Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune, April 17, 2009
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“When I was baptized into the LDS Church in March 1986, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of love,” Joseph Sitati recalled. “I loved everybody and everything. It invigorated me.
Some 23 years later, Sitati, a Mormon superstar in Kenya, has now arrived where Carmack was—in the First Quorum of Seventy. He is the first black African to join that august body, the church’s second most important tier of leaders.
“The calling is quite intimidating,” Sitati said last week before returning to Nigeria, where he is currently supervising a corps of Mormon missionaries. “I never thought of being a member of this high council. I consider it a great honor, but heavy responsibility.”
The appointment is also symbolically important.
After all, the LDS Church did not allow men of African descent anywhere to be ordained to its all-male priesthood until 1978. Missionary work did not begin among black Africans until after that.
Now there are more than 250,000 African members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across 27 countries.
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The forgotten continent » Mormon missionaries arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, as early as 1853, but only preached to the British colonists. After all its converts emigrated to Utah, the mission was closed until 1903, when it once again approached only whites. The church slowly grew there and in Johannesburg, until then-President David O. McKay visited several thousand members in 1954.
Meanwhile, Mormon pamphlets and magazines were circulating through Nigeria and Ghana, causing many people to adopt what they knew of this American faith and create congregations on their own. None of this was approved by church leaders in Salt Lake City. Representatives from Utah had to be sent to Ghana to excommunicate members who were dancing and drumming and, on occasion, being led by a woman prophet while calling themselves Mormon.
Some stayed, though, and were ready for real baptism after the 1978 revelation opening the LDS priesthood to “all worthy men.” In the following decade, membership took off in Ghana, Nigeria and the countries of East Africa.
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During his two decades in the LDS Church, Sitati has seen explosive church growth in his home continent, including the building of temples in Accra, Ghana, and Aba, Nigeria. The Nigerian missionaries he supervises are baptizing someone every three weeks, with 60 percent retention.
“The people of Africa actively seek to know the truth,” he said. “This is very fertile ground for Mormonism.”
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Original article
(Posted on April 17, 2009)
Comments
Mormonism is like any other religion, e.g. it needs to expand and find new members to stay alive. If it wants to expand into Africa, then it certainly has to put forth an African face. Personally, I don’t agree, but then again, I’m not a Mormon.
The highest TFR among whites can be found in the Mormons. Utah is one of the fastest growing states (once you subtract illegal growth in Texas and California).
Mormonism is like any other religion, e.g. it needs to expand and find new members to stay alive. If it wants to expand into Africa, then it certainly has to put forth an African face. Personally, I don’t agree, but then again, I’m not a Mormon.
Posted by idareya at 8:32 PM on April 17
You’re so right Idreya. Organized religion needs to expand to survive and so it always depends upon more than one culture, ethnicity and race to support it. Faith ought to be a personal thing, not a set of rituals owned and provided by any organization. This is why freedom of conscience is so important an American right - we become psychological slaves to other powers otherwise.
Funny how one year no blacks can be ordained priests, then things change. So that means they were wrong all along about their beliefs, or, it was done to appear politically correct, so they could not be construed as racists. I would question any church that changed it’s long held policies the way they did for questionable motives.
This is not the first black member of the Quorum of the Seventy. There was a black Brazilian several years back. The real authority in the Church rests with the 15 apostles, 3 who make up the presidency of the Church and 12 who comprise the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. They are all white, and only one, Dieter Uchtdorf, is non-American. He is also probably the only apostle in Church history not to be descended from “pioneer stock.”
The Mormon (“LDS”) Church is not adding educated members anywhere in the world. The First World is completely lost. Seriously. Most practicing young Mormon men serve 2 year missions. Ask the ones who went to Europe, Canada, Japan, or English-speaking US missions how many people they baptized. Zero is not an unlikely answer, and if he says more than two he’s probably lying. Two years spent on a mission for zero converts. In contrast those who go to Africa or Latin America may convert dozens, though retention rates are low (
First World conversion rates have been declining rapidly since the 70s, but the internet was their death sentence. Information that you usually had to get from a library or bookstore you can now get with a 2 second search on Google. A lot of early Mormons were fairly intelligent, if uneducated. White Mormons in the US are of slightly above average intelligence compared to all US whites. But the IQ of those joining now is falling rapidly. The Mormon Church is headed towards irrelevance.
Well, I hope they know what they are doing. I have always thought Mormons to be a supremely moral lot, with great financial awareness, regardless of the controversy surrounding their beginnings.
Besides, the Mormon artist Arnold Friberg is superb. I would get a copy of the Book of Mormon just to see his illustrations, but I do not know which edition has them.
The Mormons in Salt Lake City would arrest Joseph Smith if he showed up in Temple Square today. That should tell you something about them.
The real Mormons are the FLDS and similar groups. They still follow Joseph Smith’s eternal teachings. Yup. Smith said they were eternal.
The group in Salt Lake City just want to be loved and to be like any other plain wrap religion.
Watch out for the Mormons on immigration as they believe at this point in time only the unspoiled third-world masses are open to the Mormon gospel versus educated Westerners. Particularly Hispanics who Mormons believe are, at least in part, members of an ancient Hebrew tribe (don’t ask).
http://writesong.blogspot.com/2009/04/mormons-and-illegal-immigration.html
Therefore, if this portends a trend then Utah will eventually become a destination for too many of the Mormons third-world baptisms in a formally white enclave.
Are blacks allowed in the Amish community?
After this heart warming piece you should go look at www.zasucks.com and scroll down to the “witches being burned” article. Another fine piece of African civilization on display.
“Faith ought to be a personal thing, not a set of rituals owned and provided by any organization”—Whiteplight
I felt that way too, Whiteplight.
Until I went to Europe a few weeks ago.
To see St. Chappelle and Notre Dame in Paris, St. Paul’s in London, and the little St. Paul’s in Brighton, not to mention the cathedrals in Boppard and Freiberg, Germany—all done by “organized” religion—made me rethink the way I felt.
Organized religion built these breathtaking cathedrals, and I am very glad they did—they are literally drenched in overwhelming beauty, the like of which I have never seen before. They are an incredible testimony to European artistry, devotion, craftsmanship, and engineering.
So I am doing a re-think on the organized religion thing. If it can do things like this …
So I am doing a re-think on the organized religion thing. If it can do things like this …
True, many of the muslim mosques are beautiful in their architecture but fiendish in their ideaology and agenda for the world, which DOES NOT INCLUDE all of that wonderful White Christian architecture.
Mormonism is like any other religion, e.g. it needs to expand and find new members to stay alive. If it wants to expand into Africa, then it certainly has to put forth an African face. Personally, I don’t agree, but then again, I’m not a Mormon.
Posted by idareya at 8:32 PM on April 17
I was born and raised a Mormon, in South Africa, though I haven’t been in a church, apart from weddings and funerals, in 30 years. And I agree with you.
Mormons are encouraged to marry in their temples, but in many countries this is not legally recognised - one reason being that the temples are not open to the public. So a civil marriage is often performed in their meeting houses, or chapels, and followed by the religious ceremony in the temple. Additionally, not every member is allowed to enter the temples; you have to be in good standing. So, for example, when my daughters married in American temples, I was not allowed to attend, but had to wait outside in my rented tux to join the photo session afterward. And, of course, many Mormons don’t live in a country that has a temple. So for many members, the civil ceremony is all that’s available.
Now, these civil marriages are quite a nice perk of membership. The church charges nothing for the use of the facilities, including the hall for the reception after the ceremony, and the services of the marriage officer, organist etc. The ladies usually join in the work of preparation. Used to be, you could get quite a nice traditional wedding, and not spend a fortune.
Then came the rehabilitation of the "seed of Cain". I should mention that, under the old so-called Apartheid regime, most Mormon missionaries in South Africa were American, and were prohibited by their visa conditions from preaching to the blacks. After the fall of civilization, many black people joined the church, and they also wanted their nice traditional church weddings. Only problem was, their traditional weddings included quite a lot of ululation and stuff that was deemed unseemly.
So, what to do? Obviously, you can’t discriminate. So they banned all "traditions of the fathers". Problem solved. No more wedding march. No more giving the bride away. No music that isn’t in the official hymn book. Worldwide. Thank you, Africa.
You see, that’s what you get when you try to graft a Western religion like Christianity (and despite what you may have heard, Mormonism is a Christian religion) onto an African population. There will always be a substrate of animism. Just as the early Christian church was changed by its adoption as the official church of Rome.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not knocking the Mormons. Though I lost the faith, I still consider them "my people" - some of the nicest, most upstanding and moral people in the world. As one poster here once put it, Utah is what the United States should have been. It just saddens me to see the recent drift to the left.
What’s the mystery here? If blacks aren’t horning in on or invading what other have built or done what would they do with their spare time?
What’s the mystery here? If blacks aren’t horning in on or invading what other have built or done what would they do with their spare time?
Loot, Rob, Rape, Pillage,Burn, Riot, you know, the USUAL. And they usually have LOTS OF SPARE TIME.
