Bibliographies: 'Relief Society (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Relief Society (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emerged within the Mauritian landscape in the early 1980s after the arrival of foreign missionary work. With a population of Indian, African, Chinese, French heritage, and other mixed ethnicities, Mauritius celebrates multiculturalism, with many calling it the “rainbow nation”. Religiously, Hinduism dominates the scene on the island, followed by Christianity (with Catholicism as the majority); the small remainder of the population observes Islam or Buddhism. Although Mauritian society equally embraces people from these ethnic groups, it also has historically marginalized communities who represent a “hybrid” of the mentioned demographic groups. This article, based on ethnographic research, explores the experiences of Mauritian Latter-day Saints as they navigate the challenges and implications of membership in Mormonism. Specifically, it focuses on how US-based Mormonism has come to embrace the cultural heritage of people from the various diaspora and how Mauritian Latter-day Saints perceive their own belonging and space-making within an American born religion. This case study presents how the local and intersecting adaptations of language, race, and local leadership within a cosmopolitan society such as Mauritius have led to the partial hybridization of the Church into the hegemony of ethnic communities within Mauritian Latter-day Saint practices. These merging of cultures and world views prompts both positive and challenging religious experiences for Mauritian Church members. This article illustrates the implications and pressures of the Church trying to globalize its faith base while adapting its traditionally Anglocentric approaches to religious practices to multiracial, multicultural cosmopolitan communities such as Mauritius.

Abstract:

Using the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Canada as an example, I argue that religious minorities who are deemed to be harmful to society are controlled through law, either directly by legislation, through judicial application of legislation, or, more insidiously, through the discursive practices of government agents such as immigration officials. Both the legal controls imposed and the types of resistance or compliance offered by religious minorities shift and change over time. Definitions of religious freedom also shift and change over time. While the primary focus of this article is a case study of the Latter-day Saints and polygamy, it is prescient of other contemporary issues of social control of religious minorities. In these post-September 11 times, there has been a shift in rhetoric from nation-building to nation-preservation. Polygamy still plays a role in the construction of citizenship in Canada through the filtering of immigrants, but current social, political and economic circ*mstances differ from those the Latter-day Saints faced in the 1800s.

Abstract:

"I believe in the principle of faith and works, and that the Lord will more abundantly bless a man who realizes everything he prays, and not the one who only prays." These words belong to the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Ezra Taft Benson.Economic and labor ethics is an important component of the moral foundations of society. The historical evolution of different modes of production, trade, exchange, etc. is deeply connected with the history of religions. All the national and world religions engaged not only in spiritual and moral issues, but also directly interfered in the daily economic and economic activities of people, forming in them a certain type of socio-economic thinking, authorizing the divine authority of property, property, a certain type of property relations of people, blessing some economic activities and negatively related to others.

Abstract:

AbstractIn his libertarian manifesto, For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard [15] points to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an excellent model for what a private welfare program would look like in a free society. In analyzing this same organization, we can see that nearly 50 years later Rothbard’s analysis is truer than ever. Unlike the public welfare programs in the U.S., the LDS church has successfully helped lift countless individuals out of poverty and off the welfare rolls by increasing their level of productivity – a point that Henry Hazlitt [7] made in his book, The Conquest of Poverty. Public welfare, on the other hand, has continuously failed to increase the standard of living or even lift those it ostensibly seeks to help out of poverty; on the contrary, it is a system that prevents economic independence. The analysis in the present paper seeks to revive, amplify and bring up to date Rothbard’s observation and provide further insight on key factors that other private organizations can take from the Church’s model. Ultimately, it reveals that the successful journey out of poverty is not a public but rather a private endeavor.

Abstract:

The multifunctionality enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine and the tolerance of various religious groups that prevail in the Ukrainian society allow each citizen to find his way to God and publicly reveal his own worldview and worldview, including in the media. Therefore, in our society there should be an interest in different denominations and religious movements that are represented in the media space of the state. Some confessions, namely, the UOC-KP, UkhC, UOC-MP, Muslims, Jews, Protestant churches, are to some extent justified. But in Ukraine there are many religious organizations, around which there is a so-called information blockade, to a certain extent artificial. That is, some religious organizations operate outside the media, or information in the media about their activities is not sufficient, which often leads to various fabrications, speculation, which become the basis for stereotyped perception of a phenomenon.

Abstract:

Utah, USA, a state with a unique history of immigration and a distinctive religious context, provides a useful setting in which to study the intersection of racism and religious participation with immigrant integration. Utah is one of the Whitest states in the United States, with 4 of every 5 residents identifying as non-Hispanic White. It is also home to the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) which, until 1978, explicitly imposed race-based exclusions that prohibited or strictly limited Black members’ participation in church leadership, rituals, and ordinances. The state’s cultural, social, and religious history has contributed to widespread beliefs among modern Utah residents of Whites’ racial supremacy in contexts both mundane and divine. Much of Utah’s population growth since 1960, especially among non-White racial and ethnic groups, can be attributed to immigrants, who today compose nearly 10 percent of the state’s population. Given Utah’s religious, social, and cultural relationship to race, it is an ideal case to study the following question: how do race, religion, and culture shape integration among immigrants? Utilizing interviews with 70 immigrants who have lived in Utah for an average of 13 years, we find that both race and LDS Church membership influence immigrants’ social integration, creating a hierarchy of belonging among immigrants in Utah––with White LDS immigrants reporting the highest levels of integration and non-White, non-LDS immigrants reporting the lowest levels of integration. These findings suggest the power of cultural narratives––beyond explicit institutional policy and practice––in perpetuating racial inequality in society. Thus, efforts to increase integration and belonging among immigrants must not only include work to dismantle legal and structural inequalities but also efforts to actively change the cultural narratives associated with them.

Abstract:

This article will consider missionary work performed in Manitoba and Eastern Canada, and how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints progressed toward integration into Canadian society as another established minority religion searching for potential new members. By navigating through their Canadian settings, Latter-day Saint missionaries adjusted themselves and their Church to local expectations and environments, and constructed a new home for Mormonism in Canada. Three ways that Latter-day Saint missionaries negotiated their place in Canada include evolving relationships with the Canadian public through missionary encounters, renting meeting spaces from fraternal organizations and then constructing their own meetinghouses, and organizing local, auxiliary organizations that aided non-members. The Canadian context, the Latter-day Saint missionary experience, and the growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Canada, reveals a process of negotiation. There exists a tension between integration and otherness. Latter-day Saints balanced this tension by on some levels maintaining their distinctiveness, while at the same time blending into Canadian expectations. How the Latter-day Saint missionaries responded to these barriers, the challenges related to communicating with the Canadian public, finding spaces to congregate, local leadership roles, and participating in different aspects of Canadian society, tells a story of a new religion integrating into a new environment.

Abstract:

Abstract This article provides the first history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a legal entity. It makes two contributions. First, this history recasts the story of the so-called first disestablishment, revealing that it was longer and more contentious than is often assumed. Disestablishment produced a body of corporate law encoded with strong theological assumptions. Because corporate law was the primary mechanism for regulating churches, this created problems for groups like Roman Catholics and Latter-day Saints who did not share the law's theological commitments. Far from being settled in the early 1830s, the first disestablishment continued to spawn bitter legal battles into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Second, this article reveals legal personality as one of the key points of conflict between the Latter-day Saints and American society. This is a useful corrective to accounts that emphasize polygamy and theocracy as the points of legal contention. An understanding of the history of the church as a legal entity supplements these stories by revealing how the hard-fought legal battles of the late nineteenth century can be seen as an extension of the process of legal disestablishment that began during the American Revolution.

Abstract:

This qualitative study was designed to produce a theoretical model to illustrate marital adjustment as a husband becomes a bishop (a lay-clergy position) in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Individual interviews were conducted with the husband and wife of six married couples wherein the husband was currently serving as a bishop. Grounded theory methods and elements of phenomenological research were used to collect and analyze the data. The model presented depicts the adjustment process that begins with the marital relationship prior to the husband becoming an LDS bishop. The husband then becomes an LDS bishop and begins to perform the duties and responsibilities of his new lay-clergy position. Consistent with systemic thinking, the husband's acceptance of the position of bishop affects the husband and the wife individually in turn affecting the marital relationship. The mutual influences between the husband and wife as individuals and the marital relationship constantly change both in flow and direction. The effects of the calling included both points of satisfaction and points of dissatisfaction/disconnect or a parallel set of experiences both for the individual and for the marital relationship. The parallel set of experiences and the resulting effects of the husband's service as an LDS bishop on the marital relationship produce a dialectical tension between covenants or promises that both the husband and the wife have previously made. One covenant is to serve God by sacrificing to build His kingdom on earth through service to others and the other covenant is to have a strong marriage. Adjustment strategies which included both individual and couple strategies were identified. Several themes identified in this study are consistent with existing empirical and theoretical literature. However, new themes were identified including the husband experiencing increased empathy towards his wife, wives feeling "left behind" spiritually, the challenge of negotiating issues of confidentiality, the influence of family of origin and current stressors on the adjustment process, and couples seeking support from those in positions of higher authority.

Abstract:

Research on attachment suggests that attachment styles do exist in adulthood and appear to be an evolutionary product of infancy. This research was particularly focused on examining the relationship between attachment styles at various stages of the marital life cycle and the relationship of these styles of attachment to styles of love and marital quality among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

Abstract:

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Family Sciences.
Appendix A. includes materials on the Parent-Teen workshop in the Provo Utah Edgemont South Stake and advertising letters to be used for stake presidents, bishops, priesthood meetings, Relief Society meetings and Sunday announcement sheets. Bibliography: leaves 55-59.

Abstract:

Generally, in Africa and Uyo, Nigeria in particular, religion is not only a social phenomenon but an overriding force to reckon with. Therefore, when religious devotees of different religions do not comprehend the subject, their actions breed social misunderstanding and conflict among religions in society. Phenomenological study of religions is aimed at bringing the essence of religion to the doorpost of its practitioners. The methodology adopted in this chapter was historical and analytical. The methods exposed the researcher to both primary and secondary information about the work. Findings show that there is a misunderstanding of the essence of religion by some adherents of both the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Christianity; each believes that his/her religion is the best in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. The work concludes that when religious culture vis-à-vis the essence of religion is properly understood, love for each other will be realized.

Abstract:

Descriptions of cultural practices can be enriched by understanding the cognitions and emotions occurring in the minds of the people enacting the practices. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is new enough that its historical developments and ongoing practices are well documented. To explain these developments and practices, this chapter describes the images, concepts, values, beliefs, rules, analogies, and emotions that are the most important mental representations operating in Mormon minds. These representations have a neural basis in semantic pointer processes of representation and binding, and they contribute to a variety of deductive, abductive, and emotional inferences. The social process by which Mormon beliefs and practices spread from one individual to another can best be understood as the results of semantic pointer communication carried out by interactions ranging from church rituals to missionary work.

Abstract:

This chapter examines the preparation for and eventual abandonment of Nauvoo, Illinois, by the Mormons following the 1844 death of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism). It marks the failed attempts to sell properties by the faith’s new leader, Brigham Young, and the eventual resettlement of the city by a French communal society known as the Icarians. The chapter also traces the Icarian’s demise and the German farmers and vintners who next occupied Nauvoo, transforming it into a rural river village by occupying, repurposing, or removing remaining Mormon structures while remaking the city’s religious character.

Abstract:

This chapter examines Bautista’s U.S. residency (1910 to 1922) and its influence on his spiritual trajectory. It argues that during his first twelve years in the United States, Bautista experienced a decade of unprecedented personal growth and opportunity, which probably led him to expect a lifetime of increasing responsibility as a Mexican member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bautista crossed the border a month before the Mexican Revolution began. He settled first in Mesa, Arizona, but moved to Utah in 1913 where he helped found the first Spanish-speaking branch of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. Though initially a gardener on Temple Square, Bautista became president of his congregation and the Lamanite Genealogical Society, mastered temple rituals and Mormon doctrine, published an article, and spoke to audiences about his experiences as a Mexican Mormon.