Word: mormons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week 8,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gathered in Salt Lake City's Mormon Tabernacle to commemorate the 137th anniversary of the founding of the largest and strongest made-in-America faith. As usual, church leaders presented impressive testimonials to the thriving success of Mormonism. Since 1940, membership in the church has more than tripled, to 2,600,000. Last year alone, the church gained 117,000 new members. Two-thirds of the new comers were converts netted by the 12,000Mormon missionaries who toil from New England to New Zealand...
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...