Taking into consideration these factors:

-Members leaving the church in greater numbers
-Not as many members being converted
-The realization that the Morg is 60 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to equal rights of minority populations- women and LGBTQ populations and others
-greater access, worldwide, to accurate information about the morg from the internet

How long will the morg last? Do you think they will adapt their teachings to catch up to this day and age, removing the aspects that make them so cultish in order to stop the members from leaving? Or will they stick with what they have been preaching and let the ship sink?

I am interested in reading what you think will happen. I personally don't think the morg can adapt to this centuries issues at the pace they are currently going. They would have to make a 180 in what they believe in. I can see many members leaving if GA suddenly announced, "there has been a vision, now we accept women having the priesthood!, LGBTQ marriage!, etc." I think if they make a drastic change to quickly they lose lots of members, but if they remain true to their original principals, the ship is going down quick.

I think they will become more entrenched in their doctrines (or at least their current philosophies). They will wither, but they will never die.

There are plenty of small religions in the world, that have a dedicated following. There is room for one more.

I agree. It's all about the money. They can't abandon their unique truth claims and still insist that members pay tithing. I think they're already losing ground, but they're never going to disappear.

Hollands conference talk insisting that Adam and Eve actually lived in a garden, presumably in MO, etc... is a prime example of the church doubling down on stupid. They might downplay Joseph Smith, remove church history from the SS rotation, talk up Jesus more, etc... However, they're never going to give up the restored one-true-church-with-authority-from-God story.

"They can't abandon their unique truth claims and still insist that members pay tithing."

In Mormons eyes, they rival the Pope. Seriously. Even moreso because only they have the One True Church. The Pope is deceived lol.

Eventually the organization will have a small elitist hard core membership and a large "for profit" division

thedesertrat1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Eventually the organization will have a small
> elitist hard core membership and a large "for
> profit" division

All waiting for the return of Jesus. Any day now, any day now.......

My feeling is that they will liberalize their positions to survive. Religion is nowhere in the mix. It's a money stream. But, as you wisely pointed out, they could lose a lot of believing members by liberalizing. This is their quandary, and I am not at all sympathetic.

Sink or throw the cargo overboard. This is the position they've put themselves in, and it couldn't have happened to a more deserving group of pirates.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2015 03:00PM by donbagley.

It will last as long as there are core believers who keep the church going, and as long as their financial businesses keep in business. From the looks of it, that's a very long time.

The idea this is some failing enterprise is not true. It may go up and down, but it is not going to die out as some kind of failed religion or business.
BYU, for instance, has close to 30,000 enrolled students. That's not a dying university.

Just because a number of people are leaving does not mean the religion or it church is dying.

BYU...that's one thing that I think will change dramatically in my lifetime. They currently turn away thousands and thousands of applicants. I think it will get much more expensive and much easier to get in over time.

I gather BYU is a place to go but that a lot of people go because their parents want them to go there...

"For agnostic and atheists, there is hope! I’m living with two non-LDS kids right now. They were both BYU LDS students but now they are not LDS anymore so they got kicked out. I didn’t convert them! Quite a few LDS students come to BYU with a doubt, some come because their parents want them to go. My two roommates were among those people. In Utah Valley here, there are at least 1,000 atheists (my roommate showed me this group on Facebook). You’d find someone to talk to eventually but they could be “diamond in the rough.” "
http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-a-non-Mormon-attending-a-Mormon-college-or-university

It's cheaper than in-state tuition for Mormons. It's even a bargain for non-Mormons.

But it's still a church school with all the church sponsored propaganda and brainwashing mind control.

How anyone can call that a well rounded education is fooling themselves.

I totally agree! I don't know why BYU ranks so high on some top school rankings. It is mostly white, mormons being brainwashed. The thing that gets me is that they have zero tolerance for LDS students to leave Mormonism and change to a different religion. Yet they are perfectly fine when a catholic, Muslim, etc. falls into the trap of converting to Mormonism. It pisses me off. If that isn't a neon sign flashing "we are a cult" I don't know what is.

Back during the 70's wealthy Americans were shipping their children off to BYU to get them away from the 60's and 70's drug and sex culture.

They'd rather their children convert to Mormonism during the Cultural Revolution, than lose their children to drugs, sex, and communal living.

(At least they kept them from the LSD and orgies. The "communal living" not so much.)

:D

The Amish are still around. There was a time when they fit in. They looked like everyone else. Those days are long gone and the world has moved on while they stayed in the past. They made things a part of their religion that has literally kept them in the dark.

I've seen their kids with cell phones as they drive the buggy down the road. It makes me wonder if that could eventually be their undoing. Who knows? There will always be people who love that lifestyle and will stick around to live it.

I had a friend who baptised an Amish guy into mormonism. He didn't stay long. He thought they were way too worldly and went back to the Amish.

I do think that the more strict religions will shrink down to be nothing more than a small group of diehards. I have seen many in my generation (baby boomer) that found out the truth and left. Each generation there will be more and more of that. It's not just mormonism either. Many are just tired of the whole religion thing, and don't see much of a point to it.

Can anyone name a modern religion that grew as large as the Mormon church then went extinct?

Probably there were some?
http://www.schoyencollection.com/23-religions/extinct-religions

I can't think of any that were modern, at least comparable in size to Mormon and are now extinct.

Oh, yeah, 'modern' sorry.

It's already become irrelevant as a religion because it's become entrenched by its own malaise. I mean irrelevant in the sense it can no longer provide meaningful, intelligent dialogue on its own mission and purpose, other than profit promoting schemes.

Joseph Smith is a well known fraud. Any attempts to cover that up going forward is just going to backfire on the church.

It's PR program is the best it can do to provide "spin" on the negative views of those opposing and leaving it en masse.

The GA are part of a massive coverup that's been exposed for what it is.

It tries to deflect attention away from that by continuing with the theme of how grand it is and so its vision.

But it's still a crock and a malaise of our society in the 21st century. The truth has caught up to it, and it hasn't reconciled its past because it lacks the vision and ability to come clean.

Like Humpty Dumpty.
Who had a "big fall."
All the King's horses,
and all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty
together again.

Yesterday it seem very relevant in your life.

It should be entertaining to hear you tell the court in your fantasy lawsuit that an irrelevant religion performed a meaningless ritual in the name of a dead person, and you deserve compensation because of it.

Yes, that is the formula for successful litigation.

whywait Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yesterday it seem very relevant in your life.
>
> It should be entertaining to hear you tell the
> court in your fantasy lawsuit that an irrelevant
> religion performed a meaningless ritual in the
> name of a dead person, and you deserve
> compensation because of it.
>
> Yes, that is the formula for successful
> litigation.
_______________________

You sound like a mormon apologist or spin doctor right out of SLC. Are you paid, or volunteer your time?

And you are so off topic it must hurt.

Couldn't finish your thoughts on the other thread huh? You need to go back to the drawing board.

Need to get some new inspiration, in real time. It's obvious you have no more respect for the living than you do for the dead.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2015 04:58PM by amyjo.

Your comment would make more sense if it related to the topic it was attached to.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2015 08:19PM by amyjo.

Please forgive me my faux paus, annieg. I just noted your comment was directed to whywait the first time, not to me.

I've been so busy all day, just checking in here and there. Sorry I just caught that now.

:)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2015 08:17PM by amyjo.

The corporation can last as long as it wants. Look at Community of Christ or FLDS; Their numbers are small, they had the same history, scriptures, past prophets. They adapted or morphed into something else...yet they're surviving. Smaller maybe (streamlining)???

The Corporation has really, really, really changed from how it began. There's no doubt, the members don't even bat an eye. The Church started out as a Restorationist theology; then Joseph Smith had himself ordained King of the World, introduced the Council of 50 and established a theocracy. They literally thought they were creating the Church and Government for Christ to receive, they became Millennialism. The Power of Sealing families and Eternal Marriage was part of the Patriarchal Priesthood, the loss of Polygamy, Even the WoW became a commandment to these people. Blacks recvd the priesthood, the changes and loss of rites in the temple, the loss of the stake quorum of the Seventies, The loss of the Patriarch to the Church, etc...

So they're not what they were, they can morph into something else. Many religions have done so. They'll always have the cultural, ancestral Mormons; who think they own Mormonism and they think they are owed respect and reverence from others. It's the "others", the sheep, the ones that fall all over themselves to shake the hands of the GA, who give them the power and the authority and the purpose to carry on the scam.

Thanks didymus.

Good points. But consider the ones lolling and gagging around the GA are not the same caliber as the intelligentsia that's left.

All the church has left are its "sheeple." They're the little robotics that can't bat an eye or think a thought or sing a song unless it's mormon approved.

Those are the future of the LDS church. And without inspiration or visionaries it hasn't got a prayer IMO.

That's why though it "may go on," it will become more irrelevant with the passage of time.

It might shrink a bit, but will probably go on for more generations.

It will go on, but will be a pale comparison of what it once was.

It's a shrinking shadow, and an afterthought.

But then check out 'whywait's' comments on this thread and my last thread on baptisms for the dead.

He's one of those I was warning about in my thread on Monson's PR plan, (or perhaps he's just a troll, period.)

The PR is all the church has going for it, and that is choking on its own vomit. It's dying a slow death, granted.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2015 04:57PM by amyjo.

Inertia will keep it going for another 20 years before there are unavoidable indicators of decline.

Eighty and ninety year-olds (incumbents, no less) usually aren't very revolutionary.

What'll be really cool for ChurchCorp to do is to continue milking the members for tithing and volunteer services, but then at tithing settlement, you get your share of the "profits" back. It'll be more than you put in!

When mormonism becomes 'prophetable' it will settle in and become a permanent fixture of modern life, having little to do with religion.