Word: mormon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Financially, the church is thriving too. The vast Mormon-owned business enterprises-ranging from Utah's largest department store to a 360,000-acre Florida cattle ranch-help produce an income that some church observers estimate at $1,000,000 per day. The exact total is a closely guarded church secret...
Latter-Day Saints can now question some of the church's peculiar disciplines without being stigmatized by their neighbors. Although the U.S. Surgeon General's report on smoking confirmed the Mormon conviction that tobacco is an evil, there is widespread feeling that the church should relax its ban on cof fee and tea. "A lot of good Mormons drink coffee now," says one Utah saint. "The church should not make its prohibition a commandment." Still another quaint tradition is the Mormons' use of "temple garments"-a torso-covering form of underclothing signifying their covenant with the Lord...
...more serious complaint is that Mormonism is too much concerned with the perfection of its own organization, too little with the problems of the world. J. D. Williams, a professor of political science at the University of Utah and a former member of a stake (diocese) high council, argues: "It's time that the church indicated its concern for more things than simply internal structure and processes." He notes that the Salt Lake City League of Women Voters, in a city that is 52% Mormon, is almost exclusively staffed by "Gentiles" (non-Mormons). Church members should devote more...
...under fire within the church is the traditional teaching that Negroes, the cursed sons of Cain, are not eligible for the priesthood, which is open to males of every other race.when they reach the age of twelve. (Negroes, however, can join the church and are not excluded from the Mormon concept of heaven.) Williams calls it "unChristian and theologically unsound," says that the teaching "looks so anachronistic that it engenders hostility in the world around...
Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, a Mormon who describes himself as "deeply troubled by the issue," says that the church's policy "is like granting citizenship and saying 'you can't hold office.'" The nation's best-known Mormon, Michigan Governor George Romney, has refrained from calling for a change in the doctrine, in deference to the authority of his church's elders. But Romney's own civil rights record is so impeccable that his percentage of Michigan's Negro vote has gone up in each of his three gubernatorial campaigns. Williams also...