The Mormon Church Opens Up

Newsweek has an interesting and somewhat revealing cover article on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e., the Mormon Church) in its October 17 issue. Once even more secretive than the Vatican, the LDS leadership is offering up documents from Joseph Smith (whose two hundredth birth anniversary is in December) for scholarly study in what might be the largest act of openness the church has made since 1973.

Although it is the fastest growing Christian sect in the the United States, recent demogrpahic studies show that Mormons are expected to become a minority in Utah - the very state begun as the Mormon homeland in 1847 - by the year 2035, due to the waning influence in daily life in the Beehive State coupled with non-Mormon migration to the Salt Lake City area. Utah, we are told, is becoming more like the rest of America. Given the increase of religion in public life, the most patriarchal presidential administration in U.S. history, and the increasing number of pharamcists who refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions based on their own religious beliefs, howver, I'm convinced Bill Maher was right when he said the rest of America is actually becoming more like Utah. :-O