Quote:
Originally Posted by ERCougar
Thanks for the link. Great summary of the arguments.
This surprised me:
"by mid-century, less than 65% of LDS Church members surveyed in San Francisco believed that Jesus was divine, less than 60% believed that Joseph Smith saw God, and a little over 50% believed that the Church president was God’s only prophet. The numbers were higher for members living in Salt Lake City (85%, 78%, and 74% respectively) but still low by late twentieth-century standards. Given these trends, it seems likely that a substantial minority of Latter-day Saints up through the mid-twentieth century were not committed to Book of Mormon historicity. Evidently their commitment to the Church had other foundations."
I wonder if this was a survey of active Mormons, but those are certainly surprising numbers.
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So I reviewed the link provided on this study (gotta love Google Books). It seems that they interviewed a ward of members in the Bay Area who were itinerant and arguably less active than the average member. In that light, those numbers don't seem all that surprising. Am I missing something?