I think exiting the church due to lack of belief has hit the 100th monkey phase. The internet has made this possible. Once you have a continuous leak in the dike the flow gets larger. It’s easier to have the courage to do something when you see others doing it and there’s a support group.

Part of what will remain in the church is people who are brainwashed. You can expose them to all the truth you want but it won’t change a thing. The other part that will stay are people who will lose family, inheritance or a career due to exiting the church. The cost of leaving outweighs the benefit. I know plenty of these. I think they would be happier in the long-run if they took the hit and left but they can’t do it.

    Another view of what you seem to be saying is that the TBMs are brainwashed and the 'trapped' are goal/task-oriented PIMOs.

    Which, if I'm correct, means that the 'trapped', once the 'teeth' of the trap are removed, will go from PIMO to out-n'-proud.

    And the collapse of the mormon church, like a soufflé in a cooling oven, will result in a dried, crumbly turd that will just lie there because no one will want to touch it.

    My only question:  Will I live long enough to see it?  

    It will amuse me if I do, because I'll be able to claim being one the longest-existing 4-yr seminary, RM, BYU, EQP Exmos alive then!  But if I'm not alive, I should designate someone to collect my tithing refund . . . (But don't mention that I paid tithing on my busboy salary, but not on the tips!)

I’m pretty sure that I won’t live to see a collapse, but I’m happy to witness the decline. The church jumped the shark in 1990. 1989 was TSCC’s best year for percentage growth. With a few exceptions, the rate of growth has been in a gradual decline every year since then. The total number of claimed members still goes up every year, but the rate of growth for several years has been below the increase in the world population. In other words, the fraction of one percent of the earth’s population that is Mormon keeps going down.

If I were to compare the Mormon church to a car tire, I’d say we’ll never see a blowout, but a tiny leak keeps slowing bringing it down. They do things to mask the decline. The two hour block and combining elders and high priests means that it takes fewer people to staff a ward-so they don’t need to eliminate as many wards. They keep announcing (and once in a while actually building) temples.

I suppose their best hope is that the decline is gradual enough to keep the brainwashed ….brainwashed.

    It's possible that in the minds of the brainwashed, the smaller the church population, the greater THEIR faith will have been proven.

    Eventually the entire membership of the church may find itself holed-up in the COB, living on the interest from their Jesus-is-coming-to-save-us fund, using the money for food deliveries from Harmons, and trying to stay healthy by running up and down the stairs every day.

    They won't televise General Conference; they'll just play it on loudspeakers . . .
      
    And the Deseret News will just publish a Poetry Quarterly.


    What have I missed?

elderolddog Wrote:
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> like a soufflé in a cooling oven,
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Dang, now I'm hungry

> a dried, crumbly turd that will just lie there
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Thanks, fixed the hungry

The church is going to be around a long time. It’s areas of success just has changed over the years. Britain and Scandinavia were hot spots of conversion as was Polynesia. Latin America was hot and now Africa. The church isn’t dying it’s rate of growth is slowing and in the first time since 1847, it’s seeing a larger exodus of young adults 18-21.

Naw it’s not going to blow away but it’s just easier for the less convinced to leave than hang around. It certainly isn’t going to go broke. It could stop being a church and be a sizable holding company.

I thought I would see the church change it’s program to be more appealing but old people set in their ways don’t do that. So the church is going to sell ordinances. It used to be about building Zion but it’s about temples and ordinances now.

The problem is going to be temple burnout. I’ve heard plenty of TBM’s complain about being bored of the endowment session. I think the temple is a big disappointment and it’s just not talked about. So the more temples they build the worse this problem becomes. I see that in the future. The temple loses it’s luster.

Building Zion in God’s country was more exciting than printing some names of distant relatives on Family Search and doing boring ordinances for them.

The public HUZZAHS!! for the every six months new list of who gets a temple will continue, but, yeah, privately more and more TBMs are going to have WTFudge moments.

I hope both Spanish Fork and Brigham Fork get temples soon! But the Brigham Fork temple has to be built in 'The Heights', not down on the flats, where the lesser Saints reside...

It’s like getting a new car. It’s fun and exciting but short lived.

    The increase in the cost of insurance and the new monthly payments don't help any . . .

Brainwashed and Trapped just sounds miserable. I think it describes the Mormon church experience pretty good.

The word you're looking for may be 'codependent'. In Mormonism, you give away your personal sovereignty for acceptance within the cult. Another way of putting it is giving up your power to stay with an abuser.

Maybe staying in the church for some people is like Stockholm Syndrome. Then there are narcissists, who like the control over family members the church gives them.

I resented the church for a long time, but the fact is I let them do it to me.

I think everyone is different in the church. It was a house rule I had to go to church. I grew up in it. I was always suspect of it even at a young age. For me growing up in the church was a perfect example of William Shakespeare saying all the world is a stage. I gave them a show and I did whatever the hell I wanted to do. I’m really too independent to be brainwashed. The church played me and I played them back. It was a game and when I got tired of the game I left.

Our society does a really good job of producing broken, disillusioned lonely people who are looking to be accepted by a larger whole.

Mormonism isn't going anywhere...