[ExI] and speaking of exponential singularities...

Kelly Anderson kellycoinguy at gmail.com
Sat Jul 16 07:53:10 UTC 2011


2011/7/15 John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com>:
> Spike wrote:
>>The crisis for the SDA church is that membership growth is mostly outside
>>the US, Canada and Australia.
>
>
> The Mormon Church has a similar problem.  Growth in Latin America is great
> (seen as a mixed blessing), and baptisms in Africa are beginning to really
> take off.

As someone who baptized 70+ Brazilians into the Mormon church over a
period of a year in country, I saw this growth first hand. It really
was an astounding phenomenon in the 80s and remains so today. There
were lots of growth related issues, such as training leadership fast
enough, and a lot of the Brazilian missionaries were bishops within a
year of returning home... I did not see that the Latin American
Mormons were a financial burden on the church as a whole, and it could
have been thought of as a "profit center" had people thought in those
terms (which they did not).

> The only nation in Europe with really strong gains is England.
> Germany was once seen as a moderate stronghold of Mormonism (by European
> standards), but the numbers have shrunk there.  Mormon leadership dearly
> looks forward to sending missionaries to mainland China, and supposedly
> negotiations are moving steadily forward.

The BYU Young Ambassadors (a dance team) are as popular in China as
the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is here. The Mormons are great at PR, and
pay attention to that aspect carefully because of the TERRIBLE job
they did in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, resulting in relocation and a
certain amount of suffering and death. Who can blame them given the
history? They want to be liked, they want to be perceived as
mainstream. Should Romney become president, many would say that they
had become mainstream... and who could say they were wrong, despite
the peculiar beliefs. Personally, I see that belief set as no more
peculiar than other religions, but YMMV on that.

> I have friends who served missions in Russia and the Ukraine.  A goodly
> number of young women have joined there, but not many young men, which can
> lead to problems.  The young full-time elders are warned to "lock their
> hearts" and not try to find themselves a mate there.  I think the Church
> should just help all the girls to immigrate to Provo, Utah and attend
> Brigham Young University... lol

Hey, this was one of the pressures leading to polygamy in the early
church. In England many more girls than boys were converted, and they
had to be taken care of somehow... Personally, I would welcome more
pretty girls in Provo... it's nice enough as is... :-)

-Kelly




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list