"Graduating from Mormon seminary just got harder"
By lisa schencker, The Salt Lake Tribune, Sept. 26, 2014

http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile3/58421546-219/seminary-requirements-students-class.html.cap

From the article:
"Students will have to meet the new standards to get certificates of completion at the end of each year and, ultimately, diplomas. Those who don’t complete the reading or testing but meet attendance requirements will still receive certificates of recognition each year. The church also tweaked attendance requirements.

"They live in a world so full of healthy obligations as well as an increased level of distraction that our hope is that by the introduction of these additional two elements we could help encourage young people to exercise their agency and choose to reach out and include it more in their lives," said Kelly Haws, associate administrator for seminaries and institutes of religion for the LDS Church."....

"This year, the required reading is the Doctrine and Covenants, part of the LDS canon. Next year, it will be the Old Testament, followed by the New Testament and the faith’s signature scripture, the Book of Mormon."....

"Haws said the lower mission ages did not drive the creation of new seminary standards, but "we hope this additional preparation in seminary is going to be a great blessing and help to them as they depart for their missions earlier in their lives."

Thanks for posting the better link - for some reason my Kindle only puts me on the Mobile site for the Tribune. Sometimes I can get around it and other times I can't.

I read the article earlier and only had to hit the back button in Firefox a few times to retrieve the link. Thanks for posting it!

Quote from article:

"If students fail, they’ll be able to take the tests again, as many times as needed. They can even get help from a book, parent or others."

Jeez Louise, I could have a triple PhD if universities worked this way!

Saree

Just like the Eagle Scout rating.

Amazing, they have found a way to make being an LDS teenager suck even more

It almost seems like those in charge are trying to destroy the church. I would bet that most teenagers that go through seminary with these additional reading and testing requirements are going to despise it. I don't know...maybe those that attended seminary in school in Utah already had these requirements?

I attended Seminary, also secularly known as "release time", while attending high school in UT. Believe me, I did the bare minimum in order to "graduate"; all I had to do was show up most of the time.

I grew up in Texas, where we had seminary before the sun went up. It was hard enough to get there and pay any attention. I remember my first few days thinking "am I really at church at 6 am on a school morning?"

If you had put a full workload like a HS class, I probably would have dropped out. Seminary already took up 2 hours in the morning if you included driving across town and back. That's 10 hours a week just for seminary when I already had school, other church activities, a part time job, and chores around the house. Add in a few hours of homework a week for seminary and I would have likely dropped out. I almost did a few times my because an hour of sleep seemed much more interesting than seminary.

I feel so sad for those teenagers. The years of mental anxiety of trying to either live with Mormonism and push all the questions of it's truth deep inside their gut.

Or all the years it will take to decompress their minds after they find out it's false and decide to have the guts to face the truth and leave. jeopardizing families and employment.

Catch 22

"...we could help encourage young people to exercise their agency and choose to reach out and include it more in their lives,"

By making it harder?? What the hell kind of logic is that? Teens have a lot going on these days so we're going to make choosing seminary harder.

My oldest daughter told me her sense of self worth/self esteem immediately went up after we left the church because there was no longer that unspoken pressure to do the hundreds of things good mormon kids are supposed to do (scripture reading, seminary, personal progress, etc). She said when they talked about doing those things at church that she felt she had to pretend that she did those things too, which is exactly how I felt. (Oh sure I read my scriptures EVERY night).

Rumor has it that the church wants 'minister trained' missionaries (paperwork?) instead of the sheltered, naive, and oblivious ones that they have now. Good luck with that.

If you actually teach people about the church in a critical way worthy of academic study, even at the HS level, then you will lose most of them. The church just does not stand up to scrutiny, which is why they always fall back on touchy-feely "answers" from their bosoms.

We never got into reading the cult literature bit before I walked out on seminary.

Ron Burr

This is only gonna get the teens to rebel against the church. Odds are some of them are gonna find their way here in the future. Stupid Cult!!

I guess that means that the previous seminary "graduation" would have to have less worth because of the lax requirements.

I'm glad I'm a seminary dropout.

I have my seminary diploma somewhere in my parents' garage, along with my Duty to God award and my CTR ring.

There are some countries (like Brazil), that only allow visas for missionary work to “Trained Ministers”. The rumor is that the church has been using “Seminary Graduation” as proof that the missionaries sent to Brazil are trained. Of course, to the rest of the Christian world, somebody who has been trained in a “Seminary” means something entirely different from what Mormons call seminary. The church has been using this to their advantage for years, but my guess is that some of the countries are getting wise to what a Mormon seminary really is, so the church is trying to head off any future trouble by making Seminary harder, and more rigorous like a real “Seminary”

Is there any other reason why seminary graduation matters? Is it a requirement to be admitted to BYU?

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is there any other reason why seminary graduation
> matters? Is it a requirement to be admitted to
> BYU?


Seminary was required to go to BYU and Ricks/BYU Idaho when I graduated from high school 25 years ago. I don't know if it is currently but odds are a likely yes.

I am a seminary drop out and a byu graduate. So no it is not required. At least not 25 years, or so, ago.

A good case can be made that seminary graduation long ago replaced the temple marriage as the socially acceptable, required LDS behavior, needed for moms and dads to be able to hold their heads up in the lDS community.

If a marriage announcement is published noting that both partners are seminary grads, it eases the sting of no mission or temple marriage. It's LDS acceptable.

Here is another link on it from MSN.

LDS Church raises requirements for Mormon seminary

http://news.msn.com/us/lds-church-raises-requirements-for-mormon-seminary

"exercise their agency"

or else....

By "agency" church PR always means "obedience". In their minds freedom = your slavery, Orwellian talk in its purest form.

My seminary teachers were like Joseph Smith. One had to flee town because he was an adulterer, and another eventually got sent to jail for fraud.

I imagine my luck was worse than average, but if seminary is to mean anything, then The Church Educational System needs moral upright teachers who can be good examples.

This is great news, actually.

1. If it's harder, more kids will drop out.
2. If they do the reading and think about it even a little, they'll realize TSCC is a load of made-up nonsense.
3. Some of those seminary teachers are jerks and say offensive/ridiculous things. If the kids are paying attention to it (because they have to), they may very well get fed up and walk out.

There must be *some* method to their madness but I sure don't see it. "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Maybe all those non-Mormons in Utah started scrutinizing the seminary program and realized that it did not academically merit all the favoritism it gets. I remember it as Sunday School, only 5 days away at an ungodly hour.

How the hell do you teach D & C without the students finding out the truth? It's so obvious, especially if you look at the history of each section, that the revelations are made up.

icedtea Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This is great news, actually.
>
> 1. If it's harder, more kids will drop out.
> 2. If they do the reading and think about it even
> a little, they'll realize TSCC is a load of
> made-up nonsense.
> 3. Some of those seminary teachers are jerks and
> say offensive/ridiculous things. If the kids are
> paying attention to it (because they have to),
> they may very well get fed up and walk out.

Some of those seminary "teachers" are jerks. Asinine stuff comes out of their mouths. An acquaintance of the family objected to being told she would have to join a polygamist marriage when this "royal" doctrine was brought back to earth. She was told she would go to hell, by the seminary teacher.

My kids came home and told me a different seminary teacher had shared with them that age old LDS myth, Cain is Bigfoot. Yes, that crap is still taught.

So "the church" has created a special breed of stupid with its seminary teachers.

I taught early morning seminary a decade and a half ago. I left the state where I had been teaching. Three years later I recieved a call from a young lady who wanted to attend BYU. Apparently I had given her to many absences and she wanted to make sure she had really missed that many days per my memory. My memory remembered she had been an above average student who attended on a regular basis.

An hour later I recieve a call from one of the stake brethren, 900 miles away. Wanting to know if the same young lady had attended the appropriate amount of days. (Remember, this is three years later...truthfully how the heck should I remember?) I told him of course she did. His voice got huffy, he did his I am a stake high council authority bit, questioned me again, and got the same answer.

What an ass can.

In the interest of correcting some bad info--

1) Seminary isn't a required component of BYU admissions. It gets rolled up into the ecclesiastical / bishop's recommend rubric. I didn't attend freshman year of seminary, but still got admitted to BYU. From my recollection, seminary / institute participation is one element of something like a 10-question worksheet the ecclesiastical leader is asked to fill out.

2) It's MTC attendance that provides you with "Trained Minister" status, not seminary. At the end of the MTC, all the missionaries receive some paperwork indicating they are permitted to preach on behalf of the LDS church. There's a little credit-card sized minister's license (or whatever it is) you're given as well.

I personally see this as a desire to get youth deeper in as well as to delineate those that actually care from those that are there merely to appease parents / get away from school for an hour / do other work while in seminary. Those that actually care can, at least, be identified; to what end, I'm not certain.

I took seminary through the home study system. We only met for class once a week and the teacher was so horrible I dropped out and got an after school job. My mother used to enjoy rubbing it in my face that I never graduated from seminary. I'm now very PROUD to say I'm a seminary drop out! Smartest thing I ever did as a Mormon.

those new rules really suck. I barely skimmed by when the rules were less restrictive.

A diploma from seminary is completely useless -- except to make parents happy -- for about five minutes. Then it's onto the next church requirement.