I think what I was taking issue with is that illegal discrimination takes place by people who aren’t necessarily “extremely” dominant. To them it is just normal. Why wouldn’t you, for instance, have a special Sunday discount for people who bring in their Church flyer? Or hire only fellow Baptists? They don’t see that as extreme in the least. And I don’t see it as “extreme,” either, just dangerous normative behavior - well, dangerous to a plural society.
“Dangerous normative behavior” seems like a good description. But really, as long as there’s someplace else to go, the shopkeepers are only robbing themselves. The local produce mart lost about a third of their business when they went over-the-top Christian, with people literally trying to save your heathen soul in the aisles and giant bible verse posters.
Slightly off topic: The church secretary at the closest Unitarian Universalist church is a practicing Catholic. Nobody cares. Gotta like the irony.
Yes. As long as they were registered in records pre Holocaust–which inevitably they were. I used the Mormon Genealogical Library to research my Jewish grandparents’ family who lived in the Habsburg Empire. This was in 1987 (my research not the Habsburg Empire) and the Library was incredible, everything on microfiches, incredibly comprehensive.
This thread seem to prove the Mormons have been incredibly successful at PR, far more sophisticated than Scientology.
Having lived in Salt Lake City for two years as a not Mormon teenager, I am very surprised about all the positivity flooding in.
The LDS Church is not particularly partial to critical thinking and have always been outright hostile to anyone who considers leaving the Church --they are dubious goings on and not the kind of people you want to mess with.
In 1987 there was still Polygamy in Salt Lake, tolerated by the Church and various other shenanigans which I would consider un-American. But then again, with the rise of Donald what do I know about things un-American.
The LDS approach has always been to convert people / populations by making it attractive for them to join and thus open up new business opportunities.
Unless something very significant changed in the last 30 years, the way things used to work: Proselytize first, do business second.
They offered to employ me at the gynaecological library as a teenager, because I could speak three language and helped a lot of people decipher documents. But when I refused to join the Church the offer was of the table, nothing dramatic, all very subtle and common.
LDS uses its money to mission and convert heathens. It was, probably still is, the fastest growing church and not just thanks to high birthrate… Business was an important factor. Converting to the LDS Church is an attractive proposition.
Oh, yes. They are impressively media savvy. I’ve said this before.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m skeptical and wary of any organized religion, and time had proven there’s frequently abuses going on at the topmost levels. That said I have nothing but good things to say about most of the LDS folks I’ve known and been friends with throughout my life.
Maybe I would feel differently if I lived in Utah, though.
The Mormons in my area are very nice, too. Active in the community and charity work.
Just remember the LDS church is a hierarchical organization with serious top-down controls. The book @sludge referenced goes into this, and why certain parts of the liturgy make that a serious systemic problem. This messianic passage, for example, has been used by several “jack mormon” fundamentalist spinoff cults:
It shall come to pass, that I, the Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the sceptre of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God, and to arrange by lot the inheritances of the Saints, whose names are found, and the names of their fathers, and of their children enrolled in the book of the law of God
Cult leaders (like Rulon Jeffs) often take on the identity and mission of the messiah, the one mighty and strong, in order to command absolute obedience from the top of the hierarchy.
(Given the number of likes it got, I suspect several people got my absurdly obscure “strong and mighty in the lord” reference earlier. I was riffing off Joseph Smith, psalm 24, and Isaiah 28:2. And possibly Kurt Zeilinga.)
Hell, I’m cis-gender but am willing to join any religion that will assign someone to go in first to clear the bathroom for me.
ETA: I just meant this as a little pro-solitude joke. First choice: no one in the next stall. Second choice: absolutely anyone at all who wants to be there.
Oh, there’s probably more evidence of them covering up molestation in the LDS (I believe that was a scandal at some recent point mentioned by my Ex-Mormon spouse.)
Age 9-14 (elementary through junior high in Midvale). Had to visit all summer, every summer, from 14-18. I’ve only been back twice once I was of an age where no one could force me and I’m 45 now. (My mom still lives there but comes out to the coast. She married a Jack Mormon way back when.) This was in the 1980s.
