This is kind of a nonsensical question because everything changes, but at some point as a parent, I realized that my kids were growing up in a Church that was similar but also quite different from the one I grew up in. I’m sure the church in 1890 was very different from the church in 1935, but both of these pre-date me by a long stretch, so those changes are opaque to me. But there have been a lot of changes in the church that have occurred during my lifetime, and I’m sure there have been in yours as well. Some of these might have been good, and others bad. Some are not foundational in shifting the experience of being in the church, while others are.
Of course, some changes affect individuals more than others. For example, if you are a woman discovering polygamy, you probably feel differently about that than a man discovering it. If you are a Hebrew scholar, you might feel differently about Joseph Smith as a translator than if you aren’t. If you don’t like cleaning the building or your father used to be a paid janitor, you probably feel differently about being asked to clean the building for free.
Any time an organization makes a “positive” change (like the two hour block), it has a downside (like less community). There are a few things I can think of within my own lifetime that have so completely changed the church that it now feels like a different thing, even if the shift was gradual:
CORRELATION. This started under David McKay, so it predates me, but the gist was that everything was local before that, and the Relief Society was run by women, not overseen by the men. Each group had its own budget (and did fundraisers) rather than all the money going through church headquarters. Lessons would be based on local needs and interests, not everyone everywhere doing the same lesson. Magazines were written by the local people and the auxiliary groups, not strained through what the guys in the big red chairs want.
TITHING. In the 70s, there was a ward budget that members donated to, and then they decided how to spend it. This included for things like building improvements or additions, plus activities. People like my parents paid tithing PLUS donated to the ward budget. This kind of was the next phase in correlation because in the 1970s, the church was not financially solvent, and the majority of church members didn’t have a temple recommend or pay tithing. For one thing, people didn’t go to the temple all the time (see next one) so they only really needed a recommend if someone was getting married or going on a mission. You didn’t have to have a recommend to hold a calling. That didn’t start until at least the 90s that it became a requirement to have a TR and everyone knew who did and didn’t have one, and we all know that having a TR is tied to paying tithing.
TEMPLES. I kind of already hit on this a little in the prior thing, but it’s getting completely out of control at this point with more temples than Targets in Utah. My parents were converts in 1955 (when missionary lessons required 52 weeks of instruction–a full year of weekly lessons–which they started and stopped a couple times because my dad was a scientist and not that into it until eventually he was). When they wanted to go to the temple to get sealed, they had to drive to Salt Lake City from Illinois, a multi-day car trip. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, the nearest temple was 3 hours away. The idea of “regular” temple attendance was not a thing, totally impractical. It was really just for special occasions. I suspect that the push for temples goes hand in hand with the tithing push, and if people are paying 10% of their income, they’d better get something out of it, so making it possible to go to the temple regularly feels like people are getting special access to something. It’s never been a selling point to me (if I’m going to watch a movie more than once, it’s not this one), but I suppose that’s the logic.
INTERNET. This one is a huge shift. Basically, a lot of folklore was talked about back in the 70s and 80s. Cain was bigfoot. Saturday’s Warrior was an accurate depiction of the pre-existence and afterlife. People worshipped Satan behind the Utah State Capitol. My parents were convinced they met John the Revelator (they also believe JFK was assassinated by their neighbors, and hey, who knows, right?). I mean, obviously conspiracy theories abound nowadays, and the internet is certainly full of them. Before the internet, we got our information the way 5th graders get it: from the most confident kid we knew. After the internet, we suddenly had access to the ideas of a lot more confident 5th graders, but it also got a lot harder for the church to whitewash history or tell just one version of events, so the emphasis on not getting information from outside sources became imperative as did the church’s need to come clean about some stuff. They are still struggling with this one, and probably always will.
CONSERVATISM. I’m not really claiming that there weren’t a lot of conservative voices in the Church throughout my entire life, just that there was more of a mix when I was growing up, and that now it’s completely captured by the political right. There are a few byproducts of this that have completely altered the Church experience, IMO: alignment with evangelicals including doctrinal concepts leaking into Mormonism from that source, increasing polarization including the widespread idea that being a Democrat is not compatible with being a “good” church member, and lastly the retrenchment on culture war issues, most notably LGBTQ rights and acceptance.
Those are the first things that come to mind, but I suppose that everyone else’s experience will be unique. Without further ado:
- What are the biggest / foundational shifts you have seen in the church in your lifetime? What were the effects of these changes?
- Is the Church you grew up in no longer the same one your kids grew up in or do you see it as more or less the same?
- Do you disagree with my observations of things that were fundamental shifts?
- What future changes do you anticipate that will fundamentally alter the experience of being Mormon?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
The internet changed everything. It constantly detaches us from reality. Sent from my iPhone
When President Hinckley reintroduced progressive endowments in the late ’90s, it felt monumental at the time. Being surrounded by murals depicting local landscapes, plants, and fauna made the endowment much more engaging and meaningful for me (in addition to different trimmings and furnishings in each stage). Before then, virtually all temples from the ’50s to the ’90s used stationary rooms with blank wallpaper while only a handful of the older temples used the “old fashioned way.” Granted, the newer progressive endowment was modified for two rooms instead of four, but it still felt more immersive than the stationary rooms.
Now, without explanation, progressive endowments have been abandoned and we’re back to blank-walled stationary rooms being the norm again. None of the temples that President Nelson announced will use a progressive muraled endowment. Not even the Salt Lake Temple was spared from this change.
Some members have told me that I should be thrilled that the church is “hastening the work” and that art is meaningless compared to the eternal nature of ordinances. That’s like telling a chef/baker that’s seasonings don’t matter. Are seasonings required for food to be edible? No, but it certainly helps! So yeah, art isn’t required to make an ordinance “valid”, but it certainly helps make it more spiritually edifying.
We’ve stripped the endowment of all its flavor, and the emphasis on quantity over quality has made the temple experience less intimate and more transactional for me.
How dare you, Hawkgrrrl? How dare you suggest the Church could change?
No, seriously, when I saw your title, I thought of this great line from Steve Taysom’s biography of Joseph F. Smith, Like a Fiery Meteor: “Successful religions, meaning those that are historically persistent, find ways to make necessary changes to remain viable within a given cultural and historical context while simultaneously explaining away the changes as nonexistent, unimportant, or as epiphenomena that are changes in appearance only, and which are actually in service of a larger, unchanging phenomenon.”
I can’t put my finger on a particular turning point, but I feel like the Church has become more political than it was when I was younger. The FamProc, of course, was a center piece in this, but it feels like a general ongoing trend. But I also think I could be mistaken about the trend. It could just be that I’ve aged and become more aware of the Church’s political wrangling. Heck, the ERA fight happened mostly when I was young, and I was entirely unaware of it. Another way I could be wrong is that, in the US anyway, politics feel like they’ve entered into every area in the past few years (e.g., who would have thought that response to a pandemic would be so politicized?), so it could just be that the Church is following a trend larger than itself.
When I was a kid in the 60’s my parents were members of the John Birch Society and were put down in the ward for being “out there” politically. After years of obedience outwardly but rebellion inwardly, therapy and self-reflection I’ve done a 180 but it seems ward members are now firmly where my parents used to be and they don’t even know it or acknowledge how they got there. I’m sure ETB had something to do with it but I doubt pondering and prayer ever did.
Second, we can’t even call ourselves “Mormon” anymore. What used to bind us together is now used to divide us. Then to think that it’s portrayed as a revelation when it has nothing to do with salvation, faith, sin, what you eat, or who you mate with.
Finally, we were encouraged to study out of the best books. Lesson manuals would include books like “The Great Apostasy” or “Gospel Doctrine.” Even when they stopped doing that, lesson manuals had reading assignments that covered the scriptures and used scriptures, both old and new, to make points in the lesson. That evolved into lessons that alluded to scripture but were supported by statements from general authorities and now into just assigning a general conference talk that may or may not have a scriptorial reference but for sure is filled with stories that have no anchor in time or place.
We used to have liberals and conservatives meeting together to study common tenets but slowly over the last 50 years liberals have been pushed out and everyone left is expected to study the same thing and come to the same conclusions as everybody else. If you are a bit different and stick out, you have to justify it in the hallways and it wears you out.
I think the biggest contrast is that “outside the church” shifted in terms of employment (going to 2 jobs as the norm), housing, aging, family commitments, consent & abuse, starting to de-link gender from authority, transparency, neurodiversity and authenticity and the church hasn’t changed as much in recognizing the impact of those shifts.
I think that the increasing age of our top male leaders creates a mindset based on the world as they saw it up to 50 years ago. This can create uniform perspectives informing the church organization priority list and the actions of those leaders and general officers. I think that priority list is limited and ill-equipped to deal with the personal challenges of the employment, housing, inter-personal relationships, caregiver burnout from being sandwiched between aging parents and raising children, and effective marital communication. This doesn’t even start with how “diversity” is the norm for establishing families, establishing the transfer of power and authority between husband and wife, between parents and children.
With the internet the church changed for me from being true to being not true.
I also think the church changes with its current president as his teachings take on more of a prominent role. Today the things I see as the biggest changes are lip service on racial equality (no push to action), lip service on making peace (the church seems to threaten litigation a lot more these days), a weird emphasis on temple architecture (the height and mass of its walls being necessary to temple worship), the use of the word Mormon being a sign of anti-Mormon sentiment, and pre-recorded general conference addresses which seem to becoming the norm. It will be jarring to see a live address from the president and I doubt we’ll ever see an off the cuff discussion or q&a involving the president again.
Elder millennial here, while I’ve seen lots of church change in my 40+ years, I’ve been very suprised by the subtle but significant change of the last 15 years. With the Come Follow Me program, the complete eradication of the youth programs, and the switch to “ministering” it feels like the church was trying to eliminate all programs that required the church on a ward level. Often we talk about how the church behaves like a corporation, and all these changes feel like “cost cutting” measures, even if they didn’t save a whole lot of money. Like the leaders looked at the members and said, rely less on your ward you leaches. When I was a kid in the Midwest we had stake youth sports, road shows, and for better or worse, the ward was an integral part of my everyday life. We haven’t seen our ministers in 6 years and while there are weekly youth activities they have no consistency or purpose. These are the changes in feel on a real personal level.
As noted in earlier comments, where the Church *hasn’t* changed is as relevant to this discussion as where it has changed. Still wearing suits and ties and white shirts for men on Sunday, traditional business attire from two or three generations back. Still singing stodgy traditional hymns with organ accompaniment. Still using the King James Bible, almost incomprehensible to LDS youth (and adults?). Still limiting callings and leadership for women. All of this stuff was quite normal, mainstream, in the 1950s, but now 70 years later it is just so dated.
Look, leadership has hundreds of billions of dollars salted away in investment accounts. They certainly have the money to institute needed changes. They could hire a team of curriculum experts and command them to write better manuals. They could commission a good LDS translation of the Bible that English speakers in the Church could understand. They could figure out productive ways to use near-empty chapels during the week to bless the members (day care? adult education?). They don’t use those hundreds of billions for such things because they are an aging leadership cadre that doesn’t like change and that has little imagination or initiative for how to make these sort of positive changes.
I agree Bubbles – but I think that the primary indirect driver of that is that the individuals who were doing the emotional labor to create that community aren’t available to say “Yes” to that anymore – because they are working outside their home with their spouse, because they are saying “Yes” to those volunteer activities through the school system, through other community organizations with a more robust volunteer appreciation system (and possibly better funding of supplies and such). These individuals are also engaged with more targeted case management advocacy for their parents, for their spouse, for their children as well. There isn’t as much time or attention available for the average individual to “minister” to form that level of connection between individuals.
A case can be made that the “time is there” if the individual really wanted to. But that doesn’t actually change any of the dynamics and aside from shaming those “quiet quitters” who spend their time and attention elsewhere, I don’t know how much attention at the church organization level is being paid to why individuals are “quiet-quitting” and/or limiting church activity engagement.
Wekfare Farms, as scouts we spent a lot of time at the Welfare farm taking care of the lords chickens, it was lots of fun. the youth program as a whole seems very diluted. Stake welfare dinner fundraisers and ward as well. Stake basketball and go back enven further Church Wide Basketball tournement every year in SLC.
Bubbles expressed my thoughts perfectly. My sense is that as the church expanded and added new wards, many with young members, the concept of a ward being a community of local saints with deep engagement in ward programs became the exception rather than the rule. The corporation of the church (HQ) responded by streamlining the church program and reducing even more the programs supported by the congregation. Two hour church and the elimination of Boy Scouts are two obvious changes with great significance. The rebranding of Home Teaching as “Ministering” with the advice that conversation and informal friendship are sufficient is another indicator of this cultural change.
So yes, to most long-time American church members, the LDS church of today is very different than what it was 40 years ago, or even 20 years ago in some cases. The main reason why is economic growth and changing demographics – the culture of America has changed. People are less tied to their physical community and more linked by ideas and interests. On this the Internet can be credited – it is much more easier for people to engage themselves with people and things that are physically distant and beyond their church congregation.
My perspective is we are seeing he church leaders responding to culture change, and not causing it. What is surprising to me is how little the church leadership seems to care about the “old ways”. There does not seem to be any respect or appreciation for the “old way” of church. On this point it can be said that the church leadership is different. Even though the current First Presidency is “old men” they have a very different view of traditions in the church than did their predecessors.
I loved the ward of my youth. It was a big tent complete with real democrats, John Birchers, and even independent women (the Dean of Nursing at the local university was the RSP). Class discussions were issue-based without any personal attacks. Music was sublime and included works from the great composers (Bach, Mozart, Lennon, etc.). Sacrament meeting speakers gave thoughtful messages without resorting to endless GA quotes.
The succession of Mormon presidents after McKay completely changed the tone. Specifically, JF Smith, HB Lee, ETB and RMN became obsessed with enforcing a groupthink mentality. Independent thinkers were no longer welcome.
The biggest change for me has been the blatant shift to worshiping the Q15 rather than focusing on the teachings of the Savior. It is nothing less than brainwashing. Mormons love to refer to themselves as being members of the Church of Jesus Christ yet have abandoned exemplifying Christlike principles. Mormons rarely refer to the NT as the basis for talks and class discussions.
Utter hypocrisy.
Correlation started under Harold B. Lee, not David O. McKay.
I forgot the change in emphasis on family. After family home evening was introduced and refined there was a push for the eternal family. FHE led to temple marriages, which allowed for increased tithing. Celestial marriage and eternal families were talked about more than salvation and Jesus Christ. There was a big push for chastity but it was to be worthy to enter the temple. It was always about getting more righteous with little done in lessons at church about what to do with those children who strayed. There was love the sinner but hate the sin but it was never defined how that would look so there ended up being a lot of rejection of children who turned LGBTQ or strayed in some other way. Today there may be some talk about the family but not like it was. FHE is rarely mentioned and it’s hard to say if or how it is practiced. Finally, if you have a child who is LGBTQ or strays in another way you talk about showing them love and accepting them like the prodigal son (or daughter) people seem to look at you like how can you do that? There was a period where if you had a child who had a same-sex marriage had children they couldn’t be baptized. There was also a question on temple recommend about whether you supported people like that. This meant to me that if I loved my daughter and walked her down the aisle as she married her wife you weren’t worthy of the recommend. The family now became a millstone if you didn’t reject them instead of loving them.
I made several attempts to write a comment, and eventually just deleted it and hit refresh to see that A Disciple had already written it for me, and far more clearly than I was managing. (Hence the deletion.) So, just go read his comment again. 🙂
The biggest change in my 44 years of life: a deemphasis on apostasy and an increase in interfaith cooperation. I went on my mission 1999-2001 to Brazil and during that time McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith were still pretty big. Many missionaries had their books and would read them and talk about them among other missionaries. Common thinking among missionaries was that other churches were in deep apostasy. The Catholic Church was the root of all evil and other Protestant churches, although not as bad as the Catholic Church, were still evil. Evil simply because they had an incorrect interpretation of the Bible. Now, however, the church has seen other churches and religions more as allies in a common cause against secularism. The emphasis is no longer on Mormonism vs. non-Mormon religions but religion vs. irreligion. Granted, irreligion was always seen as a threat (i.e., Korihor), but not as the greatest threat as it is now. Additionally, McConkieism and Fieldingism has fallen by the wayside. As has Taftism and Skousenism. Although the spirit of their ideas still does linger among older and rural white Mormons.
Instereo,
“We used to have liberals and conservatives meeting together to study common tenets”
An interesting observation. You are older than me, but I do remember that some variant of liberalism used to be more present and pronounced in the church. Of course, decades ago, being liberal meant being more supportive of welfare, government spending on the poor, accepting of blacks and other ethnicities/races as equals, FDRism, Keynesianism, basic feminism (women can work outside the home), etc. Decades ago, you could be liberal and against LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, and cohabitation. Now, however, someone who is against those things is usually not considered liberal. To proclaim that women should be able to work outside the home or that blacks should be treated as equals is considered just common sense, not any sort of liberal stance. Additionally, when it comes to questions of Biblical historicity, decades ago it was considered liberal to accept many of the Bible stories as just metaphorical and not literal. Maybe a liberal would believe that Moses and Abraham were real, and that the Bible was largely historical, but that Noah’s flood was just a local event. Nowadays, people who accept the Biblical framework as literal but the details of the stories as metaphorical are not considered liberal per se. The more liberal view is that the Bible is almost entirely metaphorical and not real, with the exception of the small few areas that can be corroborated by archaeological research. Similar is belief about the Book of Mormon. Decades ago, it was liberal to regard some of the Book of Mormon to be metaphorical and not real. Nowadays, it has become increasingly common for liberal and cultural Mormons to regard the Book of Mormon as almost entirely fictional.
I’m an aging Boomer who grew up in very small towns, mostly very predominantly LDS. The Church was central to our lives in a way that is probably incomprehensible today. The school bus dropped us off at the church rather than our homes on Primary day. Seminary was not only release time, but our seminary grades counted on our GPA. Church activity dominated our lives–welfare farms, church sports, cultural programs additional meetings, and on and on. Our ward and our stake truly were a community.
During the Viet Nam war, the number of missionaries was severely limited, so few of my older sister’s friends went on missions. (My memory says 2 missionaries per ward maximum.) The war was winding down when I graduated from high school, so a higher percentage of my friends went on missions. Young women rarely went on missions–doing so was essentially admitting that you were an “old maid.”
As discussed above, Relief Society was a vibrant, semi-independent organization. Belle Spafford was a real influence in my mother’s life, in a way that it is not possible for any Relief Society general president to be in these days. Relief Society lessons covered a wide variety of topics. There was one monthly spiritual lesson, but the rest covered other topics. The book series Out of the Best Books were compilations of Relief Society lessons on “great literature.”
Church members were mostly very conservative, but I don’t remember the animosity that we see today. The Democratic minority leader in our state legislature lived in our ward. He was highly respected and served in many leadership positions in the church as well.
Learning was highly valued, both sacred and secular. My memory says that Gospel Doctrine was a 7 year course of study, with 2 years being spent on the Old Testament. We were expected to learn to play musical instruments, especially the piano and organ. Special musical numbers in Sacrament Meeting were most often classical music, not the pop spiritual music my current ward favors. I actually first learned of continental drift in seminary. Almost everyone I knew went to college/university, with farm kid to PhD being a real thing.
Our world view was deeply traditional. By mid summer after graduating from high school, I was the only girl my age in my ward still unmarried. I’m sure this is a great surprise for younger participants here, but attending BYU was a world enlarging experience for me. It was at BYU that I was first introduced to the concept of feminism. It was at BYU that I really learned the value of deep study of scriptures.
We simply did not know many of the facts we know today, again both in sacred and secular knowledge. I have a younger friend who has wondered if her father knew these things and lied to her about them. I tell her I think it is unlikely that her father knew about them. The facts were not available to most members of the church in those days.
gebanks is correct that Harold B. Lee is the major architect of correlation, but wrong about when it began to be implemented. President Lee developed the program and pushed to implement it during President McKay’s service. It was finally fully implemented under President Lee, but had already changed many aspects of Church culture by that time. (See David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism for details.)
The church I grew up in was a nurturing, but also a narrow community. There are many aspects that I miss, but also just as many that I am glad not to see anymore. Change is rarely all good or all bad.
PWS. Thanks for the memories.
Youth programs are a huge change. I grew up with Boy Scouts, road shows, stake musicals, sports leagues, and my kids experienced none of those, while the youth programs have become less structured. I’m not necessarily against the changes, and dropping scouts in particular, but it feels like there’s a lot less variety on offer now. If your kids aren’t interested in temple trips and youth conferences, there’s not a lot there for them, which has been the case for my kids. Entering their young adult years, they have relatively weak social ties to church, as their school and sports connections are much more important to them. There seems to be an attitude that “all you need is a testimony” to keep kids connected to the church, but I think the church underestimates the importance of social connections at their peril.
I think the shift in emphasis to the temple is a transformation that is still in progress and isn’t fully realized yet. I gave a presentation at Sunstone 2 years ago about this, with some data analysis comparing temple capacity to membership. My takeaway was that past temple construction surges in the 1980s and early 2000s largely kept up with existing church growth, while the current proposed but yet unrealized construction pushes future temple capacity into significantly new territory, with far more temple space per member than has been the case since the endowment went to a film format. A recently updated version of that analysis can be found here: https://qhspencer.github.io/lds-data-analysis/temples2/. This is going to result in a continued and maybe increased emphasis on temple attendance, which will likely be great for a certain set of members who love the temple, but possibly be alienating for those who don’t have recommends, don’t like the temple, or just don’t feel they have time for it.
About correlation, if you see it as the time frames when power in the church was consolidated more into the male priesthood and presidency, it began in the early 1900s with Joseph F . Before that time women gave blessings and the general RS president was a life long position like the male president. Releasing the general RS president was the beginning, and over time women lost their ability to fund raise and budget their own money, and run their own organization. All the different organizations had more autonomy and were gradually brought under the male presidents power under correlation. It didn’t happen under one president but bit by bit over time.
Well this post definitely illustrates there have been lots of changes.
I grew up in the Salt Lake valley in the 80’s and 90’s. I recall things like “Lengthen your stride” and “bring your goodness and add it to ours” and while I recognize the church has always been a high demand religion, I felt as a teen the church was there to help me be better, notwithstanding a few unfortunate lessons on licked cupcakes and dog poo donuts.
Contrast to watching my children grow up in the church in the 2010’s and 2020’s (up until we stopped attending). The youth messages I was seeing was that you are not good enough, you will never be good enough, you will be even worse than you are if you leave, so do everything we say and if you still mess up we only require a public pound of flesh. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
That was a big no for me so we walked out and let the door hit us on the way out. My kids deserve road shows, not worthiness interviews.
When I watched Inside Out 2, I legit cried when Riley’s anxiety changed her internal saying from “I’m a kind person” to “I’m not good enough.” It reminded me why we stopped attending.
I suppose we can quibble over what we mean by “foundational” and that an argument could be made about foundational changes to a culture of sorts. Even so, I don’t think there have been been any changes to the foundational claims of the restoration. I agree that (what I consider to be) the more peripheral elements of the Kingdom have always been in flux–a good thing generally speaking. But I can’t think of any core doctrines or truths or principles that have changed at all.
Really Jack? You might try reading the Gospel Topics Essays from your Gospel Library app. Start there. There’s a lot to go on right there.
Or if you can only think about one thing you might consider our church’s stance toward black people over the last century. Imagine that these changes applied to you, and then tell me they are not significant.
Brad D:
I appreciate your discussion on Liberal/Conservative. It has changed a lot both in and out of the church in the past 50-60 years. I also appreciate the distinction between political and religious liberal. While they can be related in their approach to issues and ideas they are most closely related in attitude. Liberals tend to look at things from many different points of view while conservatives are more set in their views. I did have a life-changing and interesting experience while going to Ohio State University and the LDS Institute. I had taken most of the classes offered because there was only one institute instructor and I also spent a lot of time talking with him and he even had me teach some of the more beginning courses. Well, my last year in college he didn’t have any more classes I could take so he put together an independent study of the New Testament. He had a large library of commentaries, histories, and studies of the New Testament from many different Christian authors. He assigned me 20-25 books and to quickly peruse to see what they were about and then compare them to the LDS Jesus the Christ. It was eye-opening for me. Jesus the Christ I found out was very conservative and virtually everything I looked at was more liberal than it yet Talmage quoted from some of them to prove his thesis. Others didn’t even acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ but looked at his life as a total fable. It was a fascinating study for me. It was the beginning of a journey for me that I continued for many years where I studied books in and out of the church about church history and other topics. So after that and the many years that followed I’ve learned that there is always more than one way to look at things. Years ago members were tolerated if they were well-versed in different views. But today there is an orthodoxy in place that is very limited in its scope and you can’t deviate from it or ask questions with support from your local leaders. If you remember going into Deseret Book years ago vs. now, you can see it in the books they have/had to offer. It’s really hard to find doctrinal or history books that go deep into the church.
A few people have alluded to another shift that I didn’t call out as its own separate thing because I think it goes along with the Conservatism bucket, sorta, which is that the Church’s integration of non-church cultural education and activities has really been cut back. This is true at BYU as well where they have doubled down more on orthodoxy, even if it means lost accreditation in some departments (e.g. nursing, speech pathology, psychiatry). It feels like a byproduct of a conservative movement that views the “secular,” including just normal cultural and educational stuff, as not worth spending time and focus on. When there are book bans of actual literary classics like Romeo & Juliet, To Kill a Mockinbird, or Toni Morrison’s works, then we are in a weird place where intellectual discussion of ideas, and even just exposure to ideas, is considered a threat. The church used to devote (as pointed out above) the Relief Society so much to culture that one of the two counselors was dedicated to cultural activities for the sisters.
Now maybe this was more necessary when women weren’t in the workforce as much; I can’t say. Back around 2007, our RS decided to do a book club reading classics and other “secular” books for discussion. The bishop intervened and said that the book club could only continue if Church books were selected. They had to be published by Deseret Book. Was that Correlation? Conservatism? A micromanaging dude who thought he had to exert his authority? I do think that my view of things (that cultural activities are bonding and valuable) lost out to his view of things. Mormons almost always were one of the highest educated sects among conservative religions, and those numbers have been falling in the last 10-15 years as the Church prefers to de-emphasize intellectual pursuits in favor of culture wars.
“the nearest temple was 3 hours away. The idea of “regular” temple attendance was not a thing, totally impractical.”
Ours is three hours away (in the US). The RS has monthly trips. We’ve had temple workers called from our ward. The youth seem to go quarterly. I think it’s totally impractical.
Echoing others, I miss the youth programs I grew up with at the turn of the century. I still have my beehive and miamaid emblems.
I’m legitimately shocked that Utah has only 16 Targets (according to statista.com).
I’m 42, and it’s hard for me to say for sure what has changed and what only feels like a change as a consequence of the exceptional ward where I grew up—which really doesn’t seem to have changed at all, except for being two hours long. They still have great youth and everybody else activities, along with church-adjacent things like book clubs, and potlucks, and everyone come over and swim at the Joneses; they still pack the house each Sunday. People are mostly conservative, but they always were. And they’re largely tolerant, and always were, of a spectrum of political views, except of course for Brother Johnson, who’s always been like that. This has -NOT- been my experience as an adult in other wards, ever. It’s people struggling to get by with little or no bandwidth for anything but the struggle. There was a second there in one of my wards when there was a re-org and enough members to make things a bit more breathable. But even still. I was second counselor in the RS and had to keep telling everyone the reason why weeknight activities were so poorly attended isn’t that they were bad, but that everyone had other urgent priorities.
Life has changed, except in places that had and continue to have crazy-high per capita incomes (hello, home ward)—the way church apparently worked in lots of places until the 1980s just doesn’t work now. The cultural model is poorly adapted to modern life and probably has been for the whole time I’ve been alive.
Agree to everybody who says the Internet has changed things, but I learned about a lot of the more controversial CES-letter type stuff in the late 80s and early 90s from my hyper-devout dad. It was always there and so probably didn’t bug me as much when I finally got around to a deeper dive in the 2010s. The leader worship was plenty big growing up, though the leaders themselves didn’t seem to bask in it quite like RMN, but that may be a him-thing.
No, the biggest change is that when I went to church as a kid, I knew I was going to a place where people knew and genuinely loved me and several generations of my family. And I knew that even if sacrament meeting bored the pants off me, it was odds-on that Sister Smith’s lesson in Sunday school would involve costumes and a marshmallow fight loosely based on David and Goliath. And I knew because I’d seen Sister Smith on Wednesday at Grandma’s, her BFF. My kids get all the boredom I endured without the marshmallow fights or the sense of being truly known and loved.
Margie,
I don’t think RMN totally “basks” in the leadership worship, part of it is he is just too blasted old to dodge it. I guess that is a related issue. But I am waiting patiently for the Church President who goes to the stand and tells members to “Just stop it. And please demonstrate the wherewithal to formulate a church talk without quoting something I said three decades ago! It bores the members and makes you look a sycophant!” Now that would be a good change.
Old Man,
That is a very charitable take. I hope you are right.
If I’m ever at another meeting when an apostle walks in I decided I will quietly remain in my seat. No more standing up when they enter a crowded room. In an intimate setting or if approached, of course I would be polite and even stand to shake his hand. But, I would do that for anyone out of courtesy.
JC identified a change. We used to stand only when the president of the church came into the room, but not for counselors or apostles. At least I think I remember it being that way: except for BYU I’ve never lived in Zion so I rarely had meetings with 12 or FP. Now they want us to stand for almost everyone. The general RS president came to my part of the world about 5 years ago and the meeting was held in the big city and was broadcast to stake centers. My wife went to our stake center. The camera view before it started was from the back of the whole room. I kid you not, when the RS president came in and walked up to the podium, not only did the women in the room on camera stand up, but the women in our stake center, viewing by satellite, also stood up. Well, most of them did. My wife did not stand up, and she got seriously looked at by those around her. I think, Old Man, that too many of our leaders do back in leader worship.
Georgis,
That’s thought-provoking.
My stake’s leadership also stands when a young missionary and his parents enter the room to the Stake High Council.
I personally think we should rise as a congregation when the ward nursery leaders enter sacrament meeting. I’ve been spiritually nudged several times that I was standing in the presence of a great soul. One was Spencer Kimball in 1979, another was Hugh Nibley in the early 1980s, still another was a dairy farmer and another was one of my students who had Downs Syndrome. But that’s just me.
As a kid, I remember being very deeply woven into the ward. Like Margie said, I felt known and loved. We lived in the same house for 15 years and so did everyone else. The friends I knew in first grade are the same people I graduated from seminary with.
I wouldn’t be able to tell you if wards are like that anymore. Since I moved out of the house, the longest I’ve lived anywhere is six years. Every ward I’ve lived in has had a lot of turnover, whether I was renting or owning. Maybe deep roots and longstanding community are more rare now, or maybe it’s that I haven’t put down deep roots in any one place.
I taught Relief Society off and on for 20+ years. The old manuals had lots of different topics and sources. I remember when we made the switch to the prophet manuals, and it was supposed to be super exciting! And those lessons were so repetitive and dull and hard to teach. Lessons have certainly become more watered down and boring over the years.
My grandmother passed away during Covid. Being the oldest grandchild, I gave the life sketch. At the time, I was also the only active member of the church of my 5 brothers and sisters. I will never forget looking out into the relatively sparse congregation in northern Idaho and seeing a member wearing a “Joe and the Hoe have Got to Go” hat. All of my siblings (again, none of them are active and all were uncomfortable being in the chapel) sang “I Am a Child of God” at the funeral. We all took off our masks to sing. We were the only ones wearing masks in the entire building. This was the peak of Covid.
I think it was in that moment that I realized how utterly foreign the members of the church were in that ward. I started seeing myself as different and not really belonging to the church at that time. I was working so many shifts at the hospital with travel RNs. I started to see the hospital as my church and my profession as an RN/caregiver as my form of woship. For me, it felt like Covid really changed the church. Or maybe it was just that it allowed me to see a side of it that was there, but which wasn’t so obvious.
I have a clear memory of visiting with a Boomer TBM loved one during my college years. I’m Gen-X. They were aware my interest/belief had waned and presumably had entered a bargaining stage of grief about it. They said something to the effect, “Jake, I look around my ward and I see… [sweet observations of a range of very active families with different levels of devoutness on display].” And then said to me, “It’s just a different Church than when I was younger.” They had grown up in the ’50s/’60s, and I had grown up in the ’80s/’90s. They were relenting a bit on correlation and bargaining that maybe they could get me in with the Sunstone intellectuals and hold on to me that way. Guess it worked, though I no longer attend Church. So, yeah, some of this is just passage of time and changing times. Doesn’t make this present changing less significant or fundamental. Probably good that it gives us pause.
One isolated example of change, I remember my parents being asked to attend a special ward meeting for temple recommend holders that I suspect was the Church getting rid of the Endowment penalties. They were gone by the time I went through for my mission, but they hadn’t been gone that long. In terms of the Church doubling down on something, I remember the Proclamation on the Family coming out while I was on my mission, and how clueless I was about the backstory
Jake, I can promise you that the removing of the penalties was not announced in meetings like that, and what actually happened was a lecture about wearing garments “as instructed.” I remember going to a couple of “special stake meetings for endowed members only” hoping that some of my questions about the temple might be answered, because that was the carrot to get us there. “This is a chance to understand the temple better.” Was what was promised, and what was delivered was just nagging and lecturing about you have to sleep in them, you cannot take them off for yard work, women especially should not alter or tuck them up, but we are supposed to let them hang to mid calf if that is where they hang to.
One of the biggest changes I’ve seen is the replacement of community & tradition with efficiency.
It’s been a big corporate church for a long time, but there was still a lot of individuality and community in the individual wards and stakes. A lot of those “superfluous” activities have been discontinued or replaced with a something prepackaged from headquarters. Sure, there was some need for streamlining, but a lot of the choices have hollowed out the local church communities. The roadshows were quirky and frivolous, but they were also lots of fun and made great memories. The pageants were sometimes strange, but it was sure a lot of fun to hang around with my friends all day waiting for a big live show outdoors, hassling the anti-Mormons, laughing at the terrible parts of the play and sometimes feeling a bit inspired by parts of the performance.
It’s really like the difference between a community potluck and eating cafeteria food. The cafeteria may efficiently feed people semi-tolerable(albeit consistent) food, but it lacks the human warmth and community that comes from the chaotic highs and lows of a church potluck.
This septuagenarian’s perspective:
While correlation has advanced the institutionalization of the Church (consistency in a world-wide organization, efficiency, economic savings, etc.), it has also drained the color from the Church experience. Our meetinghouses are bland and uninspiring. Music regimented. Social activities overlaid with missionary opportunity expectations. The curriculum noticeably has been dumbed down (ostensibly for the benefit of new members who are new to our way of belief) to the point that I rarely learn something new of value. And, no, it’s not my fault (as we have been told in the past) that the Church experience is no longer invigorating and enlightening. Unfortunately, too many Sundays at church have become net negative, as Jesus is sidelined for more contemporary figures and topics.
We used to believe the prophet was getting communication from God. Now we’re told if the 15 agreement on something that’s revelation. Where the prophet demands approval. And down through the church likewisese.
In response to Pirate Priest and LHCA on the effect of Correlation and the sameness of all modern LDS chapels, let’s talk about franchising. You can go into any McDonalds in America, and you know what to expect from the food and the prices and the layout. Go into Bob’s Burgers in a small town in Nebraska, and who knows what you will get (although reading online reviews helps nowadays). So there are some advantages to franchising, to knowing what you get when you walk in.
Yes, the Church has lost a lot of variety and diversity in lessons, in talks, in the design of chapels, and so forth. But in our mobile society, with people moving a lot more than they used to, you fit in pretty quickly into any new ward in any state. On your second week in a new ward, you can get called as a Gospel Doctrine teacher or a Primary teacher or a counselor in any organization and you pretty much know what to do from day one. Contrast that with Catholics or Evangelicals who relocate. They have to check out several different congregations and mull things over awhile before deciding which church and congregation “fits” for them. So, organizationally, the LDS franchising approach does have some real benefits.
i think I am okay with losing some variety, but I am saddened by a loss of quality. Must standardization and franchising be at a low quality level? For example, I tend to think our Sunday curriculum and youth programs are low-quality, even sub-standard, and that they are failing to meet the need or our adults and youth. I am also saddened that we are not allowed to honestly express our opinions on this lack of quality, as candor and frankness are heavily frowned upon in our culture.
@Dave B A lot of the changes are absolutely to create a unified experience churchwide and to efficiently manage a large top-down organization, and it has a lot to do with the church expanding internationally. I agree that a lot of things that make sense in the Mormon Utah/Idaho/Arizona corridor, or even in the US, just don’t make sense from an international perspective.
The franchise analogy is on point – it even has consistent uniform. Advantages and efficiency? Yes, but the Mormon McChapel also sacrifices the local community feel for businesslike efficiency and consistency. Trade-off (like with everything)…I personally don’t want my church to feel like fast food drive thru, but that’s exactly what they seem to be after at the moment.
I appreciate the comment by “ji”.
Why does the spirituality of a local ward need to be watered down by the leaders in Salt Lake with the huge “handbook” that has become so very important.
It has been mentioned here that one size does not fit all and much wonderful spiritual growth is lost when local leaders are overshadowed by the CEOs.
I am one who does not really like the sameness of McDonald’s or Burger King and look instead for a small local place to eat when traveling.
If you have been to one McDonalds you have been to them all, not my idea of living or experiencing growth in my life.
I am not impressed with a church that teaches the same thing in a suburb of Salt Lake City and in a tiny Mexican village in central Mexico.
Needs are not being met, the $120 billion stock market account is proof of that.
Bishop’s and Stake President’s use to have much more say about how things went in their area’s.
The Mormon church has lost a lot of truth and integrity trying to implement central control.
This never works.
In my last 50 years, the church and the saints have become much more materialistic.
Examples: In the ‘’60’s-80’s, church movies like Johnny Lingo, Nora’s Christmas Gift, The Mailbox, Mr Krueger’s Christmas, featured low to low middle class saints living in small houses, working as janitors or trading shells and cows. In the late ‘80’s we started flashing money- the Prodigal Son movie featured a McMansion, expensive cars and clothes. Our ads and magazines showed a particularly wealthy and casual American Polish.
Long ago, we had Marjorie Pay Hinckley wearing solely JC Penny blouses and skirts. In those days we worked in church canneries and on welfare farms. Now, all women in the red seats wear Nordstrom suits, some with Gucci scarves. Is someone going to tell me that the taut wrinkle-less geriatric faces of Wendy Watson Nelson, Kristin Oakes and Sheri Dew aren’t due to face lifts, Botox, and/or peels?
There’s been a great loss of respect and place for the salt of the earth people in the church, and our GA worship includes not only copying corporate mannerisms, but scrambling to all have executive (high-ranking) positions, homes, church callings, etc.
I miss the church that held space for poorer people, for plowboy Prophets, for people who use their hands and backs to live, for people from other cultures who bring diversity of life ,for those who aren’t prodigious musicians, scholars, doctors, lawyers, and for those who put their families first. I miss the days before the prosperity gospel ripped through us. We’ve not been the same.
Mortimer, Thanks. Miss those days. As the saying goes, “I haven’t left the church, the church has left me.”
Honestly, I miss being a Mormon. And I really miss the President Hinckley era.
Like others, this is in many respects an exercise in nostalgia. I too grew up in the 80s with “stake farm” weeding activities and roadshows and all the rest of what went along with being raised an Idaho Mormon. Pre-EFY youth conferences and scout camps etc. In hindsight, there was a lot to like.
That said, there are many ways in which that existence was insular and a sort of “closed” system of near exclusive LDS social interactions. Plus, at the time i would have likely complained that there were too many activities (and there likely were!). So there’s something about the haze of retrospect that sometimes accentuates the positives and downplays the negs.
Nevertheless I tend to agree that our more stripped-down, correlated present measures up quite poorly against the quirky-but-full-color LDS life of the past. The McDonalds/cafeteria vs. potluck analogy is apt.
One thing that’s quite interesting for our family anecdotally is that I’ve seen the sea change play out almost completely when comparing the experience of our oldest child (now 24) and our youngest child (now 18). The oldest caught the tail end of going to many scout camps and youth conferences and stake dances and even was in at least one roadshow (!), maybe two. Fast forward to youngest’s youth experience with two hour church and zero-content youth program. A striking contrast that played out in just those six years! So that’s been instructive in the sense that: reminiscing and waxing nostalgic isn’t just a generation v generation thing, we saw it play out in real time in our own children’s lives. Huge change from varied/frivolous activities to “covenant path” correlation. Definitely. (My own suspicion is that the pendulum may yet swing back in the other direction at some point, but that’s another story…)
One thing I’ve been reflecting on is, in a sense, what’s driving what. In other words, sure, we can talk about correlation efforts and the move toward uniformity and the dropping of distinctiveness etc… but I wonder if that’s less about the church changing per se, and more about larger changes we see in the world and society and culture around us. In other words: let’s say there was a churchwide (or even a robust local stake initiative) to bring back the roadshow approach. Would the youth actually want that? participate? experience it the same way us 80s kids did? Or instead, would they think it’s “cringe” and deliver a low turnout and rolled eyes? Hard to say. Maybe it just turns out the world has changed and all of the new data about Gen Z “nones” is something that couldn’t really be prevented or addressed by more roadshows or local variation etc.
The strategic cozying up of the Church to Evangelicals in recent years has been alarming, encouraging, and rather annoying all at the same time. Alarming in the sense that a large chunk of Mormons have become full maga Christian Nationalists, encouraging in that it has led to interfaith dialogue and (imo) a greater emphasis on grace over works, and annoying because, frankly, I don’t need to hear Contemporary Christian artists being quoted or played on i-phones during an elders quorum lesson. (That last one’s probably petty but, sorry just bugs me).
I imagine that the Church will continue to look more Evangelical as it continues the general historical trend of assimilating (at least outwardly) with the dominant strain of American Christianity, despite the fact that Mormons will never be accepted as “real Christians” by this group. Too bad liberal Mainline Protestantism didn’t start going on decline 50 or 6O years ago, rather than experience a resurgence. How differently things may have turned out.
Far up in the thread there were some comments about RMN basking in leadership worship. Here are some numbers from the current issue of the Liahona (August, 2024).
8 of 8 Featured Articles quote RMN
9 of 11 Young Adult articles quote RMN
3 of 5 US and Canada Section articles quote RMN
13 of the 20 quoting articles cite RMN in the first footnote
For the August Liahona as a whole, including the web articles, RMN is quoted 51 times.
Of course, President Nelson could shut down this sort of fawning behavior immediately if he wanted to, but he really seems to enjoy the adulation. (Just wait for his upcoming birthday celebration!) This level of leadership worship is new, and it’s not healthy for the organization.
From Mosiah 25:
“21 Therefore they did assemble themselves together in different bodies, being called churches; every church having their priests and their teachers, and every priest preaching the word according as it was delivered to him by the mouth of Alma.”
It is the duty of the presiding high priest to dispense the word of God to the church. It is therefore only fitting that his words should be quoted frequently.
Assume for purposes of discussion:
(a) Jesus told us to love our neighbor in the Gospels.
(b) Paul told us to love our neighbor in an Epistle, following Jesus’ teachings.
(c) President Hinkley told us to love our neighbor in a general conference talk, following Jesus’s teachings as amplified by Paul.
(d) President Nelson told us to love our neighbor in a general conference talk, without citing (a), (b), or (c).
If my sacrament meeting talk this next Sunday is about loving my neighbor, whose quote might be more authoritative? whose quote might touch the audience more? whose quote, Jesus’ or someone else’s, is more likely to cause people to think about Christ? Maybe I am wrong, but I will always quote Jesus from the Gospels first, if there is a quote on topic. Then I will quote from the scriptures before general conference talks. Our general conference talks are not canon, but they can be seen as useful guides. Elder Holland has taught us in general conference that not every talk applies to every person, and it really is a cafeteria approach sometimes. Elder Andersen has told us in general conference that we need to listen to what all of the brethren are saying, not just one or two of them.
I think that President Nelson does like to himself quoted in general conference talks. It just appears to me to be so. I would rather hear canonized scriptures far more frequently, and general conference talks that are centered on and built from the scriptures are great, particularly those focused on Christ’s mission, including His teachings in during His mortal ministry.
Jack, the question in the OP was about what changes in the church we have seen in our lifetimes. The obsession with continuously quoting the current president, in both conference talks and Ensign/Liahona articles, is new.
@BlueRidgeMormon – I grew up in the church in the 80s and 90s and did the scouting program. I attained the Eagle scout award and in my home ward there is still a plaque on the wall of all those boys who 1) earned their Eagle and 2) went on a mission. Even though I earned my Eagle and had some memorable experiences (especially camp-outs and hikes), I think I would have rather done something else with my time during those years. The social pressure of obtaining an Eagle was intense though, so I really didn’t feel like I had a choice. But in retrospect, scouting was too militaristic for my tastes.
We don’t particpate in church and my 9-year-old isn’t attending. I don’t know if roadshows would take off if they were re-instituted per se. But if there were an attempt at a reboot, I would hope there would be more autonomy and self-direction at youth activities and interests based on what the kids are interested in, whether that is coding, church sports, performances, or whatever. I will say though that growing up in Utah County where there was always a stake dance within driving distance made for lots of fun dancing and outings almost every weekend.
To piggyback off Dave B, a good follow up post would be what all has *not* changed in the Church but really should. Like, several commentators here recall a time when church members seemed more politically heterogeneous and tolerant of other viewpoints, but were they, really? I recall in the ‘90s a merit badge counselor in my ward giving me a copy of Ezra Taft Benson’s 1968 political screed “An Enemy Hath Done This,” wherein he claimed the Civil Rights movement was all part of a communist plot to overthrow America. I also recall my Mom letting some older ladies in my ward to cut my hair, who each took the opportunity to explain to my 12-year-old self why Mexican immigration was a real problem in this country and we needed to deport them all.
Again, this was all 30-odd years ago, and those same people are still alive now, active in our wards, and voting the same way. It has been dispiriting to observe the rightward lurch of so many conservatives in our church, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise, because they were there in plain sight all along.
Ya left out ward building fund! We also don’t have announcements in priesthood meeting anymore about church discipline.
“Long ago, we had Marjorie Pay Hinckley wearing solely JC Penny blouses and skirts.”
Funny–I couldn’t decide whether that represented wealth or poverty (broadly speaking). That’s probably telling.
Ended up on this page following a link from another site.
It’s my first time here.
I was baptized a member in 1965 at the age of 8.
Things are way different in the church now.
All of the things people have posted above are concerning, I will add some that bother me.
Pre-apostle Quentin Cook used his position as a trustee of the Marin County Hospital to steal the hospital and put it under private ownership.
Glenn L Pace wrote a memorandum regarding Satanic Ritual Abuse in the church. This was in 1990 when he was a counselor in the presiding bishopric. He said he interviewed over 60 people who claimed it was going on, and he believed that it was. The report was leaked and published.
For a more current look, search GoEl, Investigations in Ritual Abuse.
President Nelson several years ago suggested an Internet Fast or media holiday for the sisters. It happened to be the week one of his daughters was in the news about being a defendent in a molestation hearing.
It’s late and I am tired.
How is the stone cut without hands doing?
I also am bothered by the general authority circular quoting.
@Jacob L –
Yours is an interesting hypothesis: that more local autonomy (for what actual ward kids are actually interested in) would yield high engagement and satisfaction etc. I like your notion, though if I’m entirely candid I’m unsure if your hypothesis is correct. Let’s put it this way: in theory, the current, “empty shell” youth program is in fact DESIGNED to allow for the very kind of local variation you suggest, right now… but I’m not sure it works that well in practice. maybe it does in places, “local roulette” dependent. not sure.
As an aside, my background isn’t so dissimilar to yours w/r/t scouting, for instance… in each of our respective youth times you and i both conformed in a way and got the Eagle etc. I was never drawn much to the military/uniform/patriotism aspect of scouting, though loved the outdoorsman piece. As an adult/dad, we “lotteried” into a great ward/stake where a few dynamic individuals promoted the best of scouting – to an extent i’d been unfamiliar with before, and so i (surprisingly) dove in with both feet and was a cubmaster and got all my sons to Philmont for backpacking treks… experiencing the best of what scouts could be while (as a leader) tending to de-emphasize the Norman Rockwell uniform piece etc. So I’m personally grateful for that and I believe my own children benefitted from it, as well as their various peers, net net. AND…….. having said all that, I also clearly recognize the limitations/shortcomings of the old BSA/LDS model, and even the associated gender inequities in budgets etc. So this is all just to say: our (your and my) assessment of church scouting seems largely similar, even though as a dad, later, i leaned into a local strength in it for my own kids’ sake and would certainly do that again.
But in a way, your (or my) experience with the pros/cons of a generationally-different approach to youth programs is sort of beside the point. Or perhaps even illustrates the question I’m sort of rhetorically asking: what WOULD be optimal in terms of church “program”/presence/fulfilment, currently? My view is that the current version of things, where all has sortof been hollowed out other than ongoing “covenant path” rhetoric and the spiritual component (e.g. our stake just had a youth dance and it surprisingly started in the chapel, with a sort of mini youth conf etc, and the youth who attended felt completely bait-and-switched), does somehow miss the richness/variety of the old days…. whether it was scouting and you just had some wednesday nights of knot tying, or just the variety of fun activities without the constant worthiness interview emphasis etc. But I’m not sure how much past engagement (for better or worse, with stuff like scouting) is more a ‘product of its time’ and current GenZ just aren’t much for any of that, even if the church was still pushing it? I just don’t know.
And so i guess I remain befuddled. I think current church institutional approach to youth engagement is suboptimal, but I’ll admit i’m also more mindful/oriented toward cosmopolitan type youth… so in fact the stripped down emphasis MAY be working fine for the homeschool or prairie dress crowd, or in south america where i currently have a child on a mission. but what’s the winning formula for church institutional engagement for the next generation here in the USA? Among high achieving youth and college-going types? The current approach seems to fall flat there. And of course I worry that perhaps there may not be a workable/ready “cure” to the current approach, given the larger backdrop of “rise of the nones” and Ryan Burge’s research on the decline of religion etc. Gen Z seems to not want it, writ large. So it’s hard to know what kind of shift or approach might best deal with that larger backdrop.
JB,
I trust your personal memories. I think there was a change in the mid-1980s when ETB became President, and perhaps a little earlier as he presided over the Q12. This transition provided right-wing types the justification to read their worldview into the Church. The LDS Church had a variety of characteristics which encouraged conservatism much earlier, but IMO the harshness of the extreme right took control at that point. When ETB spoke in my ward in the early 1970s, members wrote off much of what he said. That was harder to do a decade later. So there are a variety of experience from that era.
Arrow Shooter: Welcome to the site, and I hope you come back! Several of the points you raised were also detailed in a series of guest posts here by Faith about the dubious backgrounds of various apostles.
Hawkgrrrl-
Thank you for the kind welcome.
I’ll be around.
“And of course I worry that perhaps there may not be a workable/ready “cure” to the current approach, given the larger backdrop of “rise of the nones” and Ryan Burge’s research on the decline of religion etc. Gen Z seems to not want it, writ large. So it’s hard to know what kind of shift or approach might best deal with that larger backdrop.” – Blue Ridge Mormon
I don’t know either. Primary as a social network didn’t work out for my oldest, so Achievement Days was generally tolerable to borderline fun (at a good event) to an activity to fight over with us as the parents. YW was a non-starter.
But really, the youth programs compete against paid employment for the parents (who is taking the kids to the activities) and sometimes the teenagers, youth sports (and related hobbies), therapy (parents and kids are more likely to be in therapy or counseling these days in part due to more information about a lot of mental health stuff and due to the rising anxiety situation), or off in their own world of phones, YouTube creators, and video games. That’s not even counting the “hanging out” decompression time and the actual schoolwork time.
women/YW in particular are leaving church. (and not just ours…)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/13/gen-z-women-less-religious/74673083007/
also this:
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/there-is-almost-no-liberalizing-religion
data like this is sobering.