The Mormon Church is the dominant religious group in the US state of Utah. Furthermore, the community is recruiting more and more souls internationally, even in our country. Yet there is still an air of mystery about the ‘restoration church’. Business AM presented some statements about Mormons to their Flemish director of communications and asked how close they were to the truth.
1/ Many Mormons have a business background
“Exactly,” says communications director David Geens. “I think it has to do with the fact that our faith is actually a total system, where self-sufficiency is very important.” Why self-sufficiency?
“Not out of selfish principle, on the contrary, the great concern is being able to take care of one another and of each other. I always explain it with the following metaphor: if you want to save someone who is already drowning in the sea, then you have to know how to swim yourself.
And so that’s kind of the underlying idea, and it’s often worked out in Sunday School. Children are taught this from an early age. (…) If someone has lost their job with us, we intervene to pay the monthly rent, if necessary. But we also prepare that person to go back to work.”
One well-known believer is former US presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a Republican. He also comes from the business world. “Romney was in investing and made a name for himself running the Olympic Games profitably in the bankrupt city of Salt Lake City.”
Of the CEO
In an article on successful Mormon leaders at the beginning Work week to Gary Cornia, dean of the Marriott School of Management at the Mormon-led Brigham Young University, because this religion has produced so many CEOs.
“I’m not going to say we beat everyone, but we have a reputation,” he said. “And one of the opportunities that define young men and young women is the missionary experience.”
2/ Missionary experience and zeal for conversion are very important
Nearly every 19-year-old in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints goes through what might be called “leadership boot camp,” he says. Business Insider.
It’s a very strict two-year schedule: 10 hours a day, no TV, no dates. As many American teenagers enjoy their freedom as college freshmen, these Mormons are entering the most disciplined period of their lives. “Discipline is really, really hugely important,” says Geens.
At any time before Covid, approximately 55,000 Mormons were scattered around the world, Book of Mormon in hand, preaching the gospel. “Today it’s easier to talk to people who are already interested through video communication software. Then our brothers and sisters won’t have to put their feet in the door again,” laughs Geens.
“I don’t think there is a more challenging profession than that of a Mormon missionary,” Harvard Business School professor (and Mormon) Clayton Christenson once said Work week.
3/ Polygamy was once allowed, but it isn’t anymore
“It was like that for a short time (because in the Bible, for example, the ancestor Abraham also had several wives), but now it’s completely forbidden,” says Geens.
“There are still groups who call themselves Mormons (…) and practice polygamy, but they are not members of our church. Just because you define yourself doesn’t mean you are.”
4/ Faith was founded by an American teenager in his 19from century
“Right. It goes back to the early 1800s when a teenager named Joseph Smith Jr. was in an area near New York City, where really a multitude of churches sprang up during that time.
Those churches were all denouncing each other. This young man had read the promise in the Bible: if you want an answer, ask in honest prayer and God will give you wisdom. So he did, he went into the woods one morning, full of faith in that scripture.
He knelt down and God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him there, and he asked his question: Which church should I join? And the answer was: look, every church has a part of the truth, but in the last 1800 years the whole truth has disappeared.
God promised Smith to restore His church to the earth and that it would be the last time. This time we make sure that the true church will not be taken from the earth. Therefore: restored church”.
Book of Mormon
Joseph Smith Jr. was the one who wrote the “Book of Mormon” (perhaps known from the satirical Broadway musical, ed.). Church members believe in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. So: Mormons. Actually, that name is not 100% correct and counts as a nickname as well. The “Latter Day Saints” would be more correct. The “saints” are all members of the ecclesial community.