Mormon stakes, part one

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
June 17, 2007

I had been attending a conference the previous Thursday through Saturday, so I didn’t have time to properly research the church whose name I had drawn for this Sunday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) in Cherry Hill.

At any rate, I woke up early on Sunday and tried to determine the meeting times for the LDS Church in Cherry Hill. The listing in the phone book gave me three numbers. One turned out to be the number of the Family History Center; when I called I heard a recorded message that informed me that they offer family genealogy classes. I called the two other numbers, but the phones just rang and rang – there was no answering machine.

I tried searching the web. All I found was a rather mysterious article about the local temple, which featured sentences such as “To help prepare new members and the newly activated for the temple, each unit in the stake regularly holds Melchizedek Priesthood and temple preparation classes,” and “Pam now serves as the Primary president and Tom received the Melchizedek Priesthood in May 1998. They are hoping everyone in the family will be ready to go to the temple in 1999 to be sealed.”

Hmm. They speak a whole different religious language.

So – what did I know about the LDS church? I knew that the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have discovered the Book of Mormon in the form of golden plates that he dug up near his home in New York in the early 1800s. An angel named Moroni appeared to him and told him where to dig.

I knew that members of Smith’s church were originally polygamous, but gave that up around the time Utah became a state, and that there are still several offshoot groups that practice polygamy. I knew about the custom in LDS churches of having young men go off in pairs for a year or two to evangelize.

I know that lots of other churches consider Mormonism a non-Christian heresy; I’ve read Kingdom of the Cults, more than once -- not the newest edition, though – this book has been in print more than forty years!

So I turned to Wikipedia, where I learned a number of interesting things. I learned that Mormon (the man, not the book) was a prophet who lived in the fourth century; that the LDS church officially repudiated polygamy in 1890; and that Mormons tend to discourage the use of the word Mormon to refer to the church, although they seem to be okay with using it to refer to members.

As with most churches, there are various subgroups and splinter groups. Some historians divide the LDS church into the Utah Mormons and Missouri Mormons. Utah Mormons are descended from everyone who followed Joseph Smith to Utah; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is the largest among these groups, but not the only group. Missouri Mormons are descended from the folks who didn’t go to Utah. There’s one big problem with splitting the church into Utah Mormons and Missouri Mormons – most Mormons no longer live in either Utah or Missouri. In fact, today most LDS (Utah Mormon) members live outside the United States, and most of the folks who would be considered Missouri Mormons do not live in Missouri.
Notable Mormons include Butch Cassidy; Ed “Big Daddy” Roth (the creator of Rat Fink, a cartoon character my brother and I spent hours attaching to plastic model cars in the form of decals in the sixties; the Marriott family (of hotel fame); Orson Scott Card, author of really, really interesting science fiction; Steven Covey, the life organizer guy; the singing Osmond family; Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of television, and also a guy with the perfect name for an inventor); and Mitt Romney, a politician who seemed to be in the news quite often at this time, since the primary season for the 2008 elections had already begun.

From Wikipedia I learned that the LDS church is the fourth largest denomination in the United States, which was a surprise. They report worldwide membership of 13 million, with about 5 million of those members in the United States. Some sources report that it is one of the fastest-growing churches in the US, but these data seem to be offset by other data that show that the LDS church also loses members at an extremely fast rate, making net growth about zero right now.

LDS is considered a restorationist church. All restorationists believe that they have recovered a pure or pristine version of faith that has been lost by the historical churches – the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant groups. Other groups to whom the term restorationist is applied include Quakers, some Baptists (like the Landmark Baptists), Seventh-Day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. One thing that strikes me as really unusual is that Mormons seem to believe that, to achieve the highest degree of salvation, a person must be married. This is in sharp contrast to the high value accorded celibacy throughout most of Christian history.

I learned that Mormons have churches, where anyone can attend a service, and also temples, where non-Mormons are not allowed. In fact, even some Mormons are not allowed into temples; there are special entrance requirements, including an orthodoxy test. Mormon men are expected to serve a two-year period of missionary service at the age of 19; women may or may not have a similar period of service, although for them the age of service would be 21 (if unmarried), and the mission term would usually last only 18 months. The church does not have paid clergy; in most local churches the ruling presidents and bishops (all men – Mormon women wear the invisible hijab) serve on a volunteer basis. Mormons are expected to abstain not only from alcohol and tobacco, but also from coffee and tea.

So I won’t expect a coffee hour after the service.