I have not been an active member for years. I recently attended church with a friend while visiting her in a different city. I heard a member referring to some visitors as "dry mormons". Can anyone tell me exactly what that term means.

My understanding is that "dry Mormon" refers to a non-member who has many of the beliefs of a Mormon and is living the lifestyle of a Mormon (e.g. following the Word of Wisdom), but has not yet gotten wet (been baptized).

Thank you Flipper !

which surprised me because he decidedly doesn't live by the Word of Wisdom. But he was very supportive of us as Mormons and he is a very good, moral, principled man. And a wealthy attorney so he fit their image of what they wanted in the church. They used to say he was afraid to get baptized because he'd be made bishop because he was "bishop material." Actually, he's never said why he didn't ever get baptized, despite 3 different sets of missionary discussions at 3 separate times in his life. Now, my guess is that he thought Mormonism was utterly ridiculous but didn't feel like explaining those specifics to my mom, who would have just flipped out. Better to say nothing at all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/26/2010 10:54PM by CA girl.

...usually applied to non-Mormon spouses of an active member, who attend indefinitely or are otherwise tolerant of the church, and have no apparent prohibition to joining the church anytime they wanted. I've also heard the term applied to non-members who play church basketball or softball, attend the ward scout troop, etc. Occasionally I've seen it applied to a teen who is waiting to turn of-age to join the church against their parents' non-consent.

However, I doubt that very many true dry-Mormons exist, as most apparant dry-Mormons actually have absolute or strong reasons why they're not joining.

Mormons call them dry-Mormons rather wishfully, as if at any time they'll just wake up and want to be baptised.

But such a pool of converts-waiting-to-happen is overstated. MOST converts are, to put it bluntly, naive about the church when they join.

After all, look how naive even BIC TBMs are about church history & doctrine! And investigators know even less than members.

Thanks to the Internet, savvy investigators learn the truth about the church *before* joining and thus spare themselves a costly mistake.

Of course, those investigators who fail to check out the missionaries' claims and join the church in blind faith are just as naïve as the pre-Internet investigators.

'Be baptized in haste, repent at leisure'!