Will Mormons become numerous enough to become an important American region like the South, Great Lakes etc?

Will Mormons become numerous enough to become an important American region like the South, Great Lakes etc?

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Mormons are dwindling.

No. Their birthrates are declining, I believe they're only at about 3 now. However, the amish are a completely different story...

why is it dwindling? i thought their birthrates have always been really high

They have been historically. However, as they become (relatively) more secular and integrated into mainstream American culture, their birthrates have declined.

Harold Bloom thought so, but then again the 90s were pretty crazy.

haven't they been integrated since at least the post-war years?

Because influences from the outside world have generally started to creep in to their society.

Things like giving a 10th of your income to the church or being called to serve for 2 years in some random country during the prime years of your life, years that you could spend going to college or starting a career, is not so attractive anymore. Even things like their no alcohol and no caffeine policy are largely being ignored, you can find videos of BYU students on social media doing keg stands and beer pong tournaments .Another problem, which comes from the secularization of many Mormon families, is something that's also happening to non-Mormon families as well. Kids are living with their parents longer and postponing marriage until later in life, primarily due to economic difficulties and cultural shifts. A big thing in Mormonism, like in many religions, is establishing a family and having it grow. They can't afford to do that anymore.

One final thing, which I know some anons will probably disagree with, but this is something they have in common with a lot of other religions as well. Diversity. the Mormon church is 85% white, with very few black and Asian members. Those numbers are unlikely to change anytime soon, given the Church's history with race. Their Missions are terribly inefficient. Most Mormons are rather conservative as well, the liberal Mormon is a dying breed. I'm not going to say if this is good or bad, but it does make it harder for them to brand their religion, especially in a increasingly Non-religious United States. In the past 10 years, non-religious citizens in the united states have grown by 7%. That's quite the change for a 300 million+ country. 4/10 Millennials are Non-religious as well, and that figure will only grow in the future. Larger Religions can survive these falling numbers for now, but it hurts for the smaller, more hardline, religions like Mormonism.

got my numbers from Pew Research, btw.

>Their Missions are terribly inefficient.
elaborate, im interested

I'm just basing that specific claim off of the numbers I saw and accounts from some of my Mormon friends. I happen to know quite a few. According to a few of them, other countries are even more apprehensive to Missionaries showing up at their door or in their face than in the US. Asian countries in particular, are very apprehensive to them. One guy, IIRC he was in Japan, had a businessman spit in his face, when he and his partner approached him. They really do not like seeing two white guys walking up to them, handing them a pamphlet about some white religion, and then speak to them in a broken form of their language.

The missionaries are basically car salesmen for baptisms too, they have quotas that the Church wants them to meet. Of the people I knew, only one guy managed to get a baptism. Sometimes, if the Church starts coming down hard on them for lack of baptisms, they will just lie and say "Look, we had 7 baptisms this week. get off our case." They have to pay for the missions as well. One of my friends spent the equivalent of $15,000 during his mission. Also, their mission training is brutal. For months at a time, they study for 10-12 hour days with really strict rules. They are always in small groups that are never apart except when they go to the shitter or get sick and go to a hospital. Apparently mental breakdowns are common and one guy said someone in his group tried to commit suicide because he was scared as fuck and depressed.

Again, these are from Mormon and Ex-Mormon friends I know. One of them said he liked the experience and felt that he learned about a new culture and some unique skills that he wouldn't have otherwise, he's the guy that got the baptism. But everyone else was pretty down about their mission trips. It isn't exactly a comprehensive study, but it seems like the Missions are generally rather inefficient as far as religious conversion goes.

oh, and I forgot one more thing. some of the missions are in sketchy as fuck places. One of my friends went to Central America and he said it was a shithole. no plumbing, dirt and cobblestone roads, and lots of criminal activity. There were some areas in town that no one went to. They also rarely used their bikes because sometimes they would get stolen.

wow, that doesn't sound nice

Their birthrate is still ~4 per women, which is very high for a western country.

They'll probably get genocided long before that happens.

Birth rates aren't as high as immigration into the area though so you'd need to get Catholic Hispanics to convert.

There's three mormon churches within 3 miles where I live, they're not going anywhere

Mormons don't dominate populations outside of Utah. Their next largest concentration of population outside of Salt Lake City is Las Vegas, NV, and they don't completely dominate the cultural or political landscape here (Vegasfriend here). I'd compare their influence to regional influences of large amounts of Jewish or Italian people in NYC or the large amounts of Irish people in Boston. They're just a part of the cultural tapestry of the Inland West/Southwest United States. I don't think it's deniable that Utah is kind of culturally unique in this area of the country, though, and I don't think many would object to seeing Utah as comparable to like the Navajo Nation or something but for Mormons (as far as demography and outsize influence of a particular group on culture and politics, not history or influence on region/country in general).

This. My entire extended family is Mormon and in all my life I have only ever known one person who went on a mission, one of my cousins. No one wants to do them because of your second paragraph.

It depends on the ward. My maternal grandfather and my father were both converted by missionaries and they both became bishops of their wards, which received enough money from donations so they could send their missionaries to places like CALIFORNIA and also pay for their trips.

The mission is something that most mormons i know look forward to, and are actually devoted to. Now that the Church allows women to go on the mission as well, anyone in the family that hits the age of 21 gets their assignment and fucks off for a while.

In Salt Lake City, the church has a startling amount of control. It's adapted perfectly to the new times. There is a succession of prophets that goes back to Joseph Smith himself, like the Pope of the Catholics but instead wearing business suits and holding much more secrecy.

They even have their own website, and their own acronym with the same name ; "LDS", standing for the Latter-Day Saints. If u go to their website and then find their church leaders, you will see a legion of white men in suits explaining the importance of having a prophet in the modern times.

The Church owns a bank, Deseret First Credit Union; a news company, Deseret News; a fucking book store, Deseret Book; a donation/thrift shop/whatever just like Goodwill but Mormon; Deseret Industries.

There's more, though; the Church also owns the largest cow/calf ranching operation in America; Deseret Ranches. Based in Central Fucking Florida. The University of Utah, also referred to as the University of Deseret, also owned by the Church.

I'm sure I dont have to state the political control the Church has as well.

Also the Church being associated with the freemasonry.

Deseret is said to mean "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon, so wherever you see the bee hive logo, you can see where the Church has its tendrils.

...

All mormons are going to hell for pretending to be jews

Deseret soundw like a corruption of the english word "desert" or the spanish word "desierto" [deh-see-ehr-toh (meaning the same thing)].

Also from Vegas here, and yeah Mormons are just kinda...around. They feel a lot less numerous than they used to be, now Filipinos have taken their place it feels like.

>Deseret Industries
Damn good thrift stores desu.

We've had a few imported into Edinburgh over the last year or two. They mainly hang around the University library.

In the entire school year, the only other people I actually saw them talk to was two Chinese girls, I think.

The non-American West is a dead end for them, all they'll be able to get is a few sad, lonely dregs who only show up for a sense of community.

Can we also address the central reason why they're failing to find new converts?

Their religion is batshite insane. It's the kinda thing that really can only emerge and survive in the US.

basically this, any moron who reads the CES letters can see that its a complete crock of shit.

Mormon chicks are hot, and their upbringing is training to make babies. There's definitely other reasons to convert, beyond the uncertainty brought on by the specter of your own mortality.

Didn't Twain or Wilde or one of those rascals call it the only uniquely American religion?
Liberal barely-Christianity is where it's at for the latter bit.

>Mormon chicks are hot, and their upbringing is training to make babies

So are Catholics, and Indian girls.

It's incredibly Americentric and extremely demanding. It's almost literally American Islam.

This thread is the sort of posting I like seeing on Veeky Forums. Thanks, Anons.

>It's almost literally American Islam
It is American Islam, just unable to go full sharia law because America wouldn't tolerate it

Face it, it probably is. Making totally brand new words is difficult, Joseph Smith probably realized that.

Damn, that's a take I haven't actually heard on Mormonism before. Makes you think.

he was supposed to fulfil the prophecy, it's to late now

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Horse_Prophecy

Random fuck is enlighten in the wilderness turns out allah/elohim that hey you are my prophet so now go steal the land from the heathens ("And thus, even as I have said, if ye are faithful ye shall assemble yourselves together to rejoice upon the land of Missouri, which is the land of your inheritance, which is now the land of your enemies-.Doctrine and Covenants 52:42) in the case of muslims they succeed, mormons not so much(1838 Mormon War where they lost) so unlike muslims, mormons got chase out of their homeland to the west. Still ever violent mormons like muslims committed many a massacre(Utah War,in it the worst massacre that the mormons did is the Mountain Meadows massacre "ntending to leave no witnesses and thus prevent reprisals, the perpetrators killed all the adults and older children—about 120 men, women, and children in total. Seventeen children, all younger than seven, were spared.") So we have to violent fuckers that want to ban all things haram. So yeah American Islam.

So the question is, if Mormonism became as widespread as Islam did, would it have become distilled and have a smaller percentage of hardliners as Islam does?

I had 2 of them talking to me and offering me a book of Mormon and inviting me to their church and they were white and blonde and hot...and clearly not wearing deodorant because unfortunately they stank..it was gross.

they don't expand by converting people, they expand through birthrates, same as the amish and the muslims

I see that as a chicken/egg scenario to be widespread they would need to use the same tactics that Islam did. So it would make sense that it would be similar, though the question would be did it spread because it had hardliners or does it have hardliners because it spread. I guess another comparison to it would be the Cult of Scientology still that's a bit of a stretch in some areas.

As a central Floridian that is depressing. I was under the impression most of the major ranching operations were still run by the old Cracker Cow families.