Last August I wrote a rather tongue in cheek post asking if todays missionaries are wimps because they are able to call home every week, while 45 years ago on my mission I was never able to call home even once in two years. I was reminded of this post when a friend posted his thoughts on facebook about how technological change can create artificial sacrifice in religious context. The first example he gave was of missionaries calling home. He explained that the rules made sense at the time, because of the cost involved. But then as the cost went down to zero in the last 10-15 years, there was no reason for it to remain, except for the “sacrifice” made. Then after several years, the rules caught up with the technology, and missionaries can now call home every week, and sometimes more.
My friend then mused about garments. The garments worn by my pioneer ancestors are not any different from the underwear worn by the gentiles, except for the little cuts (marks) put in them. Now the technology of underwear has changed, some of it quite a lot, and it feels much better on ones body. The gap between the best underwear technology out there and the best offered by the church is much bigger for women than for men. The church has even tried to a degree to keep up, but let’s face it, they aren’t experts in these technologies. So wearing garments might feel like a bigger sacrifice now relative to alternatives than it likely did 100 years ago.
For the most part the church is just a little behind in accepting modern technologies. Unlike the Amish who shun modern conveniences as they think it will affect their spirituality, Mormons tend to embrace technology as a way to further God’s work. Remember the big satellite dishes outside church buildings in the 1990s? Watching General Conference was a miracle! How many times have you heard that “God invented the internet for temple work”. Sure they were a little late to the game, as I remember BYU very reluctantly letting students use the internet, but not Youtube as that was evil. Now the Church has a youtube channel!
What are some other technological changes that have altered what is perceived as a sacrifice? Possibly modern contraception might fall into that category. What about doing sacrament meeting via Zoom. Do we even need to get up early, get the kids fed and dressed, and drag them to church? Are there any other examples of technology making certain religious practices a bigger sacrifice than they once were (or need to be)?
Wheat & Tares 
Part technology, part common sense, LDS early morning seminary. It was instituted in So. Cal in 1950 as a disorganized trial. https://rsc.byu.edu/vol-13-no-3-2012/century-seminary
Now current studies show that all youth and adults need more sleep. School districts nationwide are moving back starting times. The LDS church has invested $$ and resources into at home study lessons, but most SP’s prohibit their usage. The SP’s think the youth need to gather together in a formal classroom for “strength”. Although the youth are sleeping during class and rarely speak to each other. Why spend money on a home program and few use it?
Other churches who have seminaries as theological schools, show this data among their own graduates regarding spiritual growth and how to best obtain it: https://www.intrust.org/in-trust-magazine/issues/new-year-2017/the-impact-of-seminary-on-the-spiritual-lives-of-students
Quick summary: the article suggests to look for better ways than a traditional classroom method. As for the 5:30 am hour, that is stupidity for stupidity sake.
As stakeholders we should demand some peer reviewed outcome studies of LDS seminary (along with everything else done in LDS church)
I’ve been wondering lately if the way we do Sunday church (basically stuck in 1950s style worship and education) will make us seem like “20th-century Amish” to our great, great- grandkids later on in the 21st century? Even though my CofC congregation live-streams worship and Zooms adult Sunday School each week, typically it’s not all that different from before we started doing that (thanks Covid pandemic). Meanwhile younger generations are less and less interested in doing things the same, old way and drift away. Others take advantage of (succumb to?) all the other competitors for time and attention on weekends: organized sports, family-focused activities, camping, hiking, etc. In short, will church become a quaint reminder of the last century that others find either quaint or mildly annoying?
Live organists and pianists. Also 19th century, Western style hymns in general although this isn’t tech related. As an organist, this is painful to say.
Trek – this is artificially difficult and manipulative, some of it technology related such as how they cook, travel, and camp. Just take the kids for a difficult hike.
Scriptures – many seminary and even youth teachers discourage scriptures on phones.
Ward boundaries – why can’t I attend virtual church w my parents or siblings.
Law of chastity – it’s still about penetrative and gay sex, what about sexting and online coercion and bullying. However – kukos for not talking about porn every 5 minutes.
All male leadership – if we’re worried about Isabel-style seduction in coed bishoprics have bishops wear a monitored chastity belt. Or have bishoprics wear body cams. Yes, this is tongue in cheek. Sort of.
If the work is moving forward with technology, why is the temple movie now a slide show similar to how we presented to investigators in the 1980s?
Instead of a 3D headset and gloves that would allow us an immersive Adam/ Eve experience would that be, josh h?
i started at BYU in 1999. The Internet access there was faster than anything I had ever dreamed of. There was a porn filter on it, but for the most part, there wasn’t anything we wanted to look at that we couldn’t. This was the height of Napster, and we were all downloading music at a crazy rate. In early 2001 Napster was blocked, with the university siting bandwidth concerns from the sheer quantity of users. 36 hours later students found a way around that.
Anyway, YouTube didn’t launch until 2005. I don’t remember not being able to access it, though I left the university in 2006, which was before most people cared about YouTube.
Technology and “new” knowledge has always been a problem with “the church.” Maybe it’s the Catholic Church with Galileo or Copernicus or The the LDS Church and BYU with YouTube and the Internet or all the comments you hear in a ward about the same things but you could add Wikipedia, Facebook, Snap Chat, or any number of other programs or apps. It seems there is always evil lurking. The you look at what the church invests in and you wonder what our real relationship is to technology. Do a google search for “LDS Church technology investments” and you’ll find at article from the Salt Lake Tribune that lists the top companies the church has invested in and the top 6 are all technology companies. Finally I went to the Roots Tech conference last month and one of the major strands was Artificial Intelligence, AI, and how it has been used to expand exponentially genealogical research.
Technology is easy to put down as sinful when it’s not understood. There is a remarkable similarity between arguments against new technologies whether it’s the printing press 500 years ago or YouTube today. I doubt though they were invented to bring evil into the world but to make something better. I don’t think “evil” is that creative.
Josh, the church only moves forward with technology when it can save money, and an updated movie costs more than film strips taken from the old movies. This move toward cheap is relatively recent. They also decided that talks and lessons on talks is cheaper than writing lessons books with quality material. Cheap is the new order of the day so they can put the megabucks into real estate, and investments instead of a quality churc program.
and I think the headset and an immersive virtual experience would be great. except you couldn’t entertain yourself by watching the old guys fall asleep.
I’ve never understood why if we truly value educating our members, my building is full of 1960s chalkboards and 20 year old flat screen tvs on carts (only 4 of these for 16ish classes to share and I have to bring a laptop or dvd/cd to use). I wish the church would look into what the school systems are doing in my state. The educational possibilities with technology are amazing.
Also, I’d love to get an upgrade on all the locks/cabinets in the building which are also from the 1960s and only somewhat functional.
I think part of the purpose of going to a new temple movie/slide show, is that many of the actors came to be LGBT or have left the church. But if the slide artist goes another way, there is not an actual face to the temple flick. They could make the temple film AI and eliminate that specific problem.
An obvious method where the LDS church is behind current technology, is customer acquisition. Encyclopedia salespersons used to go door to door. The missionary method is no longer acceptable; I would not answer the door for a stranger. The church is trying to have the missionaries sort of engage in Facebook, but that is done without a solid plan.
Customer retention is also behind the times. Instead of listening to the membership and promoting Christ like service (soup kitchens, homeless shelters), using tithing funds to assist the needy, and having activities that engage people; we are told obedience and covenant path lingo, with no solid purpose.
If technology exists to accelerate the missions of the church, the LDS surely is not using it effectively. Christ’s teachings of love and service remain and supersede any policy and procedures/ (“revelation”) no matter the decade, or the newest technology. Too bad the LDS church has never emphasized this or even asked this question in a temple interview. Love and service were the cornerstones that Christ’s gospels teachings centered on.
This one might be controversial, but how about the latex condom? The latex condom is:
I often wonder if the ancient scriptural prohibitions against all sex outside of marriage didn’t actually originate from God. Instead, it was just men codifying ancient society’s best attempts at preventing unwanted pregnancies and STIs. If so, now that the latex condom has nearly eliminated the risk of unwanted pregnancies and STIs, perhaps the Church should change its position on sex to encourage healthy, loving, and consensual sexual relationships instead of an outright ban on all sex outside of marriage (as well as banning gay sex within marriage).
This would obviously be a counter-example to the OP since in this case, the Church has resisted accepting new technology (the latex condom) for many decades, even though this technology has long been accepted by Western society at large (if you don’t count the Catholics).
I agree with faith that the missionary program is stuck in the door to door salesman programs of yesteryear.
Donations were slow to go online and even when they did well meaning YM programs were telling the members not to pay fast offerings online so the boys could still go door to door for your donation. Luckily nobody put up with that.
We are lucky our stake offers an online seminary option as we are told most do not.
But the biggest waste of all is all the meetings that could literally be an email or a text.
Chadwick, sadly my stake still insists on sending YM door to door for fast offerings.
When my then 12 yo son took 3.5 hours to return to the church and no one else seemed concerned about it, I stopped sending him. In my frantic search for him that day I brought up that CHILDREN carrying bags of money door to door on a day that literally everyone in the state knew they would be doing so is a dangerous thing, the male leadership was floored, it had never occurred to them to be concerned! They had purposely sent 2 deacons together on the biggest route, neither with a cell phone, because the older kids wanted to be done faster. Thankfully I found them safe and sound, just messing around as 12 yo do. But after that online fast offerings is the only way any of my family will participate.
Watching Stake Conference in the gym on hard chairs while it is broadcast from elsewhere (in Utah, so literally around the corner) seems archaic – please put it on zoom so I can watch from home and sip my morning Diet Coke in my crocs and sweatpants.
They could use technology to fix the problem Faith’s comment brings up about when the film actors become, um, not temple worthy actors anymore. If they can completely put in Golum by computer, change an actor’s age by age regression by computer, take ten horses and warrior and use them as models to computerize a war scene with thousands of horses with riders going into battle, then they could take the old film, and computerize the apostate Adam into a young version of President Nelson as Adam. No problem with current technology. But it would cost more than making stupid slides that don’t show any faces. Church is too cheap.
I want the virtual reality with gloves and the works so we can each be Adam or Eve and pick and eat the fruit, feel ourselves hiding in the bushes from God, dressing in fig leaves, getting the signs and tokens straight from Peter. Yeah, I might even go back to the temple for that. At least it is very safe to promise to go back, because I won’t live long enough for the church to ever invest that kind of money, so I can say I would go back and feel safe I’ll never have to keep that promise.
And, Mountainclimber, too many people are allergic to latex.
Have you seen any of the Bible Project videos on YouTube? Look, if a couple of educated Christians and some talented animators with a small budget can use modern technology to crank out some of the best religious educational videos around, why can’t the LDS Church get some done for the temple and educational purposes in the church?
And every ward should be Zooming meetings. If an old geezer like me can figure out how to do it, how hard is it really? Top priority should be Stake Conference. Keep my old backside off of those folding metal chairs and amp up the production values for the conference. Most stakes have unused tech and musical talent begging to be used. What’s to lose? Yes, I believe people will tune in.
I like the idea of using virtual reality for the temple endowment. I’m not sure how much more interesting the ceremony would actually be for me if it were in 3D. However, virtual reality could allow people to do individual endowment sessions at their own pace. Sooooo much of the endowment is giving the instructions for each step of the ceremony, and then repeating those instructions, repeating those instructions again, and so on. If people have already done the endowment hundreds or thousands of times, then the virtual reality session could be configured to skip all of those instructions. It would make the endowment session a LOT shorter and a LOT less frustrating for me personally. Maybe people could even speed the rest of the endowment ceremony up to 1.5x or even 2x speed like you can on YouTube and other streaming services if you’ve seen it enough times as well (surely the dead person you are proxying for can handle the increased speed, right?). The VR headset could make certain that all the handshakes and tokens are done properly so the dead person isn’t stuck in spirit prison like they must be when a mistake isn’t picked up by the elderly temple workers today. The endowment session is so boring and so repetitive that I just want everything to go faster so I can be done and get out of there. Virtual reality could be used to make the endowment go faster for those who have already experienced it that many times.
Virtual reality temple endowments could even make it possible to perform endowments outside of the temple. Why do you even need to go to the temple at all when you can have an even more immersive endowment experience with a VR headset in your own home (or at your local chapel)? Hmm…what could the Church possibly do with all the money that could be saved by selling off/not building more and more temples by allowing the endowment to be done with a VR headset?
Anna, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are good alternatives to latex for the up to 6% of the population with an allergy: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/blog/what-should-i-do-if-my-partner-or-i-am-allergic-to-latex-condoms
Side note here. It appears that the timing of the switch from temple movie to temple side show occurred very close to the timing of when news came out that the director of those movies, Sterling Van Wagonen, was being accused of child sexual abuse.
See “Sundance co-founder, LDS temple video director sentenced again in second sex abuse case” on KUTV’s website for some details. Other news outlets in Salt Lake City covered the story. Link to follow in next comment.
It looks like the spam filter ate the link plus another I added to a newspaper article, but you can google it I’m sure.
Why, do you think, the LDS Church has not adopted the technology of a grocery store gift card for those who need food assistance? In Utah I’ve received group messages to find a ride for Sis/BroXYZ to bring them to the bishop’s storehouse to pick up their food order. A grocery store card would allow Bro/SisXYZ to go to the grocery store at their convenience, buy perishable foods as the need arises, have the dignity of being independent, and not scream out to anyone who sees them that they are Receiving Church Assistance.
As a young mom, I was asked to bring a mom and her small children to a grocery store to get things from a list the RS President provided. I had to arrange a babysitter for our young children. While at the store, the other young mom picked up a bag of Oreo knock offs, and pled with me to buy them, too. I hesitated, but looking back, I am very glad I did.
As a new bishop’s wife, we inherited the previous bishop’s way of giving the envelope with the food order in it to the recipient by having them come to our door and ask for it. Presumably no one else in our family knew what was in the envelope. After a newly divorced friend came to our door, requesting the envelope, I told my husband he had to find a better way.
Kind of recently I read comments on Reddit/Mormon written by people who went with their parents to the Bishop’s Storehouse in the Moridor. Some of the workers there drove home the point to their family that without them, they would not have food. One person recalled being given a month worth of perishable food that perished prior to the next food order.
I believe the switch to slideshow was to facilitate language translation, not trying to match moving lips to words, and allowing more time for various languages in each section. Amen to the double speed/express option!
Broadcasting stake conference. I used to try and take my kids, and we would end up watching the broadcast from the RS room so my kids wouldn’t disrupt everyone else. If I’m going to watch a broadcast in another room in the Church, then let’s just go with zoom at home.
There is a tipping point where the problem is now with the thing itself, rather than being the failure to adopt the available technology to improve that thing. I think we’re way beyond that tipping point with garments. Even if the church were to invest billions (and they could) into the latest underwear technologies, at what point do they say, maybe there’s a more cost-effective and logical way to symbolize covenants for temple-goers that does not involve underwear?
Sign me up for the VR headset endowment session but only if I get to duel Satan with a lightsaber.
”Do not underestimate my power!”
”It’s over, Lucifer! I have the high ground!”
Sure, there is the technology to do something to improve the behind the times Magic Moron underwear. [Opps, spell check doesn’t recognize a mistake when we go to write “Mormon” and miss a letter….but maybe I’ll let it go as a Freudian slip.] Speaking of slips, they could put markings on slips for women for Sundays. I wouldn’t even mind if they were a tad longer with cap sleeves to enforce modesty. That would have been a normal part of my underwear. Anyway, they could do like they do for military and have people send in their own underwear to be marked…except that would fail to enforce their modesty standard on women, and really they only do the T-shirt and not whatever bottoms you want, and military women are in the same sleeved T-shirt as the men. I wouldn’t even mind my own sleeved T-shirt that I wear under most of my button shirts, if I get to pick fabric, cut, and color. But really, it is about control, especially of the way women dress. They want to force covered shoulders and at or below knee shorts and dresses on women. That is why my garment bottoms are 10 inches longer than my 6’3” husband’s. 10 inches added to women’s garment bottoms so that he can wear knee length shorts and I have to go with below the knee capri length. It is JUST about forcing sleeves and longer dresses and shorts on women, and there is no modern technology that prudish. OMG, women might show porn shoulders and porn knees. No wonder I stopped wearing the Magic Mor[m]on underwear. I am 72 and just don’t need to be forced to cover my wrinkled, scared knees. I am quite capable of my own modesty standards.
I heard one of the Q12 once say half-jokingly that the church’s approach to technology is to walk into the future while facing backward. It was a pretty apt description IMO. The attitude of “I had to school uphill both ways…so you should too” has been around since the dawn of humanity – religions just like to add blessings and curses to this notion. Things that were once done out of necessity easily morph into traditions and then into commandments, especially when the leadership is so incredibly old and conservative. (for reference, movies were still silent when RMN was born).
Having members “volunteer” to clean church buildings isn’t necessarily about technology, but it’s still a false sacrifice. The original idea was to save money and give members a sense of ownership over their local building, but it often just means that things aren’t cleaned well and/or that the burden falls on the few ward members who will show up. Especially when the church is swimming in tithing money that’s supposed to be used for that sort of thing.
I don’t get the porn shoulders thing – there’s no call for it in the endowment. Probably it’s just a carryover from 19th century underwear.