The Next Mormons — Part 11

One member is examining the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a biblical perspective view .1 Mormonism sponsored by Mormonism research ministry since 1979 Mormonism research ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism are millennial's changing the face of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Welcome to this additional viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director Mormonism research ministry and with me today is Eric Johnson.

My colleague at MRM the past couple of weeks we've been going through a book titled the next Mormons how millennial's are changing the LDS church. It's a book written by Janet Reese, who, as we mentioned is a very popular Mormon blogger and in my opinion I would even say she's probably a very good Mormon thinker. I do get a lot out of some of the blogs that she has written and as I said, I don't always agree with her conclusions, but I do think she does look at issues pertaining to Mormonism in a very thoughtful way. And the reason why we felt it important to even spend the third week on this book. It's because of this reason, a lot of the statistics that she includes in this book and I should mention that these stats come from a survey that she sent out called the next Mormons survey.

She refers to it in the book is simply an M. S. But this was a private survey. It was sent out to a number of people in the Mormon church with various demographics and then she categorizes all of them so that you can get an idea of how the thinking of the younger members of the LDS church is certainly in many cases very different than the older members in the LDS church now that alone. Eric shouldn't surprise us because it's not that difficult to see that in our culture. The younger people do think very differently but folks, you know what, that's nothing that's really new. It could be it that it's much more exacerbated now, but that's always been a general difference. That history shows, but let me just go over this very quickly because she talks about the greatest generation. She talks about the silent generation Melanie explain what that means.

The greatest generation. She classifies at his 1927 and before if they were born in 1927 or before that would be the greatest generation in the silent generation would be 1928 to 1944, or the end of World War II. And then there's the baby boomer generation which would be from 1945 to 1964. Then you have generation X, which she lists as 1965 to 1979 and then you have the millennial generation, those that were born between 1980 and 1998.

Now, as I've explained in past shows. Not everybody has the same exact dates for those categories but I would argue that Jana Reese is pretty close to what I find when it comes to these topics being discussed now she doesn't interview anyone after 1998 that would be the Jin Z there could be a number of reasons why she didn't include those but the millennial generation certainly is important because as she says, and that's the way she feels her statistics are going that group in the way it thinks is certainly in her opinion starting to have an influence on the way the LDS church is going and probably will have even more of an influence as they grow older and start taking more leadership positions within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Today we are going to begin with discussing the issue of popular culture.

What she had to say about that. What she goes through and ask questions regarding popular culture deemed unacceptable by LDS leaders and said, dealing with the boomer silence the Gen X and finally the millennial and so the first question is do they watch violent or graphic video games and the numbers were this person silent would be 6% Gen X 26%, about one out of four, and millennial's 35% which would be more than one out of three millennial's that seems to be understandable that the boomers and silent generation of boomers would be you and me.

We would fall into that category. Those kind of videos just don't appeal to me personally. I'm sure that there are some within the boomer generation that that would appeal to, but if your Latter Day Saints. Should you really be looking at that kind of stuff because the church is been I would say pretty explicit. As far as things like that are not supposed to be the behavior of a faithful Latter Day Saints for the boomers and the silence, generations, years, and mine.

I think space invaders Pong Pac-Man. I don't think you can consider those they might want to know what you're talking yes that was the early days back and that maybe the 70s with Pong and then in the 80s with with zinc, not violent, but it seems like more in the 1990s and on. You get well that's why you have Gen X at one out of four, and even more millennial's because I grew up with this. They always have known about violence in graphic video games, those that deal with killing or driving cars all over the place. I mean just the violence that is there and by the way the churches talked about this in their youth magazines in the inside magazine. This is not something that the latter-day St. people should know about the millennial's had been told probably even in primary, you're not supposed to be involved in these things, and yet the millennial's don't seem to care more than one out of three. I think that's a pretty high percentage will you get into this other category that she has. Besides the violent, graphic, video, and that is profane or sexually explicit music again. The younger generations have been kind of grown up in into this type of a trend now. I wouldn't say that the boomers were exempt from this because when I look back on some of the music that was around when I was graduating from high school in the 70s, there were certainly some lyrics and I remember there was a big push in our government to label those albums that had sexually explicit language. I don't even know if they have those kind of labels anymore because it's probably the probably because the culture is tipped over in that area so badly they would all be labeled. I don't know what to give the numbers on that and by the way, all of this information. It's hard. I know them or talking numbers. But if you go to our website MRM.org/the next Mormons with hyphens between the next Mormons you'll be able to see these charts 6% of boomers and silent have listened in the last six months to profane or sexually explicit music, very little. It's interesting because that's the same amount under violent graphic video didn't. There's maybe a connection there I go same 6% or who have said, who have been watching the violent video games that have also been listening to the music but then you have Gen X at 25%, one out of four, and millennial's about the same 37% more than one out of three millennial's that when you see the same you're talking about the profane, sexually explicit music is about the same percentages violent graphic video watching that yeah so it's a little bit more than one out of three for the millennial's, where hardly any boomers or silence are tempted by these types of recreational behaviors. Now Jana Reese goes into the next section and that is R-rated movies. Now I'm kind of surprised when it comes to this because I have found in talking with Latter Day Saints that they pretty much know that watching R-rated movies any type of R-rated movie.

You see, that's where I would have a problem because I think there are some R-rated movies that have some good historical value to it that are not sexually explicit. They may be violent, especially if there documentaries or movies having to do with historical things like war, for instance. Naturally they are going to be violent, but the Mormon church generally classifies all R-rated movies is something that its members should not be doing it and they said that so when you asked most Latter Day Saints exposed watch R-rated movies. Most would probably tell you know that's why I'm a little bit surprised at some of the stats it that she has in this category were even talking the passion of the Christ for us as it came out years ago Latter Day Saints were not gonna watch that but how many have watched rated R movies in the past six months boomers more than 1/428% Gen X 40% millennial's at 42% and is very similar with TV with mature ratings boomers 37% it's gone up from the 28%.

He watched rated R movies Gen X 43.5% and interestingly enough, millennial's went down on that one. Maybe because are not watching TV at 40%.

So the Gen X of 43.5 in the millennial's at 40 and then she gets into the area of pornography and she has two categories for this. She has soft pornography and explicit pornography when she had to say about that offer boomers soft pornography 7% have seen that in the last six months.

Explicit porn would be 5%. So were talking less than 1/10 boomers in silence, but it goes up slightly for Gen X at 14% for soft porn 11% for explicit porn and as far as the millennial's 19% have seen soft porn in the last six months, 18.5%.

About the same as the soft porn explicit porn so about a little less than 1/5 millennial's are looking at soft or explicit porn that's not a question that is normally asked in the interview when Latter Day Saints wants to go to the temple have to go to a an interview where they are being questioned by their ecclesiastical leaders and there are certain questions that are asked in this, certainly, of course, are you following the word of wisdom that seems to be a big deal. Are you drinking coffee are you partaking in alcoholic products were tobacco but there aren't any specific questions that deal with some of the things that were reading here either know they're not. There are 15 different questions in question number five is probably the closest you can get do you live the law of chastity. All that's based on your own opinion, and for a lot of Latter Day Saints you might be looking at pornography, they might think well I'm not having sexual relations with anybody else that I'm not supposed to, and so they wouldn't talk about the pornography.

I'm wondering if the church is ever going to come up with an updated list of questions that they include for the 21st century because I would think if somebody's practicing the things that are talked about in this chart that we've talked about today that they aren't qualified. They're not clean to be able to get there. Temple recommend, but it's only a bill for all of what we might say is bad news for all of these numbers. It seems like Jana Reese didn't seem to mind them.

In fact, she actually thought they were low. This is what she writes on page 165.

She says even though pornography exposure among Mormon millennial's is significantly higher than it is for their grandparents. This is still low compared to their non-Mormon peers. Overall, only a minority of Mormons are viewing pornography, even in small doses so she seems happy about this and she even goes into an idea of maybe they're not being honest in this survey because these are such bad things as pornography that maybe they were not writing down that fact that they were actually participating in that and then the very last sentence she writes in the section he says. Still, even though it looks kinda bad. A majority of young Mormons avoid these forms of entertainment.

So only 1/5 more of millennial's is participating in pornography and she says well compared to the world. She doesn't give us a number but what I don't know, 40 or 50% of the non-Mormon millennial's are out there doing these things and she seems to be comparing it to what the world is about and I don't know if that's a fair comparison think it's even fair to the young people who were involved in this because who cares what the world is doing. The fact is, there are certain standards that Latter Day Saints must meet. If they hope for celestial exultation and if this disqualifies them that I would think that would be something that the church should take notice of, and perhaps even change some of those interview questions to fit exactly what's going on in the culture today. Thank you for listening you would like more information regarding his research ministry.

We encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org you can request a free newsletter research. We hope you'll join us again as we look at another viewpoint is did you know that this year marks the 40th anniversary of Mormonism research ministry. All of us at MRM want to thank those of you who have faithfully supported our efforts to educate the body of Christ about the differences between Mormonism and Christianity as well as sharing God's grace with the Mormon people.

If you would like to give a special anniversary gift to further our efforts here at MRM.

Simply click the donate button on our homepage@mrm.org your support. As always, is greatly appreciated