comparative growth among those of african descent in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Africa and the USA
There are multiple Hmong wards and branches in the USA, although here in Detroit we no longer have one as we did in the 1990s.
A large percentage of the Hmong fled Vietnam after the Vietnam Ward. Actually I think they were more in Laos, but their working with the CIA made them personas non grata when the USA lost.
There are various ethnic minority groups in central Vietnam bubbed the Montaignards, or mountain people. A certain part of North Carolina, near a large military base has many people from this ethnic group. It seems to me there is potential for missionary outreach to them in North Carolina. The Church of J.g Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vietnam is confined to major metropolitan urban centers. We know from Nigeria there is lots of potential for outreach in villages, and I believe we see the same thing in Polynesia, but the interpretation of centers of strength has of late nade rural outreach rare. I think some of the Naya speaking stakes in Guatamala are a testimony to rural outreach as well.
I am not sure is Montainards have converted to Christianity at the levels of the Chan, Karen and Naga in Myanmar. The Church has a Karen speaking ward in the South Salt Lake stake.
Still I wonder if outreach to the Karen in Myanmar might go the same way as what we have seen among Boyak and related heavily Christinized populations in East Malaysia. I once at BYU listened to a speech by a former mission President in Thailand who felt some areas in Thailand the Church did rural outreach where baptisms were easy but leadership de vcd elopement was hard. He saw fewer baptisms but higher overall retention than his predecessor so he understood at least a little the process needed to get active converts in Thailand.
In East Malaysia large numbers of converts have not yet translated to stakes. In East Malaysia many of the indigenous populations have converted en masse to Christianity. The exact time frames of these mass conversions are sometimes hard to work out. This may lead us down the road that shows why Ignacio Garcia the current president of the Mormon Hisoricak Association and the Redd Chair of Western US History at BYU, a chair created for Leonard J. Arrington when he was moved to BYU from the Church History Department, so Garcia hates Tullis' book which basically is a study of the Church in the area where Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales were killed by revolutionaries at least in part because they were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Katter-day Saints. Gard iui a feels that Tullis argues you are not a good members of the Church unless you participate in the organizational church. Garcia feels Tullis underestimates the power of individualized devotion.
Worldwide the biggest story of 20th century Christianity was mass conversions in countries of Africa. In Ivory Ciast as late as 1970 maybe even 1980 there was still a large Pagan population, today there has been almost complete conversion to either Christianity or Islam, and Islam has not spread much in that time frame. However Burma, the far eastern states of India and East Malaysia among the non-small indigenous population have also seen major rates of conversion. These sometimes involve continuation of pagan practices along with Christianity, as is seen with voodoo and Catholicism in Haiti, and also seen in some areas of Africa. At times I have tried to get a good understanding of the history of the conversions to Christianity in Africa and Asia especially India. There are some books on these subjects I never read past the few first chapters that may help, but Wikipedia articles on the conversions in these areas really do not give good sense of scale lo e over time.
I also have to wonder if fear of syncretism infiltrating the Church is one reason the Church has basically always had the brakes in against faster growth in Africa.
It may be also one of the reasons that in South Africa after the 1978 revelation for several years they allowed bishops and not missionaries to determine when at least black converts were ready. There may have been fear that Zionist Christian's would embrace the Church without understanding its doctrines. On the other hand the Church's easy embrace of Spiritual gifts, inspired dreams, revelations and most importantly work for the dead makes it an easier fit than Protestant missionary founded churches or Catholicism. The fact we allow married clergy and do not require them to be highly educated is another thing that makes things easier than for Catholicism. I believe it is on the article in the Church history country profiles on Julia Muvimbela it mentions she and the leaders of her former Orotestant faith had a falling out over how often he late husband should be mentioned.
The deliberative tactics in South Africa lead to the fact that Anthony Obinna was baptized in November 1978, J. W. Billy Johnson his wife and maybe his son Brigham, named such after Brigham Young appeared to Brother Johnson in vision to encourage him to press forward with building the faith, were baptized early in 1979. These involved bringing in missionaries where none were before. At least as long as the Cannons and Maybees were there only they were alloed to approve baptisms, branch presidents like Brother Obinna and Brother Johnson were not. Obinna and Johnson were both quoted by President Kimball in his remarks to the Regional Representatives training seminar before General Conference in the fall of 1978. On the other hand Moses Mahlangu who with others had been meeting with the approval of President E. Dale Labaron in Soweto but been told to wait for baptism, who thus had both missionaries and church members close by to teach them, had to wait longer. Moses Mahlangu was not baptized until 1980, at least 18 months after the revelation and maybe more like 2 years Such delay was not seen in Brazil or the US, although here in Detroit it feels like there was a 10 year almost delay. The reality is men like James Edwards who had been the driver for the bus on stake temple trips and would later be the first bishop of the Detroit Ward were ordained to the priesthood just weeks after the revelation, but it would take 7 years for missionaries to be assigned to reside in Detroit, with the bishop who pushed sound so through arguing if Ammon could preach among the Lamanites we also could ignore high crime including homicide rates to trust the Lird would protect missionaries. In Salt Lake City Thomas S. Monson performed the sealing of a black man to his ethnic Hawaiian wife and thus mixed race boys before July was out, meaning The man in question had been ordained to the melchizedek priesthood. Ruffin Bridgeforth the head of the Genesis Groyp was not ordained quite as quickly but when he was Elder Packer made him a high priest. By 1980 when Mahlangu was baptized, Helviceo Martins was serving in a stake presidency in Rio de Jainero Brazil and his son Marcus had returned from his mission in Sao Paulo (where he would later be mission president) and had married his white wife in their many times rescheduled wedding.
Considering that the Church is now majority African people in South Africa and still seems to struggle to make headway among African Americans it is tempting to say that the South African deliberative approach was better. Considering I know an African American woman who was baptized as a teenager at a time when she was living out of wedlock having sex with a boy in her household, among other such situations, it is hard for me to say we have been deliberative enough in baptizing African Americans. I knew one white guy on my mission who though the local leaders in Kansas City who made the extraordinary requirement that people attend church three times before baptism were racist. This guy had moved from the part of Las Vegas where he grew up which was now heavily African American to a nearly lily white area for reasons that boiled down to be that he didnt want black boys dating his daughter when she was in high school. He seemed racist to me.
Some figures suggest only maybe 2% of Church members in the United States are African American. Of course in South Africa less than 10% of the population is white. Issues of outreach in the US often turn on how to find people willing to be racial pioneers. The fact that the centers of Church membership are so far from the centers of the African American population plays a role. Still maybe I despair too quickly when there are groups like the Bonner Family. Showing an Admfrican-American member of my branch footage of the Bonner family singing at the Be One Cekebration caused a member of my branch to rethink her previous misgivings about taking a job in Utah. I am not sure if she took the job though. We have also not yet began to see much of the effects of President Nelson and other Church leaders building cooperation with the NAACP.
Another thought I have is of a testimony given by an African American sister in my branch this month where she recounted her conversion. When she told her old pastor that she was meeting vcd with missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he told her to stop meeting with representatives of a racist cult. She didnt buy it because her pastor had never cared enough to visit her house as the missionaries had. A view that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is racist is the biggest thing that keeps down missionary outreach to African-Americans combined with some people taking it as confirmation of this when they go to a church meeting and there are no other black people there. Some of this gets us into discussions of why racial separation continues that need to move beyond use of terms like "segrefation" and "racism". What I find the least believable are claims that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are racist because they use of the n word. The member I have heard use the n word the most is my wife. Linguists have proved that there are white people who use it with no racist intent. Cranes and Tamu Smith's use of the use of it as a way to attack others ignores lived experience such as the multiple times I have been called it by 1st graders or the time I was called it as a man began to punch me in the neck. In like manner if people will not admit that Kaw of chastity and word of wisdom issues are one of the big causes that stymie growth in the African American population they are not being truthful. True these same issues stymie growth among other groups too.
However while many lower class whites and Hispanics who are unmarried can be persuaded to marry before baptism , this course is harder with African-Americans for a broad array of reasons. The law of chastity issues for those members who have been sexually active but remain unmarried are different than for those that have never been sexually active and for those who get married. This is even more pronounced when the person had a child with someone out of wedlock in a society where having on again off again relations with the father of your child is the norm. This is one of the key issues John P. Livingstone presented as being understood better by fellow inner city members than by suburban members in his BYU studies article on establishing the Church simply in Detroit. Livingstone was mission President in Detroit when the Detroit district was formed in 1996. He was mission president from 1995 to 1998. Livingstone had previously been involved with outreach to Native Americans in Saskatchewan. Looking at the Church in Detroit now I wonder if we have moved back in our ability to reach out across cultural lines. On the other hand the black exodus from Detroit and the Yuppi and retire whotes moving into downtown, midtown, East and Wwst Village and now even Fitzgerald have made everything more complex. I strongly suspect Eastpointe, once a bastion of police based discrimination against African-Americans, is majority African-American. Westland has also seen significant rises in its African American population. My sister in law is a member of the Canton Ward residing in Westland. On the other hand her alcohol consumption among other things makes me wonder if people like her are the reason the Westlabd Ward was destroyed, what with their marginal activity and incarcerated murderer husbands (my wife's brother in this case), not being the basis for a ward. Other things suggest Dearborn Ward had internal dysfunction and Livonia Ward was long well below an ideal number of members so the end of Westland Ward may have had more to do with Dearborn and Livonia Wards needing help than issues in Westland. To me the unknown is what the percentage of African-Americabs in the city of Roseville is.
In my branch though I am the only Detroit resident on the branch council. The rest of the branch council lives in Grosse Pointe which is an lirr ritzy, exclusively white area. George Romney was involved in a March for fair housing where they marched into Grosse Piinte. My wife has strong evidence the GP police department is racist and avoids going there if at all possible, which considering the closest part of Grosse Piinte is less than 3 blocks from our house and the closest pizza place to our house is in GP ra kik e will power. Do not think being 3 blocks from GP lessens our crime. We had someone shot and killed on the front lawn 3 doors down a month ago. Another time my wife brandished a gun to scare off a mob in front of our house. I sit on the front porch and count 3 houses with holes in the roof and if I look through the trees right can see the foundation where another house has collapsed in on itself. The two cl iui sets schools to use sit boarded up and abandoned as do the two closest commercial buildings. No ot hgv er member of the branch council regularly brings up their own children as branch members with major issues to address. I try not to. I kay also be the only branch council member on ch uth rch welfare. I hate that my emotional instability has reduced me to working as a sub and only making $104 a day with no benefits. The branch clerk has taught high school in Detroit so he probably has a little insight. The 1st counselor in the branch presidency grew up in Detrout, but in the southeast riverfront back when that area was still lilly white, but not rich working class Catholic lilly white. These were union members not the mainly Protestant (attempting to exclude Jews) executive class of Grosse Pointe. Other members are people like the Relief Society president who runs my wife the wrong way often. She does things that make my wife feel she is being treated as less than for receiving food from the bishops storehouse. The way the clothing distribution was done in cooperation with the Sa lo cation Army last year also caused my wife outeage. This sister also insists that Lehi Utah is most definitely not Salt Lake, which to me shows how stuck in the pool at she is. The county line is not what it used to be. Other members oh f the branch council are less than 6 month Utah or Arizona transplants who really do not know the territory at all.
There are various ethnic minority groups in central Vietnam bubbed the Montaignards, or mountain people. A certain part of North Carolina, near a large military base has many people from this ethnic group. It seems to me there is potential for missionary outreach to them in North Carolina. The Church of J.g Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vietnam is confined to major metropolitan urban centers. We know from Nigeria there is lots of potential for outreach in villages, and I believe we see the same thing in Polynesia, but the interpretation of centers of strength has of late nade rural outreach rare. I think some of the Naya speaking stakes in Guatamala are a testimony to rural outreach as well.
I am not sure is Montainards have converted to Christianity at the levels of the Chan, Karen and Naga in Myanmar. The Church has a Karen speaking ward in the South Salt Lake stake.
Still I wonder if outreach to the Karen in Myanmar might go the same way as what we have seen among Boyak and related heavily Christinized populations in East Malaysia. I once at BYU listened to a speech by a former mission President in Thailand who felt some areas in Thailand the Church did rural outreach where baptisms were easy but leadership de vcd elopement was hard. He saw fewer baptisms but higher overall retention than his predecessor so he understood at least a little the process needed to get active converts in Thailand.
In East Malaysia large numbers of converts have not yet translated to stakes. In East Malaysia many of the indigenous populations have converted en masse to Christianity. The exact time frames of these mass conversions are sometimes hard to work out. This may lead us down the road that shows why Ignacio Garcia the current president of the Mormon Hisoricak Association and the Redd Chair of Western US History at BYU, a chair created for Leonard J. Arrington when he was moved to BYU from the Church History Department, so Garcia hates Tullis' book which basically is a study of the Church in the area where Rafael Monroy and Vicente Morales were killed by revolutionaries at least in part because they were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Katter-day Saints. Gard iui a feels that Tullis argues you are not a good members of the Church unless you participate in the organizational church. Garcia feels Tullis underestimates the power of individualized devotion.
Worldwide the biggest story of 20th century Christianity was mass conversions in countries of Africa. In Ivory Ciast as late as 1970 maybe even 1980 there was still a large Pagan population, today there has been almost complete conversion to either Christianity or Islam, and Islam has not spread much in that time frame. However Burma, the far eastern states of India and East Malaysia among the non-small indigenous population have also seen major rates of conversion. These sometimes involve continuation of pagan practices along with Christianity, as is seen with voodoo and Catholicism in Haiti, and also seen in some areas of Africa. At times I have tried to get a good understanding of the history of the conversions to Christianity in Africa and Asia especially India. There are some books on these subjects I never read past the few first chapters that may help, but Wikipedia articles on the conversions in these areas really do not give good sense of scale lo e over time.
I also have to wonder if fear of syncretism infiltrating the Church is one reason the Church has basically always had the brakes in against faster growth in Africa.
It may be also one of the reasons that in South Africa after the 1978 revelation for several years they allowed bishops and not missionaries to determine when at least black converts were ready. There may have been fear that Zionist Christian's would embrace the Church without understanding its doctrines. On the other hand the Church's easy embrace of Spiritual gifts, inspired dreams, revelations and most importantly work for the dead makes it an easier fit than Protestant missionary founded churches or Catholicism. The fact we allow married clergy and do not require them to be highly educated is another thing that makes things easier than for Catholicism. I believe it is on the article in the Church history country profiles on Julia Muvimbela it mentions she and the leaders of her former Orotestant faith had a falling out over how often he late husband should be mentioned.
The deliberative tactics in South Africa lead to the fact that Anthony Obinna was baptized in November 1978, J. W. Billy Johnson his wife and maybe his son Brigham, named such after Brigham Young appeared to Brother Johnson in vision to encourage him to press forward with building the faith, were baptized early in 1979. These involved bringing in missionaries where none were before. At least as long as the Cannons and Maybees were there only they were alloed to approve baptisms, branch presidents like Brother Obinna and Brother Johnson were not. Obinna and Johnson were both quoted by President Kimball in his remarks to the Regional Representatives training seminar before General Conference in the fall of 1978. On the other hand Moses Mahlangu who with others had been meeting with the approval of President E. Dale Labaron in Soweto but been told to wait for baptism, who thus had both missionaries and church members close by to teach them, had to wait longer. Moses Mahlangu was not baptized until 1980, at least 18 months after the revelation and maybe more like 2 years Such delay was not seen in Brazil or the US, although here in Detroit it feels like there was a 10 year almost delay. The reality is men like James Edwards who had been the driver for the bus on stake temple trips and would later be the first bishop of the Detroit Ward were ordained to the priesthood just weeks after the revelation, but it would take 7 years for missionaries to be assigned to reside in Detroit, with the bishop who pushed sound so through arguing if Ammon could preach among the Lamanites we also could ignore high crime including homicide rates to trust the Lird would protect missionaries. In Salt Lake City Thomas S. Monson performed the sealing of a black man to his ethnic Hawaiian wife and thus mixed race boys before July was out, meaning The man in question had been ordained to the melchizedek priesthood. Ruffin Bridgeforth the head of the Genesis Groyp was not ordained quite as quickly but when he was Elder Packer made him a high priest. By 1980 when Mahlangu was baptized, Helviceo Martins was serving in a stake presidency in Rio de Jainero Brazil and his son Marcus had returned from his mission in Sao Paulo (where he would later be mission president) and had married his white wife in their many times rescheduled wedding.
Considering that the Church is now majority African people in South Africa and still seems to struggle to make headway among African Americans it is tempting to say that the South African deliberative approach was better. Considering I know an African American woman who was baptized as a teenager at a time when she was living out of wedlock having sex with a boy in her household, among other such situations, it is hard for me to say we have been deliberative enough in baptizing African Americans. I knew one white guy on my mission who though the local leaders in Kansas City who made the extraordinary requirement that people attend church three times before baptism were racist. This guy had moved from the part of Las Vegas where he grew up which was now heavily African American to a nearly lily white area for reasons that boiled down to be that he didnt want black boys dating his daughter when she was in high school. He seemed racist to me.
Some figures suggest only maybe 2% of Church members in the United States are African American. Of course in South Africa less than 10% of the population is white. Issues of outreach in the US often turn on how to find people willing to be racial pioneers. The fact that the centers of Church membership are so far from the centers of the African American population plays a role. Still maybe I despair too quickly when there are groups like the Bonner Family. Showing an Admfrican-American member of my branch footage of the Bonner family singing at the Be One Cekebration caused a member of my branch to rethink her previous misgivings about taking a job in Utah. I am not sure if she took the job though. We have also not yet began to see much of the effects of President Nelson and other Church leaders building cooperation with the NAACP.
Another thought I have is of a testimony given by an African American sister in my branch this month where she recounted her conversion. When she told her old pastor that she was meeting vcd with missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he told her to stop meeting with representatives of a racist cult. She didnt buy it because her pastor had never cared enough to visit her house as the missionaries had. A view that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is racist is the biggest thing that keeps down missionary outreach to African-Americans combined with some people taking it as confirmation of this when they go to a church meeting and there are no other black people there. Some of this gets us into discussions of why racial separation continues that need to move beyond use of terms like "segrefation" and "racism". What I find the least believable are claims that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are racist because they use of the n word. The member I have heard use the n word the most is my wife. Linguists have proved that there are white people who use it with no racist intent. Cranes and Tamu Smith's use of the use of it as a way to attack others ignores lived experience such as the multiple times I have been called it by 1st graders or the time I was called it as a man began to punch me in the neck. In like manner if people will not admit that Kaw of chastity and word of wisdom issues are one of the big causes that stymie growth in the African American population they are not being truthful. True these same issues stymie growth among other groups too.
However while many lower class whites and Hispanics who are unmarried can be persuaded to marry before baptism , this course is harder with African-Americans for a broad array of reasons. The law of chastity issues for those members who have been sexually active but remain unmarried are different than for those that have never been sexually active and for those who get married. This is even more pronounced when the person had a child with someone out of wedlock in a society where having on again off again relations with the father of your child is the norm. This is one of the key issues John P. Livingstone presented as being understood better by fellow inner city members than by suburban members in his BYU studies article on establishing the Church simply in Detroit. Livingstone was mission President in Detroit when the Detroit district was formed in 1996. He was mission president from 1995 to 1998. Livingstone had previously been involved with outreach to Native Americans in Saskatchewan. Looking at the Church in Detroit now I wonder if we have moved back in our ability to reach out across cultural lines. On the other hand the black exodus from Detroit and the Yuppi and retire whotes moving into downtown, midtown, East and Wwst Village and now even Fitzgerald have made everything more complex. I strongly suspect Eastpointe, once a bastion of police based discrimination against African-Americans, is majority African-American. Westland has also seen significant rises in its African American population. My sister in law is a member of the Canton Ward residing in Westland. On the other hand her alcohol consumption among other things makes me wonder if people like her are the reason the Westlabd Ward was destroyed, what with their marginal activity and incarcerated murderer husbands (my wife's brother in this case), not being the basis for a ward. Other things suggest Dearborn Ward had internal dysfunction and Livonia Ward was long well below an ideal number of members so the end of Westland Ward may have had more to do with Dearborn and Livonia Wards needing help than issues in Westland. To me the unknown is what the percentage of African-Americabs in the city of Roseville is.
In my branch though I am the only Detroit resident on the branch council. The rest of the branch council lives in Grosse Pointe which is an lirr ritzy, exclusively white area. George Romney was involved in a March for fair housing where they marched into Grosse Piinte. My wife has strong evidence the GP police department is racist and avoids going there if at all possible, which considering the closest part of Grosse Piinte is less than 3 blocks from our house and the closest pizza place to our house is in GP ra kik e will power. Do not think being 3 blocks from GP lessens our crime. We had someone shot and killed on the front lawn 3 doors down a month ago. Another time my wife brandished a gun to scare off a mob in front of our house. I sit on the front porch and count 3 houses with holes in the roof and if I look through the trees right can see the foundation where another house has collapsed in on itself. The two cl iui sets schools to use sit boarded up and abandoned as do the two closest commercial buildings. No ot hgv er member of the branch council regularly brings up their own children as branch members with major issues to address. I try not to. I kay also be the only branch council member on ch uth rch welfare. I hate that my emotional instability has reduced me to working as a sub and only making $104 a day with no benefits. The branch clerk has taught high school in Detroit so he probably has a little insight. The 1st counselor in the branch presidency grew up in Detrout, but in the southeast riverfront back when that area was still lilly white, but not rich working class Catholic lilly white. These were union members not the mainly Protestant (attempting to exclude Jews) executive class of Grosse Pointe. Other members are people like the Relief Society president who runs my wife the wrong way often. She does things that make my wife feel she is being treated as less than for receiving food from the bishops storehouse. The way the clothing distribution was done in cooperation with the Sa lo cation Army last year also caused my wife outeage. This sister also insists that Lehi Utah is most definitely not Salt Lake, which to me shows how stuck in the pool at she is. The county line is not what it used to be. Other members oh f the branch council are less than 6 month Utah or Arizona transplants who really do not know the territory at all.
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