Can some of you give me more detail about how, specifically, correlation and central funding, took out the fun activities from the church? I remember there being activities like road shows and dances in the 80's when I was a teen but apparently they phased these out by the early 90's? Was it a gradual thing? Did it happen exactly the same time as when fund raising was taken from the local level? Were these official church wide sponsored activities or controlled only at the local level? Was it simply because the COB penny pinched and didn't want to support these activities financially or were there other reasons? Did the leadership give any reasons? Did they send out letters to the Stake Presidents officially terminating such and such activities?

It seems like taking fun activities out of the church is a really stupid idea if they are trying to retain members and attract new ones. I can't see any logic on the part of the leadership to make the church less fun other than for financial reasons. As long as they are controlling the activities what other reasons would there be for them to take get rid of them?

I've been out for 10 years now. What do the Mormons do for activities and how are they different from the past? They must do activities. What do they do in replacement?

To the time of carnivals and SS classes that were interesting. The teenage SS class in our ward was taught by a college student. He was excellent--so good that the younger teens would skip their class and go to his class. He often brought in outside information and had great discussions. Even at that time, I think he was getting in a little trouble with the stake folks, but he was keeping the kids coming, so I think they cut him some slack.

This was the time of roadshows. These were part of the "Mutual" organization, but usually envolved many ward members--building scenery, taking the sets from wardhouse to wardhouse. The reason they were called "roadshows" was because you took the show on the road. We had FIVE buildings in our stake, with seven different wards. All the shows were shown on one night to the people in EVERY building. The shows traveled to the people. That was part of the fun of it. I think one of the things that put a damper on this activity was that the church started expanding beyond The Utah Corridor and Idaho Falls. You can't really have a ROAD show in Massachusetts, for instance when the whole stake covers two states.

The mutual program was amazing in the 60s. There were Speech Festivals and Dancing programs. There was Drama and Music. These four topics rotated, one each week during the month, usually with a big event at some point in the year--the Dance Festival, the Speech Festival which went to the stake level and beyond. These programs didn't really work in my ward, because we were one of the anemic wards, but in the talented and "fat" wards, it must have been quite wonderful.

The dance festival brought people in from all over the United States where there was a church-wide festival (usually held at the U of U stadium).

Of course there was the sports program (only for boys, however). This kept a lot of boys going to church who otherwise wouldn't. You had to have a certain attendence at church meetings to be able to be on the teams. This program also culminated in a church-wide tournament.

I think most of these things were dropped because the church expanded beyond the intermountain west.

But...most other things were dropped because the corelation committee wanted to keep things under control of the group of people chosen to monitor the lesson material.

Relief Society was another area where great changes were made. The RS had their own publication (the Relief Society Magazine) which was published by the RS. They had their own writers and their own staff. The lessons ran the gamut from Literature (Shakespeare--V.Hugo, etc) to Social relations to Homemaking skills.

Our stake sponsored a summer carnival as a fund raising activity. The "laurels" in the ward (17 year olds) vied for "Queen of the ward" for that year. The one who raised the most money won the award. You can imagine that I was glad this hideous practice was discontinued before I turned that age. In fact, the whole thing was a disgrace. RS women would work for months on a quilt, and it would be sold for $10-15. They'd embroider pillowcases that would sell for a dollar. This was fun for us kids though. We loved the dunking booth where the young men usually got to sit. There was a lot of junk food, etc.

Then there were the Budget banquets. One a month. Put on by a few of the RS women. Those were fun as well. Pretty standard food--a slice of ham and peas and some potato dish.

What else could I tell?

I think a lot of things were discontinued because of tax codes--some things were discontinued because they violated health codes--serving food, etc.

But probably most things were changed so that leaders could keep a better control over what exactly was being taught.

This is what I experienced:

All these wonderful activities were supported by the funds held by the Relief Society. We were all SAHMs and had the time (plus it was fun) to get together and work on these projects.

One of the auxiliaries would come to us and we would organize support for whatever they wanted to do. We made money and lots of it. One day the Elder's Quorum had to come to ask us for money for a project--they didn't have the time for bake sales and the little projects that we had going (selling herbs in little plastic bags, making/selling quilts, etc, even selling rolls of wet newspapers rolled up to start your fire with).

From then on, all the money the Relief Society made had to go into the Elder's Quorum Fund and we could make withdrawals by permission only. No one in Relief Society was a signatory on the account.

It is pretty hard to provide assistance and "relief" when you are not allowed to keep your "egg money" as they used to say in the old days. Mothers got to keep it, but not in Mormonism.

It was never the same after that. The paradigm changed and we women were ashamed that we were so obviously treated as children but they were perfectly willing to use us. The spontaneity went out of the help we were giving.

In my opinion, the fact that the women were more financially successful than the men was intolerable for the men. They believe, in their hearts, that money is control and they were perfectly willing to throw away the fun in exchange for the control they felt they were entitled to because of their appendage.

Anagrammy

I converted in the early 60's when we had dozens of events, and discussions, and a variety of music for choir, progressive dinners, BBQ's, picnics -- with water fights :-) (I have the pictures to prove it! ), RS lessons on a large variety of subjects, lots of guest speakers (minor vehicle repair, self defense, funeral arrangements, and on and on).

We had Firesides, Bazaars,(all hand made items for sale for RS budget), Road Shows, Dance Festivals, New Years parties with live music, and on and on and on. I still have one of the series of "Out of The Best books" - short stories and poems that we studied in RS.

We had our own auxiliary budgets. I was a Rel. Soc. Sec. Treasure -- actually took minutes and read them in class - which is long gone. I think the annual dues was something like $2.

we had car washes to earn money for the kids for camp and Scout camp and other projects.

When we lived in UT in the 60's,we had Firesides with many of the leaders from SLC. They would come down to Provo and speak in small Firesides. Many of those men are deceased now.

In So. CA in one of the wards, we had a project to drive cars from the local airport, back to one of the airports in LAX -- several times a week---to earn money for our Ward Budget.

I used to take orders and go to an egg farm and buy eggs in bulk for several of the ladies.

Those are just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. There were probably more.

We had full time dedicated paid custodians who took care of the buildings and kept them in excellent shape. Had a grounds crew also.

I enjoyed those events, the socialization, the discussions-- made a lot of great memories.

Then things changed. All the fun was gone. All the choices were gone. No variety in music, or lessons, or open discussions. Had to stick to the hymnal and the manual.
No more guest speakers,No more Road Shows, Dance Festivals, and only a few Firesides.
No more progressive dinners, Ward picnics (maybe 2) and no more live music at dances. The list goes on.
No more custodians.

The LDS Church today is not the church I joined and enjoyed.
I lost interest long before I left and stopped believing.

Have you met Mr. Scrooge's Brother - He is called TSCC!

Don't they even have the Young Adult and Single Adult dances anymore? I seem to remember my friend's teen kids going to Church dances and they're only in their early 20s now.

I don't know how often, or if they have a DJ or how they do them now. Been too long for me.

But I do know that there is a very long list of acceptable, appropriate dress and behavior for the dances. And they are highly chaperoned.

When they printed the Stake directories, (don't do that anymore), that list was printed on one of the pages.

because more people are older and it feels like going back to junior high and a wallflower experience.

My TBM friend John shocked me the other night by telling me he's attending the Murray Dance Studio. Now this guy, you may remember from my other posts, is a descendant of Brigham Young and believes every bit of crap the GA's (or the extreme right for that matter) spouts.

I asked him why he wasn't going to the LDS dance and he said it was just too tense there. It felt like pressure to a list of rules and no structure, so it felt awkward like a meeting of the Biggest Losers.

Anagrammy

..,....if one prayer can take care of all the needs of those on the prayer list (dozens to hundreds) why are we wasting out time doing all these temples rites individually when that same god could take care of hundreds at a time listed on one roll with just one prayer and one spoken ritual. But then that would defeat the whole make work process of the temple and in turn destroy church income.