While missionary training had been centralized in Salt Lake City at the mission home beginning in 1925, this was a one week course, and only applied to centrally called and not mission called missionaries. In the 1960s visa problems lead to a formal language training curriculum. The Language Traning Mission begins at BYU, and later spreads to Ricks (now BYU-Idaho) and the Church College of Hawaii (now BYU-Hawaii).
In 1976 the whole operation is recentralized, both mission home and LTMs, as the MTC in Provo, Utah. In 1977 however a missionary training center was opened in Brazil. Over the years more MTCs outside the US opened, they trained missionaries from those areas of the World, and generally had no language training, just missionary gospel teaching training.
Things begin to change again in the 1990s. It was determined that new missionaries could often be better trained for their new assignments on sight. It also made the logistics of arrivial to the mission more simple.
So beginning with the Brazil MTC, missionaries foriegn to Brazil joined native Brazilians in being trained. By 2000 the Madrid Spain MTC joined with an initial plan where missionaries from the US would spend the first half of traning at the Provo MTC, and second half at the Madrid MTC.
At some point, and I don't know when this happened, the process became even more focused on evening out use of facilities. Thus at some point missionaries heading to Russia, no matter where they came from, begin training in Spain.
The first decade of the 21st-century saw "raise the bar" and Preach My Gospel. Missionary work was moved from being an expected rite of passage to being a work emphasized on teaching. A higher expectation of worthiness and contrite repentence was imposed, as well as more stringent health requirements. Programs were developed for service missions for those unable to be regular full time missionaries.
The 2010s saw lots of new developments. The most seminal was the 2012 age change for missionaries. This facilitated a one year creaton of over 50 new missions. It was connected with many more sister missionaries, the mission council replacing the zone leaders council, the mission president's companion (wife, but we are trying to find a clearer title) was made a formal member of the mission council. The position of coordinating sister was created.
Along with this, missionaries called Spanish-speaking from the US were normally sent to train at the Mexico City MTC. No new MTCs were created, but several existing ones were greatly expanded.
This was the case with Joseph Fielding Smith, or as he was then often known Joseph F. Smith, Jr., who left behind his wife who had just had a miscarriage to go serve as a missionary in the United Kingdom. This was the case with Goege D. Benson, Jr, when he left behind his wife and children in about 1909 to go serve a mission in the United Kingdom. Brother Benson's oldest son was a boy they called T, who would later be known as Ezra Taft Benson.
The modern model of young, single missionaries serving before their marriage had began. On the first day of the 20th century the first marriage ceremony performed in the Salt Lake Temple was the marriage of David O. McKay and Emma Ray Riggs. Brother McKay was a graduate of the University of Utah, who had a few years before served a mission in the United Kingdom (mainly in Scotland).
Joseph F. Smith, Jr's cousin George Albert Smith represented all these trends in his missionary experience in the 1890s. First he had been called as a mutual improvement association missionary. He was sent from his home in Salt Lake City (where he went after completing high school at Brigham Young Academy, although as a child in school he had often put Lucy Woodruff's pig tails in the ink well in their Salt Lake City school.) to southern Utah where he served as a mutual improvement association missionary. At the dawn of the 20th-century Francis M. Lyman was serving as president of the British Mission. None of his wives had accompanied him on this assignment. Before the 20th-centuries first year (1901) was out, Heber J. Grant would open the Japanese mission. He was accompanied on this assignment by one of his two living wives (he had had three at once at one point, but his first wife, Lucy Stringham Grant, whose father was the man for whom Bryan S. Hinckley was named, had died a few years before, not long after the birth of their only son, they had a few daughters, who also died. Elder Grant traveled with his daughters throughout the US to get their minds off their mother dying, and one of his daughters fell ill and nearly died, but was saved by a blessing from George Q. Cannon in which he revoked the power of Satan and his having claimed the life of this child.
Geogre Albert Smith receieved the call to be a Mutual Improvement Association missionary on Sep. 7, 1891. In this capacity he traveled with a friend of his who was a grandson of Brigham Young, thus repeating their grandfather's being co-members of the first presidency. The were called by the first presidency and sent to Juab, Millard, Beaver and Iron counties to build up the mutual programs in those counties. Elder Smith was 21 at the time.
Elder Smith would after a few months return to Salt Lake City, where he married Lucy Woodruff, a daughter of Wilford Woodruff Jr and thus a granddaughter of Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe. Wilford and Phoebe had a daughter Phoebe who was one of the wives of Lorenzo Snow. So Phoebe Woodruff is probably the only woman to have been both mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law of presidents of the Church, sort of a slight difference from Mary Fielding Smith who was the only woman to be both a mother and a grandmother of president of the Church.
George Albert and Lucy were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 25, 1892. On June 23, 1892 George Albert left on a mission to the southern states, which he would mainly spend as the secretary to President J. Golden Kimball. The position of secretary was not like is found in most modern missions. President Kimball did not have counselors. Elder Smith was thus a cross between a one man pair of assistants to the president, a one man set of counelors to the president, and did many of the things missions secretaries, in modern missions often multiple men and women, do. Do make things more interesting, there were no stakes in the south (actually I think none outside of Arizona, Utah and Idaho, southern Alberta might have just gotten a stake, but even much of the inter-mountain west lacked stakes, Boise would not see a stake until about 1912. That is also the year Nevada got its first stake, although some areas had been part of the St. George Stake before then.)
So with no stakes, the Southern States Mission oversaw all the operations of the Church in the area it covered, which was Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and maybe Kentcky and Ohio. I am not sure how much of Virginia was in the mission.
After being in the mission from June to Novemeber, Lucy W. Smith came and joined her husband, and stayed with him for the remaining year and a half of his mission.
As the 20th-century progressed thins were beginning to change. When LeGrand Richards went out as a missionary in 1905 at age 19, he was ot yet married. Yet David M. Kennedy in the 1920s left on a mission the day after his married, leaving his wife behind. Hugh Nibley's father served as a mission pesident in the Netherlands as a young, unmarried missionary. Yet he was succeeded by 27-year-old LeGrand Richards, who was now a married man.
With the disruption caused by the World Wars, the Church started to move away a little from the model of relying on American missionaries.
Especially during and right after World War II, Germany saw many local missionaries, and due to migration controls, they became a key part of missionary efforts in places like Tonga by mid-century. In the 1930s LeGrand Richards was one of a large number of married men, mostly former missionaries, sent on short term missions. He had also been called to go to California to serve as a stake president, although this was a slightly different case because he remained gainfully employed.
By 1952 and the close of the Korean War the Church pretty much ceased to send out married men as missionaries unaccompanied by their wives. I am much less sure about the rise of the senior couple missionarires.
I know such missionaries existed by the late 1970s. I have little if any evidence clearly placing their emergence in earlier times.
During the 1950s while David O. McKay was president of the Church, it became standard to call counselors to mission presidents. While Mission presidents served full time and came from elsewhere, their counselors were most often local men called from the area. Local in the sense that they lived there, some were from that area, and some had moved there for work, but they were resident there as opposed to called from elsewhere.
More so than in other cases, these counselors were like Aaron and Hur, able to hold up arms about to drop. They tended to know the area much better than the mission president.
During the first decade of the 20th-century the standard term was "lady missionaries". I think this was still the common term when my grandmother served in the 1940s. I have not found a definitive time of the switch to "sister missionary" as the term, but guess it was never intentional and always gradual.
Ezra Taft Benson is to date the only president of the term whose wife served as a missionary prior to marriage. On the other hand for about half of his mission Sister Flora Amussen had her mother as her companion. Ezra Taft Benson was the first president of the church to hold a master's degree, and the first to have done work on a Ph.D. He is also the one who was most clearly notable for work done outside of being a general authority. He like President Smith was a young unmarried missionary (in Britian with David O. McKay as his mission president), a married missionary leaving behind his wife (in Europe as President of the European Mission just after World War II), and a married mission president with his wife along with him (in this case in the Germany based European Mission, with a house in Frankfurt, that they shared one Christmas at with the Hinckley family.)
To be fair, in both his assignments as mission president, Elder Benson was closer to an area president than a mission president. He was both times a member of the Quorum of the 12, both times he presided over all missions in Europe, not any specific mission. The first was in the days just after World War II. The second was in the mid-1960s when the long standing US military agreements with countries such as Italy and placment of US servicemen there were bearing fruit in the dedication of the land for the preaching of the gospel. On August 2, 1966 Elder Benson oversaw the reestablishment of the Italian Mission.
Starting in the 1970s two other trends emerge. The Church begins to centralize missionary calls and training. More and more missionaries are called through the formal channels of Salt Lake City, and the local missionary begins to become a thing of the past. Mini-missions, stake missionaries and some other such assignments fill in the force, but formal mission calls come from Salt Lake City.
While missionary training had been centralized in Salt Lake City at the mission home beginning in 1925, this was a one week course, and only applied to centrally called and not mission called missionaries. In the 1960s visa problems lead to a formal language training curriculum. The Language Traning Mission begins at BYU, and later spreads to Ricks (now BYU-Idaho) and the Church College of Hawaii (now BYU-Hawaii).
In 1976 the whole operation is recentralized, both mission home and LTMs, as the MTC in Provo, Utah. In 1977 however a missionary training center was opened in Brazil. Over the years more MTCs outside the US opened, they trained missionaries from those areas of the World, and generally had no language training, just missionary gospel teaching training.
Things begin to change again in the 1990s. It was determined that new missionaries could often be better trained for their new assignments on sight. It also made the logistics of arrivial to the mission more simple.
So beginning with the Brazil MTC, missionaries foriegn to Brazil joined native Brazilians in being trained. By 2000 the Madrid Spain MTC joined with an initial plan where missionaries from the US would spend the first half of traning at the Provo MTC, and second half at the Madrid MTC.
At some point, and I don't know when this happened, the process became even more focused on evening out use of facilities. Thus at some point missionaries heading to Russia, no matter where they came from, begin training in Spain.
The first decade of the 21st-century saw "raise the bar" and Preach My Gospel. Missionary work was moved from being an expected rite of passage to being a work emphasized on teaching. A higher expectation of worthiness and contrite repentence was imposed, as well as more stringent health requirements. Programs were developed for service missions for those unable to be regular full time missionaries.
The 2010s saw lots of new developments. The most seminal was the 2012 age change for missionaries. This facilitated a one year creaton of over 50 new missions. It was connected with many more sister missionaries, the mission council replacing the zone leaders council, the mission president's companion (wife, but we are trying to find a clearer title) was made a formal member of the mission council. The position of coordinating sister was created.
Along with this, missionaries called Spanish-speaking from the US were normally sent to train at the Mexico City MTC. No new MTCs were created, but several existing ones were greatly expanded.
More on mission evolution
I decided to use some figures to study matters.
To start with one needs to know interpretation of figures is sometimes hard. I am not sure what the "missionaries called" figures represent. I am not sure anyone quite does. Is this an aggregate of formally issues mission calls. Is it influenced by "many are called, but few are chosen."
In the case of missionary calls, most people who receive mission calls, serve at least part of their mission. However I have known enough women who recieved a call, and ended up getting married or engaged before going to serve a mission, that I hope that this figure starts somewhere later than the formal call.
I have to wonder if the stats given would actually be better labeled "missionaries set apart." That has its own draw backs. Either way it probably does not count some irregular missionary assignments.
However does it include the art missionaries of the 1890s, sent to Paris to learn art, and then returning to Utah to decorate the Salt Lake Temple. There is little evidence that these people shared the gospel while abroad. John A. Widstoe and some other students who went to either Eastern US universities or German universities (Brother Widstoe went to both) were set apart as missionaries before departure. How much Elder Widstoe actually did as a missionary is unclear. My guess is he begin the faithful and wonderful man he was, took every oppourtunity to share the gospel within reason, but it is not clear when he was in Germany if there was a local branch of the Church.
On the other hand I wonder if Phoebe Woodruff being set apart to serve along side her husband Wilford Woodruff as he presided over the Eastern States Mission in the 1848-1850 shows up in these statistics. As it was, mission presidents wives accompanying their husbands was only semi-regular in the 19th-century, and which ever way the case of Sister Woodruff falls, there are almost certainly some wives of mission presidents in the 19th century who accompanied their husbands and provided much support at multiple levels of the mission, in many ways, both logistical and proselytizing ways, who were not set apart and so do not show up in the statistics at all.
I then consulted the 1972 Church Annaul Statistical Report. It includes this highly informative paragraph "The following statistics of missionaries set apart (accumulative by decade) do not include local missionaries who often serve in the same mission field where they were baptized and who begin their labors in their own native tongues." see https://www.lds.org/ensign/1972/07/the-annual-report-of-the-church?lang=eng for the fuller discussion.
This tells us that the 65,215 missionaries set apart from 1960-70, does not include everyone serving as a missionary. I am still trying to figure out how the fact the chart also has 1950-1960 works out. Are the 1960 set aparts double counted, or is the cut off either the start of 1960 or the end of 1960, or is it some date during the year? This seems to indicate to me that almost none of the missionaries serving under John H. Groberg (I believe he served 1965-1968, I know it was years in the 1960s) show up, since almost all of his missionaries were local Tongan missionaries, usually married couples (I am not sure if both husband and wife or just husband were set apart, I think the former, but am not sure) and farming during off hours, so they would not show up in the centralized figures, and also would be differently scrutinized for approval than missionaries scrutinized through Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. I say differently, because various factors mean that it is only a different process, how it is different is hard to say.
Using the easier comparison of 1830s stats I can now say. 1-"missionaries called" is the same as "missionaries set apart", and I think the later is a better description. This still ignores that some missionaries get set apart, and then do not move all the way to serving in the field, some because of issues revealed in the MTC. Others then serve very short times, I had to go home at 21 months due to health issues, but I knew one missionary who had health issues that made it so he was unable to serve even a full month past the MTC.
On the other hand, with the "raising the bar" both for worthiness and health, the Church now sends some missionaries on trial missions, and actually did it some back in the 1990s, I know because there was a 1990s trial missionary in my mission. However my impression is that the program has become more regularized and widespread since raising the bar. Raising the Bar was not a one time change, there was clearly structural development of alternatives for those whose health did not allow to serve as a regular full time missionary before the bar was raised, and on the other hand the Church is still working to better develop and organize the church serivice missionary opportunities for those who are not able due to various health issues to serve full time missions. My mission president and his companion, Wareen G. and Suzanne J. Tate, later presided over the Salt Lake City Headquarters (at first Salt Lake City Family and Church History) mission. The rename came about because of three factors. One was that it no longer just oversaw missionaries assigned to work in the Family and Church History Departments, but also oversaw missionaries in media relations, military relations and many other headquarters departments.
On the other hand, President and Sister Tate did not in any way oversee the actual operations of the Family History Libary, the Church History Department or other such facilities. They oversaw the work of the missionaries as missionaries. The rename was also connected with reinvisioning the mission as one where the missionaries, like many other missionaries, have dual assignments, at least in the case of the 700+ senior missionaires (mostly couples, but some single sisters) in the mission. They were redeployed from having self advancing, preaching to the choir type branches in the central city of Salt Lake, to assignments as leadership and membership development missionaries in various units throughout Salt Lake City.
Unlike some other cases, this is one where Salt Lake City is following a model pioneered elsewhere. Here in Metro-Detroit our Personal Storehouse Project might be in some ways pioneered from the Inner City Mission of Salt Lake City, but our taking it to every ward and branch and in the stake, instead of just the 4 with the highest rates of poverty and unemployment (being the 4 that take in Detroit) makes sense. Virtually every ward and branch in the Bloomfield Hills Stake has areas that have a population large enough and poverty and unemployment high enough to translate into inner-city units with the concentration of members you see in Salt Lake City.
Bloomfield Hills Ward for example has the south-end of Pontiac, the part of the city with the highest rates of unemployment and poverty. With Salt Lake City membership levels percentages, this area would probably be at least two wards/branches.
North Shores Ward has Mount Clements and South-east Clinton Township, with the same struggles. Sterling Heights Ward has a few apartment complexes in various parts of the ward with concentrations of these negative issues.
Add to this that many of the people who most benefit from the Personal Storehouse Project and the related but seperate Development Specialist based in the employment center and funded under the auspices of Deseret Industries (I have benefitied from formal association with the later, only informal aid from the former) are people who live in at neighborhoods with low reates of poverty but individually struggle a lot. In my case I pulled this off by living with my parents as a 35+ year old adult. In other cases people pull it off by both husband and wife working long hours, one missing church, and still incuring debts to keep things a float that will leave then never having many options. It may also mean sub-functional cars, all the more problematic with Metro Detroit's sub-functional public transit.
The place of residence may be in a neighborhood not currently pegged as high poverty, but that does not mean it will be an ideal home, and with the husband working long hours at low wages, he will have little time to fix the house and no money to pay others to do it. It does not matter if your neighbors have pristine houses, a leaky roof will be sub-optimal in any situation.
OK, back to my point. Here in the Detroit Mission we had been having full-time missionaries assigned to the Employment Center and the Food distribution facilities within the Bishop's storehouse also assigned as full-time missionaries to work with specific wards and branches in need of various aids to development. Mainly reactiviation and leadership development assignments, but also generalized assistance with teaching and travel as aids to the full-time missionaries.
These full time missionaries normally live close to the Bishop's storehouse in Farmington Hills, but are assigned to wards and branches much further south-east.
The situation makes me wonder if the Bishop's sotehouse should be moved. However I know that will not happen in any close decade.
I am not sure if the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric owns or leases the Bishop's storehouse. I am guessing the former.
My general experience is that while the Church leases some mission offices, virtually all missionary residents (the ones it does not lease, it holds on rents, but that is rare, and there are some who live in Church owned mission homes, but that is also not common, I am not even sure the Church owns all homes for mission presidents, some may be leased.), and does rent/lease some spaces where Church meetings are held, the Church generally works on the goal of eventually owning as much of its operational space as reasonably possible, with the exception of missionary living quarters.
I do not have enough points of information to say for sure, but I think the Church is trending towards trying to move mission offices from leased/rented spaces to Church owned spaces where possible.
In some cases the Church acts as a land-lord for other organizations. However this is technically through its various Property Reserve and a few other for-profit corporations, to make it clear which properties it does and does not pay property tax on.
There may be some churches that do iffy things and skirt the line of non-profit status with money making operations in their non-profit operations, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extra scrupulous about this, making Kargil's attempts to get incrimadating information on this matter even more bizarre.
Back to the situation at hand. The Church buys properties, to build churches, temples, etc. They do this with the long duration in mind, and try not to abandon specific properties. On occasion the Church does close and sell old chapels, but not on the model of building a replacement just across the street or such as so many fast food, grocery and clothing stores do.
The LDS Church builds its buildings to last. The Troy Chapel is so well built that it gets estimated at 15 years old instead of the real 24 years old. Temples are built to a higher standard. Both go through various remodels. Temples a lot more than chapels.
On occasion LDS Chapels are demolished with a new one rebuilt on the same sight. Although this does on occasion happen for fast food locations and other restaurants, keeping open during remodel is more common in the later cases.
Many LDS chapels were built in phases. Both the Bloomfield Hills Stake Center and the Roseville Chapel were not built as unified units. The Bloomfield Hills Stake Center because it was first built as just a ward chapel, and when designated a stake center needed to have expansion.
The Roseville Chapel as part of the general phase in large buildings as the congregation grows. It was built in three phases. However there have been at least two revisions since enclosing some of the heating/cooling and such space, adding an addtional more acecssible bathroom ajacent to the chapel, and reformating the areas of the original chapel which no longer needed to have a foyer, thus creating more classrooms.
While the Church owns many institute buildings, I have also attended institue class in space on a public university campus that the Church accesses through having an LDSSA chapter at the university, I am not sure if fees are involved.
I have known of seminary being held in rented space, either inside a public school or in other locations. I would guess most seminary classes are held in space owned by the LDS Church, and probably most institute classes. The later because most institute classes are held in chapels and not specific to any college/university enrollment.
A large percentage of Church picnics during summer months are held at locations other than church property, the exact percentage hard to place. Also, outside of certain parts of the intermountain west and the western US, most summer camps are held off church property.
The majority of EFY sessions are probalby held off church property. All the ones immediately family members of mine have gone to have been, but I have never even tried to calculate what percentage of sessions are held at BYU. I do not know if any sessions outside of BYU are held at least in part at Institute Buildings, but would be surprised. Most institute buildings other than at a few places in Utah are not big enough, and I am not sure Salt Lake City is far enough from BYU to justify holding a regional EFY at the University of Utah institue. Also, Institute Buildings generally operate at least some over the summer, so they are not actually open spaces. EFY thrives on universities with much lower summer enrollment.
Virtually all stake youth conferences involve some use of non-Church owned space, although I have attended some where most of the time was spent at the stake center.
Church sports programs and stake conferences I know of cases where both were held at non-Church owned locations, involving some level of rent. Stake conference is in the long term the one that makes most sense to rent space for. Although with the advent of the internet interconnecting multiple buildings in the stake seems to probably be headed to what will be done all the time.
A few locations, such as Salt Lake City, Bountiful and Provo in Utah, and Oakland, California with the inter-stake center adjacent to the Temple, have a situation where building a facility large enough to house a stake conference for the current sized stakes with at times 5,000 members, and attendance hopefully going over 3,000 makes sense.
In other places a facility of that size clearly is not a reasonably investment, since it will not be used very much, so either you chose multi-site, multi-session, have more people than available seating, or rent a facility. While the last has many pluses, from what I know and have been told there are drawbacks. Generally when you do the whole process in house and with known systems, the technology failure level is lower, although I once was at a conference in a stake center where the sound system to the cultural hall was not working, and people there could not hear the speaker.
To start with one needs to know interpretation of figures is sometimes hard. I am not sure what the "missionaries called" figures represent. I am not sure anyone quite does. Is this an aggregate of formally issues mission calls. Is it influenced by "many are called, but few are chosen."
In the case of missionary calls, most people who receive mission calls, serve at least part of their mission. However I have known enough women who recieved a call, and ended up getting married or engaged before going to serve a mission, that I hope that this figure starts somewhere later than the formal call.
I have to wonder if the stats given would actually be better labeled "missionaries set apart." That has its own draw backs. Either way it probably does not count some irregular missionary assignments.
However does it include the art missionaries of the 1890s, sent to Paris to learn art, and then returning to Utah to decorate the Salt Lake Temple. There is little evidence that these people shared the gospel while abroad. John A. Widstoe and some other students who went to either Eastern US universities or German universities (Brother Widstoe went to both) were set apart as missionaries before departure. How much Elder Widstoe actually did as a missionary is unclear. My guess is he begin the faithful and wonderful man he was, took every oppourtunity to share the gospel within reason, but it is not clear when he was in Germany if there was a local branch of the Church.
On the other hand I wonder if Phoebe Woodruff being set apart to serve along side her husband Wilford Woodruff as he presided over the Eastern States Mission in the 1848-1850 shows up in these statistics. As it was, mission presidents wives accompanying their husbands was only semi-regular in the 19th-century, and which ever way the case of Sister Woodruff falls, there are almost certainly some wives of mission presidents in the 19th century who accompanied their husbands and provided much support at multiple levels of the mission, in many ways, both logistical and proselytizing ways, who were not set apart and so do not show up in the statistics at all.
I then consulted the 1972 Church Annaul Statistical Report. It includes this highly informative paragraph "The following statistics of missionaries set apart (accumulative by decade) do not include local missionaries who often serve in the same mission field where they were baptized and who begin their labors in their own native tongues." see https://www.lds.org/ensign/1972/07/the-annual-report-of-the-church?lang=eng for the fuller discussion.
This tells us that the 65,215 missionaries set apart from 1960-70, does not include everyone serving as a missionary. I am still trying to figure out how the fact the chart also has 1950-1960 works out. Are the 1960 set aparts double counted, or is the cut off either the start of 1960 or the end of 1960, or is it some date during the year? This seems to indicate to me that almost none of the missionaries serving under John H. Groberg (I believe he served 1965-1968, I know it was years in the 1960s) show up, since almost all of his missionaries were local Tongan missionaries, usually married couples (I am not sure if both husband and wife or just husband were set apart, I think the former, but am not sure) and farming during off hours, so they would not show up in the centralized figures, and also would be differently scrutinized for approval than missionaries scrutinized through Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. I say differently, because various factors mean that it is only a different process, how it is different is hard to say.
Using the easier comparison of 1830s stats I can now say. 1-"missionaries called" is the same as "missionaries set apart", and I think the later is a better description. This still ignores that some missionaries get set apart, and then do not move all the way to serving in the field, some because of issues revealed in the MTC. Others then serve very short times, I had to go home at 21 months due to health issues, but I knew one missionary who had health issues that made it so he was unable to serve even a full month past the MTC.
On the other hand, with the "raising the bar" both for worthiness and health, the Church now sends some missionaries on trial missions, and actually did it some back in the 1990s, I know because there was a 1990s trial missionary in my mission. However my impression is that the program has become more regularized and widespread since raising the bar. Raising the Bar was not a one time change, there was clearly structural development of alternatives for those whose health did not allow to serve as a regular full time missionary before the bar was raised, and on the other hand the Church is still working to better develop and organize the church serivice missionary opportunities for those who are not able due to various health issues to serve full time missions. My mission president and his companion, Wareen G. and Suzanne J. Tate, later presided over the Salt Lake City Headquarters (at first Salt Lake City Family and Church History) mission. The rename came about because of three factors. One was that it no longer just oversaw missionaries assigned to work in the Family and Church History Departments, but also oversaw missionaries in media relations, military relations and many other headquarters departments.
On the other hand, President and Sister Tate did not in any way oversee the actual operations of the Family History Libary, the Church History Department or other such facilities. They oversaw the work of the missionaries as missionaries. The rename was also connected with reinvisioning the mission as one where the missionaries, like many other missionaries, have dual assignments, at least in the case of the 700+ senior missionaires (mostly couples, but some single sisters) in the mission. They were redeployed from having self advancing, preaching to the choir type branches in the central city of Salt Lake, to assignments as leadership and membership development missionaries in various units throughout Salt Lake City.
Unlike some other cases, this is one where Salt Lake City is following a model pioneered elsewhere. Here in Metro-Detroit our Personal Storehouse Project might be in some ways pioneered from the Inner City Mission of Salt Lake City, but our taking it to every ward and branch and in the stake, instead of just the 4 with the highest rates of poverty and unemployment (being the 4 that take in Detroit) makes sense. Virtually every ward and branch in the Bloomfield Hills Stake has areas that have a population large enough and poverty and unemployment high enough to translate into inner-city units with the concentration of members you see in Salt Lake City.
Bloomfield Hills Ward for example has the south-end of Pontiac, the part of the city with the highest rates of unemployment and poverty. With Salt Lake City membership levels percentages, this area would probably be at least two wards/branches.
North Shores Ward has Mount Clements and South-east Clinton Township, with the same struggles. Sterling Heights Ward has a few apartment complexes in various parts of the ward with concentrations of these negative issues.
Add to this that many of the people who most benefit from the Personal Storehouse Project and the related but seperate Development Specialist based in the employment center and funded under the auspices of Deseret Industries (I have benefitied from formal association with the later, only informal aid from the former) are people who live in at neighborhoods with low reates of poverty but individually struggle a lot. In my case I pulled this off by living with my parents as a 35+ year old adult. In other cases people pull it off by both husband and wife working long hours, one missing church, and still incuring debts to keep things a float that will leave then never having many options. It may also mean sub-functional cars, all the more problematic with Metro Detroit's sub-functional public transit.
The place of residence may be in a neighborhood not currently pegged as high poverty, but that does not mean it will be an ideal home, and with the husband working long hours at low wages, he will have little time to fix the house and no money to pay others to do it. It does not matter if your neighbors have pristine houses, a leaky roof will be sub-optimal in any situation.
OK, back to my point. Here in the Detroit Mission we had been having full-time missionaries assigned to the Employment Center and the Food distribution facilities within the Bishop's storehouse also assigned as full-time missionaries to work with specific wards and branches in need of various aids to development. Mainly reactiviation and leadership development assignments, but also generalized assistance with teaching and travel as aids to the full-time missionaries.
These full time missionaries normally live close to the Bishop's storehouse in Farmington Hills, but are assigned to wards and branches much further south-east.
The situation makes me wonder if the Bishop's sotehouse should be moved. However I know that will not happen in any close decade.
I am not sure if the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric owns or leases the Bishop's storehouse. I am guessing the former.
My general experience is that while the Church leases some mission offices, virtually all missionary residents (the ones it does not lease, it holds on rents, but that is rare, and there are some who live in Church owned mission homes, but that is also not common, I am not even sure the Church owns all homes for mission presidents, some may be leased.), and does rent/lease some spaces where Church meetings are held, the Church generally works on the goal of eventually owning as much of its operational space as reasonably possible, with the exception of missionary living quarters.
I do not have enough points of information to say for sure, but I think the Church is trending towards trying to move mission offices from leased/rented spaces to Church owned spaces where possible.
In some cases the Church acts as a land-lord for other organizations. However this is technically through its various Property Reserve and a few other for-profit corporations, to make it clear which properties it does and does not pay property tax on.
There may be some churches that do iffy things and skirt the line of non-profit status with money making operations in their non-profit operations, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extra scrupulous about this, making Kargil's attempts to get incrimadating information on this matter even more bizarre.
Back to the situation at hand. The Church buys properties, to build churches, temples, etc. They do this with the long duration in mind, and try not to abandon specific properties. On occasion the Church does close and sell old chapels, but not on the model of building a replacement just across the street or such as so many fast food, grocery and clothing stores do.
The LDS Church builds its buildings to last. The Troy Chapel is so well built that it gets estimated at 15 years old instead of the real 24 years old. Temples are built to a higher standard. Both go through various remodels. Temples a lot more than chapels.
On occasion LDS Chapels are demolished with a new one rebuilt on the same sight. Although this does on occasion happen for fast food locations and other restaurants, keeping open during remodel is more common in the later cases.
Many LDS chapels were built in phases. Both the Bloomfield Hills Stake Center and the Roseville Chapel were not built as unified units. The Bloomfield Hills Stake Center because it was first built as just a ward chapel, and when designated a stake center needed to have expansion.
The Roseville Chapel as part of the general phase in large buildings as the congregation grows. It was built in three phases. However there have been at least two revisions since enclosing some of the heating/cooling and such space, adding an addtional more acecssible bathroom ajacent to the chapel, and reformating the areas of the original chapel which no longer needed to have a foyer, thus creating more classrooms.
While the Church owns many institute buildings, I have also attended institue class in space on a public university campus that the Church accesses through having an LDSSA chapter at the university, I am not sure if fees are involved.
I have known of seminary being held in rented space, either inside a public school or in other locations. I would guess most seminary classes are held in space owned by the LDS Church, and probably most institute classes. The later because most institute classes are held in chapels and not specific to any college/university enrollment.
A large percentage of Church picnics during summer months are held at locations other than church property, the exact percentage hard to place. Also, outside of certain parts of the intermountain west and the western US, most summer camps are held off church property.
The majority of EFY sessions are probalby held off church property. All the ones immediately family members of mine have gone to have been, but I have never even tried to calculate what percentage of sessions are held at BYU. I do not know if any sessions outside of BYU are held at least in part at Institute Buildings, but would be surprised. Most institute buildings other than at a few places in Utah are not big enough, and I am not sure Salt Lake City is far enough from BYU to justify holding a regional EFY at the University of Utah institue. Also, Institute Buildings generally operate at least some over the summer, so they are not actually open spaces. EFY thrives on universities with much lower summer enrollment.
Virtually all stake youth conferences involve some use of non-Church owned space, although I have attended some where most of the time was spent at the stake center.
Church sports programs and stake conferences I know of cases where both were held at non-Church owned locations, involving some level of rent. Stake conference is in the long term the one that makes most sense to rent space for. Although with the advent of the internet interconnecting multiple buildings in the stake seems to probably be headed to what will be done all the time.
A few locations, such as Salt Lake City, Bountiful and Provo in Utah, and Oakland, California with the inter-stake center adjacent to the Temple, have a situation where building a facility large enough to house a stake conference for the current sized stakes with at times 5,000 members, and attendance hopefully going over 3,000 makes sense.
In other places a facility of that size clearly is not a reasonably investment, since it will not be used very much, so either you chose multi-site, multi-session, have more people than available seating, or rent a facility. While the last has many pluses, from what I know and have been told there are drawbacks. Generally when you do the whole process in house and with known systems, the technology failure level is lower, although I once was at a conference in a stake center where the sound system to the cultural hall was not working, and people there could not hear the speaker.
The changing nature of missions
A wise corelary study would be something like "The Missionary Handbook: Its evolution both in stated context and in application through situational addendums in various locations." However since that might invite coverage of those who just ignored it totally, it needs some sensativity.
Clearly the rules of missionary conduct have changed over time. In the 19th-century while "Preaching the gospel two by two in my name" was the stated standard of the Lord, some men traveled long periods without any companion. The majority of the missionary force was married men, who were sent away from their families, for illdefined periods of time.
As the 20th-century dawned the modern missionary model began to take shape. More and more missionaries were young, single men, and missionary calls began to normalize to 2 years in ones native language, and generally 3 years in another language. The native language was almost always English, althogh there were some native speakers of Shoshone serving, although on a more localized and part time basis.
The long and complex developments that lead to the current position of ward missionaries, along side the even less understood, less formalized, less universal and less known stake service missionaries, is worth considering.
To confuse things even more until the Spring of 2002 the position now known as ward missionary was called stake missionary. It was a stake calling, thus the call had to be approved at the stake level. The nature of the calling made it possible to assign individuals across ward boundaries, but this was extremely rare. Since then there has been a stake service missionary postion, that exists to assign across ward boundaries, in just about whatever capacity the stake president deems needed. I have seen it mostly used in cases of people assigned for self reliance development and leadership development, but a few cases I have seen it done with young men old enough to serve missions preparing to do so, or in one case someone who had health conditions who made it doubtful if he would be able to serve a regular full-time mission. That last case actually he was able to go serve a full time mission, so it was good preparation more than anything else.
"stake service missionaries" are different than "church service missionaries". I will get to the distinction later on.
It was not until the 1970s that the missionary force became truly centralized in the heart of the Church. The exact details will require study in various loggs, mission president and missionary journals, etc., but my impression is that there were some, although not nearly as many as we would wish, people serving as missionaries in some sort of capacity prior to the 1970s who had been called not through the central Church in Salt Lake City, but by assignment from their local mission president to serve in the mission they resided in. To what extent these were stake missionaries in non-stake areas, and to what extent these were more full time is hard to say. Even harder because stake missionaries at times have regularly prosellyted, lead out in teaching and baptizing, and basically been like full-time missionaries except they have either also held a job, been college students or been full-time mothers and homemakes as well. This is generally not equivalent to the modern ward missionary, and although somewhat like some modern stake service missionaries, the comparison ignores how non-uniform the later are.
In fact, for some purposes the 1970s are too early for centralization.
Clearly the rules of missionary conduct have changed over time. In the 19th-century while "Preaching the gospel two by two in my name" was the stated standard of the Lord, some men traveled long periods without any companion. The majority of the missionary force was married men, who were sent away from their families, for illdefined periods of time.
As the 20th-century dawned the modern missionary model began to take shape. More and more missionaries were young, single men, and missionary calls began to normalize to 2 years in ones native language, and generally 3 years in another language. The native language was almost always English, althogh there were some native speakers of Shoshone serving, although on a more localized and part time basis.
The long and complex developments that lead to the current position of ward missionaries, along side the even less understood, less formalized, less universal and less known stake service missionaries, is worth considering.
To confuse things even more until the Spring of 2002 the position now known as ward missionary was called stake missionary. It was a stake calling, thus the call had to be approved at the stake level. The nature of the calling made it possible to assign individuals across ward boundaries, but this was extremely rare. Since then there has been a stake service missionary postion, that exists to assign across ward boundaries, in just about whatever capacity the stake president deems needed. I have seen it mostly used in cases of people assigned for self reliance development and leadership development, but a few cases I have seen it done with young men old enough to serve missions preparing to do so, or in one case someone who had health conditions who made it doubtful if he would be able to serve a regular full-time mission. That last case actually he was able to go serve a full time mission, so it was good preparation more than anything else.
"stake service missionaries" are different than "church service missionaries". I will get to the distinction later on.
It was not until the 1970s that the missionary force became truly centralized in the heart of the Church. The exact details will require study in various loggs, mission president and missionary journals, etc., but my impression is that there were some, although not nearly as many as we would wish, people serving as missionaries in some sort of capacity prior to the 1970s who had been called not through the central Church in Salt Lake City, but by assignment from their local mission president to serve in the mission they resided in. To what extent these were stake missionaries in non-stake areas, and to what extent these were more full time is hard to say. Even harder because stake missionaries at times have regularly prosellyted, lead out in teaching and baptizing, and basically been like full-time missionaries except they have either also held a job, been college students or been full-time mothers and homemakes as well. This is generally not equivalent to the modern ward missionary, and although somewhat like some modern stake service missionaries, the comparison ignores how non-uniform the later are.
In fact, for some purposes the 1970s are too early for centralization.
A need for a history of the Handbook
There may be only one person alive today who has memorized the entire contents of the Church Handbook of Instructions. That would be President Thomas S. Monson, and that was with an older verion of the handbook, to get it into East Germany without being confiscated and destroyed by GDR government agents. When he arrived in East Germany, then Elder Monson sat down with the Church leader he was about to teach the handbook to, and saw a mimiegraphed copy of the handbook on the wall.
President Monson has been involved in the revisions since then.
A history of the handbook to me is a needed part of the generalized history of the Church. It would not be an easy thing to write, and would best be written by people who had shown a long record of disgretion and professionalism.
Too often LDS history has been written by people who have never shown skills in either.
Currently the handbook is divided into two sections. Part 2 is posted on the internet, and members are encouraged to read it. Part 1 is more often the domain of sensationalism and fire eaters in attempts to force the Church to more publicize these instuctions to bishops and higher leaders, that are often meant as many things.
President Monson has been involved in the revisions since then.
A history of the handbook to me is a needed part of the generalized history of the Church. It would not be an easy thing to write, and would best be written by people who had shown a long record of disgretion and professionalism.
Too often LDS history has been written by people who have never shown skills in either.
Currently the handbook is divided into two sections. Part 2 is posted on the internet, and members are encouraged to read it. Part 1 is more often the domain of sensationalism and fire eaters in attempts to force the Church to more publicize these instuctions to bishops and higher leaders, that are often meant as many things.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Nigeria, Bayelsa, Yanagoa
The Church is moving forward in Bayelsa State in the heart of Nigeria's Delta, or as it is called there the "South South". Here is an article from a local paper on the Church providing community service http://naijachurchnews.com/latter-days-saint-renovates-park-bayelsa/
Although it is not entirely clear from the article it appears that Akekere Jonah is that stake president. The stake was formed in May of this year (per www.ldschurchtemples.com) but the LDS Church news has not yet run an article on its creation, so I cannot at this time definitely confirm that President Jonah is the stake president. A District was formed in Yenagoa in December 2013, and it would not surprise me if President Jonah was also the district president, although I have no information on this matter.
He is an economists interested in inproving the lives of the people. He was the lead author of an article on maternal mortality in Bayelsa State, the trend of change in such rates from 2000 to 2011 and urging that more needed to be done to lower the rate even further in the state. That article was published in 2015.
I would love to see President Jonah become a general authority.
Although it is not entirely clear from the article it appears that Akekere Jonah is that stake president. The stake was formed in May of this year (per www.ldschurchtemples.com) but the LDS Church news has not yet run an article on its creation, so I cannot at this time definitely confirm that President Jonah is the stake president. A District was formed in Yenagoa in December 2013, and it would not surprise me if President Jonah was also the district president, although I have no information on this matter.
He is an economists interested in inproving the lives of the people. He was the lead author of an article on maternal mortality in Bayelsa State, the trend of change in such rates from 2000 to 2011 and urging that more needed to be done to lower the rate even further in the state. That article was published in 2015.
I would love to see President Jonah become a general authority.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
One of my favorite events I ever went to at BYU was a speech by WInston Wilkinson. At the time he was a part time faculty member at BYU in the law school and a member of the Salt Lake County Council. Wilkinson is an African-American man. He gave an overview of his life. One of the more interesting things he said was that when his generation died off we would see high rates of inter-racial marriage.
I think his general thoughts on the matter were postive, but have to admit that I still think he was unrealistically hopeful. Although since Wilkinson was born in 1944, and as far as I can tell still alive, maybe I am too quick to say his optism was too soon. The fact that in 2010 0.7% of married white men in the US had black wives My very limited and not at all broad perspective on changes since then suggests that the figure is probably higher today, although not as much as one would wish.
I think his general thoughts on the matter were postive, but have to admit that I still think he was unrealistically hopeful. Although since Wilkinson was born in 1944, and as far as I can tell still alive, maybe I am too quick to say his optism was too soon. The fact that in 2010 0.7% of married white men in the US had black wives My very limited and not at all broad perspective on changes since then suggests that the figure is probably higher today, although not as much as one would wish.
For the Cause of Righteousness
I have started to read Russell W. Stevenson's book with this title. It is not an easy book to read.
The full title is "For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013" but do not think for a second it is at all a sugar coated history.
I have not seen evidence that Stevenson quite lives up to his title. I am to page 95. So far Stevenson has focused on the following locations. The United States, although at times on Utah without producing any evidence that anyone involved in what he is actually quoting is a Mormon. While such maybe can be assumed for some parts of Utah, 1920s Park City and Price are not such places.
He has made a vague reference to LDS policies and African-Americans in the southern states mission in the 1940s, but LDS black relations in the south did not consume much of his focus. While his discussion of LDS blacks in the 19th-century seems comprehensive, other sources I have read have spoken a lot more of Green Flake and his role as a faithful black Latter-day Saint, and also of at least one post-Civil War black convert in the American south whose name I have forgitten.
There was also a black convert in South Africa who immigrated to Idaho where he was killed in sheep/cattle raiser infighting who is not mentioned at all. The discussion of the Church in South Africa is arguably too focused on the racial issue as a prisom to see what is going on. In fact I would argue the book is too focused on theology and thought, too little on action. It is definetely not the book I wish it was.
The book does delve into the Nigerians and Ghanaians who organized themselves, and some of whom even had authorization to act on behalf of the Church, granted by a member of the 1st presidency in a letter, even though at that point they had not been baptized. As is my general critcism of the book, I do not think Stevenson has taken a broad enough historical view, or properly contextualized what was going on in those two countries. He has given a generalized allusion to the Biafra Conflict, but considering how much this was a disruption to the growth of the congregations of people weeking baptism, and considering that he mentions at least two leaders of such congregations who were killed during the conflict, I think more background on it is needed.
Another flaw of the book is that it focuses too much on people who made statements without ever showing anyone cared about some. On the other hand, it ignores people like Florence Chukwurah, who was a key figure in the Church, served with her husband as he presided over the then multi-national Ghana Accra Mission, did much good as a nurse, and served as a member of the Relief Society General Board after she had moved from her native Nigeria to Salt Lake City.
Another example of an inadequacy is that the Genesis Group is according to the index mentioned on only one page.
An even bigger complaint is that the title of the book misleadingly leads the reader to belief that the book will focus heavily on events from 1978-2013. This is not the case at all. It is not until page 159 of the 201 pages of the historical narrative (as opposed to the section entitled "The Documents") that we get into a discussion of things from 1978 to the present. This is short shafting all things considered. In countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast and many others the only history at all is starting after 1978.
True, for the historian it is incredibly hard to write about very recent events, because of the fact that many oral histories are taken with time locks on them that make them not accesable, much of the foot work of gathering documents is done after the fact and so on. Also, for a writing on this grand scale, use of secondary sources is often neccesary, and thus the problems mentioned above become even more prominent.
However I have to say I dislike the short shafting of the recent. Maybe my approach would over emphasize the recent. On the other hand a book published in 2014 that does not, at least per the index, mention general authority seventy Joseph W. Sitati, who had held that position for 5 years when the book went to press, nor mention singing icon Alex Boye, but can find space to mention Randy Bott, needs to be chalenged as an objective history.
In fact, if the book was really seeking a globalized history of blacks in Mormonism, it would have mentioned Edward Dube. His call in April 2013 was not too recent for inclusion, since the book includes an except from the First Presidency authorized Church publication "Race and the Priesthood" which came out in December 2013. Even before he was made a general authority Dube had been the moving force behind LDS growth in Zimbabwe. He was called a modern day Wilford Woodruff for his force in moving the Church forward in an ensign article before he was called as a general authority. Stevenson is too narrow in his coverage.
The full title is "For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013" but do not think for a second it is at all a sugar coated history.
I have not seen evidence that Stevenson quite lives up to his title. I am to page 95. So far Stevenson has focused on the following locations. The United States, although at times on Utah without producing any evidence that anyone involved in what he is actually quoting is a Mormon. While such maybe can be assumed for some parts of Utah, 1920s Park City and Price are not such places.
He has made a vague reference to LDS policies and African-Americans in the southern states mission in the 1940s, but LDS black relations in the south did not consume much of his focus. While his discussion of LDS blacks in the 19th-century seems comprehensive, other sources I have read have spoken a lot more of Green Flake and his role as a faithful black Latter-day Saint, and also of at least one post-Civil War black convert in the American south whose name I have forgitten.
There was also a black convert in South Africa who immigrated to Idaho where he was killed in sheep/cattle raiser infighting who is not mentioned at all. The discussion of the Church in South Africa is arguably too focused on the racial issue as a prisom to see what is going on. In fact I would argue the book is too focused on theology and thought, too little on action. It is definetely not the book I wish it was.
The book does delve into the Nigerians and Ghanaians who organized themselves, and some of whom even had authorization to act on behalf of the Church, granted by a member of the 1st presidency in a letter, even though at that point they had not been baptized. As is my general critcism of the book, I do not think Stevenson has taken a broad enough historical view, or properly contextualized what was going on in those two countries. He has given a generalized allusion to the Biafra Conflict, but considering how much this was a disruption to the growth of the congregations of people weeking baptism, and considering that he mentions at least two leaders of such congregations who were killed during the conflict, I think more background on it is needed.
Another flaw of the book is that it focuses too much on people who made statements without ever showing anyone cared about some. On the other hand, it ignores people like Florence Chukwurah, who was a key figure in the Church, served with her husband as he presided over the then multi-national Ghana Accra Mission, did much good as a nurse, and served as a member of the Relief Society General Board after she had moved from her native Nigeria to Salt Lake City.
Another example of an inadequacy is that the Genesis Group is according to the index mentioned on only one page.
An even bigger complaint is that the title of the book misleadingly leads the reader to belief that the book will focus heavily on events from 1978-2013. This is not the case at all. It is not until page 159 of the 201 pages of the historical narrative (as opposed to the section entitled "The Documents") that we get into a discussion of things from 1978 to the present. This is short shafting all things considered. In countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast and many others the only history at all is starting after 1978.
True, for the historian it is incredibly hard to write about very recent events, because of the fact that many oral histories are taken with time locks on them that make them not accesable, much of the foot work of gathering documents is done after the fact and so on. Also, for a writing on this grand scale, use of secondary sources is often neccesary, and thus the problems mentioned above become even more prominent.
However I have to say I dislike the short shafting of the recent. Maybe my approach would over emphasize the recent. On the other hand a book published in 2014 that does not, at least per the index, mention general authority seventy Joseph W. Sitati, who had held that position for 5 years when the book went to press, nor mention singing icon Alex Boye, but can find space to mention Randy Bott, needs to be chalenged as an objective history.
In fact, if the book was really seeking a globalized history of blacks in Mormonism, it would have mentioned Edward Dube. His call in April 2013 was not too recent for inclusion, since the book includes an except from the First Presidency authorized Church publication "Race and the Priesthood" which came out in December 2013. Even before he was made a general authority Dube had been the moving force behind LDS growth in Zimbabwe. He was called a modern day Wilford Woodruff for his force in moving the Church forward in an ensign article before he was called as a general authority. Stevenson is too narrow in his coverage.
Reflections of the wanderer
I have realized my enjoyment of visiting new wards and branches and meeting new people often comes at the cost of not developing truly deep connections to those I know. It is also not helped by having to juggle my work schedule at Kroger, which has often caused me to have little time to attend activities when I could really get to know people.
Still, I am very glad I was able to be at Sterling Heights Ward last Sunday and meet the new couple where the husband is from Nigeria.
I am a little saddened though that I have not made it out to Southfield Ward more. I am also sad that I have not seen some of my friends there much of late. I hope they are still coming out, and just were not there on the Sunday's I was.
I should make a greater effort to go to Southfield Ward, but have to admit getting myself to meetings starting at 9:00 is at times a big struggle.
Still, I am very glad I was able to be at Sterling Heights Ward last Sunday and meet the new couple where the husband is from Nigeria.
I am a little saddened though that I have not made it out to Southfield Ward more. I am also sad that I have not seen some of my friends there much of late. I hope they are still coming out, and just were not there on the Sunday's I was.
I should make a greater effort to go to Southfield Ward, but have to admit getting myself to meetings starting at 9:00 is at times a big struggle.
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
General authorities and careers
I just came across a bizarre statement "there is a reason why LDS leadership is exclusively full of successful businessmen, rather than what they would describe as good Mormons."
This is just plain false. To claim anyone kepts to be a general authority or even area seventy without demonstrating deep faith and devotion to the Lord is just plain false.
Beyond that, to claim that all general authorities are successful businessmen is also false. Of the first presidency, "successful businessman" is a stretch for all of them. True, President Monson was a printing and ad exec, so maybe. President Eyring was a professor of business, and never actually worked in the field. While President Uchtdorf was an airline executive he is best understood as a pilot.
President Nelson was a surgeon, not a businessman. Elder Oaks was a law professor and judge, not a businessman. Elder Holland was an institute teacher. Elder Ballard was a car dealer among other things, but he didn't head his father's advice against selling the Edsel, so he was not super successful, although maybe in the long run. Elder Hales was a businessman, but a few examples do not prove a claim.
If you go to the seventy we find more of the same. Elder Echo Hawk was a state attorney general and law professor and then head of the BIA, not a businessman. Elder Dube was the head of the Church Educational System in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, not a businessman. The newly called Elder Godoy was head of the Church Educational System in Peru, and before that was a dentist. Elder Gong worked for the US government until he became an administrator at BYU.
Elder De Hoyos was a CES administrator. There are some who were businessmen, like Elder Montoya. However part of the time he was running a taco stand.
The claims of everyone being a "successful businessman" just do not hold up under scrutiny.
This is just plain false. To claim anyone kepts to be a general authority or even area seventy without demonstrating deep faith and devotion to the Lord is just plain false.
Beyond that, to claim that all general authorities are successful businessmen is also false. Of the first presidency, "successful businessman" is a stretch for all of them. True, President Monson was a printing and ad exec, so maybe. President Eyring was a professor of business, and never actually worked in the field. While President Uchtdorf was an airline executive he is best understood as a pilot.
President Nelson was a surgeon, not a businessman. Elder Oaks was a law professor and judge, not a businessman. Elder Holland was an institute teacher. Elder Ballard was a car dealer among other things, but he didn't head his father's advice against selling the Edsel, so he was not super successful, although maybe in the long run. Elder Hales was a businessman, but a few examples do not prove a claim.
If you go to the seventy we find more of the same. Elder Echo Hawk was a state attorney general and law professor and then head of the BIA, not a businessman. Elder Dube was the head of the Church Educational System in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, not a businessman. The newly called Elder Godoy was head of the Church Educational System in Peru, and before that was a dentist. Elder Gong worked for the US government until he became an administrator at BYU.
Elder De Hoyos was a CES administrator. There are some who were businessmen, like Elder Montoya. However part of the time he was running a taco stand.
The claims of everyone being a "successful businessman" just do not hold up under scrutiny.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
The power of a unified message
The power of a unified message is too rarely appreciated. Correlation has helped focus the Church and its teaching more on Jesus Christ. Of course this is something that leftists do not like. They hate focusing on Christ and him being the one way to Salvation, and then wonder why the Church suffers when they get imput.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Camping near the temple
Part of trecking to the temple is that when the temple is far away, people need accomadations. Those who sell their car to get the tickets to go rarely can afford even a cheap motel.
In many places the church has patron housing on or near the temple grounds. However Bishop Caussee has reflected on the expierience his family had of camping on the temple grounds in Switzerland and noted it was quite common among European saints of his generation.
In many places the church has patron housing on or near the temple grounds. However Bishop Caussee has reflected on the expierience his family had of camping on the temple grounds in Switzerland and noted it was quite common among European saints of his generation.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
The 20th and 21st century gathering to Zion: Trecking to the Temple
In the 19th-century Church members gathered to Zion by leaving their homes, and moving permanetly to a place to be gathered with the Saints.
From 1847 until the 1890s the destination was Utah.
After 1900 the Church leadership stops encouraging members to gather to Utah. In about 1915 the Church leadership explicitly asked members from Hawaii living in Utah to move back to Hawaii in preparation for a temple there.
After the Laie Temple was built in Hawaii there were some members from especially Samoa who moved to Hawaii to be near the temple. I also knew a sister whose family came into Salt Lake City by train having left Norway in about 1948 and they were gathering to Zion.
However after 1900 the gathering to Zion more and more becomes not a permanent move, but a journey to the temple, that is followed by going home.
Brother Michael J. Lantz and his wife made this joruney in the early 1970s, from Michigan to Salt Lake City, managing by dint of being open about their journey to find member homes to stay in along the way. Elder Lansing, an Area Authority Seventy from Virginia, can tell of his family's journey to the Salt Lake Temple from Richmond Virginia in the late 1950s.
I know another couple who in the early 1980s journeyed to the Salt Lake Temple from Iowa to marry, only to find the temple closed due to flooding. They had to continue their journey to Jordan River Temple to marry.
There was a president of the Sydney Temple whose family had sold their car among other things to finance going to the New Zealand Temple at its dedication. President Monson has a story of a family from Tahiti where the husband worked several years in the mines of New Caledonia to fiance the family going to the temple.
Elder Fallabella can tell of the long treck from his home in Guatemala through Mexico to get to the Mesa Temple where he was sealed to his father and his deceased mother.
Vai Sikehema's family saved money when he was young to go from Tonga to New Zealand to be sealed. They did not have enough money to go home, so for a few months his father worked shearing sheep in New Zealand.
By the time I was born the journeys were not quite as long. By the time I went to the temple as a youth we only had to drive about 4 hours each way to get to the temple.
However to this day many have to drive much, much further. Even in the mid 1990s both Brazil and Mexico had only one temple. In both countries many people would travel for days to go to the temple. When the temple opened in Aba Nigeria the first group from Camerron traveled for 60 hours one way. Looking on a map and calculating the distance it would not seem to take this long, but when you are going through muddy roads and have to push the car it can take this long.
There are lots more stories of trecking to the temple. Chile still has not gotten a second temple. Arequipa Peru still requires a long treck to the temple, and Iquitos deep in the Amzonian interior of Peru will probably require such a treck much, much longer.
While there is a temple announced for Nairobi, it will be a time of long tecking for much longer.
While the Perpetual Education Fund is the one named after the Perpetual Emmigating Fund, and it has some similar purposes, in another way it is the Temple Patron's Fund that more closely matches the goals of gathering in the 19th-century PEF. This fund allows members to contribute toward helping those members who live so far from the temple to be able to go. I would encourage all who can to contribute.
From 1847 until the 1890s the destination was Utah.
After 1900 the Church leadership stops encouraging members to gather to Utah. In about 1915 the Church leadership explicitly asked members from Hawaii living in Utah to move back to Hawaii in preparation for a temple there.
After the Laie Temple was built in Hawaii there were some members from especially Samoa who moved to Hawaii to be near the temple. I also knew a sister whose family came into Salt Lake City by train having left Norway in about 1948 and they were gathering to Zion.
However after 1900 the gathering to Zion more and more becomes not a permanent move, but a journey to the temple, that is followed by going home.
Brother Michael J. Lantz and his wife made this joruney in the early 1970s, from Michigan to Salt Lake City, managing by dint of being open about their journey to find member homes to stay in along the way. Elder Lansing, an Area Authority Seventy from Virginia, can tell of his family's journey to the Salt Lake Temple from Richmond Virginia in the late 1950s.
I know another couple who in the early 1980s journeyed to the Salt Lake Temple from Iowa to marry, only to find the temple closed due to flooding. They had to continue their journey to Jordan River Temple to marry.
There was a president of the Sydney Temple whose family had sold their car among other things to finance going to the New Zealand Temple at its dedication. President Monson has a story of a family from Tahiti where the husband worked several years in the mines of New Caledonia to fiance the family going to the temple.
Elder Fallabella can tell of the long treck from his home in Guatemala through Mexico to get to the Mesa Temple where he was sealed to his father and his deceased mother.
Vai Sikehema's family saved money when he was young to go from Tonga to New Zealand to be sealed. They did not have enough money to go home, so for a few months his father worked shearing sheep in New Zealand.
By the time I was born the journeys were not quite as long. By the time I went to the temple as a youth we only had to drive about 4 hours each way to get to the temple.
However to this day many have to drive much, much further. Even in the mid 1990s both Brazil and Mexico had only one temple. In both countries many people would travel for days to go to the temple. When the temple opened in Aba Nigeria the first group from Camerron traveled for 60 hours one way. Looking on a map and calculating the distance it would not seem to take this long, but when you are going through muddy roads and have to push the car it can take this long.
There are lots more stories of trecking to the temple. Chile still has not gotten a second temple. Arequipa Peru still requires a long treck to the temple, and Iquitos deep in the Amzonian interior of Peru will probably require such a treck much, much longer.
While there is a temple announced for Nairobi, it will be a time of long tecking for much longer.
While the Perpetual Education Fund is the one named after the Perpetual Emmigating Fund, and it has some similar purposes, in another way it is the Temple Patron's Fund that more closely matches the goals of gathering in the 19th-century PEF. This fund allows members to contribute toward helping those members who live so far from the temple to be able to go. I would encourage all who can to contribute.
Why Stark is wrong internation Church growth will cause resitriction on Coffee etc to end
Peggy Fletcher Stark in her article on the Word of Wisdom's changing meaning misses the point that the Word of Wisdom is meant to set us apart. To claim that it is especially hard for the Church to grow in Brazil because of the Word of Wisdom ban on coffee consumption is ludicrous. There is no way to have more of a coffeee culture than the US. The only thing that Kroger provides as a fee item for employees on break is coffee. Many college students in the US entering Mormon studies just do not believe that Mormons really do not drink coffee.
I have colleges who find refusal to drink coffee so odd they do not believe me when I tell them my religion does not allow it.
Stark clearly does not understand overall US culture if she thinks anywhere else could have more of a coffee culture making it harder for a sell of the Word of Wisdom. The Word of Wisdom is an outward sign of internal belief. True, its exact meaning has changed over time, but that does not lessen the fact that it currently is a full power commandment from the Lord. The order of the Church does not require the directives of the 1st presidency to be clearly enunciated by written forms.
I have colleges who find refusal to drink coffee so odd they do not believe me when I tell them my religion does not allow it.
Stark clearly does not understand overall US culture if she thinks anywhere else could have more of a coffee culture making it harder for a sell of the Word of Wisdom. The Word of Wisdom is an outward sign of internal belief. True, its exact meaning has changed over time, but that does not lessen the fact that it currently is a full power commandment from the Lord. The order of the Church does not require the directives of the 1st presidency to be clearly enunciated by written forms.
Why the Church grows more among those in Africa than among African Americans
It generally seems the LDS Church is making much better growth among people in Africa than among African-Americans.
However the stats on the latter are hard to know. 2009 surveys seem to say that 3% of US Latter-day Saints were African-American, but without knowing what the overall US African-American percentage in the same survey was, it is a little hard to compare. Plus this was of adults. In Sterling Heights Ward there are 4 sidblings, all 15 or younger, who are African-American converts.
In Southfield Ward our last 10 or so baptisms have all either been African-Americans or immigrants from Ghana.
Most interesting to me was this article http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2017/apr/28/operation-streets-founder-calls-recreation-program/ from the Richmond Free Press about Charles A. West, a former Chuch of God minster who recently was bpatized in the LDS Church. This is a true sign of inroads among African-Americans.
I could also cite people of prominence, like Congresswoman Mia Love, NBA player Jabari Parker, NCAA players Frank Jackson, DeMarcus Harrison and Jordan Chatman, and Jordan's dad Jeff Chatman who joined the Church while an NCAA player at BYU. This is not even close to a comprehensive list.
Some of the people above may not show up in surveys as African-American because they are of mixed race origins, and so depending on various factors may be identified in other ways. By some I mean Parker and Jackson and maybe Jordan Chapman, although I have no evidence on Chapman's mother's race.
On my mission we had African-Americans tell us flat out they would not come out to our Church anymore because they did not like going to a Church where there were no African-Americans. This is a situation that presents an insurmountable barrier. This is one reason why in some areas the Church has at times created specific urban congregations.
Another big hurdle is a widespread belief that the LDS Church is racist. A true knowledge of the past racial restiction policy with regard to priesthood is generally showing the Church in a more positive light than what some think the policy was.
In African outside of South Africa and Zimbabwe they Church has always been black members, and usually black missionaries. In Zimbabwe there were hard times of growth to the black majority in the early 1980s, but especially with the role of Edward Dube the Church thrived and overcame these draw backs.
In South Africa the conversion of Julie Mavimbela in 1981 helped. It also helps that the end of the priesthood restriction in 1978 predates the end of apartheid of white minority rule by 16 years. This makes a big difference from the US, where having the policy as late as 1978 is used as an attack point, when so many other things seen as racist were officially removed by 1968 with the fair housing act, or going back to Brown v Board in 1953. Or even the desegregation of the US military by Truman no latter than 1951.
There are some barriers to overcome in South Africa, but with a population that is 8% white and 80% black, the Church has to overcome them to thrive.
In the US, not so much, although we do have to overcome them to take the gospel to ever nation, kindred, tongue and people.
One problem is the unspoken nature of some objections. Even Gladys Knight's Saints United Voices does not overcome all the linger worry. Marvin Perkins and his "Black and the Scriptures" work is making progress.
Maybe though the issues are more complex. Maybe the question is why is the Church growing so much in countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast. In a lot of ways this is because of a long process of local leadership development.
In the US we are not yet seeing strong leadership development for local congregations of African-Americans. There is possibly an issue of less religious commitment by African-American males, high incareration rates, and lots of related facts.
The fact that even in a city like Detroit, where 85% of the population is African-American and 98% or more in many neighborhoods, the vast majority of missionaries are white and black missionaries are fairly rare, makes things difficult.
On my mission I saw that phenotypically black Brazilian missionaries could at least get people dialoguing on these issues.
Another issue is white Latter-day Saints need to work to speak of the issues of the past priesthood restriction in ways that are not offensive. Make sure to not attribute it as a direct design of God, and state that we do not know why God allowed it.
I have no disrespect towards Keither Hamilton and his last laborer views, but have to say I can not accept them.
More talking on this is good. Even if it causes uncomfortableness.
Another issue is some people objecting to the Church's position on those on probation or parole getting baptized. I have seen people mishandle sharing this with investigators. Lastly it should be emphasized that this is not based on the Church holding that such a punishment is in any case just, but that they Church embraces the order of law.
This does make it hard for the Church to reach people who feel that the order of law is against them. However I think if being subject to kings, etc is properly explained it creates less offense. Also, always remember the route to conversion is through sharing the Book of Mormon and tesitfying.
However the stats on the latter are hard to know. 2009 surveys seem to say that 3% of US Latter-day Saints were African-American, but without knowing what the overall US African-American percentage in the same survey was, it is a little hard to compare. Plus this was of adults. In Sterling Heights Ward there are 4 sidblings, all 15 or younger, who are African-American converts.
In Southfield Ward our last 10 or so baptisms have all either been African-Americans or immigrants from Ghana.
Most interesting to me was this article http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2017/apr/28/operation-streets-founder-calls-recreation-program/ from the Richmond Free Press about Charles A. West, a former Chuch of God minster who recently was bpatized in the LDS Church. This is a true sign of inroads among African-Americans.
I could also cite people of prominence, like Congresswoman Mia Love, NBA player Jabari Parker, NCAA players Frank Jackson, DeMarcus Harrison and Jordan Chatman, and Jordan's dad Jeff Chatman who joined the Church while an NCAA player at BYU. This is not even close to a comprehensive list.
Some of the people above may not show up in surveys as African-American because they are of mixed race origins, and so depending on various factors may be identified in other ways. By some I mean Parker and Jackson and maybe Jordan Chapman, although I have no evidence on Chapman's mother's race.
On my mission we had African-Americans tell us flat out they would not come out to our Church anymore because they did not like going to a Church where there were no African-Americans. This is a situation that presents an insurmountable barrier. This is one reason why in some areas the Church has at times created specific urban congregations.
Another big hurdle is a widespread belief that the LDS Church is racist. A true knowledge of the past racial restiction policy with regard to priesthood is generally showing the Church in a more positive light than what some think the policy was.
In African outside of South Africa and Zimbabwe they Church has always been black members, and usually black missionaries. In Zimbabwe there were hard times of growth to the black majority in the early 1980s, but especially with the role of Edward Dube the Church thrived and overcame these draw backs.
In South Africa the conversion of Julie Mavimbela in 1981 helped. It also helps that the end of the priesthood restriction in 1978 predates the end of apartheid of white minority rule by 16 years. This makes a big difference from the US, where having the policy as late as 1978 is used as an attack point, when so many other things seen as racist were officially removed by 1968 with the fair housing act, or going back to Brown v Board in 1953. Or even the desegregation of the US military by Truman no latter than 1951.
There are some barriers to overcome in South Africa, but with a population that is 8% white and 80% black, the Church has to overcome them to thrive.
In the US, not so much, although we do have to overcome them to take the gospel to ever nation, kindred, tongue and people.
One problem is the unspoken nature of some objections. Even Gladys Knight's Saints United Voices does not overcome all the linger worry. Marvin Perkins and his "Black and the Scriptures" work is making progress.
Maybe though the issues are more complex. Maybe the question is why is the Church growing so much in countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast. In a lot of ways this is because of a long process of local leadership development.
In the US we are not yet seeing strong leadership development for local congregations of African-Americans. There is possibly an issue of less religious commitment by African-American males, high incareration rates, and lots of related facts.
The fact that even in a city like Detroit, where 85% of the population is African-American and 98% or more in many neighborhoods, the vast majority of missionaries are white and black missionaries are fairly rare, makes things difficult.
On my mission I saw that phenotypically black Brazilian missionaries could at least get people dialoguing on these issues.
Another issue is white Latter-day Saints need to work to speak of the issues of the past priesthood restriction in ways that are not offensive. Make sure to not attribute it as a direct design of God, and state that we do not know why God allowed it.
I have no disrespect towards Keither Hamilton and his last laborer views, but have to say I can not accept them.
More talking on this is good. Even if it causes uncomfortableness.
Another issue is some people objecting to the Church's position on those on probation or parole getting baptized. I have seen people mishandle sharing this with investigators. Lastly it should be emphasized that this is not based on the Church holding that such a punishment is in any case just, but that they Church embraces the order of law.
This does make it hard for the Church to reach people who feel that the order of law is against them. However I think if being subject to kings, etc is properly explained it creates less offense. Also, always remember the route to conversion is through sharing the Book of Mormon and tesitfying.
Ending racism in Mormonism
In general I think the Mormon leaders have done well in ending racism. I still think the voice against it could be more clear.
The notion that in 2012 any well informed observer could think that pre-1978 attempts to explain the priesthood restriction were workable is not believable.
In August 1978 Elder Bruce R. McConkie gave a talk to Church Educational System instuctors in which he explicitly said forget what he, Brigham Young or anyone else had said before June 1978 on the priesthood restriction and its meaning.
Today this can be found by going to the race and the priesthood gospel topics essay at LDS.org https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng&old=true and going down along the side and clicking on Bruce R. NcConkie's "All Are Alike Unto God" talk. That leads to this link https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie_alike-unto-god-2/ so I am guessing BYU based searchs might find it.
Back before my mission the internet was not well searchable, and I had never found this. I knew when I heard people quote Brigham Young and Bruce R. McConkie on these matters they were not quoting current Church teachings. I think I first heard mention to this talk about halfway through my mission when a sister in one of our wards whose son-in-law was African American was listening to a recording of a talk by an African-American sister in Oakland California in which she mentioned this talk. I wish I had known of it sooner.
I had read Helvicio Martins autobiogrpahy.
The race and the priesthood link has made things explicit that were not before. However in 1988 the first presidency denounced racism, without neccesarily explicitly denouncing the folklore to justify the former priesthood restriction.
In an August 1978 interview for Time Magazine Spencer W. Kimball denounced the idea of less faithfulness in the pre-earth life. The one professor I had at BYU who ever addressed this topic as far as I remember in class in an explicit way was Camille Fronk. She explicitly denounced the notion.I think I had other professors state there were no neutral spirits in the war in Heaven, but not explicitly connect it to or use it to denounce specific ideas.
I do have to wonder if the Church should have publicized the gospel topics essays more fully. I am still also hopeful that a general authority will directly recommend or draw on them in general conference.
On the other hand, they have been fully incorporated into the new institute curriculum, and are clearly fully endorsed by the leadership of the Church.
The notion that in 2012 any well informed observer could think that pre-1978 attempts to explain the priesthood restriction were workable is not believable.
In August 1978 Elder Bruce R. McConkie gave a talk to Church Educational System instuctors in which he explicitly said forget what he, Brigham Young or anyone else had said before June 1978 on the priesthood restriction and its meaning.
Today this can be found by going to the race and the priesthood gospel topics essay at LDS.org https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng&old=true and going down along the side and clicking on Bruce R. NcConkie's "All Are Alike Unto God" talk. That leads to this link https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie_alike-unto-god-2/ so I am guessing BYU based searchs might find it.
Back before my mission the internet was not well searchable, and I had never found this. I knew when I heard people quote Brigham Young and Bruce R. McConkie on these matters they were not quoting current Church teachings. I think I first heard mention to this talk about halfway through my mission when a sister in one of our wards whose son-in-law was African American was listening to a recording of a talk by an African-American sister in Oakland California in which she mentioned this talk. I wish I had known of it sooner.
I had read Helvicio Martins autobiogrpahy.
The race and the priesthood link has made things explicit that were not before. However in 1988 the first presidency denounced racism, without neccesarily explicitly denouncing the folklore to justify the former priesthood restriction.
In an August 1978 interview for Time Magazine Spencer W. Kimball denounced the idea of less faithfulness in the pre-earth life. The one professor I had at BYU who ever addressed this topic as far as I remember in class in an explicit way was Camille Fronk. She explicitly denounced the notion.I think I had other professors state there were no neutral spirits in the war in Heaven, but not explicitly connect it to or use it to denounce specific ideas.
I do have to wonder if the Church should have publicized the gospel topics essays more fully. I am still also hopeful that a general authority will directly recommend or draw on them in general conference.
On the other hand, they have been fully incorporated into the new institute curriculum, and are clearly fully endorsed by the leadership of the Church.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Go betweens in Pennsylvania and Utah
I have started to read "Into the Armerican Woods" about the go betweens from Pennsylvania colony to the Native Americans. This caused me to think of Dimick Huntingdon and Jacob Hamblin in Utah. Then I realized I can't remember who baptized Sagowitz. It might have been George Washington Hill. These men were never fully marginalized as were the Indian interpreters in Pennsylvania, but Utah lacked people with the pretense of genetlemen either.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Understanding the world
OK, I have come to see that I do not, and I don't think anyone does. I came across a blog by an Elder Hyrum Kim, I was like "this is an American guy of Korean descent." Then I saw his picture, I was like "this guy looks white". Then I realized his name is Hyrum Kahalena'auao Kim. I was like "this guy is some mixture of Hawaiian and Korean, who looks totally white, I am confused." I am still trying to figure out who actually became the president of the Portugal Porto Mission if Brother Joni Koch, now a general authority, was sent to the Mozambique Maputo Mission. He was the second Brazilian in a row to be mission president in Mozambique. His predecessor had been head of FranklinCovey of Brazil before becoming mission president.
Thoughts on General Conference
The First session had a strong theme of focusing on the Plan of Salvation. A general focus on Jesus Christ and the power of his atonement is found throughout.
I especially liked Elder Renlund's talk denouncing bigotry. Elder Holland's talk was very powerful, especially his call for more care for the poor, and more love for those who suffer mental illness.
I especially liked Elder Renlund's talk denouncing bigotry. Elder Holland's talk was very powerful, especially his call for more care for the poor, and more love for those who suffer mental illness.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
The Deseret News needs to change the tone of its comment section
The Deseret News comment section is currently a vile hole of anti-Mormonism, liberal progssive lies and rudeness, incivility, caustic sarcasm and other negativity. It is high time this changed.
The way to change this is 3 fold.
1. Ban all comments to all articles for the next 2 weeks.
2.Force all people to enter new names, and force all screen names to be first and last name with a middle name option. Do not allow anything that is not a name.
3.Ban Hutterite and a few other hate mongers permanently.
The way to change this is 3 fold.
1. Ban all comments to all articles for the next 2 weeks.
2.Force all people to enter new names, and force all screen names to be first and last name with a middle name option. Do not allow anything that is not a name.
3.Ban Hutterite and a few other hate mongers permanently.
Friday, March 24, 2017
On the other hand, the Mexico Catholic Apostolic Church was founded in the 1920s with the support of President Calles with the goal of destroying the Catholic Church loyal to Rome in Mexico. This is a clear example of the political intervention into religion so key to the Reformation in England and the early history of the Church of England.
This group is hard to place. It apparently still exists, but one of its 5 dioceses, with a membership of about 10,000-20,000 converted to the Orthodox Church and became the backbone of the Orthdox Church in Mexico in 1972.
In some ways MCAC is reminiscent of the 3rd Convention Movement in Mexico, a break away group in Mormonism that was mass reconciled when George Albert Smith visited Mexico in 1946.
This group is hard to place. It apparently still exists, but one of its 5 dioceses, with a membership of about 10,000-20,000 converted to the Orthodox Church and became the backbone of the Orthdox Church in Mexico in 1972.
In some ways MCAC is reminiscent of the 3rd Convention Movement in Mexico, a break away group in Mormonism that was mass reconciled when George Albert Smith visited Mexico in 1946.
Why the notion of a reformation in Latin America does not work
I remember reading an article published about 1992 that asked if there was a Reformation going on in Latin America. It pointed out the rise of Protestant Churchs and the LDS Church in the region.
My takeaway from the situation, after thinking on and off about it for 20+ years is that the idea that Latin America has experienced a significant reformation just does not work.
What has happened is very widespread and significant conversions away from Catholicism. Probably most heavily to Pentecostal Denominations. However there is a whole range of groups that have grown in the wake of Catholic decline.
This is not the same thing as a reformation. A Reformation would be people within Catholicism presenting a new religious view that caused break away from the Catholic Church. For this to count as a reformation, we would need to see the success rates found in places in Europe where the majority of the population had embraced the Reformation.
The first member of the Church in Brazil, at least as far as hisorians can tell, arrived in 1913. However there is no indication of informal LDS meetings until 1923, and an actual branch was not organized until 1930. Today there are 1.3 million Church members in Brazil, second only to the US. However Church members in Brazil are a lower percentage of the population than in much of Latin America.
The Brazilian Apostolic Catholic Church, a break off from the Catholic Church that does things like the people electing bishops and allowing married priests, counted 560,000 members as of 2010. While a sizeable religious body, it is not a significant portion of the population in a country of 184 million people. Even the LDS Church is well below the 1% mark.
However the whole structure of Catholicism not in open communion with Rome is on the messy side.
My takeaway from the situation, after thinking on and off about it for 20+ years is that the idea that Latin America has experienced a significant reformation just does not work.
What has happened is very widespread and significant conversions away from Catholicism. Probably most heavily to Pentecostal Denominations. However there is a whole range of groups that have grown in the wake of Catholic decline.
This is not the same thing as a reformation. A Reformation would be people within Catholicism presenting a new religious view that caused break away from the Catholic Church. For this to count as a reformation, we would need to see the success rates found in places in Europe where the majority of the population had embraced the Reformation.
The first member of the Church in Brazil, at least as far as hisorians can tell, arrived in 1913. However there is no indication of informal LDS meetings until 1923, and an actual branch was not organized until 1930. Today there are 1.3 million Church members in Brazil, second only to the US. However Church members in Brazil are a lower percentage of the population than in much of Latin America.
The Brazilian Apostolic Catholic Church, a break off from the Catholic Church that does things like the people electing bishops and allowing married priests, counted 560,000 members as of 2010. While a sizeable religious body, it is not a significant portion of the population in a country of 184 million people. Even the LDS Church is well below the 1% mark.
However the whole structure of Catholicism not in open communion with Rome is on the messy side.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
I don't understand Detroit
My main take away from 3 and a half years of going to Detroit almost every day is that I do not understand Detroit.
It is too huge of a city to be understood. Its 139 square miles defy easy explanation. Even this underestimates the full number of lots in the city, which far exceeds the same area in the suburbs. Beyond this the city has little aparments buildings dotted over much of the east side, and despite the 1980s bulldozing to make room for big automative factories in a hope to save the city from total suburban flight of all jobs, still probalby lost more homes, businesses and churches to the building of freeways than to the building of gargantuan factories like the Poletown Plant.
Detroit has iconic abandoned buildings, like the Packer Plant, that has sat empty since 1958. Yet it is the stores that have closed since I went in there that tell me more, like the meat market that used to sit on Lahser just south of 8 Mile, or the many Taco Bells that used to dot the east side.
On the other hand it is the removal of the old factory building that was adjacent to the double Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall complex on Outer Drive just west of Mound that is the best sign that Detroit is being realigned to a city that has parts that people with suburban sensabilities can live in.
However that was exactly what the neighborhood around, and especially just north of, Emerson Elemntary were built as in the 1940s and early 1950s. Yet today these neighborhoods see house after house leveled.
It means something that some people in Brightmoor take the burning of houses as a sign that crime is on the decline because the drug dealers are being driven out.
My one take away from Detroit is it is not understandable. At least not by mere mortals. Maybe if I was a better student of all the social sciences I would have a hope to write a historical assesment of Detroit with as penertrating an understanding as "The Mediteranean and the Mediteranean World in the Age of Philip II".
However at present I content myself with knowing that the preservationists are wrong. The hope for a new, vibrant Detroit is mostly found through destroying as many unused and useless buildings as possible. It does no one any good to have a stately 1920s tudor revivial style dwelling on their street when the place is an abandoned hive for the activities of vagrants.
Also the reality of a car culture needs to be better adapted to. This means that Churches should be given opetions to expand their properties so that their parking lots are not across a street. New businesses should be encoraged to have on site parking, especially outside the downtown core, and parking on major streets should be discoraged.
Lastly the city needs to remove the scores of abandoned commencial buildings, primarily on the east side, built on dinky lots in residential zones, often on 2 minor streets, that are not going to be used again any time soon.
What Detroit needs most of all is a more aggresive program of removing blighted buildings. As long as charred remains of houses greet people thinking of moving in the city will not be able to turn around on a significant basis.
It is too huge of a city to be understood. Its 139 square miles defy easy explanation. Even this underestimates the full number of lots in the city, which far exceeds the same area in the suburbs. Beyond this the city has little aparments buildings dotted over much of the east side, and despite the 1980s bulldozing to make room for big automative factories in a hope to save the city from total suburban flight of all jobs, still probalby lost more homes, businesses and churches to the building of freeways than to the building of gargantuan factories like the Poletown Plant.
Detroit has iconic abandoned buildings, like the Packer Plant, that has sat empty since 1958. Yet it is the stores that have closed since I went in there that tell me more, like the meat market that used to sit on Lahser just south of 8 Mile, or the many Taco Bells that used to dot the east side.
On the other hand it is the removal of the old factory building that was adjacent to the double Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall complex on Outer Drive just west of Mound that is the best sign that Detroit is being realigned to a city that has parts that people with suburban sensabilities can live in.
However that was exactly what the neighborhood around, and especially just north of, Emerson Elemntary were built as in the 1940s and early 1950s. Yet today these neighborhoods see house after house leveled.
It means something that some people in Brightmoor take the burning of houses as a sign that crime is on the decline because the drug dealers are being driven out.
My one take away from Detroit is it is not understandable. At least not by mere mortals. Maybe if I was a better student of all the social sciences I would have a hope to write a historical assesment of Detroit with as penertrating an understanding as "The Mediteranean and the Mediteranean World in the Age of Philip II".
However at present I content myself with knowing that the preservationists are wrong. The hope for a new, vibrant Detroit is mostly found through destroying as many unused and useless buildings as possible. It does no one any good to have a stately 1920s tudor revivial style dwelling on their street when the place is an abandoned hive for the activities of vagrants.
Also the reality of a car culture needs to be better adapted to. This means that Churches should be given opetions to expand their properties so that their parking lots are not across a street. New businesses should be encoraged to have on site parking, especially outside the downtown core, and parking on major streets should be discoraged.
Lastly the city needs to remove the scores of abandoned commencial buildings, primarily on the east side, built on dinky lots in residential zones, often on 2 minor streets, that are not going to be used again any time soon.
What Detroit needs most of all is a more aggresive program of removing blighted buildings. As long as charred remains of houses greet people thinking of moving in the city will not be able to turn around on a significant basis.
Understanding Northwest Detroit
I have tried over the last few days to better understand Northwest Detroit. I have a long, long way to go.
Today I was at one restraunt, part of a national franchisee, where people were sitting in the restraunt selling CDs and DVDs in a way that I strongly doubt they were paying proper royalties, and they might have been selling DVDs or films still doing their first run in theatres. I decided not to ascertain the whole details of the matter, and since this was the only one of that chain located in Detroit west of Livernois, I will not name it.
I have spent my whole teaching career, all 3 and a half years, teaching in Detroit north of I-94 and west of Livernois, which is a rough approximation of north-west Detroit, although I would argue the area south of Warren between Livernois and the first crossing of the Dearborn border is more south-west Detroit, with its high number of Hispanics. However Warrendale, the area along Warren further west once Detroit is reentered, has few if any Hispanics, but some portion of Arabs which still makes it culturally foriegn to the part of Detroit I teach in, where schools have 98%+ black student bodies. That includes some students who while they fully acknowledge a their black heritage also acknowledge white and Native American heritage. Those number probably between 5 and 10 percent of the overall student body, at least those who have at least one grandparent who is fully white, but how much those see themselves as making them other than just black is hard to say, and still probably undecided for some. I may be overestimating, since the percentage of such may be higher in lower grades than in middle school.
The far northwest has many areas. My school, John R. King, is located in the heart of the Belmont Neighborhood. This neighborhood has less strong of an identity than some. It is also harder to describe.
Actually the school is not in Belmont. Belmont starts on the other side of Strathmoor, and goes all the way to Greenfield. It goes from Puritan to Fenkell. So the school is adjacent to Belmont, and the houses closest to the main entrance of the school are in Belmont, but the school itself is not there.
In general the crime level and percentage of abandoned houses seems to rise as one goes south from 6 mile to Fenkell between Schaefer and Hubbell. I have analyized the issue less west of Hubbell.
There are some areas in the northwest that stand out. Grandmont, the area just south of Grand River just before the Southfield Freeway, and even more so Rosedale Park and Rosedale Park north alone Grand River between 6 mile and maybe Lyndon or so from the Southfield Freeway to Evergreen have a history of being some of the more affluent parts of Detroit.
However as my coworker who lives in Rosedale Park told me "its still the neighborhood". This is not as exclusive as Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest or Indian Village, and I was told by another co-worker 3 years ago the neighborhoods were going down hill.
It was at the Little Ceasars Pizza in the heart of Rosedale Park I overheard some black Hebrew Israelte types spewing their message of racial segregation and denunciation of inter-racial marriage.
Rosedale Park has also produced members of the Detroit City Council who excell at race baiting politics being used to advance their own narrow interests.
Still whenever I start to try to explain Detroit I realize I know way too little of the city.
An area I am trying to understand is Brightmoor. This area is poorer and less African-American than other areas in the North west. It has a combination of drivewayless dinky houses crammed next to each other, houses with 5 or more empties lots by them, blocks without houses, and less than 20 year old new build houses with attached garages. It has seen some of the highest rates of abandoned house removal, but one can still find 4 aboandoned houses in a row in some places.
As in most neighborhoods in Detroit the notion that whites there are the last stragglers on of the massive white population that left are too simplistic and often just plain wrong. True, I also at times have poor sampling size issues. I do know 2 white people who live in Brightmoor and meither fits that description. One is a native of Pittsburgh who came to Detroit a few years back to engage in urban homesteading. The other is a man of Italian descent who was born in Farmington, Michigan, largely raised there and Redford Township, and now lives in Brightmoor.
Even some of the white people who really are hold outs don;t fit the assumed mold. For example John George, the founder of Motor City Blight Busters may be white, but his wife is black, and therefore John George Jr looks black. To understand George one has to try to wrap their mind around Sandhill/Old Redford and its struggle to thrive against crack houses, drug dealers and neglect from the city combined with oppressive beauracratic red tape. On the other hand MCBB at times suffers from an overabundance of volunteers to do its work. The problem there is it lacks the logistical support staff to formulate ways in which to effectively use the volunteers.
Then there is the North Evergreen/Southfield area. This is the area north of 7 Mile between Evergreen and Southfield. It is a neighborhood with the 78 acre O'Hair Park, including the 20 acre Pitcher Woods. Adjacent to that on the east is the abandoned Pitcher Elementary. To the west is Henry Ford High School, one of the schools run by the EAA that may be the high school in the city that suffers the most from brain drain to Cass and Renaisance.
The neighborhood also has the misfortune of having 8 Mile and some of its unsavory businesses along its north edge. If it was not for having to live insanely close to such businesses, the probably early 1950s housing that covers most of the streets just south of 8 Mile would seem attactive. In the part of the neighborhood just west of the Southfield there are lots of abandoned bungalow houses, crammed on small lots, and in general not an easy place to want to live. Even the Little Free Library in O'Hair park has an under abundance of books.
Today I was at one restraunt, part of a national franchisee, where people were sitting in the restraunt selling CDs and DVDs in a way that I strongly doubt they were paying proper royalties, and they might have been selling DVDs or films still doing their first run in theatres. I decided not to ascertain the whole details of the matter, and since this was the only one of that chain located in Detroit west of Livernois, I will not name it.
I have spent my whole teaching career, all 3 and a half years, teaching in Detroit north of I-94 and west of Livernois, which is a rough approximation of north-west Detroit, although I would argue the area south of Warren between Livernois and the first crossing of the Dearborn border is more south-west Detroit, with its high number of Hispanics. However Warrendale, the area along Warren further west once Detroit is reentered, has few if any Hispanics, but some portion of Arabs which still makes it culturally foriegn to the part of Detroit I teach in, where schools have 98%+ black student bodies. That includes some students who while they fully acknowledge a their black heritage also acknowledge white and Native American heritage. Those number probably between 5 and 10 percent of the overall student body, at least those who have at least one grandparent who is fully white, but how much those see themselves as making them other than just black is hard to say, and still probably undecided for some. I may be overestimating, since the percentage of such may be higher in lower grades than in middle school.
The far northwest has many areas. My school, John R. King, is located in the heart of the Belmont Neighborhood. This neighborhood has less strong of an identity than some. It is also harder to describe.
Actually the school is not in Belmont. Belmont starts on the other side of Strathmoor, and goes all the way to Greenfield. It goes from Puritan to Fenkell. So the school is adjacent to Belmont, and the houses closest to the main entrance of the school are in Belmont, but the school itself is not there.
In general the crime level and percentage of abandoned houses seems to rise as one goes south from 6 mile to Fenkell between Schaefer and Hubbell. I have analyized the issue less west of Hubbell.
There are some areas in the northwest that stand out. Grandmont, the area just south of Grand River just before the Southfield Freeway, and even more so Rosedale Park and Rosedale Park north alone Grand River between 6 mile and maybe Lyndon or so from the Southfield Freeway to Evergreen have a history of being some of the more affluent parts of Detroit.
However as my coworker who lives in Rosedale Park told me "its still the neighborhood". This is not as exclusive as Palmer Woods, Sherwood Forest or Indian Village, and I was told by another co-worker 3 years ago the neighborhoods were going down hill.
It was at the Little Ceasars Pizza in the heart of Rosedale Park I overheard some black Hebrew Israelte types spewing their message of racial segregation and denunciation of inter-racial marriage.
Rosedale Park has also produced members of the Detroit City Council who excell at race baiting politics being used to advance their own narrow interests.
Still whenever I start to try to explain Detroit I realize I know way too little of the city.
An area I am trying to understand is Brightmoor. This area is poorer and less African-American than other areas in the North west. It has a combination of drivewayless dinky houses crammed next to each other, houses with 5 or more empties lots by them, blocks without houses, and less than 20 year old new build houses with attached garages. It has seen some of the highest rates of abandoned house removal, but one can still find 4 aboandoned houses in a row in some places.
As in most neighborhoods in Detroit the notion that whites there are the last stragglers on of the massive white population that left are too simplistic and often just plain wrong. True, I also at times have poor sampling size issues. I do know 2 white people who live in Brightmoor and meither fits that description. One is a native of Pittsburgh who came to Detroit a few years back to engage in urban homesteading. The other is a man of Italian descent who was born in Farmington, Michigan, largely raised there and Redford Township, and now lives in Brightmoor.
Even some of the white people who really are hold outs don;t fit the assumed mold. For example John George, the founder of Motor City Blight Busters may be white, but his wife is black, and therefore John George Jr looks black. To understand George one has to try to wrap their mind around Sandhill/Old Redford and its struggle to thrive against crack houses, drug dealers and neglect from the city combined with oppressive beauracratic red tape. On the other hand MCBB at times suffers from an overabundance of volunteers to do its work. The problem there is it lacks the logistical support staff to formulate ways in which to effectively use the volunteers.
Then there is the North Evergreen/Southfield area. This is the area north of 7 Mile between Evergreen and Southfield. It is a neighborhood with the 78 acre O'Hair Park, including the 20 acre Pitcher Woods. Adjacent to that on the east is the abandoned Pitcher Elementary. To the west is Henry Ford High School, one of the schools run by the EAA that may be the high school in the city that suffers the most from brain drain to Cass and Renaisance.
The neighborhood also has the misfortune of having 8 Mile and some of its unsavory businesses along its north edge. If it was not for having to live insanely close to such businesses, the probably early 1950s housing that covers most of the streets just south of 8 Mile would seem attactive. In the part of the neighborhood just west of the Southfield there are lots of abandoned bungalow houses, crammed on small lots, and in general not an easy place to want to live. Even the Little Free Library in O'Hair park has an under abundance of books.
Truly international Mormonism
This article http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865676001/Despite-tragedy-LDS-family-from-Taiwan-finds-comfort-in-fellowship-of-Japanese-members.html I have to love. Japanese and Taiwanese showing love for each other is probably not exceptional, although not all in Taiwan have forgotten the oppressive nature of Japanese colonialism.
Still the myriad ways people in both countries show caring and love for each other shows the Church reaching into the hearts of the people.
This is also why my favorite LDS film is "Freetown". It is the least burdened by Americans of any LDS film I can think of. True, it has an American director, but all the characters are non-Americans, except the mission president and his wife, who have bit parts at the end. All the other characters are Sierra Leonean, or in almost all cases Liberian. However beyond that all the actors were pretty much from those countries or Ghana. The cast is also not American. Only about half the cast is LDS, but I am surprised that they found even that many LDS actors in those 3 countries. They may have also recruited a few Nigerian actors, but it was actors from those countries, not from the US, that were the cast.
Still the myriad ways people in both countries show caring and love for each other shows the Church reaching into the hearts of the people.
This is also why my favorite LDS film is "Freetown". It is the least burdened by Americans of any LDS film I can think of. True, it has an American director, but all the characters are non-Americans, except the mission president and his wife, who have bit parts at the end. All the other characters are Sierra Leonean, or in almost all cases Liberian. However beyond that all the actors were pretty much from those countries or Ghana. The cast is also not American. Only about half the cast is LDS, but I am surprised that they found even that many LDS actors in those 3 countries. They may have also recruited a few Nigerian actors, but it was actors from those countries, not from the US, that were the cast.
Friday, March 17, 2017
Horribly written articles
This article http://www.manilatimes.net/latter-day-saints-promotes-family-values-in-ph/29943/ has a quite encoraging coverage of the LDS Church impact on families. However the author makes a few unacceptable mistakes. Elder Echo Hawk did not say his family relocated to Mexico. They relocated to New Mexico, a US state. This is a horrible mistake.
Even worse they constantly refer to him as Hawk. His last name is Echo Hawk. One must use both parts of the name.
Even worse they constantly refer to him as Hawk. His last name is Echo Hawk. One must use both parts of the name.
Mormons, Catholics and immigration
In the 19th-century both Catholics and Mormons had an image as immigrants.
However Mormons also in many ways resonated with a concept as converts from a New England Yankee background. This New England Yankee core group formed most of the leadership of the Church. Of the first 5 presidents of the Church, only John Taylor did not come from such a background.
Joseph F. Smith represents a shift, with a mother who was born in Britain even though his dad was from the New England origin. President Smith also shifted things with a Denmark born and England born counselors. Although his fellow member of the first presidency before had been a native of England.
Even in the early days not all immigrants joined the Church before immigrating. Both Elder Eyring and Elder Faust had their first ancestor with that last name to join the Church be a German born man who joined the LDS Church after immigrating to the US.
While especially in Maryland there were Catholics from its founding, and the Catholic Church numbers many Native American and Hispanic members who came to the US by annexation more than immigration, the Catholic core was immigrants. However the relevant percentages of immigrants and native born among current Catholics is a complex issue.
From about 1900 on the LDS Church continued to have immigrants but their numbers are lower especially as a percentage of the Church.
After World War II the LDS Church entered into an intense growth period in the US, that lasted at least through 1980. This growth was largely among American-born whites, although there are exceptions. Miami and New York City areas saw widespread conversions of Hispanics beganing in about 1963. However how non-white these Hispancs are is often hard to say, since many were uppper class Cuban immigrants. There was ucces among the clearly not culturally in any way white populations in the south-west US.
By the 1980s the Church began to make broader inroads into immigrants communities from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. There was also a growing number of Tongan and Samoan Church members, although in general these joined the Church in their home lands.
This focuses on Catholic and LDS differences. While the Deseret News overstats the extent to which Catholics come from majority Catholic countries, there are at lot from Latin America and the Philippines who come from Catholic majority areas.
On the other hand there is a growing number of Catholics from India, Nigeria, Ghana, Vietnam and other countries where Catholics are a minority. In all those countries exceed Ghana Christians are most likely a minority, although the exact religious balance in Nigeria is tricky.
Here in Metro Detroit there are several Catholics from Lebanon, Syria and especially Iraq, all countries where Catholics are a small minority.
On the Ghana issue a Catholic from Ghana was just baptized in my ward.
Still in general Catholic immigrants in the US were mostly Catholic before immigrating. While there are notable and noticeable exceptions, most are also life long Catholics.
For Mormon immigrants the numbers are more complex. Among immigrant Mormons the picture is hard to know. This is especially true because sometime you have couples like the one I knew from India where the husband joined in India but the wife did not join until after immigrating.
Some groups, like Mormons of Cuban and Iranina descent, have virtually all joined the Church in the US. However I have also known couples in the US where the wife was from Korea, the Philippines and Uruguay and was a life long Mormon and the American husband was a convert.
My general sense is among immigrant Ghanaians most immigrated after they joined the Church, but as I mentioned I know a counter example. We had a native of Zambia serving as a misionary in my ward who had joined the Church in the US, but in my sister's ward there is a native of Zimbabwe who joined the Church there, so no general trend is easily findable.
However with the exception of immigrants from Samoa and Tonga virtually all move to a US with the Church more established.
This fact makes the relationship between immigration and Church members different for the Catholic and the Mormon Church. In some ways the Catholic Church wants to encorage immigration to give more vitality to the Church, while the LDS Church fears immigration will sap vitality from the sending countries.
One reason that there is a different feeling is that in the Catholic context recruited priests are religious leaders who come permanently. In the Mormon context, the Church can send a Fijian man to be mission president in Arkansas, and not see it as a permanent move. Most leadership is drawn locally, so the fact we have a Haitian born member on my stake high council says nothing of recruiting members in Haiti, and in fact he joined the Church in Detroit.
The LDS Church has in my experience sent more missionaries from other countries to the US of late, although my mission 15 years ago had 10 or so Mongolians, and I also had French and Canadian companions, plus knew missionaries from Argentina, Yap, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Bolovia, Chile, Australia and Samoa.
A short assesment of the issues is that the LDS Church has for the last 50 or more years sought to move beyond an image of being an American Church. The Catholic Church on the other hand had a strong image in the 19th and well into the 20th century of being a foreign institution. Its struggle has been to present its members as truly American.
Another issue is that until World War II, and in some areas later, the primary divide was between Catholics and Protestants. The culture wars starting in the 1960s have pitted liberal Protestants, a certain element in Catholicism, reform and conservative Jews, and non-believers against Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Protestants and Catholics who believe in the doctrines of the Church, although not all issues divide exactly on these lines.
However Mormons also in many ways resonated with a concept as converts from a New England Yankee background. This New England Yankee core group formed most of the leadership of the Church. Of the first 5 presidents of the Church, only John Taylor did not come from such a background.
Joseph F. Smith represents a shift, with a mother who was born in Britain even though his dad was from the New England origin. President Smith also shifted things with a Denmark born and England born counselors. Although his fellow member of the first presidency before had been a native of England.
Even in the early days not all immigrants joined the Church before immigrating. Both Elder Eyring and Elder Faust had their first ancestor with that last name to join the Church be a German born man who joined the LDS Church after immigrating to the US.
While especially in Maryland there were Catholics from its founding, and the Catholic Church numbers many Native American and Hispanic members who came to the US by annexation more than immigration, the Catholic core was immigrants. However the relevant percentages of immigrants and native born among current Catholics is a complex issue.
From about 1900 on the LDS Church continued to have immigrants but their numbers are lower especially as a percentage of the Church.
After World War II the LDS Church entered into an intense growth period in the US, that lasted at least through 1980. This growth was largely among American-born whites, although there are exceptions. Miami and New York City areas saw widespread conversions of Hispanics beganing in about 1963. However how non-white these Hispancs are is often hard to say, since many were uppper class Cuban immigrants. There was ucces among the clearly not culturally in any way white populations in the south-west US.
By the 1980s the Church began to make broader inroads into immigrants communities from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. There was also a growing number of Tongan and Samoan Church members, although in general these joined the Church in their home lands.
This focuses on Catholic and LDS differences. While the Deseret News overstats the extent to which Catholics come from majority Catholic countries, there are at lot from Latin America and the Philippines who come from Catholic majority areas.
On the other hand there is a growing number of Catholics from India, Nigeria, Ghana, Vietnam and other countries where Catholics are a minority. In all those countries exceed Ghana Christians are most likely a minority, although the exact religious balance in Nigeria is tricky.
Here in Metro Detroit there are several Catholics from Lebanon, Syria and especially Iraq, all countries where Catholics are a small minority.
On the Ghana issue a Catholic from Ghana was just baptized in my ward.
Still in general Catholic immigrants in the US were mostly Catholic before immigrating. While there are notable and noticeable exceptions, most are also life long Catholics.
For Mormon immigrants the numbers are more complex. Among immigrant Mormons the picture is hard to know. This is especially true because sometime you have couples like the one I knew from India where the husband joined in India but the wife did not join until after immigrating.
Some groups, like Mormons of Cuban and Iranina descent, have virtually all joined the Church in the US. However I have also known couples in the US where the wife was from Korea, the Philippines and Uruguay and was a life long Mormon and the American husband was a convert.
My general sense is among immigrant Ghanaians most immigrated after they joined the Church, but as I mentioned I know a counter example. We had a native of Zambia serving as a misionary in my ward who had joined the Church in the US, but in my sister's ward there is a native of Zimbabwe who joined the Church there, so no general trend is easily findable.
However with the exception of immigrants from Samoa and Tonga virtually all move to a US with the Church more established.
This fact makes the relationship between immigration and Church members different for the Catholic and the Mormon Church. In some ways the Catholic Church wants to encorage immigration to give more vitality to the Church, while the LDS Church fears immigration will sap vitality from the sending countries.
One reason that there is a different feeling is that in the Catholic context recruited priests are religious leaders who come permanently. In the Mormon context, the Church can send a Fijian man to be mission president in Arkansas, and not see it as a permanent move. Most leadership is drawn locally, so the fact we have a Haitian born member on my stake high council says nothing of recruiting members in Haiti, and in fact he joined the Church in Detroit.
The LDS Church has in my experience sent more missionaries from other countries to the US of late, although my mission 15 years ago had 10 or so Mongolians, and I also had French and Canadian companions, plus knew missionaries from Argentina, Yap, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Bolovia, Chile, Australia and Samoa.
A short assesment of the issues is that the LDS Church has for the last 50 or more years sought to move beyond an image of being an American Church. The Catholic Church on the other hand had a strong image in the 19th and well into the 20th century of being a foreign institution. Its struggle has been to present its members as truly American.
Another issue is that until World War II, and in some areas later, the primary divide was between Catholics and Protestants. The culture wars starting in the 1960s have pitted liberal Protestants, a certain element in Catholicism, reform and conservative Jews, and non-believers against Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Protestants and Catholics who believe in the doctrines of the Church, although not all issues divide exactly on these lines.
Mormons, Catholics and Immigration 3
The big issue is why is the Deseret News addressing the issue of Catholics and immigration and not Mormons and immigration.
The answer is hard to put succinctly.
A higher percentage of Catholics, 27%, are immigrants. What the percentage of Mormons who are immigrants is a question that needs to be better addressed.
However some of the issues have to do not so much with reality but with perception.
The idea that the Catholic leadership is white has place no matter what the reality is.
Mormon leadership is white, but how this compares to Mormon membership is complex. There are 4 general authorities who are clearly not white, at least not non-Hispanic white, who are also at some level American. Garrit W. Gong of the Presidency of the 70 is the highest ranking, a native of California whose ancestors came to the US from China over 100 years ago. He is totally non-white, although not in any sense an immigrant. Larry EchoHawk is a Native American, specifically a Pawnee. We have yet to have an African-American (as opposed to Afro-Brazilian, Kenyan or Zimbabwean) general authority, but there is an African American area seventy. At least 1 maybe 2 area seventies are Hispanic. Elder Ochoa is a US born, but Mexico raised general authority, who spent most of his adult life in Mexico but was living in the US when called as a general authority. Elder Hugo Montoya was born in the US as well, but since he moved to Mexico as a very young child and spent his entire adult life there until his call as a general autority, he does not figure in my calculations. Elder Juan Uceda on the other hand, a native of Peru who had been an area seventy there, had been living in New Jersey for a few years at the time of his call.
The answer is hard to put succinctly.
A higher percentage of Catholics, 27%, are immigrants. What the percentage of Mormons who are immigrants is a question that needs to be better addressed.
However some of the issues have to do not so much with reality but with perception.
The idea that the Catholic leadership is white has place no matter what the reality is.
Mormon leadership is white, but how this compares to Mormon membership is complex. There are 4 general authorities who are clearly not white, at least not non-Hispanic white, who are also at some level American. Garrit W. Gong of the Presidency of the 70 is the highest ranking, a native of California whose ancestors came to the US from China over 100 years ago. He is totally non-white, although not in any sense an immigrant. Larry EchoHawk is a Native American, specifically a Pawnee. We have yet to have an African-American (as opposed to Afro-Brazilian, Kenyan or Zimbabwean) general authority, but there is an African American area seventy. At least 1 maybe 2 area seventies are Hispanic. Elder Ochoa is a US born, but Mexico raised general authority, who spent most of his adult life in Mexico but was living in the US when called as a general authority. Elder Hugo Montoya was born in the US as well, but since he moved to Mexico as a very young child and spent his entire adult life there until his call as a general autority, he does not figure in my calculations. Elder Juan Uceda on the other hand, a native of Peru who had been an area seventy there, had been living in New Jersey for a few years at the time of his call.
Catholics, Mormons and immigration 2
A bigger problem with the Deseret News article is that it too much posits immigrants verses native born Catholics as white verses non-white.
This comes from too narrow an understanding of Catholic history in the US. The percentage of Native Americans in the US who are Catholics is fairly high. It is telling that in my 20th-century Native American history class at Eastern Michigan University the two biographies of Native American women, one on a Lakota Woman, and the other on Molly Spotted Elk called "Penobscot in Paris", were both on women who were Catholics.
With Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, being a registered member of the Prarie Band of Potawatomie, while also being one of the strongest voices of politically conservative Catholicism, the dichotomies in the Deseret News article do not hold up.
There are also more African-American Catholics than some realize. In Louisiana and MAryland especially there are long established African-American Catholic communities. In the case of Louisiana the Catholic Church ran a segregated school system. True, in both white and black schools there were probably non-Catholics, but there also were Catholics.
This comes from too narrow an understanding of Catholic history in the US. The percentage of Native Americans in the US who are Catholics is fairly high. It is telling that in my 20th-century Native American history class at Eastern Michigan University the two biographies of Native American women, one on a Lakota Woman, and the other on Molly Spotted Elk called "Penobscot in Paris", were both on women who were Catholics.
With Charles Chaput, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, being a registered member of the Prarie Band of Potawatomie, while also being one of the strongest voices of politically conservative Catholicism, the dichotomies in the Deseret News article do not hold up.
There are also more African-American Catholics than some realize. In Louisiana and MAryland especially there are long established African-American Catholic communities. In the case of Louisiana the Catholic Church ran a segregated school system. True, in both white and black schools there were probably non-Catholics, but there also were Catholics.
BYU's Maxwell Institute has gone to far in trying to reach acceptability in secular scholarly circles
BYU's Maxwell Institute has gone too far in trying to reach acceptability in secular scholarly circles. That is my take away from this http://www.patheos.com/blogs/soulandcity/2014/12/intellect-and-affection-how-to-be-a-faithful-mormon-intellectual/ article by Ralph C. Hancock.
I have to agree with this assessment. I also will agree that some level of breadth is good, but the current turn has made for a situation where most believing Latter-day Saints would not feel this scholarship is at all addressed to them.
In the over two years since Hardy wrote the article in question things have not improved. Hardy has become a caustic voice attacking the LDS Church on its position that entering into same sex marriage is an act of apostasy. Hardy's criticism of these people for making peace with the sexual revolution is becoming even more true.
Park on the other hand has taken to attacking the LDS Church for not standing against President Trumps travel bans. Besides the fact that Park showed a rash rush to attack when the Church did make a statement on the issue, he misunderstands religious freedom, most likely intentionally to mock its true believers.
The travel ban is based on assesments connected with government dysfunction and violence in the listed countries. I would actually question either Iran or Sudan being on the list, however since the vast majority of Muslim countries are not on the list, saying it is religiously motivated would require more analysis than its attackers have given it.
Beyond this, an order that prioritices the protection of persecuted religious minorities is exactly the type of order those who favor religious freedom would want. At least viewed on that specific issue. The order has enough other flaws that I doubt anyone can defend it.
Beyond this, the comparison to the issue of attempts to stop Mormon immigration to the US in 1879 show a major lack of historic understanding, specifically a failure to grasp what was at stake for emigrating British, Danish, Swiss and other Mormons in 1879. If the US controlled Mecca nad Medina and then sought to ban Muslim immigration there would be an analoguy. In 1879 Mormon theology called on Mormons to gather to a literal, physical Zion found in Utah. The purpose of this was to build the temples, and once that was accomplished there was a shift to building Zion everywhere. The shift took 70 years to fully implement, and in some ways LDS Church still seeks to counteract the gathering mentality.
Back to the issue at hand, I think Handcock is right that we need to stop assuming that bracketing all truth claims is a broad approach to issues, and need to start focusing on how to develop dialogue with believers who are academics. This probably means focusing more on shared dialogue with Catholic universities. On the other hand considering how many American Catholic universities have abandoned any distinctions from general secular culture this may be a hard endevor.
I however think that BYU needs to make sure that we do not in seeking to be liked and popular to other people sell our basic doctrines. As President Kimball counseled we should not seek to have a king like all other people.
I think there was a need for a broader, more scholarly, less apologetic approach to the isues. However the Maxwell Institute has gone too far the other way.
I have to agree with this assessment. I also will agree that some level of breadth is good, but the current turn has made for a situation where most believing Latter-day Saints would not feel this scholarship is at all addressed to them.
In the over two years since Hardy wrote the article in question things have not improved. Hardy has become a caustic voice attacking the LDS Church on its position that entering into same sex marriage is an act of apostasy. Hardy's criticism of these people for making peace with the sexual revolution is becoming even more true.
Park on the other hand has taken to attacking the LDS Church for not standing against President Trumps travel bans. Besides the fact that Park showed a rash rush to attack when the Church did make a statement on the issue, he misunderstands religious freedom, most likely intentionally to mock its true believers.
The travel ban is based on assesments connected with government dysfunction and violence in the listed countries. I would actually question either Iran or Sudan being on the list, however since the vast majority of Muslim countries are not on the list, saying it is religiously motivated would require more analysis than its attackers have given it.
Beyond this, an order that prioritices the protection of persecuted religious minorities is exactly the type of order those who favor religious freedom would want. At least viewed on that specific issue. The order has enough other flaws that I doubt anyone can defend it.
Beyond this, the comparison to the issue of attempts to stop Mormon immigration to the US in 1879 show a major lack of historic understanding, specifically a failure to grasp what was at stake for emigrating British, Danish, Swiss and other Mormons in 1879. If the US controlled Mecca nad Medina and then sought to ban Muslim immigration there would be an analoguy. In 1879 Mormon theology called on Mormons to gather to a literal, physical Zion found in Utah. The purpose of this was to build the temples, and once that was accomplished there was a shift to building Zion everywhere. The shift took 70 years to fully implement, and in some ways LDS Church still seeks to counteract the gathering mentality.
Back to the issue at hand, I think Handcock is right that we need to stop assuming that bracketing all truth claims is a broad approach to issues, and need to start focusing on how to develop dialogue with believers who are academics. This probably means focusing more on shared dialogue with Catholic universities. On the other hand considering how many American Catholic universities have abandoned any distinctions from general secular culture this may be a hard endevor.
I however think that BYU needs to make sure that we do not in seeking to be liked and popular to other people sell our basic doctrines. As President Kimball counseled we should not seek to have a king like all other people.
I think there was a need for a broader, more scholarly, less apologetic approach to the isues. However the Maxwell Institute has gone too far the other way.
Catholics, Mormons and immigration
The Deseret News just published http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865675659/How-a-church-transforms-immigrants-and-immigrants-transform-a-church.html which is a fairly good article on Catholics and immigration. Here I will address a few shortcomings, and discuss why the issue of Mormons and immigration is not approached.
The Flaws
To being with the article relies too much on leftists who want to ignore religious freedom and right to life issues.
The article fails to contectualize right to life as the ultimate social justice fight in the minds of many. There is no more vulnerable, more voiceless group than the unborn. Right to life also focuses on the elderly and mentally disabled, other groups the death industry attacks and targets. Even issues like lowering maternal mortality suffer from the false rhetoric of the pro-abortion lobby overly personalizing policies by one person that impact another.
The religious freedom discussion misses the issues involved. To begin with, the break between Catholic institutions and government funding mandates is almost entirely an Obama administration problem. Before Obamacare we did not see atempts to force religious schools etc. to fund programs they objected to on moral grounds. Since this is not an old fight, it can not be one that people just started not resonating with.
The older issue is the use of the KKK's "seperation of Church and state" to discriminate against Catholics. The history of this needs to be understood in the context of the public schools acting as de facto agents of Protestantism well into the 20th-century. By about 1950 there was a move away from this, and a move to letting government aid to education benefit transportation budgets of Catholic Schools. Then former Alabama KKK grand dragon Hugo White introduced "seperation of Church and stae", the thing he had sworn hundreds of KKK inductees to uphold eternally, into the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
For the next 50 years the establishment clause was increasingly used to disadvantage religious groups ability to run private schools, to justify huge taxes on religious parents that made it hard for poor religious people to send their children to religious schools of their choice.
On the other hand the Catholic Church only proclaimed religious freedom as a positive good in Vatican 2 in the 1960s.
Lastly, a big part of the religious freedom fight at present focuses on the right of religious people to conduct their business in accordance with their religion. This means Catholic nurses cannot be forced to perform abortions and Catholic pharmacists cannot be forced to perscribe abortion inducing drugs. Considering that half the foriegn trained nurses in the US are Filipinos, and a majority of Filipinos are Catholics, these religious freedom fights impact immigrants more than leftists will admit.
The Flaws
To being with the article relies too much on leftists who want to ignore religious freedom and right to life issues.
The article fails to contectualize right to life as the ultimate social justice fight in the minds of many. There is no more vulnerable, more voiceless group than the unborn. Right to life also focuses on the elderly and mentally disabled, other groups the death industry attacks and targets. Even issues like lowering maternal mortality suffer from the false rhetoric of the pro-abortion lobby overly personalizing policies by one person that impact another.
The religious freedom discussion misses the issues involved. To begin with, the break between Catholic institutions and government funding mandates is almost entirely an Obama administration problem. Before Obamacare we did not see atempts to force religious schools etc. to fund programs they objected to on moral grounds. Since this is not an old fight, it can not be one that people just started not resonating with.
The older issue is the use of the KKK's "seperation of Church and state" to discriminate against Catholics. The history of this needs to be understood in the context of the public schools acting as de facto agents of Protestantism well into the 20th-century. By about 1950 there was a move away from this, and a move to letting government aid to education benefit transportation budgets of Catholic Schools. Then former Alabama KKK grand dragon Hugo White introduced "seperation of Church and stae", the thing he had sworn hundreds of KKK inductees to uphold eternally, into the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
For the next 50 years the establishment clause was increasingly used to disadvantage religious groups ability to run private schools, to justify huge taxes on religious parents that made it hard for poor religious people to send their children to religious schools of their choice.
On the other hand the Catholic Church only proclaimed religious freedom as a positive good in Vatican 2 in the 1960s.
Lastly, a big part of the religious freedom fight at present focuses on the right of religious people to conduct their business in accordance with their religion. This means Catholic nurses cannot be forced to perform abortions and Catholic pharmacists cannot be forced to perscribe abortion inducing drugs. Considering that half the foriegn trained nurses in the US are Filipinos, and a majority of Filipinos are Catholics, these religious freedom fights impact immigrants more than leftists will admit.
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