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Even if YOU don't know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic® knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic® will tell you what religion (if any) you practice...or ought to consider practicing.

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Southern Baptist Convention, largest Baptist group in the United States, organized at Augusta, Georgia, in 1845 by Southern Baptists who disagreed with the antislavery attitudes and activities of Northern Baptists. By the late 20th century, however, it had repudiated its history of support for racial segregation and had become one of the most ethnically diverse Protestant denominations in North America.

Like Baptists in the North, Baptists in the South trace their history back to the Baptist churches established in the American colonies in the 17th century. The number of Baptist churches increased and spread throughout the colonies in the 18th century, primarily because of the missionary work of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, which was organized in 1707 by five Baptist churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Early associations of Baptist churches in the South included the Charleston Association (1751) in South Carolina, the Ketochton Association (1765) in Virginia, and the Kehukee Association (1765) in North Carolina.

In the 19th century the Baptist churches and associations in the North and South cooperated on a national level in organizing foreign and home missions and religious publications. The slavery question, however, soon caused disagreements between Southern and Northern Baptists, and in 1845 the Southern Baptists set up their own organization. About 300 churches joined the new group. After abolition the convention maintained a socially conservative stance on race relations; for example, it opposed the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. However, the convention adopted a resolution in 1995 denouncing racism and repudiating its past defense of slavery and opposition to the civil rights movement.

The Southern Baptist Convention has become a national rather than a regional organization, and it has long been by far the largest American Protestant body and one of the most rapidly growing. Its membership now includes a substantial fraction of ethnic minorities. In 2012 Fred Luter, Jr., became the denomination's first African American president. Also that year the SBC agreed to allow some congregations whose members wished to avoid the negative associations of the denomination's racist past to use the alternative name "Greater Baptist Convention." (The denomination's official title remained Southern Baptist Convention.)

From its beginnings the Southern Baptist Convention was a more centralized denominational organization than had been usual among the Baptists. It developed its own missions, publications, and educational and other boards that functioned under the direction of the convention. The centralized organization of the Southern Baptists has been credited with aiding the amazing growth of the convention following a period of recovery after the devastation of the American Civil War (1861-65).

Generally considered more conservative (both theologically and socially) than the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., the Southern Baptist Convention has not taken an active part in ecumenical activities. Though joining in the Baptist World Alliance, it has not joined the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. or the World Council of Churches. There are state conventions, and a general convention is held annually. In the first decades of the 21st century the Southern Baptist Convention reported more than 16 million members and 45,000 congregations. Headquarters are in Nashville, Tennessee.

A related Canadian organization, the Canadian National Baptist Convention, reported more than 10,000 members and 250 congregations in the first decades of the 21st century. Its headquarters are in Cochrane, Alberta.

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Southern Baptist Convention | American religious organization

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Southern Baptist Convention: Southern Baptist Convention, largest Baptist group in the United States, organized at Augusta, Georgia, in 1845 by Southern Baptists who disagreed with the antislavery attitudes and activities of Northern Baptists. By the late 20th century, however, it had repudiated its history of support for

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We Need Some Immigrants to Get the Job Done

So I'm headed to Germany and Denmark next week for vacation, and I figured I should do something related to that here on the blog. Naturally, I decided to look at Lutheranism!

But how to look at it? Well, I recently discovered that old U.S. Religion Census data from 1850-1936 + 1952 is digitized at the county level and available online. So I did the only thing a reasonable person can do: I downloaded all of it, crosswalked it into usable files for mapping, and mapped it! Below is a series of maps showing the Lutheran share of county population back to 1850.

I've averaged together some periods for simplicity, and to reduce the number of maps I had to make.

Our story begins in Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Sure, there's a smattering in the midwest and Texas... but really, from 1850-1870, institutional American Lutheranism had not made major inroads in the west. Many Germans and Scandinavians did settle there and would have identified as Lutheran, but they lacked churches, and in many cases their children would have received little or no catechetical instruction. Outside of PA and eastern Ohio, Lutheran culture just wasn't extremely robust.

But by the late 19th century, that had changed.

There's no data from 1880, so we skip to 1890, 1906, and 1916. The late-19th century and pre-WWI period saw several trends: strengthened institutions and an end to "early settlement" out west, Lutheran internal missions and evangelism, and, especially, large-scale Scandinavian settlement. The Scandinavians and Baltics seem to have been moderately more successful at bringing and planting their religion with them than many Germans, though this is partly because many of the Germans were Catholic, and also they tended to be better educated.

Byb this second period, the Lutheran heartland is visible. Pennsylvania is still a big cluster, but we also see the clusters in northern Ohio and eastern Michigan, and especially in the upper midwest. That is Lutheran country as we know it today!

In the interwar and immediate postwar period, Lutheran church membership grew explosively. Transitioning towards English-language services, relatively high fertility, and robust ethnic networks centered around churches all played roles in this interwar expansion. Plus, America was settling down: immigration was curtailed, domestic migration rates were fairly low, and, especially post-war, the national trend was towards a kind of conventionalism and denominationalism in religion, which benefited Lutheranism mightily.

Through 1990, Lutheranism's spread westwards remains apparent, even as some declines start to show up in the east. But this gives us really "the map of Lutheran country." Pennsylvania, northern Ohio and Indiana, northeastern Michigan, central Texas, and the upper Midwest. That's our turf. Has been for a while, at least since the 1890s.

But what's happened today? Well...

To the naked eye, that might not look so bad. But there's definitely no big new growth region. And if you open up the last map in another tab and flip between them, you'll see declines in many places.

On to 2010, we get...

Now we can see some real retreat along the fringes.

To highlight it another way, here's 2010 Lutheran share vs. historical maximum county Lutheran share.

Lotta red on that map. Basically no blue. Lutheranism is shrinking essentially everywhere, and when I convert this to a rate of change, the map looks like this, showing percent change in the Lutheran population share since 1980:

There are pockets of growth in Alaska, specific counties in the south, and a very big growth cluster in the northern Great Plains. But it's not enough to offset declines in Pennsylvania, New England, the west coast, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Lake Michigan, and the Carolinas. Lutheranism is declining at a precipitous pace in those areas, losing solidly half its population share in 30 years.

So seeing these maps, you may wonder what's going on with Lutheran membership nationally. I've got that for you!

In case you couldn't tell, that line, it is pointed rather steeply downwards.

Here's the same data, shown as a percent of national population.

To review: the line? It's going down.

Lutherans in 2016 were about the same share of the population they were in 1870. Probably when 2017 figures come in, we will find that Lutherans made up under 2% of the national population.

But there's nothing Lutherans love more than infighting. So let's bicker about about who is the worst.

Here's the same data, broken out into three major categories back to 1890.

From 1890 onwards, I have sufficiently detailed denominational data to track the denominations that eventually formed the present-day denominations of Lutheranism. And the result is that if we group Lutheranism into 3 big categories that are broadly "progressive/modernist" (ELCA and its precursors), "conservative/traditionalist" (LCMS, WELS, minor synods, and their precursors), and "conservative/modernist" (ELCA breakaways), we get some neat trends. First of all, the most severe decline is in ELCA. This is probably not due to demographic differences: according to Pew, "mainline Lutheranism," meaning mostly ELCA, is actually ever so slightly younger than "evangelical Lutheranism," meaning LCMS and WELS. Comparing LCMS to ELCA, ELCA is a very slight bit older than LCMS, but LCMS' median age is probably rising faster.

In other words, this isn't just about ELCA having more old people going the way of all flesh.

Neither is it fertility differences. While the data on this is somewhat limited, it turns out that a higher share of ELCA or other mainline Lutherans have children under age 18 than LCMS or other conservative Lutherans. Now, this is a weak indicator, because it's highly sensitive to birth spacing and other underlying demographics, but the point is, there's no evidence of a huge difference in birth rates here, certainly not one that favor's conservatives. This is in contrast to, say, the Mormons, where over 40% of adult Mormons are a parent of a child under age 18.

All forms of Lutheranism have a very low rate of immigrants and racial minorities among them, and none of them are statistically different in either regard, which suggests that this isn't a story about racial differences or immigration either.

In other words, this is a story about religious switching. ELCA has a higher rate of net switching out than the conservative denominations do.

But of course it does! I made a whole category for "ELCA breakaways"! How we count those people is tricky. Should NALC and LCMC be counted as part of ELCA, or part of the conservative wing?

Here's each denominational grouping's indexed population share since 1980:

If you just compare conservatives and progressives, the progressive decline has been worse, but it's not much worse. If you add the breakaways back in with the progressives, even though the breakaways were explicitly schisming from a more progressive church, then progressives with breakaways included do a little bit better than conservatives. But if you lump the breakaways in with the groups they were moving towards, then conservatives with breakaways do way better than progressives. Counting NALC and LCMC in with "more conservative Lutheranism," fairly explicitly conservative denominations have had about 33% decline in population share since 1980, vs. 47% decline for progressives.

Arguing about who is facing church-ending-demographic-disaster-soonest is a very Lutheran thing to do.

Whither Now, Lutheran?

I'll make just a few notes here. First of all, for every 3 people claimed as members by a Lutheran denomination, there are about 5 people who claim to be Lutheran in surveys. The Pew Religious Landscape Survey turned up about 11.5 million "Lutherans" in 2014, vs. about 6.8 million official baptized members. That is to say, there are a lot of nominal Lutherans out there. These are people who on some level accept the identity of "Lutheran," and may regard Lutheran-situated value claims as having some meaning in their life, but who are not on the books (or probably attending church) anywhere.

Some denominations have more of these marginal identifiers. Some have fewer. But here's the thing: baptized membership is about 60% of LCMS reported adherency, and about 58% for WELS. For all "mainline evangelicals," it's about 70%.

For ELCA? For ELCA apparently 94% of self-reported adherents are baptised members. I want to note that that is a bit odd. The Episcopal Church has about 63%. The United Methodist Church has about 63% as well. Southern Baptists, on the other hand, claim to have about 92%. Roman Catholics have about 105% of self-reporting adherents claimed as members. Mormons are even more impressive: apparently with every 5 people who claim to be a Mormon, a 6th Mormon magically appears! Claimed membership is 119% of self-reported adherency.

I would humbly suggest that some of these numbers are *ahem* implausible. That is, that a common definition of membership is not being used. Some denominations have different views of membership than others, with the result that some more aggressively maintain their membership lists. I would suggest that perhaps ELCA is not maintaining its membership rolls quite in the same way that LCMS and WELS do, with the result that membership is overstated. Unless you want to argue that ELCA is just so much better at tying self-identity to formal membership which, cool, show me some evidence.

Meanwhile, there are probably at least 1.1 or 1.2 million people today who identify as LCMS but are not a member anywhere. Probably another 200,000 WELS, and another 200,000 to 400,000 other assorted conservative Lutherans. It's really kind of incredible to think that half of the nation's self-identifying evangelical Lutherans (meaning, here, more conservative Lutherans) aren't part of any actual religious body. They're floating around in the ether somewhere. This is a population that needs to be served.

Much of Lutheranism's initial growth in America came from itinerant pastor-missionaries knocking on doors, looking for people who spoke German, and hauling them to Lutheran churches. These were people who may have been committed Lutherans in Germany (or Norway, or Sweden, or Latvia, or wherever), or they may not have been. But they were people who were open to the idea that Lutheranism meant something; they shared a language (literal and figurative), and they knocked on doors until they found people who spoke it.

There are something like 3.5-4 million American Lutheran-identifiers who are not formally part of any church. That's about 1.1 or 1.2% of the national population. If we use some rough estimates of the Lutheran share of various immigrant groups in the 1800s, then it turns out that the share of "nominal but unattached Lutherans" is probably about the same today as it was between 1850 and 1870, when the country was packed with recent German and Scandinavian immigrants, just after the "Great Saxon Migration" LCMS folks like to talk about.

And that's not even including recent immigrants themselves! The success of Lutheranism in demographic terms has historically rested on immigration. Here's a fun graph:

Huge majorities of Lutheran churches maintained major non-English worship practices or services as late as WWII. I know somebody who grew up and was baptised in a Norwegian mission church in the 1970s and they spoke Norwegian in the service. Immigration has always been in our church's bones.

Today, approximately 3% of the Lutherans Pew tracks are immigrants. Put another way, about 0.8% of immigrants claim to be Lutheran, versus 3.6% of Americans on the whole. I suspect when we make the adjustment for church membership, the picture may be even starker.

Of course, immigrant-origin countries have changed. We aren't going to get a wave of Lutherans from some big Lutheran country.

Well, I mean, probably. There are 8 million Lutherans in Ethiopia. There are 7 million in Tanzania. There are 6 million in Indonesia! 6 million! India has 4 million more! I could go on. The sum of the story is that a lot of very big immigrant-sending countries turn out to have similar numbers of Lutherans as the US has. I get that our German/Scandinavian churches are very accustomed to having assorted sausages and Oktoberfest beer at events, but it might be time to learn to like injera, or have a plate of dosai at the potluck. There are more Lutherans eating a daily meal of rice than pretzels, and there may be more Lutherans eating nasi goreng than lutefisk.

So how many immigrants are there from countries with large Lutheran populations, that is, immigrants who, even if not Lutheran, probably have been exposed to our churches, our schools, and some of our teachings, and likely respect them?

That line, you see, is going up. But of course, most immigrants from countries with Lutheran churches are never going to be open to evangelism. So let's make a simple assumption. Let's assume that a mere 10% of these people are somehow nominally attached to Lutheranism, by familial confession, or perhaps just positive reputational image due to Lutheran schools. In 2014, that would be about 750,000 immigrants from countries with Lutherans who probably are Lutheran or have very positive views towards Lutherans. In 2014, there were about 350,000 immigrants total within all Lutheran churches, and the racial demographics of those churches suggest most of those immigrants are actually from countries with very few Lutherans, that is, Latin America. So there are probably at least half-a-million or so Probably-Open-to-Lutheranism-or-Already-Consider-Themselves-Lutheran-Right-Now immigrants in the United States.

Fertility is falling. I'd love to see that reverse, but I'm a realist: it probably won't turn on a dime. Population aging is real. If we want our churches to be fiscally solvent as places where the next generation can hear the gospel, be catechized, commune, and have spiritual fellowship as a church, we gotta start looking out the door. Even if we do nothing but sticking to low-hanging-fruit like nominal Lutherans and immigrants already biased in our favor, that's about 3.5-5 million people, a huge mission field. And if you allow yourselves to imagine (gasp) that people without pre-existing proclivities towards Lutheranism might be moved along by the spirit to consider the freedom to be found in the gospel, it gets even larger.

But look, it's fine to ignore this stuff. We can just let whoever wanders in on Sunday be our whole mission field. And then we get the pleasure of wringing our hands ferociously and complaining about how society is getting worse and why can't our young people find somebody to settle down with and, hey, when are you going to have kids, anyways? And it is fun to revel in irony and bathe in despair for the societal future of the church. But what may be less fun but more helpful is to evangelize to others.

PS- I cited a book called "Factors in the Expansion of the Methodist Episcopal Church: 1784-1812." It's my grandpa's dissertation! I never knew it existed until this winter, as I had never heard him talk about it. It's a historical population geography of Methodist church growth, 1784-1812, but has tons of data on other churches too. Also, here's a picture of one of the many maps my grandpa made for the book back in 1954:

Guys! The compulsive mapping... it appears to be a genetic condition. I never knew about this book until a few months ago. Who knew that my writing was just picking up on my grandpa's work?
I'm an Advisor at Follow me on Check out my Podcast about the DISCLAIMER: My posts are not endorsed by and do not in any way represent the opinions of the United States government or any branch, department, agency, or division of it. My writing represents exclusively my own opinions. I did not receive any financial support or remuneration from any party for this research. history of American migration. Twitter to keep up with what I'm writing and reading. Follow my Medium Collection at In a State of Migration if you want updates when I write new posts. And if you're writing about migration too, feel free to submit a post to the collection! Demographic Intelligence, the nation's leading producer of rigorous national- and regional birth and marriage forecasts. I'm also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a Senior Contributor at The Federalist, and I write periodically for Vox's Big Idea column. I'm a native of Wilmore, Kentucky, a graduate of Transylvania University, and also the George Washington University's Elliott School. My real job is as an economist at USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, where I analyze and forecast cotton market conditions. I'm married to a kickass Kentucky woman named Ruth. I am not paid one penny by anybody for this blog post.

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A Very Brief History of American Lutheranism - In a State of Migration - Medium

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So I'm headed to Germany and Denmark next week for vacation, and I figured I should do something related to that here on the blog. Naturally, I decided to look at Lutheranism! But how to look at it? Well, I recently discovered that old U.S.

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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also called Mormonism, church that traces its origins to a religion founded by Joseph Smith in the United States in 1830. The term Mormon, often used to refer to members of this church, comes from the Book of Mormon, which was published by Smith in 1830; use of the term is discouraged by the church. Now an international movement, the beliefs of the church are characterized by a unique understanding of the Godhead, emphasis on family life, belief in continuing revelation, desire for order, respect for authority, and missionary work. Its members obey strict prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea and promote education and a vigorous work ethic.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and had more than 16 million members by the early 21st century. A significant portion of the church's members live in the United States and the rest in Latin America, Canada, Europe, Africa, the Philippines, and parts of Oceania.

Another Mormon denomination, the Community of Christ (until 2001 the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), is headquartered in Independence, Missouri, and had a membership of approximately 250,000 in the early 21st century.

History

In western New York state in 1823, Joseph Smith had a vision in which an angel named Moroni told him about engraved golden plates buried in a nearby hill. According to Smith, he received subsequent instruction from Moroni and, four years later, excavated the plates and translated them into English. The resultant Book of Mormon-so called after an ancient American prophet who, according to Smith, had compiled the text recorded on the plates-recounts the history of a family of Israelites that migrated to America centuries before Jesus Christ and were taught by prophets similar to those in the Old Testament. The religion Smith founded originated amid the great fervour of competing Christian revivalist movements in early 19th-century America but departed from them in its proclamation of a new dispensation. Through Smith, God had restored the "true church"-i.e., the primitive Christian church-and had reasserted the true faith from which the various Christian churches had strayed.

Smith, Joseph; Moroni Everett Collection Historical/Alamy

The new church was millennialist, believing in the imminent Second Coming of Christ and his establishment of a 1,000-year reign of peace. This belief inspired Smith's desire to establish Zion, the kingdom of God, which was to be built somewhere in the western United States. He received revelations not only of theological truth but also providing day-to-day practical guidance. The early members of the church devised new secular institutions, including collective ownership (later changed to a system of tithing) and polygamy, which was practiced by Smith himself and by most leading Mormons in the church's early years.

Soon after the church's founding, Smith and the bulk of the members moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where a prominent preacher, Sidney Rigdon, and his following had embraced the faith. In Jackson county, Missouri, where it was revealed that Zion was to be established, Smith instituted a communalistic United Order of Enoch. But strife with non-Mormons in the area led to killings and the burning of Mormon property. Tensions between church members and local slave-owning Missourians, who viewed the Mormons as religious fanatics and possible abolitionists, escalated to armed skirmishes that forced 15,000 of the faithful to leave Missouri for Illinois in 1839, where Smith built a new city, Nauvoo. There the commercial success and growing political power of the newcomers once again provoked renewed hostility from their non-Mormon neighbours. Smith's suppression of some dissidents among the Nauvoo Mormons in 1844 intensified non-Mormon resentment and furnished grounds for his arrest. Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered by a mob while both were in jail in Carthage, near Nauvoo, on June 27, 1844.

After Smith's unexpected death, the government of the church was left in the hands of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, whose senior member was Brigham Young. Ignoring several claimants to the church leadership, the majority of its members supported Young, who became the church's second president. Increasing mob violence, however, made their continued presence in Nauvoo untenable, and Young thus led a mass 1,100-mile (1,800-km) migration to Utah in 1846-47. There they hoped to establish a commonwealth where they could practice their religion without persecution. Envisioning a new state that he called Deseret, Young helped to establish more than 300 communities in Utah and neighbouring territories. To build the population, he sent missionaries across North America and into Europe. Converts were urged to migrate to the new land, and it is estimated that about 80,000 Mormon pioneers traveling by wagon, by handcart, or on foot had reached Salt Lake City by 1869, when the arrival of the railroads made the journey much easier.

Despite the obstacles presented by the desert area of the Great Basin, the pioneers made steady progress in farming, partly through their innovative methods of irrigation. Their petition for statehood in 1849 was denied by the U.S. government, which instead organized the area as a territory, with Young as its first governor. Future efforts to gain statehood were blocked by the announcement in 1852 of the church's belief in polygamy, a practice that had begun quietly among its leaders during the Nauvoo period. Conflicts between Young and federal officials over this practice and over Mormon attempts to establish a theocratic government continued during the 1850s. Tensions increased following the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a group of Mormons killed members of a wagon train passing through the region. In response to the conflicts with federal officials, U.S. Pres. James Buchanan dispatched a military expedition to Utah to suppress the Mormon "rebellion" and to impose a non-Mormon governor, Alfred Cummings, on the territory. Fearing that the purpose of the expedition was to persecute their faith, Young called on the Utah militia to prepare to defend the territory. A negotiated settlement was reached in 1858, and Cummings eventually became popular with members of the church. Although the abortive military episode, later known as "Buchanan's blunder," aroused widespread public sympathy for the Mormons, it succeeded in ending direct religious control of Utah's territorial government.

After his death in 1877, Young was succeeded as church president by John Taylor, the senior member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles. During Taylor's presidency, the U.S. government intensified its campaign against polygamy. In 1890 Taylor's successor, Wilford Woodruff, announced the church's abandonment of the practice in order to conform to U.S. law, and in 1896 the territory of Utah was admitted into the union as the 45th state. However, Woodruff's pronouncement, the "Manifesto," forbade polygamy only in the United States, and for a decade or so it continued in Mexico and other places outside the U.S. government's jurisdiction.

In the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more than 150 different independent groups have formed to follow new prophets, to defend polygamy, or to continue other practices that were discarded by the mainstream church. An important minority, for example, rejected Young's leadership and remained in the Midwest. The largest of these groups, which gained the cooperation of Smith's widow Emma and his son Joseph Smith III, formed the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now known as the Community of Christ) in 1852-60. The Reorganized Church eventually settled in Independence, Missouri, which Smith had designated as the location of Zion.

Many smaller splinter groups also arose after Smith's death. One faction moved to Independence and purchased the so-called Temple Lot, the site chosen by Smith for the new temple. The possession of this valued property embittered relations with the Reorganized Church, whose headquarters were on land immediately to the south. Other factions that rejected Young's leadership included one led by Sidney Rigdon and another that Apostle Lyman Wight took to Texas. David Whitmer and Martin Harris, two early converts who, along with Joseph Smith, testified that they saw the golden plates and the angel Moroni, eventually set up a church in Kirtland, Ohio. In 1847 James Jesse Strang established a polygamous community of about 3,000 people on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, whose members became known as Strangites.

Among the most significant of Latter-day Saints factions to emerge in the 20th century were groups that practiced polygamy. The first such colony was established at Short Creek (now Colorado City), just south of the Utah border in northwestern Arizona, in 1902, shortly after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints imposed excommunication as the penalty for entering into or officiating over a plural marriage; additional colonies were later founded in Mexico and Salt Lake City. Church and federal authorities have attempted to stamp out the polygamy-practicing groups, which nevertheless claim a membership of more than 30,000.

Scriptures

While the Community of Christ uses Smith's unfinished translation of the Bible, which incorporates prophecies of his own coming and of the Book of Mormon, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prefers the King James Version. Of great importance to both churches and factions is the Book of Mormon, which recounts the history of a group of Hebrews, led by the prophet Lehi, who migrated from Jerusalem to America about 600 bce. There they multiplied and split into two groups: the virtuous Nephites, who prospered for a time, and the hostile Lamanites, who eventually exterminated the Nephites.

Other revealed writings, including Smith's translation of "Egyptian" texts that he declared to be the Book of Abraham, were incorporated into the Pearl of Great Price. The Doctrines and Covenants contains Smith's ongoing revelations through 1844. The editions of the Utah church and of the Community of Christ add the revelations of their respective church presidents (who, like Smith, are regarded as prophets). The Community of Christ's version of the Doctrines and Covenants omits several of Smith's revelations that appear in the Utah edition.

Doctrines

Mormon beliefs are in some ways similar to those of orthodox Christian churches but also diverge markedly. The doctrinal statement, the Articles of Faith, for example, affirms the belief in God, the eternal Father, in his Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. These three beings-the Godhead-are considered to be distinct entities (a doctrine known as tritheism) rather than united as the Trinity. Although Mormons believe that Christ came to earth so that all might be saved and raised from the dead, they maintain that people's futures are determined by their own actions as well as by the grace of God. They also stress faith, repentance, and acceptance of the ordinances of the church, including baptism by immersion and laying on of hands for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as a memorial of Christ's death.

© MedioImages/Getty Images

Mormons believe that faithful members of the church may receive God's fullness and thus become gods themselves. Everyone who ever lived, save for a few who reject God having known his power, will receive some degree of glory in the afterlife. At Christ's return to earth, he will establish a millennial kingdom. After the millennium, the earth will become a celestial sphere and the inheritance of the righteous. Others will be assigned to lesser kingdoms named terrestrial and "telestial."

Members of the church regard orthodox Christian churches as apostate for lacking revelation and an authoritative priesthood, although they are thought to be positive institutions in other respects. Smith, they believe, came to restore the institutions of the early Christian church. Although calling people to repent, Smith's creed reflected contemporary American optimism in its emphasis on humanity's inherent goodness and limitless potential for progress.

Institutions and practices

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dissolves the distinctions between the priesthood and the laity. At age 12 all worthy males (a category which until 1978 generally did not include black men) become deacons in the Aaronic priesthood. They become teachers at age 14 and priests at age 16. About two years later they may enter the Melchizedek priesthood as elders, and thereafter they may enter the upper ranks of the church priesthood hierarchy. In addition to service in the priesthood, many members accept the call to missionary work. Single young men, generally between the ages of 18 and 25, undertake a 24-month proselytizing mission, and single young women age 19 and older undertake a mission of 18 months. Many retired married couples also serve as missionaries. This missionary work helped to make the faith one of the fastest-growing religions in the world.

Baptism, a rite signifying repentance and obedience, is understood as essential for salvation. Baptism is administered to children at age eight and to adult converts and may be undertaken by proxy for those who died without knowledge of the truth. The Mormons' interest in genealogy proceeds from their concern to save the deceased population of the earth, and meticulous genealogical information is compiled in order to identify candidates for baptism by proxy. In 2010, after complaints from some Jewish groups, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints changed its procedure for collecting genealogical information, in order to prevent the names of Jews who had died during the Holocaust from being proposed for baptism by proxy. As of 2018, the church had some 4,800 family history centres in 134 countries to assist with genealogical research for anyone, regardless of faith.

Baptism for the dead, endowment (a rite of adult initiation in which blessings and knowledge are imparted to the initiate), and the sealing of husbands, wives, and children (which may also be undertaken by proxy for the dead) are essential ceremonies that take place in the temple. During the endowment, the person is ritually washed, anointed with oil, and dressed in temple garments. This is followed by a dramatic performance of the story of Creation, the Fall, and the return of God. Temples, which are distinct from the church meetinghouses used for weekly services, are reserved for such ceremonies. There are more than 150 temples worldwide.

Idaho Falls Merrill Humberg

Structure of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The "General Authorities" of the church are the First Presidency (the church president and two councillors), the Council of the Twelve Apostles, the First Quorum of Seventy, and the presiding bishop and two councillors, who manage the church's property and welfare programs. All are "sustained in office" by the regular and now-ritualized vote of confidence at the semiannual General Conference, which is open to all believers and to outside observers as well. Until the year 2000, conferences were held in the dome-shaped tabernacle east of the temple in Salt Lake City. Constructed between 1864 and 1867, the tabernacle had become unable to accommodate conference attendance, and its use was largely replaced by the new LDS Conference Center, which has a capacity of nearly 22,000 and is one of the largest theatre-styled auditoriums in the world.

At the local level, members of the church are divided into "stakes" of 4,000 to 5,000 members under stake presidents and into wards, each of a few hundred members, under a bishop. The religious life of each member is focused on the ward, through which religious, economic, and social activities, tithing, and the operation of the church's elaborate welfare plan are organized.

The Community of Christ, which was known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints until 2001, holds less firmly to the Book of Mormon than its sister church and rejects various teachings, especially baptism on behalf of the dead and tithing. It never practiced polygamy or sealing for the afterlife. It does not perform temple ceremonies at the Kirtland, Ohio, temple, which it owns, or at the temple in Independence, Missouri. The office of church president was for many years passed to lineal descendants of Joseph Smith III. With the end of the presidency of Wallace B. Smith in 1996, however, no Smith descendant was available to take the reins of leadership. That year the church's World Conference chose W. Grant McMurray as its new president.

J. Gordon Melton The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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