What I was actually hoping for was to get some discussion of how John Taylor and Brigham Young both foresaw that prosperity would cause people to lose faith in things besides themselves and result in a culture that had religious flavor without the spiritual and religious commitment so important to both of them and how that is effected by and countered by the missionary work and calls to dedication that we have.

What do we do to make religion meaningful to people who are raised without it and who see it only as a cultural artifact? How do we keep that from overtaking ourselves? How important is a focus on missionary work, which brings with it spiritual experiences and strength for both the converted and the missionary?

How great of an opportunity is the influx vs. being a threat of cultural dilution, and is the cultural dilution a bad thing?

Hmm, I’m trying to keep posts shorter as suggested, maybe I should have broken this one up into more than one post in order to get more to the points.

Hope everyone is ok there in Houston now.

I hope no one got doom and gloom from this. The real question is: “what lessons should we learn from the past?”

There are no foregone conclusions, beyond that eventually, Christ will come when all seems darkest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0ZFow_9vsg

New things become possible in such a world. The Pre Christian awakening occurs in a Post Scientology world.

1: Is % of population in Salt Lake really the correct measurement? After all, the Salt Lake temple is limited in size, so you’d expect that the actual number of members would be a better measurement. Has the number of Salt Lake members decreased, or have the number of non-members merely increased at a faster rate? Howabout movement to the suburbs? Does that really count as a decrease in religious faith if the faithful have just moved a few miles outside the city limits?

2: Church membership is growing, hence you would expect the religious centers (such as temples) of Mormons to increase in numbers and attendance.

3: America has shown itself to be quite different from Europe in religious matters. As a whole America’s birth rate is 2.1 or so, and Americans are still very religious. Some areas of America have seen a significant decrease in church attendance, but it’s nothing like Europe.

4: America, unlike Europe (or historical Greece) has a large number of different religious sects, and as some decrease, other’s increase in numbers.

5: Religious people have a much higher birth rate then the secular population, this is particularly true for Mormons. So it seems to me that the main concern is retention of the youth, which will ensure our continued viability as a faith.

So while I would not say that all is well in Zion, I am not sure where this doom and gloom comes from. The gospel will continue on in it’s spread across the world, and is not going to be stopped by something as weak and pitiful as secularism.

I guess I didn’t get it.

My youngest has Tourette’s and both the common ADD and OCD issues that go with it. We try to focus on the positives with her, but I sympathize with you about how hard it is for you to deal with the way others deal with your condition.

Take care and God Speed.

aileen — most people don’t realize that LDS are a minority in Salt Lake. That is how youall got that mayor who protected the whorehouse until the news crew showed up (they had the house next door to the one my non-member brother-in-law bought … from an LDS realtor who owned the house he bought and who did not disclose the neighbors, which I would have thought significant. Anyway, the neighbor bragged about how he was never going to get shut down. Amazing the difference a news show televising your business makes when it is illegal). Lots of changes are going on in Utah, a lot.

Hawkgrrrl — the Hellenic influence in the area is a different story. A large group, but not large enough to hit 60% My maternal grandparents were both Greek, from Asia Minor.

Neal “the calling of the new quorums of the seventy” is starting to work the way through the cycle. There is a way to flatten leadership with quorums of 70 spinning out and interacting with the twelve as a traveling quorum that interacts with the various quorums of 70 and the first quorum of 70. You can get a leadership model that projects well and flat for over 70 million members. I think that is coming, but don’t know. Leadership is a real issue in the Church, it is a limit on growth.

With the Church you have to choose between bringing people in and leaving them with inadequate leaders or not sharing the gospel with those who would be glad to receive it. I have no answers for that problem.

But the post-Christian nature of much of Europe is something that really got my attention a while back and that remains something I think about. Especially as it seems to move into the United States.

The same thing is true of the negative population growth of first world countries. If you remove immigration, England, France, Germany, Italy, etc. all have serious negative population growth, as do a number of States in the United States.

Now, there will always be one prophet and the twelve apostles. However, the calling of the new quorums of the seventy and the associated bureaucracy are a step towards trying to deal with the growth of an international church with a local leadership crisis. But we are going to have to get away from, first, the Utahcentricity, and second, the Americanocentricity of the church. That’s going to be a really painful step, and I think it will do a lot to strip away what is not the gospel from the Church’s message.

Interesting questions, Stephen. I’ll have to think about it, since my immediate reactions need some synthesizing to be coherent.