Is it stupidity, oblivious to reality or parakeeting what their leaderships has been telling them.

I know a lot of LDS who state this and I just circle my eyes knowing full well that many other Christian faiths such as nondenominatonal Christians, Pentecostals and Jehovah Witness are growing much faster in the US.

They believe it for the same reason so many Americans are blind to the imperialism of the USA.

They don't care about reality. They just see what they want to see.

They definitely parrot everything they hear at church, and they believe what they're told. There are so many canned phrases which come out of Mormonism. Just like every chapel looks the same on the inside, their phrases all come out sounding the same as well.

I always wonder how many join,,and how many leave and never return or totaly inactive. They never talk about that. How come in many areas 3-4 wards are turned into 1 or 2 wards.

And as you said, they count anyone who ever got dunked, whether they knew what they were doing, whether they consider themselves mormon now, whether they were a kid and don't even remember being dunked. Other churches that count only their active members are STILL growing faster, i.e., the Seventh-day Adventists.

I had my eyes opened a few months ago when I helped on our stewardship committee at my UU church. It's the committee tasked with running the annual pledge drive, reporting on our number of members, etc. I didn't realize that if someone doesn't pledge and no one remembers seeing them at church in the previous year, they are taken off the membership rolls and have to sign some kind of form if they WANT to remain a member. Many people leave and ask to be removed. Great. We wish them good luck.

So for the LDS to even compare their membership with other churches is as disingenuous as it gets. And it's not even just in foreign countries where they have extremely low activity. I know for a fact that there are wards here in the South that don't even have 20% activity rate.

I would just love to see the numbers if TSCC started counting people like my Anglican church- just like NormaRae's UU church we delete people from the list each year if we haven't seen them around, and every 3 years the whole list is deleted and people have to actively choose to go back on it again. When I told them about staying a member of TSCC until you're 110 and being counted forever more they just laughed- they didn't believe me.
Rank and file mormons just want reassurance that they are on 'the winning side' IMHO.

because they are MORmONS!

What surprises me is that so many Mormons are returned missionaries and should know better and realize that most of those conversions are bogus. Even if the Mormon church is the fastest growing purely by number of baptisms, they still should know they have nothing to brag about because most of them go inactive anyway. Most converts are either flakes, mentally instable, immigrants, lonely, want financial support, or are children and so forth. Very few of them are true blue converts to the religion.

someone told them and they believe it without doing any research. It gives them a sense of validity to think they are expanding and growing.

Perhaps because too many journalists writing about Mormonism do their research in outdated files and articles written by other lazy journalists who simply perpetuate the falshood without properly checking facts. That and the fact that the Mormon Church is happy to have the idea perpetuated under the theory that success (numbers) breeds success and that somehow that success is verification of its truthfulness.

is simply a process of receiving a press release from the corporation (e.g. Churchco) or government agency being reported on and slightly altering the press release contents to fit the relevant media format.

Even the more educated rank-and-file are under-educated in real fact, choosing instead church-promulgated drivel and the idle talk of other Mormons over a clear fact. Life is just easier that way.

As kentish points out, journalists are apparently lazy, and help perpetuate the myth by accepting the Mormons' word for it. I personally find that very frustrating. It takes very little effort indeed to discover that there are many, many more religions that grow faster than the LDS church. Roman Catholics alone add more to their membership just in new births.

People tend to be lazy and don't bother to check the facts. That takes work. It is easier to believe what you want to believe. You see it everywhere, even on this board. None of us check out everything.

Remember, all ye naysayers, that TSCC is busy baptizing the unsaved dead and thus adding to its numbers. We may have walked away, but everybody from Hitler to Ted Bundy has walked in. Should be an interesting sacrament meeting.

What's the weirdest thing Kolobians believe?

Right. That...that gawd lives near Kolob, that the international house of handshakes teaches you how to high five and momey jive into heaven, and the profit talks (face to face) with gawd.

Next to all of that, thinking you are growing fast is sane, even if it isn't true.

International House of Handshakes ha ha ha ha ha ha

Too funnny ROFLMBO

Ha ha ha ha!

I love it!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2011 03:11AM by steve benson.

Why shouldn't they?

They are Mormons and they are right!

So it stands to reason because they have the most correct book on the earth [The ramblings, musing and plagarisms of an under-sexed teen, later over sexed man],

Living prophets [who incidentally cannot fortell the future, er...ok]

and continued revelation...I mean constant prevarication

How can they not belief with all this preponderance of evidence on their side [clearly suffering from delusions of grandeur]

It must be true!

They are the "fastest growing faith" because all of those other organizations that seem to be growing faster don't count. Those other organizations don't know what real faith is because they don't have the fullness of the truth, so how could they possibly be faster growing faiths than the LDS Church?


Then again, leaving Mormon fantasyland for a moment, it could just as easily be argued that the LDS organization is one of the "fastest shrinking faiths" in the world. All you have to do is decide to examine inactivity rates and abysmal retention statistics instead of looking only at the rate at which names are added to membership lists.

I expect that one day, in a fit of desperation, the First Presidency will authorize one super special proxy baptism for the entire population of China, just so that they can claim to be the biggest church in the world.

"Having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and in behalf of the entire population of the Peoples Republic of China, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

That should just about do it and give the LDS church the bragging rights they so desperately want. It'll take a while for their competitors to figure out how to respond to that one.

I just can't believe they are sitting there in MORGdom thinking all is well?

Talked to a friend in Canada where 3 wards were combined!

Oh I thought of one revelation by GBH - Smaller temples [wonder where the money went] and substandard materials.

Keep hearing complaints!

Even if it is the fastest shrinking church, that just makes it MORE true than ever. Since in the last days even the very elect will be deceived and all that jazz.

Damn that JS and BY were brilliant (and 100% EVIL)

I recently posted a SLC COB email to our ward asking for a new record for a member that was born in 1900. SLC said they can't find the record and need us to verify the members ordinances etc and re-create the record if possible.

Its all a shell game - create as many records as possible, keep them around for a ridiculously long period of time and then use them to show the growth of the church. How accurate can their records be if they are outdated, incomplete or duplicates? For a so called church that is heavily invested in record keeping they do a very poor job of it.

I think Joseph Goebbels has the answer:


“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goebbelslie.html

This is a tactic the LDS organization uses to great effect. The most common is: "I know the Church is true."

The church is growing?

I don't think so. If anything it is losing members.

I got an invite to attend General Conference in person from a family member a couple years ago. I went just for the Hell of it.

It was the session where GBH stood up and said "I have reviewed the data, and I am convinced that the LDS Church remains the fastest growing church in the world" or some such.

Maybe 2005, maybe April, maybe Sunday afternoon?

I was shocked. To hear such falsified drivel, in person, with 25,000 other people.

I didn't say anything, but I really ought to teach myself to utter quiet statements, like "that's bullshit!" -- just loud enough for folks in the next couple rows to hear. Can't hurt.

Anyhow, given that the rank and file can swallow such obvious lies, in person, from Grandpa Hinckley himself, without a peep from any one of them, suggests that the LDS faithful will still believe this factoid for a long time to come.

My prediction -- within 5 years, the LDS church will spin this as folklore and blame the sheep for not doing their own homework and learning the facts...


RG