How many changes will the leadership make until you start seeing mutiny from TBMs that don't like the changes?

Or do you believe that they have been so conditioned to follow the leadership that they will just bow their heads and say yes?

The leadership has and continues to make changes that drive people out. Take the janitorial issue as a very recent example. This has been the last straw for several people who have even expressed such on this board. Every time the church makes a change, it makes people question the authority, and ultimately some will leave. Like a virus, religion must evolve to stay alive. It will not do anything to cause its own demise. So, no, I do not think there will ever be a full out mutiny. The changes happen slow for a reason. Turn up the temperature degree by degree.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2010 06:06PM by chainsofmind.

doctrine/teaching is based on Modern Day Revelation and changes are to be expected.That's just Mormonism 101. Every new president/prophet will make changes. It's how it works.
The point as a believer is to support the changes as they are "from the Lord."

My husband's favorite line is that the God's church is true and therefore will never leave the face of the earth. I would love to see the church reformed, or admit to their history and educate their members with real information. I'd like to see people rise up and say, "I want to give a creative lesson". But, I think this church will be around a very long time. The next change I see happening is the young women will start working and becoming more modern, and perhaps marrying at a later age. If they pressure young women to be moms and housewives without additional choices, eventually the idea will be even too outdated for the members and they will have a more difficult time keeping them down.

They just get to their own personal level of acceptable pain and quietly sneak away, never to return.

I think we will see some new splinter groups emerge before to long though. The New Order Mormons and the Sunstone crowd already have their own version of mormonism that is different from the mainstream.

The leaders might be able to keep their heads down for another generation.

They are slowly inoculating the members against the pain of learning the real history, and most are just passive about it all anyway.

They could drift on like this indefinitely, converting 300,000 a year, losing 2/3 almost immediately, but offsetting the 100,000 that leave. Add in the babies born and they have a small net growth.

I know people talk about how many leave, but I haven't seen a single one leave in my extended family in decades, including kids.

The LDS church is going to go on like they always have. They will change things slowly enough and incrementally enough so that they won't shock the base of the membership to want to leave. There will be many who will continue to leave like us, but the leadership will not do anything crazy that will make everyone leave.

The core of the church (primarily pioneer descendents/Utahn's) will stubbornly stay and go along with whatever their leadership says, but the growth of the church will stagnate. The days of exponential growth are over thank goodness.

They bring in about 10% gross growth per year (300K converts and 100K births = 400K new members, and 4,000K existing active members, so growth is about 10% of active membership. Not too bad, if that were the whole story)

Growth in the number of wards is about 1%, so almost all of that 10% annual growth is offset by 9+% annual losses. That is an enormous churn rate. Any organization that has 10% turnover per year is already dealing with a mutiny.

LDS Inc is not about to disappear. Neither is the Catholic Church, but they had their mutiny almost 50 years ago. Neither church will ever recover its former power over its members. Those days are long gone for Catholics, and sinking fast for Mormons.

The sustaining vote is a joke, you are expected to vote yes, and there is no writing even to the 15 bigsh*ts. If a mormon complains or disagrees, they are percieved as being in open rebellion to the prophet.

I find that the core mormon base of cultic, narcissistic mormons, crave new stuff from the prophet. They view anything from them as if it was a revelation personally delivered from Jesus himself. That is why they are ok with the church cleaning, and now the added bathroom and everything cleaning.

The only voting you can do is with your exit. Anything of logic falls on deaf ears. They can't process logic. If the prophet said it, it is true and noble.

Those willing to stand up to the leadership would rather just leave. At least that is what I did. Once I was aware of all the mess that is mormonism, both doctrinally, historically and culticly, it is too far gone, and caused too much grief in my life.

Besides, I like beer.

I don't know if any of them will actually leave TSCC over it, but I have had a lot of family and friends complain extensively about the whole "every church member a janitor" thing.

There will always be TBMs who start to doubt, become inactive, and eventually leave. But it's usually an individual process repeated millions of times over the years, not one big mass hysteria. Just my two cents.

Mutiny involves underlings seizing control from their masters, such as when sailors mutiny, kill or lock up the officers, and take control of the ship. Since the Corporation of the President is a corporation sole, with the President being the exclusive owner of everything that is The Church®, it would be extremely difficult for an uprising of members to gain control of it. The President could employ all sorts of legal maneuvers to retain ownership, even if deposed. Right now it is the legal equivalent of The Church of Thomas S. Monson.

Now, I suppose it would be possible, upon the death (natural or otherwise) of the President, for the Q12 to change the ownership rules. But the Q12 got to be apostles by virtue of being totally devoted guardians of the status quo. If they messed with the rules of succession, that would open the doors to the rules being changed again when they were in power.

On the other hand, a mass of members declaring they've had enough and walking out to reform what they consider to be the unadulterated church would be desertion, not mutiny, since they would be leaving the leaders intact, just with fewer followers.

The Catholic Church has had a few thousand years to get to the point where they still preach the same stuff, but how many Catholics actually follow all of the rules? I'm sure that most use birth control anyway, have pre-marital sex anyway, etc.

Maybe the same thing will eventually happen to the Mormon Church. There will be too much evidence out there to dispute the claim of being the one-and-only Church of God, so the rules will be there, and they will be expected to follow them, but how many will?

I think there's a little bit of that happening already amongst the younger generation of Mormons. That's why they're so desperately trying to tighten the screws. But I believe it will backfire, if it is to remain a church the size that it is.

Think of how East Germany fell. Hungary opened its border with Austria. East Germany couldn't imprison its people solely within the confines of its own border, so East Germans traveled to Hungary, to the Austrian border and literally walked over into the west.

Once everyone found out how easy it was, everyone was doing it. No longer at the risk of death or imprisonment.

Something will click in TSSC, who knows what, and two families on the block will say "that' it. we're out!" then two more families will follow suit. Then the whole block will go. It will become a news story. Mormons will see stories about how mormons are leaving in droves and it is critical mass time. It will happen very quick, say over the course of two weeks.

...is the belief the leaders hold the priesthood keys to eternal happiness. No keys means no ordinances, which means no salvation or exaltation, which means no celestial kingdom, which means no happy ending -- and the happy ending is why the faithful hold to the rod.

The doctrine of priesthood keys to exalting ordinances is one that will never change, otherwise the leaders and the church they run would be unnecessary.

So until you can convince believers the keys are unnecessary or that they can get them elsewhere, they will follow the key holders.

Good point Mutty,

My simile was guards at the East German border with machine guns, holding the keys to life in this kingdom.

But my bigger point was the number of social mormons, who don't believe a word of it, or are trapped in the Truman Show, who are just keeping up appearances.

There are lots of them who post and lurk here. Who can't leave because of societal, familial repercussions. Once those barriers of inhibition are removed, and you know two neighbors who bolted, and just now two more, it will become a painless, danger-free transition out of TSSC and I believe many will bolt, if they're taking their friends and family with them.

But yes, there will always be hardcore bunker mo's, clinging to the rod at the end. But 10-25%, around the same amount who stayed true to East Germany even after the collapse of the wall.

I hope it happens, More young people seem to see the truth. I was thinking how mormons really stick out( and not in a good way) at other churches functions, rude kids at my churches pageant, and the white shirts and homely dresses at a concert. I would love to see them more and more the minority until they want to blend in.

Yep. There are always Catholics who follow the rules as well. I knew a lady who was about 5 months pregnant and the baby died. She refused to go through a forced delivery because it was against her religion.

She walked around the office for over a month, looking pregnant, even though the baby in there was dead. She finally delivered naturally, much to our relief.

This woman is lucky to still be alive herself.

Carrying a dead child for a month is unbelievably idiotic.
She can thank modern medicine, not her archaic belief system, for not croaking from an overwhelming infection.

Perhaps those that are leaving and resigning their membership could be called a "mutiny"!

Remember that active Mormons (TBMs or social Mormons or those there against their will) are the minority.

So the question is how many currently active members would have to walk away before a critical mass is reached?

My guess is that the ratios of TBMs to active non-TBMs is similar to the ratio of active to inactive members -- about 1/3 to 1/4. Of course, the vast majority of TBS are in the MoZone, reinforcing to each other the illusion the church is strong, growing and "true."

Every religion has its orthodoxy, or what they print up as their beliefs, and what the people on the ground actually believe. A big part of the leadership spends its time managing and trying to spot the icebergs of folklore belief in time to steer around them before they destroy the ship.

When the Catholic Church hit the iceberg called "Indulgences, they had such little respect for the rank and file, that they completely dismissed it. (Indulgences: The Catholic church started scamming the people by selling time off from Purgatory. Purgatory is the place of fire where you go to suffer off your venial sins until you are completely pure and eligible to go to heaven. Venial sins are insignificant sins like swearing or missing Mass. I can pray off 300 years of your time for saying certain prayers, for example).

This description is quite abbreviated, obviously, but you get the idea. A doctrine of the church, Purgatory, which was made up to explain how impure people can eventually get to heaven, was taken by the grassroots Catholics and their various organizations, and took on a life of its own. Over time, the doctrine morphs into something...horrible, a Frankenstein of the church's original intention. (Check out Wiki: indulgences) Nevertheless, as long as it benefits the church's coffers, the orthodoxy doesn't care what crazy stuff the people believe.

As long as they stay and pay.

Religions change because society changes. If a religion is out of whack with society, the people revolt. For example, Spencer Kimball's announcement that married couples couldn't practice oral sex. This was considered an intrusion into married sexual privacy, which is unacceptable in Western culture. A lot of families left and TSCC was a laughing stock worldwide.

Orthodox leaders are prone to make such mistakes because they are usually out of touch with the people and drunk with power. You can bet baldy did not consult with anyone about that pronouncement. In fact, I'll bet that embarrassment started the whole "We pray and concur together over every revelation."

The protestant reformation was successful because the selling of indulgences was one of many points of abuse FOR 500 YEARS! TSCC is so young that a tipping point of mass abuses is just visible forming on the horizon. Because of the internet, the informing of the masses that they are victims of yet another form of exploitation is instantaneous. So, the approach of critical mass is much, much faster.

Some have said that were Joseph Smith were proved to be false, that would end the church. No, think Book of Abraham scrolls.

Some have said that were the Book of Mormon proved to be false, that would end the church. No, think DNA.

People approach a tipping point when a society as a whole gives or withdraws its approval. Mormons have tried to make themselves exempt from the social mandates by claiming they are proud to be "peculiar." But no one and no organization is exempt, to wit, polygamy is still a problem for TSCC.

God complex notwithstanding, they have made a huge mistake recently which, I believe, has the best chance of energizing a tipping point than any esoteric Mormon history discovery.

How can a tax-supported church be allowed to openly influence an election? How can a tax-supported church be allowed to persecute gay people?

Which leads the average Joe Schmo sipping coffee in Starbucks, who doesn't know or care about Joseph Smith (or maybe even admires his antics)--now he says WTF? And he asks his wife if their pastor thinks Mormons are Christians...and she says, no, they hate blacks and women.

And there comes Mitt Romney, timing perfect, to put the entire mass of conflated confliction in front of the American people. He recently said that he didn't believe God had spoken since Moses and the burning bush. Up yours, Thomas S. Monson, et. al.

The confluence of the election of 2012 and the certain posturing of Mitt Romney will bring the tidbit-hungry election analyst into the living room of every American, talking about Prop 8 and Mormons using tithing funds for political purposes. Throw in the internet boards where we all will be posting "did you know" tidbits and the people wearing funny underwear are going to be pointed at like the unconverted in "The Body Snatchers."

When Johnny comes home from school and says, "The kids are making fun of me. They say we are haters and wear magic underwear. That's not true, is it?"

NOW, that's a tipping point.



Anagrammy - can't wait, please pass the popcorn.

That is my point. That there is tipping point in view, we just don't know what it will be.

You said it could be the scrutiny which will return to Mittens in 2012. But it could be anything.

An exmo comedian strikes it big mining the wealth of marment culture and gains mass appeal among the general population.

A sitcom or movie gains similar mass appeal.

Whatever it is, it will be the equivalent of the general population becoming interested in a newsdriven phenomena that turns into water cooler talk the next day. Late night pundits tap into to it for two straight weeks.

Mormons believe in magic underwear, but don't believe in dinosaurs? WTF?

But the tipping point is when church members realize that their beliefs have become a national embarrassment. That will be enough for the first two families to bolt, then two more on the block find out and jump ship. Then there goes the neighborhood.

And as you so astutely stated, in this age of instant communication, it will be impossible to staunch the hemorrhaging.

My guess it that it will be the worthiness interviews of children. But I hope something far more innocuous happens that spares them -- not their families -- the humiliation of national ridicule.

I don't believe it was the 500 years of being jerked around by the Catholic Church that caused the Reformation. It was the printing press. Martin Luther may well have been the world's first best-selling author, and the wars and religious rebellions that ended the Holy Roman Empire started about 40 years after the printing press came on the scene.

I see the internet as doing exactly the same thing to Mormonism, only it is not taking 40 years to start having an effect.

As for kids being embarrassed at being Mormon, it would seem to me that that should already be the case in California, but I haven't seen much on RFM to indicate that kids hate admitting to classmates that they are Mo. Puzzling.

I don't think that the church/cult is prepared to combat the internet, and I don't know how they possible could.

The other downfall of mormonism besides the internet, is that it is run by very old narcissistic men. They increasingly have shown how out of touch they are. Fun and activities for adults have essentially ended as of recent years, only to be replaced with first cleaning the ward houses, and now the bathrooms. They are treating the church as a business, rather than a social community. People will tire of doing all the stuff or the guilt from not doing it. Going to the temple is harped about incessently, as the pinacle of mormonism, but it takes time and money. Go to the temple, clean the buildings and bathrooms, get your recommend, pay your tithing, go on a mission, do your HTing, attend your meetings, give talks and testimony, and btw don't wear flipflops or look unique. Blend in to the one size and appearance fits all. Oh and get pregnant on your wedding night and don't stop pumping out the kids in the expected single income sahm lifestyle.

They don't realize that the world is a different place with people genuinely hurting in these tough economic times. Even double income, one and two kid families are struggleing. People seem to have shifted into more of a survival mode, than a luxury mode. There are constant commercials about credit problems. It is a different world.

And the church used to be a refuge, but is just a downer, filled with people with cultic minds.

People are at wit's end on how to keep home and hearth together. Being on their "last nerve" it is not going to take that much to send them over the edge.

I wonder how those golden collars like cleaning the bathrooms.


Anagrammy

and the ability of the internet to take that info around the world will cause a tipping point.

And I could not be more pleased to be on this board when it happens. We must begin planning a party... Fiasco Night?

Anagrammy

One encouraging observation: I have had more than a few nevermo business colleagues make a remark about the "I'm a mormon" ad campaign that has run on TV in a few markets (one commentator is in MN). Generally the reaction was suspicious and negative.

"Why does any church have to SPEND PRECIOUS DONATED MONEY just to convince people that their members are normal," they wonder. (name another church that does)

One person suggested that the ads alone were paranoid and enough by themselves to cause worry. Another wondered why the TSCC wouldn't just take care of its own members rather than worry about image management. (answer: they don't take care of their own members, duh) He said it was like watching the BP oil company ads -- almost worse PR for the organization than saying nothing.

I think the days of the cult being able to hand out cute little BS Reader's Digest inserts are over both in the media and certainly on the internet. The clinical sterility of everything the TSCC hands out is defacto evidence that something is wrong.

Definate Fiasco looming . . . sooner than later IMO.

People are struggling to pay tithing, struggling to have moms stay at home or work part-time, struggling to pay for missions, doing without, having to clean toilets, etc. If some financial scandal hits the news, Mormons (at least the less-fanatical ones) will suddenly wake up and wonder where the hell their money is going. Why doesn't the church make it's finances public? Why are they spending so much money adorning their fine buildings and neglecting the poor and needy? Yeah, there is Welfare Services, but how much of the good it does actually comes from TITHING? How much of the good works the church gets credit for is actually members doing things they finance more or less themselves? How much of the charity is actually from DI donations, rather than tithing funds? And you know the media loves a scandal about a church, especially when it involves money or sex.

I also think Mitt has the potential to shine a spotlight on the Mormons. Mormons think this will be a positive thing because they are so deluded but it will end up being extremely negative. People will want to know more about this strange religion their possible president-to-be follows. A couple of pictures of people dressed in temple clothing, doing the endowment, will be like a match to dry papers. The really TBM will hunker down and scream persecution but the reasonable people, the young, those who have been going-along to get-along will see it for what it is and run for the door. It'll be the Seventh Day Adventists all over again.

I suspect the church is going to screw up again big time around then, and if not, I agree with others that Mitt's campaign will do it in.

Good one, Phantom Shadow, and you're in Northern Cali as well, so we can clink glasses as they start auctioning off the temples on eBay...

"Collector's Item - Unique Building. Can be redecorated--perfect for Satanic rituals, fleamarket, or hot tub venue..."


Anagrammy

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while only recover their senses slowly, one by one."~ historian Charles Mackay

I am thinking there will be no mass exodus. There will always be a core there of people too locked-in, or too unaware, devout or deluded enough to remain. They will self-perpetuate for awhile.

Eventually, most likely because of the internet, it will implode and self-destruct, then be reborn. It may take longer than we ourselves have here on earth, but I do think it will happen. It won't go away, it will just wear a different face.

The only thing they can do to remain in business longterm, would be to completely change their reason for being, their mission, their methods, their model and essentially what it means to be Mormon. Which is what I see signs of them doing, and of them having done, and it's been going on a long, long, time.

I can forsee a day when Mormon women will be Bishops, and the polygamy nonsense will be openly discussed among members. Pamphlets, written by the church, will declare to new converts that Kolob and the planets and all that were never thought to be real, just allegories, and no good Mormon ever believed any of it was true.

Tithing will be de-emphasized, because the real estate and investment income already taken in will support the lower numbers of people left in, and besides, people will give far more once they can see where it goes and what it's all for--because in the future the books of the church will be open to all.

If they have to burn the top prophets and leader guys, they will, but over time, subjected to the same whitwashing they are trying to put JS himself through. They will happily allow BY to be the devil incarnate, and will themselves accuse him of heresy and betrayal of JS, and claim that all leaders after him were led astray thru lies, but hallelujah! A new book of Mormon will appear and it will be akin to the New Testament, and in it will be found the newly restored and revealed word of God.

The secret temple stuff will go away, though some symbolism will remain; people do like their magic. The buildings, open to all, will be there, too. The garments will go, but there will be some sort of vestigal thing, maybe a cotton vest or string worn around the wrist--and so will crossing arms across the body to pray, which will catch on and go mainstream.

Sadly for the angel Moroni, he's out of there. They'll just change him to Gabriel or somebody else with better PR value. They'll equate Mountain Meadows to the Inquisition, and pre-1978 prohibitions on priesthood for Blacks to Lutherans and Presbyterians and Catholics procuring, transporting and selling slaves. Dead dunking will disappear, but be replaced by something equally as bizarre, but instead they'll call it transfiguration and it will take place among all living Mormons, at mass events.

And people will declare, hundreds of years from now, that they have no idea why everyone thought the Mormons were a bunch of peculiar people, holding fast to a rod which was tempered by lies.

If the internet exists, and everything we write here today is known in that day, they will find a way to make all the old lies and ways seem irrelevant, anyway. They've already started this whitewashing campaign. Someday they'll reveal that this whitewash was what JS really meant in the first place about "correctly translated", and he'll be more of a martyr than he ever was. BY will still be the devil, though.

And so it will go, one, by one, by one.

Depressing to this atheist, yes; very. But then, so are a lot of other things out there in this world I have to share, particularly with people who do now and would then, believe things like this.

I make it thru listening to normal people like Ricky Gervais talk about why he is an atheist, coming here to watch how you all are faring, and living my life as well as I can. I'm good without God, and I guess in the end, that's all I can do.

who are NOT happy with the rather wishy washy ways of the current leadership. Will this translate into another schism? Probably not - but you never know.

in the next decade. Growing up in the mid-west, I saw first hand how the COC evolved, and how the splinter groups took off. Such a "mutiny" is long over do. I'd imagine some apostle somewhere where get caught doing something, will get in trouble, and will start exposing TSCC. TSCC reminds me of the movie, "The Firm" in many ways.

Not a mutiny yet, but division over Book of Mormon geography.

You know, this is a nice faith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDaO6BnjNis
Nothing to bash against. A lot of ex-mormons end up here, just saying.