Seriously, I just don't get this. There is a serious disconnect going on here. I understand the concept of cognitive dissonance, but this is ridiculous.

She's a woman, she's AA and her ENTIRE family converted--as ADULTS!

Does anyone have any insight that can help me undertand this? It's beginning to keep me up nights.

she would be educated enough, or at least have those around her, to point out how TSCC is one of the most racist orgs. ever to sprout on American soil. Surely she knows.

Members have to apply for the privlage of seeing her and Mishies are mkaing gift baskets for her.

Keep your enemies close.

I remember when Gladys Knight was a guest star on "The Jeffersons" and sang "The Old Rugged Cross". Florence (Marla Gibbs) told her she had potential, but wasn't quite ready for no church choir!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2011 04:04PM by Stray Mutt.

OMG!!!

Really?! Gladys Knight is a mormon!?

I did not know that!

I love Glady's Knight. But she has an addictive personality prone to cult attachments. She's been previously involved in other religious movements. When I lived in LA in the 90s she married this charismatic motivational speaker named Les Brown. It was like a conversion to his movement. (Here's a video of him http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXS4tWHtItY)

She later said the marriage was disastrous and she can't understand why she ever married him. She divorced him, dealt with gambling addiction and lost a lot of money. Then she joined the Mormons.

All those things have to do with the right brain instead of the left brain. It's a pattern in her life to go from one right-brain-feel-good addiction to another.

I love her though. Hope she takes the midnight train to apostasy as soon as she can.

"the midnight train to apostasy" <snort>


Till then, any time the church's history of racism is discussed on a public forum, the name of good 'ole Gladys Knight is trotted out in an attempt to squelch the discussion.

Yeah! Yeah! But think about all the people she is going to take with her when she leaves the church, and she will leave. She is going to realize the truth one day.

My best guess is she thought, "here are 14 million white folk who have never purchased a Gladys Knight album."
She then met with a GA who told her she could "clean up".
She thought he meant "sell a lot of albums".
He really meant the chapel bathrooms.

She's never been the same since she split up with the Pips.

Her son was a Mormon and died tragically. The family all got baptized after his death. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Plus, she is not a regular rank and file member. There are a lot of perks to being a famous Mormon. I would guess she doesn't have to put up with any bullshit like regular members.

Plus album sales from the membership probably make up for all the racism :p

Actually her son died several years after she converted to Mormonism. There was a picture of the whole family with Hinckley a few months before her son died suddenly. She'd been a member already for 4 or 5 years. I heard her speak on KBYU at a women's conference while her son was still alive about how much she loved the temple--so she had been a member a few years already.

Ok. Here's some somewhat first-hand info IIRC. I served as a missionary in Las Vegas in 1990. The two missionaries that taught and baptised Kenya (Gladys' daughter) lived in our area and (their area was next to ours). So, we hung out together a lot and we sometimes went on splits when they were teaching her. Kenya lived in their ward boundaries.

Jimmy Newman (Gladys' oldest son) was the first one in the family to join TSCC. He deliberately kept it quiet because he wanted his family to see that he only changed for the better. He was a member for around three years before his sister, Kenya, decided to take the discussions and get baptised.

Attendance wise, it was a small baptism. The two Elders that taught her, me and my comp, and a small handful of family and a few ward members. Honestly, it was pretty typical.

Gladys attended the baptism along with one or two of the Pips. She was very friendly and down-to-earth, as were all of her family that were in attendance. She was a little late in getting there. We were hoping she would bust out a song or two, but she didn't. Instead, a member of the ward was rockin' out on the piano. It was surprisingly lively for a baptismal service and everyone enjoyed it.

Glady's was baptised a number of years after that. I'm not sure exactly the year that occured.

It's not much, but that's what I know. As far as what Gladys is/was thinking, I don't have a clue. I'm guessing that a lot of it may have to do with emotions and the crap of life. Like a lot of us, I'm sure she's got a shelf she sticks everything on. Who knows.

The Mormon church provided her with her own gospel choir to conduct as she pleases.

So she could make a buck off the saints. She wasn't selling many albums in the real world anymore. My tbm parents bought her albums for all their kids and they didn't know a damn thing about Gladys Knight other than she was a famous singer who joined the church. Thats all it took to make the sell.

This thread focuses on Gladys Knight because she's a celebrity. I would expand the range of the question to ask why ANY woman is interested in Mormonism. And yet the Mormon women I know are their own worst enemies, rationalizing to themselves their support of an institution that demeans them in this life and for all eternity.

Gladys Knight is from Georgia and grew up in the 1950s so she is no stranger to racism. My guess is that Mormonism provides some type of emotional family stability. To an outsider, Mormon families "look" perfect -- happy marriages, nice homes, well mannered kids, etc., etc. The "Family Home Evening" thing just doesn't exist any more on the other side of Zion Curtain. It's kind of like how the old DDR (East Germany) was the showcase of the East Bloc socialist system and was used to make communism look cool.

I'm sure no one is requiring her to say "Now repeat after me -- 'I am cursed...I am cursed. I was less valiant in the Pre-Existence...I was less valiant in the Pre-Existence, Satan uses me as an instrument of evil' " and so on.

I've posted about this in the past: I had a very nice student about a year ago (I teach at a community college) who is an African-American adult convert to Mormonism. She had even attended BYU-I for a while. I couldn't understand it (still can't). She may have converted to marry a Mormon, but it sounded to me like she had converted and attended BYU-I before she got married.

One thing she told me did really stand out, however... Once in class during a discussion about racism, she stated that she and her brothers had been the targets of blatantly racist remarks (including the n-word) in high school. That shocked me, because frankly, the part of the SF Bay Area we both live in has been majority non-white for years, plus there simply seems to be virtually little to no racism against blacks among the younger generation here. Anyway, after class, we continued our discussion one-on-one, and she laughingly told me how funny it was that when she attended LDS services in her city for the first time, the same kids who had made racist remarks to her in high school were also in attendance and were "speechless" at seeing her there. That one remark she made in passing made me wonder if a major factor in her converting was to prove something to the Mormon kids who had been racist toward her and her siblings.

Who knows what motivates people to convert to anything, though? I'm sure it seldom is based on rational motives. Two of my younger cousins who, although not black, are not "white and delightsome," either, have both recently converted to Mormonism too.