Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Michigan

The claim heard in some conners recently "no stakes created this month" does not bear up under scrutiny. It might be a reaction to what happened in July, but there are almost never new stakes in July. August has seen a stake was just created in Forteleza Brazil. Multiple stakes have been formed in Lima this year. Also multiple stakes have been formed in the Phillipines this year. The Church also continues to clearly grow in Utah. The Africa West Area being split in two is possible, but I do not know how likely it is. At present we have about 2/3rds the areas the Church had at the hight of the area phenomenon. That said, the history of administrative units between that of stakes/missions/districts and the Church as a whole is so complex, that I have only ever seen one article come close to getting it right. That is an article from the book on THe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Canada. Even there I am not sure they fully explain regional representatives (who o...

Some indications are that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may not be gorwing as much in the US as we think. However I always question the results of the Pew survey. I question them even more on Islam. The Pew survey says that conversion is not a factor in the growth of Islam in the US. Why, because the number of former Muslims and converts to Muslims are both roughtly 20%. However with this being an adult survey and 58% of Muslim adults in the US being immigrants, I think the modeling involved here is flawed. Why, for one thing, without converts Islam would be 20% smaller. However more to the point, we need more indepth studies on the former Muslims. For one thing how does someone like Peter M. Johnson show up in this study? Johnson became a Muslim when he was about 12. I think he was either Pentecostal or Baptists before that. When he was about 20 he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is now a general authority. So does he count as a former ...

The article " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_and_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints#Teachings_from_1978%E2%80%93present  to me is a clear example of POV pushing. Basically it sets out to prove that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintained racist resistence to interracial marriage until 2013. The problem is most clear in sighting a footnote to a talk by Russell M. Nelson. This was a talk in 1996, but was in a footnote, not in his actual remarks. What he said was "The commandment to love our neighbors without discrimination is certain. But it must not be misunderstood. It applies generally. Selection of a marriage partner, on the other hand, involves specific and not general criteria. After all, one person can only be married to one individual.The probabilities of a successful marriage are known to be much greater if both the husband and wife are united in their religion, language, culture, and ethnic background."The com...

I will not claim to know the answer to this question. However it is clear that if it had been received in 1960 the Church would have moved into Nigeria and baptized those requesting baptizsm then. This would have put the Church in the position of having its membership in the contry in the area where the Biafra War was fought. It may have also put fighters against the government then as members of the Church and may have lead to the centeral government siding against the Church. The process would have been both devastating and desctuctive to the building of the Church.

The misuse of courts has reached a new low. In a rambling and clearly unhinged suit someone has now tried to begin a class action lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the grounds that it misrepresents its history for corporate gain. The suit claims that it is known that Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Mormon from the gold plates and that it is known that Joseph Smith did not see God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ in the First Vision, but the Church tries to manipulate and downplay these facts. The problem for the suit is that it makes false claims on what is and is not known, and then outright lies about the implications. First off, the seeming main claim is that because at least some of the translation of the Book of Mormon was done by Joseph Smith looking in a seer stone in a hat it was not translated from the golden plates. This is a clear false claim. The belief of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that t...

This year seminary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is finally getting on the same schedule as the rest of the Church programs. The differences in coverage date back to a time when seminary was often by grade and you did a different subject in each grade. When I was in seminary in the late 1990s it they finally changed the order they went through so that it was the same ordered progression as the rest of the Church programs. More recently scripture mastery was revamped and then about 2 years later it was scapped in favor of a new program.