Reddit Reddit reviews The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church

We found 4 Reddit comments about The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Books
Christian Books & Bibles
Christian Living
Christian Social Issues
The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church
Check price on Amazon

4 Reddit comments about The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church:

u/girlfriendinacoma24 · 3 pointsr/mormon

Lou, have you read Jana Riess’ The Next Mormons? Because I think you’d appreciate her research.

u/SpaceYeti · 2 pointsr/exmormon

Two sources for you, that will answer your question better than this poll will:

u/levelheadedsteve · 1 pointr/mormon

So sorry to hear you had struggles with good male role models. I actually think Mormon men make pretty great role models, and my dad was very much present in my life, and the LDS church really urges guys to have a very active role in their kids lives. Also, the church takes a lot of time making sure teens have good experiences, and I actually really liked several things about being a teenager (but others not so much). On the good side, I had very cool youth leaders (similar to youth pastors) that came up with great activities and were very easy to relate to. They always heard me out on my questions and so there were great role models throughout the church. Leadership is particularly important for men in Mormonism, and while this is sometimes at the expense of girls getting leadership opportunities (for example, many congregations will spend quite a bit of their yearly budgets getting boys involved in outdoors programs and other activities where they will have chances to be leaders and learn skills. Girls often are left with whatever is left over. But this is starting to change.) On the problematic side, leadership does conduct worthiness interviews with teens. Some leaders keep this brief and casual and really only bother to dig into things if the kids bring it up. Others, like the leaders I had growing up, will specifically ask about certain things like masturbation, porn use, sexual activity, etc to really probe and dig into whether or not the teens are doing what they were supposed to. I struggled a long time with feelings of being unworthy, I felt pretty worthless and struggled a lot with my self esteem once I started to get interviewed like that. That, I would say, was a downside and left me with resentment and I, after seeking some help dealing with some of the residual feelings I had from those years, realize that my general distrust of men stems from those interviews and some of my mom's attitudes and actions, because I was convinced that every man was more or less a sexual predator at heart based on what the leadership would often say was something they were making sure people weren't doing to justify what they would ask in interviews, and what my mom would say about men in general and more targeted comments at me. It's something I still struggle with quite a bit. So yeah, pros and cons, haha.

So when it comes to politics, Mormons are generally conservative, and generally republican. In some regions of the US Mormons tend to be slightly more progressive and liberal compared to their Utah counterparts, but are still very generally Republican. Utah is very conservative, especially outside of Salt Lake County. A lot of this is actually discussed in that same research I talked about above. That said, Millennial Mormons, across the board, are generally more progressive and liberal than their parents were, and LGBTQ issues are a big topic there. Basically just look at the general trends in the US, adjust them to be slightly more conservative, and that's more or less where Mormons tend to stand. See some conversation around this here and here. And while I haven't read it myself, if you're interested in further details on this topic, it's worth getting The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church where most of this research is documented.

There is a great summary I've heard about Mormon politics that is pretty well stated in this article:

>If you gave the typical Mormon a quiz on being a conservative, he or she would ace it. Socially conservative mixed with the small government views of the Mountain West, most Mormons hold conservative positions on the major issues of the day.
>
>That said, there are some nuances. On abortion, Mormons support the view of the LDS Church, which permits abortion in the case of rape or the life of the mother. Mormons are more supportive of allowing abortion in these cases than the average American (that’s right: in these cases, Mormons are the most pro-choice). But on abortion in general, Mormons are among the most pro-life, opposing abortion because the mother is in poverty or has other private reasons for making her decision.
>
>Mormons are also more in favor of immigration, particularly compared to the average Republican. One reason is the exposure to other cultures. Mormons are more likely to see immigration as a good thing if they’ve gone on a mission, particularly a foreign mission.

I've noted these trends as well. In my experience, Mormons are not only more likely to support immigration policy, but general policies that allow for countries to mutually benefit instead of pushing for the US to get the best deal, for example. I've also noticed that Mormons tend to be much more supportive of Muslim and Jewish communities than some Christian conservatives I know of (I have family who are in other Christian denominations that are VERY negative in how the talk about Muslims, in particular). Mormons don't frame religious freedom from a Christian perspective as much as some religious conservatives do, in my experience.

As for what modern revelation means, and whether that will cause the LDS church to move in a more secular direction, it's hard to say. But that has been the trend, over time. Policy has tended to change in progressive ways over time, as I mentioned before, where the practice of polygamy and allowing for Black members of the church to have priesthood and go to the temple could be seen as progressive advances, potentially motivated by external pressures. But that does not take the whole picture into account, as many LDS members are very adamant that those changes were due to revelation, and that the revelation should be trusted even if it seems to follow a trend. I think there is merit to both sides of that argument.

Another change that has recently happened was that the LDS church had a pretty strong, if mostly cultural, stance that people weren't really gay, but giving in to temptation or allowing sin to cloud their judgement. This is a position made clear in the book by Spencer W. Kimball, who served as an apostle and then President of the LDS church, called The Miracle of Forgiveness, where he claims that practices like masturbation or inappropriate thoughts would lead someone to homosexual behavior (see a brief discussion on this here). It was quite clear that it was not something that was an inherent part of a person, but rather something they learned through sin. Even more recently, Apostle David Bednar stated "there are no homosexual members of the church" where he basically says that homosexual attraction is merely a temptation rather than an actual part of a person's identity. While this stance is not necessary gone in Mormonism, it is no longer a punishable offense for someone to say they are gay and openly identify as gay, as shown in the "Mormon and Gay" site I linked above, where someone can be both Mormon and Gay. Many people speculate that, with that subtle shift, it could be an indication that leadership in the future may be more open to the idea of homosexual relationships eventually being allowed under certain situations. Personally, I think that there is doctrinal space for the idea of "for life only" marriages between gay couples in Mormonism, and it will be interesting to see if that happens. But, that sort of speculation is hardly a reason to decide to stay or go. Ultimately, if you feel the conviction that the LDS church is god's church, then that is the standard that the LDS church requires to join.