Author: Wilfried Decoo
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Online Christmas concerts: Salt Lake brings inclusiveness and simplicity. Europe does not.
Besides the large public Christmas concerts at Temple Square, the Church also offers a less spectacular, pre-recorded one-hour Christmas concert for online view, worldwide. For 2022 the Church produced “The Promise of Christmas”. Bravo! I don’t know if they employ a Diversity Consultant, but they certainly hit the mark. Opening: immediate focus on two singing…
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Learn English: The Anglicization of the Church
At the Europe Area Conference in Munich, Germany, in August 1973, President Harold B. Lee, confronted with a variety of languages and the challenges for translators, said: “How helpful it would be if everyone now speaking your own native tongue would learn to speak English. Then you would be able to talk with us more…
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Mid-1990’s projections for 2020 revisited
Last week the church reported 16,565,036 members. What did some foresee a quarter of a century ago for 2020? Back to the past’s future. In the Ensign of August 1993 an analysis of church growth concluded: “If growth rates for the past decade remain constant, membership will increase to 12 million by the year 2000,…
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Martha’s Sacrament Revisited
In these challenging times, an experience I posted fourteen years ago on Times and Seasons comes back to mind. How would I draw a conclusion now? This was the experience: *** Martha was one of the older sisters in our branch. We counted a scant dozen of them, singles and widows, making more than half…
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Ethics and Mormon missionary work: what memoirs tell us
They are still teenagers, 18 or 19, and are sent out to change the lives of adults. The boys dress up like CIA-agents, the girls like old-school women. They typically have no clue about the national, regional, social, cultural, religious, or familial identities of the people they try to interest in their alien sect. They…
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Interesting times for linguists
These are interesting times for linguists. Church leaders and administrators are working to change names in order to emphasize the correct name of the Church of Jesus Christ, as asked by the First Presidency. A main question is semantic: to what extent will the overuse of Jesus Christ lead to a devaluation of its meaning…
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“Latter-day”: time to reconsider some translations?
The requirement to use the official name of the Church is meeting with much willingness to comply. One of the challenges is the length of the words, in particular for online references. If that is the case in English, it is all the more so in many non-English languages. What about the translation of latter-day?…
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Missionaries and European privacy laws
The Court of Justice of the EU just ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses must obtain consent from people before they take down their personal details during door-to-door preaching in order to comply with EU data privacy rules. See here the Reuters press note and here the more detailed European Court’s press release. It will obviously also apply to Mormon missionaries.…
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Welcome to guest blogger Hans Noot
We’re happy to welcome another “international” blogger, Hans Noot from the Netherlands. During the past 36 years Johannus D. T. (Hans) Noot coordinated Religious Education in Belgium and the Netherlands for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also supervised this work in Ireland, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Balkans and Italy. He…
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Consolidation of Church units: some reflections
Last month more than half of the Church units in Flanders were closed (Flanders is the Dutch-speaking, northern part of Belgium, with a population of 6.5 million). We shrank from 9 wards and branches to just 4. Historic cities like Bruges and Louvain lost their Mormon meeting place. It’s part of the major “contraction” of…
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For Dutch-speaking readers
I apologize for not having contributed much to Times and Seasons lately, but since last year I have chosen to concentrate on our Dutch-speaking members and friends. So much is available in English, so little in many other languages. Our site Mormoneninfo.be is geared to information that can enrich the understanding of Mormonism. This year the…
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International? Peripheries? Global? In search of a name
What is an adequate label for the areas outside of the so-called “Church’s center”? If it pertains to non-US countries, “international” is commonly used, but semantically it is flawed because the United States itself belongs to the circle of all nations. “Foreign” and “alien” sound non-inclusive for a church that emphasizes worldwide unity and belonging…
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Internationalizing Mormon Leadership: The Normal Pace
In the Salt Lake Tribune of October 5, Jana Riess regrets that the top leadership of the Mormon church is all-white and overwhelmingly American, and that the recent apostolic callings missed the chance to reflect the church’s international diversity. Others have expressed the same disappointment. I can appreciate their concern, but I wonder how many…
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The Perversity of Orthodoxy
I could have called this post “Same-sex marriage: The Belgian perspective,” but it includes more. “The perversity of orthodoxy” – that’s how one of the members in our Belgian ward identified the broader issues which triggered this post. He called me on Sunday afternoon, upset by a Sacrament meeting talk that same morning and in…
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Understanding Anger against Mormon Missionaries
We sometimes hear stories about Mormon missionaries who are confronted with angry people. We praise the missionaries for suffering for Christ like the apostles of old. We condemn the iniquity of those who loathe the messengers of the Lord. I am going to take up some perspectives of those angry people—because of my mother and…
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Martha’s Sacrament
Times & Seasons used to post, from time to time, something “From the archives”. So is this one. *** Martha was one of the older sisters in our branch. We counted a scant dozen of them, singles and widows, making more than half of the congregation and being its very backbone. When I got to…
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Utah same-sex marriage and the international church
Media around the world have been reporting the developments in Utah in relation to same-sex marriage. Nearly always the articles and broadcasts also mention the Mormon Church as the conservative force that tries to prevent same-sex marriage. What could be the effect of such reporting on the image of the Mormon Church worldwide? As far as…
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International Day of the Girl
Today is the International Day of the Girl. Yesterday, the Deseret News devoted an article to it but 24 hours later, no one had yet commented. Another article appeared today, but as of now, no comments yet. Perhaps there is no need to voice support for something everyone agrees on? Still, worldwide, tens of thousands of…
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The Mormon moment abroad: thank you, Jim Dabakis.
Michael Otterson advised the press: to understand Mormonism, go to the source and allow Mormons to define themselves. But what if these Mormons are survivalist Joel Skousen, Tea Party painter Jon McNaughton, or Tammy, an anti-government gun-toting rodeo queen from Overton, Nevada? All three were lengthily interviewed on French national radio.
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The blood of Israel in Europe
At a multi-stake conference in Berlin in 2010, Area President Erich W. Kopischke quoted Joseph Smith as having declared that “England, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland and Belgium have a considerable amount of the blood of Israel among the people which must be gathered out.”
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Primitive church
Times & Seasons used to post, from time to time, something “From the archives”. I revisited a post I published eight years ago, updated a few items, and thought it would still be worthwhile to read. My question to you: what are your memories of the “Primitive church”, if you ever had the privilege of experiencing it?
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Informing members timely – a PA function?
Last week a Belgian church member, with a long record of outstanding leadership service in the Church, put a link on his Facebook page. The link went to an article in a local newspaper, titled “Homosexuality kills more than smoking” (translated), reporting on the recent anti-gay outburst of Jim Wallace, head of the Australian Christian…
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Eugene
Eugene came from the Congo and accepted the gospel while studying in Belgium. After having obtained a doctorate in economics of developing nations, he returned to Africa. During the years with us, Eugene fulfilled many callings, willingly responding to the recurrent changes in positions our branch and district demanded in the relentless cycle of convert…
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Do not convert exchange students
When I was counselor in the Belgium-Netherlands mission presidency, the mission president asked me one day to handle the following. He had received a letter from a Utah family informing him that they had hosted a Belgian student as part of a high school exchange program. The family was “super excited” to tell the mission…
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EFY, hair, and culture
The bishop told Amadou he would not be allowed to attend EFY unless the braids were cut. Amadou comes from Mali. His family settled here a few years ago and became members of the Church.
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Sacrifice and retention: An unsolvable dilemma?
In Lectures on Faith, Joseph Smith taught that “a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has the power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation” (Lecture 6, verse 7). The Church’s dramatic history demonstrates that this call to sacrifice was not mere rhetoric. Extolling the endurance of…
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Mormons without the Mormon Church
In his recent conference address, Elder Ballard emphasized that we must avoid the name “Mormon Church” and instead use as much as possible the official, full name of the Church. His message stems from two concerns: (1) the missing association with the name “Jesus Christ”, hence no immediate recognition of the Church as Christian. (2)…
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Thou-thee-thy from other angles
In General Conference of April 2009, Elder Russell M. Nelson reminded us:
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Catholic parish registers belong to humanity
According to various news outlets the Catholic Church has ordered its dioceses to not allow Mormons access to parish registers any more. For decades, our Church has copied and preserved millions of pages of parish registers around the world, as part of the injunction to seek out ancestors and perform ordinances in their behalf. There…
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Gospel culture and the others
How do ‘we’ as Mormons learn to view ‘others’? We can try to answer this question from the angle of various approaches to the concept of “gospel culture”.