Saturday, August 4, 2018

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Middle Belt of Nigeria

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just organized a district in Ilorin, in Kwara State. This is a move into more traditionally Muslim areas of Nigeria, although less so than Jos and Abuja. Those two cities have large populations from the south due to mining and government respectively.

There are also some branches in the north in more traditionally Muslim areas. Still Ilorin is probably the first place to get a district that was a base of one of the Emirates in the Sokoto Caliphate. It was also part of the British Protectorate of Northern Nigeria before the unification of 1908, which some call the mistake of 1908, which gave us the modern, culturally bifurcated country of Nigeria.

The Church has had a branch in Ilorin since 1992, but didn't get a second branch there until 2016. It was long part of the Enugu Mission, after the 1992-1993 plan to have a mission based out of Ilorin was decided to not be a worthwhile use of mission resources.

Ilorin is now in the newly formed Ibadan Mission. I am not sure if prior to July it was in the Enugu Mission or the Lagos Mission. Enugu was where the Mabeys and Cannons lived on their mission to Nigeria in 1978-1979. Although unlike places further south there were no pre-existing believers, they did convert many Christians in that city.

However Ilorin is not Muslin at the same level of northeast Nigeria. There is not Sharia law there. Nor does it have as deep Muslim roots as the northwest in places like Kano.

Christian missionaries did not come to Ilorin until about 1905, although there were unsuccessful attempts earlier. However in the 1920s indigenous Christian Churches sprang up in the area. The exact balance of Christians and Muslims I have not yet learned. Ilorin has long been a place of many ethnic groups. The largest, the Yoruba, who dominate the whole of south-west Nigeria from Lagos north, are majority Muslim but with noticeable numbers of Christians. The Hausa, Nupe and Falani among other groups are thought to be almost all Muslim. However there have also been migrations from the basically all Christian south-east of Nigeria. Thus, religious plurality exists and better for LDS growth, it often exists in Churches that embrace the gifts of the spirit and notions of personal revelation through dreams.

Last year there were similar growth anniversaries of forming districts in the eastern parts of Nigeria's middle belt. This area in the time around 2000 saw some of the worst inter-communal violence in Nigeria. The violence has since moved north, where Boko Haram has more often attacked more moderate Muslims, instead of the Christian/Muslim fighting in the middle belt area. I hope the Church continues to grow in the middle belt. Still, there are large swaths in the southern third of Nigeria of places that are not yet part of a branch or ward. Akwa Ibom has a lot of rural presence of the Church, this is the area where many of the pre-1978 congregations waiting on the misisonaries were. However even in Cross River State, that included Akwa Ibom in 1978 and thus the Cross River district was the first one formed in Nigeria, even in Cross River State the northern part of the state  there are just two branches, with boundaries in theory stretching 30 miles or more out of the location city, but probably much of the area still yet unreached.

On the other hand, the area between Calabar and the Cameroon border, is assigned to the mission branch. So there is a lot of potential for growth in much of Nigeria.

Breast feeding in Church

A local woman in Utah who has made waves and started a fight with her bishop wants The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to come out with a uniform policy on breast feeding. This is an idea so culturally specific I think only a Utah Latter-day Saint would ever come up with it.

To begin with, I am not convinced the actions of her bishop were as much a reaction to her breast feeding in public as opposed to her combative and rude reactions to others issues with it.

Actions in public society can never just be about a woman and her child and how they want to do things. They have to be navigated by other cultural considerations. Personally I can see values in opening more space for breast feeding. On the other hand I have read other places where people actually gripe that women's restrooms in LDS Church buildings have been made too comfortable for breast feeding.

I have known other buildings that had rooms specifically just for breast feeding, this is more common in newer buildings. I have also known other buildings with large numbers of mothers of young children to transform a classroom into a breastfeeding station.

The main reason why I think the demand here is unworkable is that breast feeding is a culturally navigated issue. In some cultures breast feeding in public is viewed very differently than others. Any possible statement on the matter would either offend people in some cultures where things are approached very privately, or those who allow it much more in the open.

Worse still, a lot of possible statements on the issue would offend people in both cultures.

This is clearly an issue best decided at the local level.

More on Miss America

So the Philadelphia Inquierer published some quite informative articles on the Miss America pageant. This may be in part because Atlantic City where it is held is within the paper's greater readership area.

What we learn from all of this, and from thinking about it, is that Miss America is in crisis. The removal of the old board and the introduction of a new leadership has caused a break. Many people feel they were basically told the competition had to either drop the swimsuit portion, or be dropped by ABC. It is now clear that was never the case, and they feel lied to.

However a bigger break seems to be a fight over the wording of the contracts. The new leadership, if I am reading what is going on correctly, seems to want to make Miss America an at will employee of the Miss America organization. Weather they would remove her without good cause is hard to say, but I can see people not wanting to make removal easier. There is also talk  of giving her bonuses if she does her job well.

Such changes are a lot bigger than ending the swim suit competition and opening the processional to any outfit, not just evening gowns.

Also unclear is how the trickle down from the national organization works. Will all state competitions no longer be allowed swim suit competitions and evening gowns as of next year.

Related to this there has been some argument over the amount of scholarship money given out by Miss America. It used to claim $45 million, but only around $2 million is actually traced. One issue often overlooked is scholarship awards are a funky thing.

Miss America compensated winners in furs and movie contracts in the 1930s. In 1944 it began giving out college scholarships. However contestants must be between age 18 and 26. Maybe it is time to reconsider the top age and move to 30. Either way, not all 26-year-olds will be going to college within the allowed time for the scholarship money. Others will have bills below what they win. This might not be a direct likelihood for those people the top prize, but many of these contestants will have other scholarship sources. So like most scholarships that awarded and that paid out is not the same.

However Miss America has another problem. It is actually the main motivation behind dropping the swim suit competition, although I am not sure that change will fix the other problem. In the 1980s annual competitors within the system could number 85,000. This year, only 4,000 women entered into the competition at its sub-state level feeder competitions.

Why this is I cant say for sure. Marriage rates for women in this age bracket have dropped. Have any competitors with out-of-wedlock children ever participated? Even if they are not formally barred, post-pregnant bodies are a hard fight against those that were never such in many cases.

There are many other issues. There are lots more options for women in sports, other scholarship options have also multiplied. Social stigma against pageants has increased. At the same time all youth organizations have struggled. Boy Scouts a little less since the LDS-Church propped it up, but the break between the LDS Church an Boy Scouts may have been because the system called for a level of social capital not workable any more. It also was mainly just the LDS Church and BSA and Boy Scouts Canada, and only on the boys not the girls side. All this made the attempt of leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints such as Russell M. Nelson to create a unifying worldwide program only workable if scouts was left behind.

There is another possible issue. This is competition inflation. Basically over time people run up the stakes of competitions by trying harder and harder to win. This increases the direct financial costs of winning and more often the opportunity cost, the amount of time diverted to winning as opposed to other things.

Closely related to this is the likelihood that the number of local level competitions has fallen. Whenever such a competition folds, it probably decreases the likelihood people will participate.

Right now Miss America is facing the effects of years of fewer competitors and apparently a loss of sponsors. The new contracts seem to say your scholarship money is unsure, and you will be more at will. I can see why people are reluctant to sign such especially with a lack of transparency at the top. Rewriting the contracts the same year the competition itself was so fully reformatted was a very bad idea.

Friday, August 3, 2018

Miss America and Mormonism: An Uncomfortable relationship

In some ways the headline understates the difficulties involved. President Spencer W. Kimball directly denounced women parading around in swimsuits to be judged by men in a talk at BYU. Yet there were two Mormon winners of the Miss America title. More recently there was a case where an LDS contestant from Idaho was the only one not to wear a bikini.

On the other hand Charlene Wells' father, Robert E. Wells, of the 70, may have received a confession of sexual improprieties by Joseph Bishop given when he was mission president and neither removed him as mission president nor taken action to prevent his call as MTC president, in the later position he may have abused the authority, that may have been unwisely given him, to initiated sexual relations with sister missionaries, that may or may not have constituted sexual assault. Wells has not yet been given a chance to present his side of what transpired, and at least in some cases Bishop has denied basically all the accusations, so it is hard to know what happened. Still, it is hard to not feel that if Bishop did confess a long standing issue of hyper sexual attraction and at times failing along this line, that giving him a position of trust over young nubile females was anything other than a major mistake.

While Miss America started out as just a chance to show off women in bathing suits to increase tourism to Atlantic City, it soon sought a larger course. In the 1950s it chose to not force Miss America to appear at a specific event in a bathing suit, and its former main sponsor, a bathing suit company, jumped ship, and formed the Miss USA competition.

Miss America was hated by bra burning feminists in the 1970s. From at least some time in the 1950s until about 1989 it banned contestants wearing bikinis. Yet by about 2005 the standard issue for contestants unless they chose otherwise was not just a bikini but a string bikini.

The late 1980s also saw a rise in the quality of talent on the part of the winners. However since then TV ratings have plummeted. However this is true of all TV ratings, as we have more options on TV, more options other than TV.

Where does this all leave us. Well, last winter the previous directors were forced out in the wake of a scandal that involved emails related to saying unkind and gossipy things about contestants. At the same time the Metoo movement, put into over-gear by the fall of Harvey Weinstein last October, but building on other issues but things into high hear. The caderie of accusations by former Miss USA consestants against Donald Trump also may have been motivation.

This lead to a decision in May or June that the competition this year would no longer include a swim suit competition and "contestants will no longer be judged based on looks."

Having read through the reactions posted on the Washington Post comments page I can say a few things. First off, about half the people who posted probably just read the title and then knee jerk reacted. Closely related to that, almost half basically engaged in false dichotomies, that we have women parading around in high heels along with string bikinis, or we have them in full burkhas. On the other hand, others insisted that anyone who paid any attention to how physically attractive women were had no interest in their intellectual abilities.

What really surprised me was that no one really considered weather the super skimpy bathing suits seen in recent Miss America competitions were the only option. Maybe to some people being judged in a one piece or in a bikini is all the same, but no one seemed to even consider this issue.

At the same time people seemed to say this change would effect the chance of the US winning at Miss Universe. The only problem is that Miss Universe is a competition that includes the winner of Miss USA, it has no connection to Miss America.

The total failure of most to get this does show how little most people follow these pageants. Of course to some Wikipedia people I am a radical enemy of articles on pageant winners. This is true, but only because I eventually realized that winning a pageant was not a big deal, contrary to what some editors wanted to say, and at the state level did not justify having an article.

I have never watched the Miss America pageant. I also have never seen the super bowl.

My general thought on the whole issue is I think the Miss America competition is still probably worth keeping. However I am a lot less sure if is worth televising. One big issue is how much will the national level reforms trickle down. Oddly enough because of how they were announced, the 2018 competition for the 2019 title might not incorporate appearance at all, but appearance will have weeded out the contestants.

Will the competition for the 2020 title really "not be based on appearance". I have my doubts. Especially if they keep the same guidelines on age. I doubt we will see many people who are less slender and in others ways fit less a certain body image. Only time will tell for sure.