Today, another great blog by the gifted Pres Paternoster! He quotes from the March Ensign article by Dallin Oaks, “The Gospel Culture.” Here's a bit from Paternoster’s blog:

“Elder Oaks is forced to ask: ‘Marriage is essential, but in Africa we must ask, what kind of marriage?’

”Finally someone who is willing to stand up to the African people and bluntly ask them what on earth they think they are doing! Finally someone who has the courage to lovingly invite them to relinquish their long held traditions and do things the right way!”


Link to SP Paternoster's blog:
http://stakepresident.blogspot.com/2012/03/plea-to-africa-cease-your-false.html

Link to Dallin Oaks' Ensign article:
http://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/03/the-gospel-culture?lang=eng

That is really what Oaks is saying. The church hates diversity.

I read the blog this morning and then I read the article on the Ensign. I felt sick. There is no message to the people of Africa about hope, direction, or about helping them grow as a people and as a culture, nope, just telling them to stop their traditions and be assimilated. And if you notice the article is and extract of a speech given at a regional meeting in Africa. What else did we miss?

Like SP Paternoster says in the article, it's about African members footing the bill for their country and sending the extra money to SLC.

Sadly, many believers will do just that, save money to pay tithing and marry in the temple. I thope this backfires for the church.

I like the guy who commented that President Paternoster is using LDS sources but he is only picking the things to talk about that puts the LDS church in a bad light...um, pretty sure you guys did that all on your own by doing the things you do to begin with...he doesn't get how utterly stupid he sounds!

MAKES ME SICK. I can't even handle this that blog post. As if Africa hasn't suffered enough at the hands of people who were determined to 'civilize' them, such as the civilizing mission Europeans invested themselves in during the scramble for Africa in the beginning of the 20th century.

Africa as a whole has lost so many of its beautiful cultural traditions at the hands of European colonialism and missionaries (of all Christian faiths). It's truly a wonderful miracle they can hang on to the ones they still have today. I hope that those who convert to Mormonism in Africa hold onto those traditions tightly and find this as alarming as I do.

Second to last paragraph, under the section titled, A Distinctive Way of Life.

"This conflicts with the gospel plan for sexual purity outside marriage.."

So, the gospel plan calls for sexual impurity only inside marriage? Or am I just reading this wrong? Wouldn't sexual purity apply to both inside and outside of marriage?

This whole ariticle kind of reminds me of my mission in Taiwan, telling Chinese people they need to stop drinking tea. Sheesh.

Maybe they are backpedaling even further away from old, Mutual Masturbation Kimball.

and adopt our false traditions? Tithing, temple going and missions? This is what you would expect from a top down organization. Focus on the lds church and not about solving problems plaguing Africa. I predict the mormon church will be a passing fad in Africa. People will move on when something else more useful comes along.

Ethnocentrism at it's finest!

"Another negative cultural tradition is the practice of lobola, or bride price..." -- D. Oaks

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The Mormon church wants to be the ONLY ones to extort money from member weddings. It doesn't like competition, even if the competition has been there for generations.

One question however, do the bride's parents have to pay TITHING on the money they get for selling their daughter?

Does the church turn it down?

So Johnny Lingo is a bad example?