A generation ago, most Americans who shed their childhood religious attachments did so during their college and post-college years. Family dynamics and structure matter in at least two ways. Recent research has shown that when Americans are raised in households with parents of different religious backgrounds, they have weaker attachments to religion as adults and are more likely to disaffiliate.
Divorce, which can physically separate young people from their religious community and often creates greater emotional distance between children and parents, has also shown to hamper the transmission of religious values. Because the vast majority of Mormon children are raised in two-parent Mormon households, they are far more likely to receive robust and consistent religious instruction throughout their childhood.
Recognizing the centrality of family, the LDS Church has not been shy about encouraging young Mormons to start families early. In , the LDS Church leadership was actively encouraging college students to start families even before they graduated.
More recently church elder M. Russell Ballard urged Brigham Young University students to not let educational goals lead them to postpone marriage. A recent poll by College Pulse of students currently attending four-year colleges and universities found that the most common response among students about the ideal age to be married was However, the response among Mormon students was Even with a concerted emphasis on family formation and religious education, there is evidence that an increasing number of Mormons are still leaving the church.
And while this rate is still better than that of most other Christian denominations , it represents a modest decline from , when the retention rate stood at 70 percent. It is an argument that resonates with many younger Mormons. Sarah, another young Mormon mother, concedes that the church might be out of step with young people — even younger Mormons — on the issue of same-sex marriage. But there are signs that the church hierarchy is listening. Quin Monson, a professor of political science at BYU and co-author of Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics , says that while the church has maintained its conservative theological stance, it is offering a kinder and gentler approach on hot-button social issues like LGBTQ rights.
In , the LDS Church launched a website called Mormon and Gay featuring firsthand accounts of Mormons who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Importantly, the church remains opposed to same-sex marriage, but church leaders have adopted much more inclusive language when discussing LGBTQ members of the church.
This shift stands in stark contrast to what is unfolding in the United Methodist Church, which recently voted to toughen prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy. The Catholic Church remains similarly steadfast in its opposition to same-sex marriage.
It is also around the same time that the Mormons set up camp in Utah and Idaho. Today, there are 67, Mormons in Wyoming. They represent Wyoming has congregations with one mission camp. Furthermore, Mormons believe that God created the world using existing matter and not out of nothing, as Christians believe.
The third difference is that Mormons believe that the second coming of Christ will be in the United States. However, Christians believe that when Jesus Christ appears again, he will appear in the heavens and everyone will see him.
The historical significance of Mormonism lies not so much in its size and success in gaining adherents. By , it had nearly 40, believers; by , , What is most significant historically about Mormonism is that it was not simply another Christian sect or denomination but was the only new religious tradition founded in nineteenth-century America.
Equally important is Mormonism's complex and embattled relation to both the society from which it emerged and to the evangelicalism that was such a dominant force in the society. It was launched in with the publication of the Book of Mormon, the sacred text which became the foundation for new religion.
As Smith told the story, seven years earlier the angel Moroni had appeared before him and told him of a book written on gold plates and buried in a hill outside Manchester, New York. Then, on September 22, , after other visitations from Moroni the plates were turned over to Smith. Over the next twenty-four months, Smith and a few trusted associates, using special, ancient, "seer" stones, "translated" the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the plates into English.
When they had finished this arduous task, Smith reported, as arranged, he delivered the plates back to the angel. The Book of Mormon was not simply an arresting and powerful spiritual treatise like John Fox's Book of Martyrs, which became the foundational text of Quakerism. Rather, Smith promulgated it as a new, sacred and canonical text, a wholly new dispensation of scriptural truth that God, working through the angel Moroni and his chosen earthly vessel, Joseph Smith, delivered to humankind.
As such, for Mormon believers, the Book of Mormon possesses the same canonical standing as the old and new testaments do for Protestants and Catholics.
In fact, just as early Christians saw the New Testament, with its narrative of Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies, as the completion of God's delivery of scriptural truth, so too did Mormons see the Book of Mormon, with its prediction of a new prophetic figure, as God's third and final dispensation.
To believers, in fact, the Book of Mormon built directly on the promises and predictions of the earlier texts: it was the "sealed" book, described in the Book of Isaiah, the appearance of which would signal the coming of the "end-times" predicted in the Book of Revelation. Thus did the Mormons identify themselves as "saints," the new Israelites called out from the Gentiles to usher in the millennium. Finally, the Book of Mormon revealed that on the day it "spoke out of the ground," a prophet, named Joseph like his father, would appear and, with the aid of revelations delivered to him directly from God, establish the Godly kingdom on earth that would prepare the way for Christ's Second Coming.
From the beginning, Joseph Smith and his followers provoked ridicule for Mormonism's seemingly magical if not superstitious origins, and opposition as a heresy that dared to claim itself "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.
Kirtland was the seat of the prophet where in l the Mormons built and consecrated an elaborate temple. In both places, they isolated themselves from their neighbors, and, much as other nineteenth-century religious communitarian groups like the Shakers or the Amish, set up cohesive, economically self-sufficient and largely self-governing communities, setting themselves up not simply as a group of worshipers but as a people apart. Neither Ohio nor Missouri provided adequate refuge against the hostility of neighbors suspicious of Mormon belief and fearful of Mormonism's growing numbers and economic prosperity and power.
In their Missouri neighbors attacked the settlement, forcing the Mormons to abandon Independence. Mormonism is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world and its possibility of becoming a major world religion may happen within the next century. While many people think of Utah when they think of Mormons, several states have significant Mormon populations. The western United States does have the highest Mormon population in the country, specifically the states of Utah, California , and Arizona.
Utah, which has the highest Mormon population, has 5, congregations. About Hover over Click on a tile for details.
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