NO it's not the LDS church it's the Seventh day Adventist church! If Mormons tell you how many people they are baptising in Africa and how fast the church is growing point them to these articles! The Mormon church is growing in Africa, but so is every other church and they are growing quicker! So no miracles here! The growth of the Mormon church in Africa is no big deal and infact is pretty poor compared to other groups!
According to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the largest muslim body in the world, islam loses approximately six million members per year to christianity in Africa.
Christian religions lose much more. Sometimes to islam. Mostly to each other.
In many African countries, people love religion but don't stay faithful to any one faith for long. They'll switch from one church to the next just because it's closer to home or to work, has more parking space, better seats, better food, a better choir or more native speakers of a language they want to practice more. The advice of their friends, colleagues, relatives and boss also counts.
Of course some stay true to the same faith for very long, but others don't. Someone compared it to movies: we've all seen Bambi, but few watch nothing else for the rest of their lives.
<< "In many African countries, people love religion but don't stay faithful to any one faith for long. They'll switch from one church to the next just because it's closer to home or to work, has more parking space, better seats, better food, a better choir or more native speakers of a language they want to practice more." >>
This is so true. This is what I've tried to tell so many people. Missionaries in a place like Kinshasa "convert"--or at least baptize--a couple dozen people per missionary per month. On the surface it seems very successful, and LDS conversions soar. But when you go to church, it's the same fairly small group of people. Congolese LOVE church and religion, and enthusiastically glom onto Mormonism as they do any other church, but there's not necessarily an understanding that it will "take."
I think that in the end, they are exacerbating the problem of percentages; sooner or later (perhaps already), they will have an increasingly lower percentage of people who self-identify with Mormonism. It will become like Chile, where there is only 7-8% activity among the thousands who have been baptized. The LDS church will say that they have so many hundred thousand members in a country, but only a fraction of that number will self-identify as a Mormon.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2017 01:44PM by cludgie.
In our modern move about world where we are so unconnected from others it seems religion is the means whereby people connect and find a sense of community. Church/religion replaces the tribe and in Africa the tribal culture is most likely being replaced by western culture. This must be the reason it attracts people like flies to cow ----.