What's new

LDS general conference - Fall 2013

Oh ok. Well Baptists believe that faith alone is enough to save you. LDS doctrine teaches that faith without works is dead.

For example: I cannot say I believe in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and go out and lie, cheat, booze, steal...if I truly believe I will act in accordance and have things to show for my faith. Just believing it is not enough. I have to act on it.

As for the authority. Jesus Christ was hand picked by Heavenly Father (God) to be our Savior. It is why he came to earth. He is our Eldest brother and as such paid the price for our sins. He was perfect here on this earth and as such was worthy of paying that debt.

Thanks for answering brother.
 
All of these statements are true, but I have been to Africa and (at least judging from the locations that I visited) it wouldn't make too much sense to go there to conduct missionary work if you were not interested in converting blacks.

Dude the LDS church had missionaries in South Africa in the 1800's.... About 10% of South Africa population is of European decent!!!
 
Did you ever baptize a woman? Did you have a similar discussion with them... except, of course, for the part about the policy having been changed.

Yep. And no, I didn't have a similar discussion with them. But then, the differences between the sexes are far more pronounced than the differences between races. And having an all-male priesthood is not too uncommon.
 
Ive always been confused about Mormons beliefs about Jesus and the Cross. What do Mormons believe?

We believe that Jesus's suffering for our sins culminated with his death on the cross, and that (for reasons we can't understand) this ultimate price was needed in order to accomplish the means for our forgiveness. In that sense we revere the cross like all other Christians. That being said, most Mormons also view the cross as the instrument of his torture and demise, and therefore is not an object to put on display in our chapels--in that sense, we are pretty different from most Christian denominations. I personally am far more liberal than most Mormons in that respect, and (for example) love hymns like "As I survey the wondrous cross" which don't necessarily find a place in our hymn book.
 
We believe that Jesus's suffering for our sins culminated with his death on the cross, and that (for reasons we can't understand) this ultimate price was needed in order to accomplish the means for our forgiveness. In that sense we revere the cross like all other Christians. That being said, most Mormons also view the cross as the instrument of his torture and demise, and therefore is not an object to put on display in our chapels--in that sense, we are pretty different from most Christian denominations. I personally am far more liberal than most Mormons in that respect, and (for example) love hymns like "As I survey the wondrous cross" which don't necessarily find a place in our hymn book.

I also do not share the aversion to the cross that most other Mormons do.
 
No and here is why. I feel that women are men's equal. Now that does not mean the same. For example: in my mission field there were female missionaries. Some male missionaries did not feel they should be there and were a waste of time and resources. I did not. They could reach people and do things that I could not and vice versa.

If you want to consider women not holding the priesthood means they are second class citizens than fine. But I do not. So I disagree with the premise of the arguement.

Edit: I am sure that some people do feel that way and that is fine. But others do not. So the base arguement is not an absolute.

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife... as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.”

- Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., Latter-day Saint Messenger and Advocate, Nov. 1835
 
I don't understand why women want the priesthood. IMO you either believe that blacks carry "the mark of cain" and that women play a secondary role to men or you don't really believe in the book of mormon. If one can edit these great books that were handed down to man by god to people with a higher moral character than ourselves what is the point believing in them at all.

This doesn't just apply to mormons. I have never met a christian in my life that actually believes what the bible says. Do any of you believe this...

- Leviticus 24:16:

And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.

Then why not ask them? These issues are extremely complicated and personal, and your simplification of it all comes across as nothing more than a condescending straw man fallacy.

I certainly don't fully understand everything there is to know about the controversy surrounding women and the priesthood, but websites like Ordain Women are a good place to get further education on it all.

https://ordainwomen.org/
 
Women can't handle the magical powers of the priesthood? I am sorry but I don't see a single legitimate argument that would convince me that women are any less capable of playing make believe than men.

That's not what he said at all.
 
Then why not ask them? These issues are extremely complicated and personal, and your simplification of it all comes across as nothing more than a condescending straw man fallacy.

I certainly don't fully understand everything there is to know about the controversy surrounding women and the priesthood, but websites like Ordain Women are a good place to get further education on it all.

https://ordainwomen.org/
It is how I truly feel. I really try to be understanding and open minded but I guess I am just being honest today. I find both the bible and the Book of Mormon to be morally deplorable. Why is it ok for people to hold sexist and homophobic views simply because it is part of their religion. If I said and believed those things I would be responsible for them yet I am supposed to let it slide when someone says "It's part of my faith". BS.
 
Women can't handle the magical powers of the priesthood? I am sorry but I don't see a single legitimate argument that would convince me that women are any less capable of playing make believe than men.

Women can have the priesthood in the LDS church!!!
 
Sorry I keep coming back to this every few days colton, but I pick it up when I have time. Lots of the last two days of jazzfanz time got spent on Archibald and Honzward.

Who ARE these sociologists, though? That's what my question was--what are your sources. That news article just quotes anonymous people for that 5 million source. (The source that is named in that article agreed with my U.S. estimate of 50% activity.)

The previous sentence in that article indicates that the number to get to a 30% estimate (and everyone is giving estimates) comes from a comparison between claimed church members by the LDS organization vs. census numbers in developed countries. I did an example of this arithmetic in my previous post for Brazil whereby the church claims 1,138,740 members in Brazil, but in the 2010 census only 225,695 Brazilians claimed they were LDS. In other words 93% of the supposed church membership in Brazil is missing.

Obviously Brazil is an extreme case (although oddly one that the church brings up of its own accord very frequently) but that's how you go about making estimates of this kind.

Less thorough estimates exist for the United States (because nothing is more thorough than a census), but the Pew Research organization determined the percentage of self-described mormons in the United States is about 1.7%.

https://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us/

In adding up all the data I could find from the 2012 church release, I estimate claimed US church membership at 6,331,380 or approximately 2.3% of the US population. That puts active membership at around 66% for the United States, but at a much lower rate in the rest of the world. To some extent this isn't surprising given that the LDS church is a largely regional religion.

That powerpoint cites cumorah.com, the same site I ran across earlier in this thread. But no one there seems to be a qualified sociologist. https://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=about_us. As near as I can tell, the figure that everyone quotes is just an estimate they made with no real evidence.

I think you're quibbling some here. For one thing, I note that your'e not disputing the discrepancies between LDS death rates vs. those of everyone else in the United States or the world. I think one of the questions you need to be asking yourself is "how many claimed church members are actually living human beings on the planet earth"

Secondly, the powerpoint I linked to is not an anti-mormon source. It's from a self-described believing member.

Thirdly, cumorah staffs a person whose apparent job is "church growth researcher." No description of education is given by anyone on the cumorah website but I think a quick look at the "church growth researchers" blog (https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/) is indicative that he's not a total yahoo and doesn't appear to have any bias against the church. In fact, I've never seen a more exhaustive or complete information source regarding church/stake openings or growth numbers. As his source for his belief in a 30% activity rate worldwide he states:

As for where I ascertained the 30% activity rate for the Church as a whole, this was calculated by estimating the member activity rate for each individual country (a process that literary took years to complete). This process was done by obtaining reports from church leaders, missionaries, and members from around the world in regards to sacrament meeting attendance and other measurements of activity for individual countries. 70% may seem high for inactivity, but when you consider that the countries with the most members generally have some of the lowest member activity rates in the world (less than 25%), then this makes a lot more sense.

The LDS Church doesn't directly release those numbers, but that seems like the fairest estimation procedure I can get ahold of.


Come on colton, look at those death rates again and tell me there isn't a serious institutional bias problem with how the numbers are calculated? Do you really think there's not a problem with a system where gains are locked in forever and losses are assumed to absurdly low rates?
 
It is how I truly feel. I really try to be understanding and open minded but I guess I am just being honest today. I find both the bible and the Book of Mormon to be morally deplorable. Why is it ok for people to hold sexist and homophobic views simply because it is part of their religion. If I said and believed those things I would be responsible for them yet I am supposed to let it slide when someone says "It's part of my faith". BS.

Well, we certainly agree on that.

The statement I disagree with is that one must think of women as secondary to men in order to believe in the Book of Mormon, and that because of that the movement to ordain women to the priesthood is somehow fundamentally flawed.
 
Are there any Mormons on here that were adults before the church stopped it's racist policy of excluding blacks? If so how did you rationalize that policy back then? If the church believed this from the beginning doesn't that make the founders of the church racist?
 
Well, we certainly agree on that.

The statement I disagree with is that one must think of women as secondary to men in order to believe in the Book of Mormon, and that because of that the movement to ordain women to the priesthood is somehow fundamentally flawed.
Isn't that what the Book of Mormon says though? Isn't that what Brigham Young said was the truth? If all of church history says that only men will be ordained than that is the way it is. If you don't believe that is true than you don't fully/really believe in the church or its history.
 
The statement I disagree with is that one must think of women as secondary to men in order to believe in the Book of Mormon, and that because of that the movement to ordain women to the priesthood is somehow fundamentally flawed.
The former is everything I was taught growing up and I'm not even 30 yet. It doesn't really make sense to me that the supposed one true church - that has the ability to commune directly with god - revises it's own beliefs at a frankly staggering rate.

I'm hoping this is the only post I will make in this thread, and I'm hoping the church grants priesthood to women one day both for the benefit of those women that I don't understand but also so I have another thing to point at and lose my mind over.
 
Isn't that what the Book of Mormon says though? Isn't that what Brigham Young said was the truth? If all of church history says that only men will be ordained than that is the way it is. If you don't believe that is true than you don't fully/really believe in the church or its history.

Does it?
 
Top