For those who live in Utah...

[JohnsonJones]

1 hour ago, Anddenex said:

Note, the concept of ministering and other changes were actually piloted outside of Utah -- you were aware of this right?

Elder Bednar also highlighted the first shall be last and the last shall be first referring to how specific changes have been piloted and made outside of the US, and are now coming to the US? Outside of Utah/US (last who are now first), and to the US/Utah (first who are now last).

So no, the changes are not stemming from problems in Utah.

You are right.  The changes are not necessarily stemming from Utah or have anything to do with them.

I was addressing the PERCEPTION of such things.

When changes come it almost always seems to be stated that this must be due to some problem they are having in Utah.

For example, the two hour changes...attributed to things that must be happening in Utah and such.

Another example, I have German relatives.  Many of them have not participated in Boy Scouts for YEARS (actually, longer than that for some).  The Church discussing that they are leaving Boy Scouts and are coming up with a New Young Mens (and young women's) program...

Must be due to things happening in Utah (or I suppose the States).  Things are working fine here (in relation to Germany when there).  Will do whatever program the church comes up with to replace the one they already have if there are changes to how it works in Germany.

It's not that it's actually true, it's an attitude that I find exists in many members when describing various things. 

Edited March 4, 2019 by JohnsonJones

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

On 2/27/2019 at 11:27 AM, carlimac said:

Have you ever lived outside of Utah? If so, how does your church experience compare with when you lived outside? Do you ever feel "oppressed" by living among so many members? Do you have non-member friends who you choose to socialize with? Is your testimony different than when you lived away from Utah? 

I live outside of Utah now, but I have lived in Utah. When I lived there, I never wanted to leave, but when I lived in Alaska I didn't want to leave there either or Washington (where I live now.)  Like @classylady said, I think with the right attitude you can be happy just about anywhere. Or maybe I just don't like moving. lol.

I have had non-members friends both in Utah and in other states. I love have a variety  of friends.

I don't think my testimony is affected by where I live.  

I also agree with @Jane_Doe ...I find more diversity of culture, race, religion and political beliefs outside of Utah. I like diversity a lot, so I will likely never move back to Utah. There's nothing wrong with Utah, I simply prefer where I am now. It's good to be happy wherever you are.

 

Edited March 5, 2019 by LiterateParakeet

[anatess2]

1 hour ago, LiterateParakeet said:

I live outside of Utah now, but I have lived in Utah. When I lived there, I never wanted to leave, but when I lived in Alaska I didn't want to leave there either or Washington (where I live now.)  Like @classylady said, I think with the right attitude you can be happy just about anywhere. Or maybe I just don't like moving. lol.

I have had non-members friends both in Utah and in other states. I love have a variety  of friends.

I don't think my testimony is affected by where I live.  

I also agree with @Jane_Doe ...I find more diversity of culture, race, religion and political beliefs outside of Utah. I like diversity a lot, so I will likely never move back to Utah. There's nothing wrong with Utah, I simply prefer where I am now. It's good to be happy wherever you are.

 

So this recent video on LDS.org about Elder Uchdorf's talk about longing for home... that's how I feel about my dad's hometown or my mom's hometown in the Philippines.  It's not really even my hometown because I grew up in another town but those 2 hometowns are where generations of my father's people (records go all the way back to the 1500's) and generations of my mother's people (all the way back to the Spanish occupation) have lived and most of my blood relatives are.   Our families have now gone global, with family living on 5 continents, but we all are connected through that hometown acting like our "base" such that if something ever happens and you need to reconnect, all you have to do is go "home" and even if you've never met anybody there nor know of anybody there, you're going to be welcomed and prepared a feast because you're family.

[LadyGunnar]

I live in Utah. My husband is from here. It's hard on me at times being here. I think it's ugly and too hot and/or cold. The people are very surface friendly. They are polite. Once people in our ward from out I am from out of state they changed. They adore my kids and husband but I am different.  It's been hard on me. 

   But truth be told, there are 'Utah mormons' all over the place. They think they are better than people who live in utah. They look down on the ones here.  They were several in my last ward that would spend hours dissing on Utah, the people and the church here. I guess it gets truer if you leave Utah.

[Traveler]

On 2/27/2019 at 12:27 PM, carlimac said:

Have you ever lived outside of Utah? If so, how does your church experience compare with when you lived outside? Do you ever feel "oppressed" by living among so many members? Do you have non-member friends who you choose to socialize with? Is your testimony different than when you lived away from Utah? 

 

Background: I grew up in Utah as did my parents and grandparents.  I have lived away for nearly 20 years now and the longing to get back "home" only intensifies the longer I'm away. But many people who have lived in my different wards over the past decades will sometimes disparage Utah and say things like, " Whew- we escaped!"  or "I'm out of Utah and never going back." 

I only had positive experiences growing up. I had some good non-member friends as well as a tight social group that has stayed together since highschool. 11 of the 13 friends as well as more than half my graduating class ( guessing) have stayed in the Salt Lake/Bountiful area. I had a firm testimony (most of the time.) Most of my family still lives there and they are puzzled about our living away all this time. ( Believe me it wasn't my choice.) 

What has changed over the past 20 years to make people dislike living there?

We're about 3 1/2 years from an empty nest and may have the chance to retire in Utah. Should we be looking elsewhere?  

I did not read all the posts in this thread - but I did read some.  I grew up in Utah and moved away after marriage and completing college.   Mostly I have discovered that there are differences among the Saints.  Most places outside of Utah, the wards cover a much larger geographical area than in Utah.  This often results in the demographics (diversity) of the ward Saint population to be vastly narrower in Utah than outside of Utah.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how well you fit into the demographics of your ward.  

I can casually walk around the entire outside border of my current Utah ward in less than 30 minutes.   Though one might think of our ward as an upper middle class and more affluent ward there are a surprising number of our residents that are economically over reached and as a result our stake is what is termed a fast offering negative stake - meaning that the fast offering donation contributions are less than the distributions in the stake.  From my past experience - this problem of need and contribution is diminished in many poorer areas and increases in other richer areas.  But this is a culture of entitlement generally in our affluent society rather than strictly church demographic.  

So I would say that if someone is not happy with the ward and Saints where they live or have lived - generally I believe it says more about them than it does those they attempt to criticize.

 

The Traveler

[mirkwood]

1 hour ago, LadyGunnar said:

But truth be told, there are 'Utah mormons' all over the place. They think they are better than people who live in utah. They look down on the ones here.  They were several in my last ward that would spend hours dissing on Utah, the people and the church here. I guess it gets truer if you leave Utah.

Interesting, I've received that sort of treatment in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, California, Arizona and Nevada.  You just have to change Utah in the above statements to any of these other states.

Edited March 6, 2019 by mirkwood

[Fether]

Saints are the same everywhere.

However, there is one thing that I did observe.

Being raised in Utah, you have to learn to be obedient to the commandments while active members of your own faith are not. I’ve found that Sinners of your own faith will try to tear down the righteous more than the sinners outside your faith will.

[Guest MormonGator]

2 hours ago, mirkwood said:

Interesting, I've received that sort of treatment in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, California, Arizona and Nevada.  You just have to change Utah in the above statements to any of these other states.

I've noticed that some people love to make jokes about other states, but when someone says something about their own home state-gloves come off. It's like religion. We love teasing those stupid fundamentalists but if anyone says anything about our own faith, we become sniveling babies and play the "I'm offended" card. 

[NeuroTypical]

It dawns on me that one of my more treasured memories, is something that just plain couldn't happen anywhere but Utah.

My mom used to play underground bingo in Salt Lake in the '70's.  Every Tuesday night.  One of her great regrets was she was sick one week, and the place got raided by the cops that night.  We all thought it a tragedy that she wasn't there to swing her cane around and give some poor @mirkwood a hard time about harassing the old and infirm.

[Vort]

4 hours ago, MormonGator said:

I've noticed that some people love to make jokes about other states, but when someone says something about their own home state-gloves come off. It's like religion. We love teasing those stupid fundamentalists but if anyone says anything about our own faith, we become sniveling babies and play the "I'm offended" card. 

Not really sure about this. Perhaps some people operate on this level, but few of the Saints I know. I hear very little teasing or mocking of other religions, and more than a little laughing at jokes about us. Sadly, this extends to laughing at unfunny "jokes", some of which really are offensive and others of which are merely dumb.

For example, some years ago, back during the short period when Conan O'Brien hosted The Tonight Show, he presented some song-and-tap-dance routine on his show featuring "The Mormon Tap-ernacle Choir" in response to Orrin Hatch releasing a religiously themed CD. (Which I listened to parts of and, with all due respect to Brother Hatch, I found to be more than a little cringe-inducing. But that's just a matter of taste, I suppose.)

Now, I don't hate Conan. I'm not a huge fan, but sometimes he's funny in a goofy way. I don't normally watch the guy, or any other late-night comedian. But I had heard about this funny, funny skit, and I was prepared to laugh heartily at it. Except...it was not funny. Not even a little, tiny bit. It was just purely dumb. Like you watch it and say, "There's 90 seconds of my life I'll never get back" dumb. Maybe even "I'd rather listen to Orrin Hatch's Hannukah CD than watch that skit" dumb.

I wish I could find a clip of the skit so that you could judge for yourself if it qualified as "funny". But for the time being, take my word for it that there was really nothing funny or particularly clever about it. It was self-mockery, not mockery of the Church, so it wasn't offensive. It just Was. Not. Funny. Yet I read literally dozens of paeans from Latter-day Saints laughing themselves to tears at this skit. I came up with exactly two reasons why this might be so:

(1) They really and truly did find it side-splittingly hilarious.

(2) They wanted to show all their family and friends how open-minded they were and could laugh at jokes about Mormons.

Possibility 1 above filled me with despair, to think that Latter-day Saints would have such a tenuous grasp on humor that they would find the skit so crack-me-up funny. Mildly amusing, perhaps, but nothing like the momentous breakthrough in comedy history they were treating it as being.

So I settled on Possibility 2 as the most likely reason. And to tell the truth, that didn't make me feel much better. Are we really so deeply insecure in other people's perceptions of our culture that we have to go out of our way to put on a false performance of laughing our heads off, just to virtue-signal to the world that we're cool enough to laugh at ourselves? (Ignoring for the moment that the skit was attempting to poke fun, not at Latter-day Saints or the Church, but at the writers' own openly professed ignorance about the Church.)

And if we don't ignore the parenthetical sentence I just wrote, what does it say about us that some writers aim for some silly, self-deprecating humor about their own ignorance, and Saints everywhere instead take it as some sort of direct commentary on the Church and its members, then proceed to laugh themselves silly in order to proclaim how open-minded and good-humored they are?

Here is another example of the same phenomenon, actually also involving Conan O'Brien.

http://www.ldsliving.com/Conan-O-Brien-Sends-Hilarious-Mormon-Missionary-Tweet/s/87131

In this case, Conan made some mildly humorous switch-up-of-expectations comment, worthy of a smile or even a chuckle, but hardly groundbreaking humor. Something you might forward to your spouse if you had a minute. Or maybe not. But the LDS Living staff made an article out of his tweet, calling it "hilarious". (The missionary responses, consisting of photographs of the missionaries in their short- or long-sleeved shirts along with some short comment, were also characterized as "hilarious".)

Honestly, this sort of thing reeks of desperation. "Look! Conan O'Brien talked about Mormon missionaries! We're FAMOUS!" In the long view, that's way more cringey than Brother Hatch's Hannukah CD.

EDIT: Looks like we actually discussed this little skit on this forum at the time:

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Vort

[Guest MormonGator]

1 minute ago, Vort said:

Now, I don't hate Conan. I'm not a huge fan, but sometimes he's funny in a goofy way. I don't normally watch the guy, or any other late-night comedian.

I love his work with The Simpsons, but other than that I'm not cool and hip enough to like him. Like you, I don't watch late night comedians. 

[carlimac]

On 3/6/2019 at 10:45 AM, LadyGunnar said:

I live in Utah. My husband is from here. It's hard on me at times being here. I think it's ugly and too hot and/or cold. The people are very surface friendly. They are polite. Once people in our ward from out I am from out of state they changed. They adore my kids and husband but I am different.  It's been hard on me. 

   But truth be told, there are 'Utah mormons' all over the place. They think they are better than people who live in utah. They look down on the ones here.  They were several in my last ward that would spend hours dissing on Utah, the people and the church here. I guess it gets truer if you leave Utah.

I don't quite understand your statement. When you say they are all over the place, what do you mean? In other parts of the country and world? Or all over the place in Utah. Are you saying "Utah Mormons" in a negative sense? You live in Utah right? So Utah Mormons are looking down on other Utah Mormons? And dissing on Utah? I get that the liberal ones who have grown too proud would be dissing on Utah and their politicians, conservative values, etc. Are these people who were born and raised in Utah or are they from somewhere else? Those born and raised in Utah don't generally diss on other Utah born members of the church. 

Outside of Utah I have heard plenty of members dissing on Utah and Utah Mormons- the culture and mindset. But not while I lived there. 

This is why I'm asking the question- are those born and raised in the church in Utah getting too proud and weak in standards?  That wasn't the what it was when I lived there. Is it that way now? Has that sentiment of pride  and lax attitudes towards the standards of the Church gotten worse over the last 20 years? 

[carlimac]

On 3/6/2019 at 6:59 PM, Vort said:

Not really sure about this. Perhaps some people operate on this level, but few of the Saints I know. I hear very little teasing or mocking of other religions, and more than a little laughing at jokes about us. Sadly, this extends to laughing at unfunny "jokes", some of which really are offensive and others of which are merely dumb.

For example, some years ago, back during the short period when Conan O'Brien hosted The Tonight Show, he presented some song-and-tap-dance routine on his show featuring "The Mormon Tap-ernacle Choir" in response to Orrin Hatch releasing a religiously themed CD. (Which I listened to parts of and, with all due respect to Brother Hatch, I found to be more than a little cringe-inducing. But that's just a matter of taste, I suppose.)

Now, I don't hate Conan. I'm not a huge fan, but sometimes he's funny in a goofy way. I don't normally watch the guy, or any other late-night comedian. But I had heard about this funny, funny skit, and I was prepared to laugh heartily at it. Except...it was not funny. Not even a little, tiny bit. It was just purely dumb. Like you watch it and say, "There's 90 seconds of my life I'll never get back" dumb. Maybe even "I'd rather listen to Orrin Hatch's Hannukah CD than watch that skit" dumb.

I wish I could find a clip of the skit so that you could judge for yourself if it qualified as "funny". But for the time being, take my word for it that there was really nothing funny or particularly clever about it. It was self-mockery, not mockery of the Church, so it wasn't offensive. It just Was. Not. Funny. Yet I read literally dozens of paeans from Latter-day Saints laughing themselves to tears at this skit. I came up with exactly two reasons why this might be so:

(1) They really and truly did find it side-splittingly hilarious.

(2) They wanted to show all their family and friends how open-minded they were and could laugh at jokes about Mormons.

Possibility 1 above filled me with despair, to think that Latter-day Saints would have such a tenuous grasp on humor that they would find the skit so crack-me-up funny. Mildly amusing, perhaps, but nothing like the momentous breakthrough in comedy history they were treating it as being.

So I settled on Possibility 2 as the most likely reason. And to tell the truth, that didn't make me feel much better. Are we really so deeply insecure in other people's perceptions of our culture that we have to go out of our way to put on a false performance of laughing our heads off, just to virtue-signal to the world that we're cool enough to laugh at ourselves? (Ignoring for the moment that the skit was attempting to poke fun, not at Latter-day Saints or the Church, but at the writers' own openly professed ignorance about the Church.)

And if we don't ignore the parenthetical sentence I just wrote, what does it say about us that some writers aim for some silly, self-deprecating humor about their own ignorance, and Saints everywhere instead take it as some sort of direct commentary on the Church and its members, then proceed to laugh themselves silly in order to proclaim how open-minded and good-humored they are?

Here is another example of the same phenomenon, actually also involving Conan O'Brien.

http://www.ldsliving.com/Conan-O-Brien-Sends-Hilarious-Mormon-Missionary-Tweet/s/87131

In this case, Conan made some mildly humorous switch-up-of-expectations comment, worthy of a smile or even a chuckle, but hardly groundbreaking humor. Something you might forward to your spouse if you had a minute. Or maybe not. But the LDS Living staff made an article out of his tweet, calling it "hilarious". (The missionary responses, consisting of photographs of the missionaries in their short- or long-sleeved shirts along with some short comment, were also characterized as "hilarious".)

Honestly, this sort of thing reeks of desperation. "Look! Conan O'Brien talked about Mormon missionaries! We're FAMOUS!" In the long view, that's way more cringey than Brother Hatch's Hannukah CD.

EDIT: Looks like we actually discussed this little skit on this forum at the time:

 

 It was cute and harmless. At least it wasn't vulgar. 

[Vort]

29 minutes ago, carlimac said:

 It was cute and harmless. At least it wasn't vulgar. 

carlimac, did you understand that the point of my post had nothing to do with the Conan O'Brien skit itself, but was rather about the reactions to it among Latter-day Saints?

[carlimac]

2 hours ago, Vort said:

carlimac, did you understand that the point of my post had nothing to do with the Conan O'Brien skit itself, but was rather about the reactions to it among Latter-day Saints?

Slapping my head.  No. That just blew right by me. 

[NeuroTypical]

Non-LDS Utah buddy on Facebook just posted something pertinent to this thread. Sometimes, it's just easier to be the stereotype.

Edited March 8, 2019 by NeuroTypical

[mrmarklin]

I lived in Utah for three years while attending BYU.  Since it's an atypical experience, I won't comment on the culture. 

But I had to get home to California ASAP because weather!

[LadyGunnar]

14 hours ago, carlimac said:

I don't quite understand your statement. When you say they are all over the place, what do you mean? In other parts of the country and world? Or all over the place in Utah. Are you saying "Utah Mormons" in a negative sense? You live in Utah right? So Utah Mormons are looking down on other Utah Mormons? And dissing on Utah? I get that the liberal ones who have grown too proud would be dissing on Utah and their politicians, conservative values, etc. Are these people who were born and raised in Utah or are they from somewhere else? Those born and raised in Utah don't generally diss on other Utah born members of the church. 

Outside of Utah I have heard plenty of members dissing on Utah and Utah Mormons- the culture and mindset. But not while I lived there. 

This is why I'm asking the question- are those born and raised in the church in Utah getting too proud and weak in standards?  That wasn't the what it was when I lived there. Is it that way now? Has that sentiment of pride  and lax attitudes towards the standards of the Church gotten worse over the last 20 years? 

Utah mormons is what people called them back home. It's not a physical state as much as a mental one. It's hard to describe.  People who dissed on Utah were from Utah and people who have never lived here. They complained about them doing the same things that they did. They could not see it. I found it funny. 

[pwrfrk]

On 3/8/2019 at 1:36 PM, NeuroTypical said:

Non-LDS Utah buddy on Facebook just posted something pertinent to this thread. Sometimes, it's just easier to be the stereotype.

Go to California.  There you can have one mom and six dads....

 

[bytebear]

People ask where I live in California, and I just say, near Disneyland.  Easier than trying to explain the geography.

Edited March 14, 2019 by bytebear