‘The Australian’ Newspaper Looks into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Foreign Editor for The Australian newspaper, Greg Sheridan, wrote about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last week. An article, “The Mormons may seem strange, but they’re doing God’s work,” was published by The Australian on Saturday 17 August.

In the article, Sheridan suggests that Latter-day Saints have some different teachings and practices to other Christians, but that they are “doing God’s work.” He says that the Church of Jesus Christ, “like all serious religious traditions, deserves respect. What it plainly has the power to do is inspire its adherents to decent lives and significant service of others.”

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Sheridan uses the terms “Mormon Church” and “LDS Church” for brevity and recognition purposes, though members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prefer the full name of the Church to be used, or “Latter-day Saints.”

Watch a video featuring worldwide leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Russell M. Nelson, explaining why using the full and correct name of the Church is so important to Latter-day Saints. See the style guide for news media.

Given President Nelson’s counsel to Latter-day Saints to use the full and correct name of the Church instead of nicknames, the following excerpts of the article include corrected names for the Church:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a remarkable ability to call on its members’ energy, expertise, and financial resources. Out of a global membership of nearly 18 million, it has 78,000 young people on “missions”. We’ve all seen them, the polite young men in white shirts and ties who knock on the door and want to talk about Jesus. It also has 25,000 older people on “senior missions”. These are typically retired folk in good health sent to supervise young missionaries or to use their professional expertise in other ways. In the Pacific, the Church uses retired doctors to supervise Latter-day Saint-funded refurbishments of decaying hospitals. That’s more than 100,000 people actively working in missions.

Like most religious groups in Western societies, Latter-day Saints have suffered defections in substantial numbers. Young people find their values misalign with the church’s conservative moral teachings, or move away from home and lose the habit of church. Covid accelerated this, as recorded in The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. Nonetheless, there’s still net growth in Latter-day Saint ranks worldwide. There are 24,000 conversion baptisms every month and nearly 100,000 Latter-day Saint kids are born annually. The growth is slower than it was, but it’s still growth.

Why is the Church of Jesus Christ growing? I spent a few days in Salt Lake City trying to answer those questions…The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints is a global religion entirely made in America. It was founded in New York in 1830 by Joseph Smith. The young Smith told of a vision he had of God the father and God the son standing side-by-side. According to Church teaching, an angel revealed to Smith the whereabouts of an ancient Christian text, the Book of Mormon, which Smith, with divine assistance, translated. It told of an ancient Jewish migration to North and Central America, and also of the appearance of Jesus Christ in North America after his death and resurrection in Jerusalem. The Latter-day Saint doctrine is that the community that Christ originally founded came to an end after his departure from earthly ministry. God chose to re-establish the one true church through the prophecy of Smith. Latter-day Saints were periodically, at times savagely, persecuted in different parts of the US. The community fled west until it settled in the Salt Lake plain in Utah.

The Latter-day Saint beliefs are a long way from those held by any other Christian denomination. As a result, many Christians, while honouring the plain goodness in so much the Church of Jesus Christ does, don’t regard them as Christians. The Latter-day Saint view of God and Jesus, for these Christians, is too far away from the Nicene Creed. However, it’s not the purpose of this article to make any judgments at all on Latter-day Saint theology, which within its own tradition is rich and complex. Instead, the Church of Jesus Christ, like all serious religious traditions, deserves respect. What it plainly has the power to do is inspire its adherents to decent lives and significant service of others.

Back in Australia I interview another young missionary. *Deacon Tilmouth, 22, is an Aboriginal Church member from the tiny community of Mulga Bore, about 250km from Alice Springs. He’s **getting ready to go to a mission in Papua New Guinea. He’s excited and tells me that church membership gives his life purpose and direction. He got to know Latter-day Saint missionaries in his own community: “I’ve seen the missionaries doing their job, providing services and stuff, talking to people. I’ve seen a few missionaries struggle. So I helped them, teach them the language. I decided to help out the missionaries, and to serve on a mission myself.” He hopes after his mission to get a job, raise a family, travel to NZ.

*Elder Tilmouth’s first name is Keaton. **He is currently serving in the Australia Melbourne Mission while he awaits his visa so he can serve in Papua New Guinea.

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The Church of Jesus Christ, it seems to me, is a constructive influence in countless young and not so young lives. The missions are certainly designed to win converts, and the 24,000 convert baptisms a month are testimony to this. But equally important is the effect they have on the young people who go on the missions. The young missionaries, and the senior missionaries, pay to take part, they contribute towards their support in the mission. Missionaries from poorer countries, or poorer backgrounds, make only a modest contribution, something in accordance with their means. Both the missionaries themselves and the people they mission to can be eligible to study online with Brigham Young University. BYU is a well-funded and highly regarded university, difficult to get into, a beautiful campus with state-of-the-art facilities. For a young woman in PNG, say, the charge to do a credit-earning online course at BYU will be all but nominal, certainly a tiny fraction of what it costs BYU to provide. But it gets her on the road to a higher education and a decent job. For the missionaries themselves the experience is challenging, rewarding and tends to deepen and confirm their faith.

[Elder Peter F. Meurs, Pacific Area President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints], who comes from Warnambool in Victoria, where his parents were the town’s first converts to the Church of Jesus Christ, served on a mission in New Zealand when he was 19. It was a crucial, formative experience in his life: “For young people at a time when they are most likely perhaps to be self-centred, they’re serving others on the mission.”

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Meurs nominates what he says are the Church’s true priorities: “Our driving force is belief in and love of Jesus Christ, and the two great commandments: love God, and love your neighbour.”

The full article can be accessed by subscribers at The Australian.

Learn more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at ChurchofJesusChrist.org or talk with a member of the Church or with missionaries.

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