For weeks now I’ve been observant a determined gossip present in amicable media: that a soothsayer of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Russell M. Nelson, is about to lift a anathema on Mormons’ celebration caffeinated coffee and tea.
Now before we go on a record as observant that we consider this gossip is, during best, sad meditative on a partial of people who would like to sup down a guilt-free frappuccino, let me out myself as an complete disaster during giving faith to other early rumors when those rumors did, in fact, breeze adult temperament fruit.
To wit: I wrote a mainstay scarcely a year ago observant that people who believed that a LDS Church was about to digest a Sunday services to dual hours instead of 3 were totally off base, and if we was wrong we would eat my hat.
Here is a follow-up post in that we described what it tasted like to eat my hat.
The indicate is that I’ve been 100% wrong before, so we should take what I’m about to contend with a pellet of salt in your aforementioned coffee: I do not trust this rumor.
One of a reasons we don’t trust it is that my possess research, that does not have any temperament on a matter, has been cited on amicable media as explanation that a soothsayer is about to disencumber a church’s limitation opposite coffee.
Say what? If we had been celebration coffee, we would have squabble it out in warn when we saw that.
For a record, the Next Mormons Survey did find that:
- Four in 10 Millennial and GenX Latter-day Saints in a United States pronounced they had consumed caffeinated coffee during some indicate in a final 6 months. Benjamin Knoll and we found this to be surprisingly high, as we can see in this Dialogue article that unpacks a study’s commentary about Word of Wisdom observance.
- 62% of stream church suggest holders endorsed that they had not consumed any of a substances banned by a Word of Wisdom (alcohol, caffeinated coffee and tea, tobacco, or bootleg or recreational drugs)* in a final 6 months. The other 38% of suggest holders had consumed one or more.
- In a apart question, younger Mormons were reduction expected to contend that it was “essential” to equivocate coffee and tea in sequence to be a good Mormon. Fewer than a third of Millennials or GenXers pronounced this was an “essential” partial of a Mormon identity, compared to 52% of Boomer/Silent Saints.
So is there softening about Mormons’ attitudes toward Word of Wisdom confluence in a United States? Clearly, quite for younger generations. Does this meant that a soothsayer is about to announce a Starbucks in each temple? No, nonetheless that thought done for a fun Apr Fool’s column a few years ago.
Leaving aside a evidence that Mormonism is a tellurian sacrament that is not unconditionally buffeted by a changeable sensibilities of some of a U.S. adherents, a Word of Wisdom has turn a poignant square of a genealogical temperament a universe over.
Yes, there are hurdles in several areas of a universe when missionaries and church leaders have to figure out either a sold libation is in gripping with a suggestion of a Word of Wisdom, though that’s zero new. The Church has been navigating those questions for scarcely a century, ever given adherence to a Word of Wisdom became a requirement for church acknowledgment in 1921.
And even before that, when confluence was distant from standardised and many Mormons drank coffee — it was on a list of suggested supplies for pioneers to move with them when channel a plains — a ideal existed.
I have nonetheless to hear anyone we know who works for a Church endorse this rumor. Moreover, we don’t see a sold reason for it to be true; zero critical has changed. No scientist has unexpected detected a life-saving advantages of a daily cuppa joe. No vigour is being exerted from outward a Church insisting that Mormons desert their java-avoidant ways and join a block-long line during Peet’s.
Rather, what we see from a outward universe is a begrudging admiration, like when Garrison Keillor did his Prairie Home Companion uncover in Utah and remarked on how sedulous a Mormon settlers had been — before devising how most some-more they could have achieved if they’d usually dipsomaniac coffee.
So, I’m putting this sold General Conference gossip in a dirt bin category, entirely wakeful that we might have to eat my difference since 1) I’ve been spectacularly wrong before and 2) President Nelson likes to keep us guessing. He has warned us that some-more surprises are coming, and that we should eat a vitamins to ready for all a changes.
Vitamins, during least, are Word of Wisdom-approved.
* The full survey, with strange wording, is accessible as a giveaway PDF download here.
Related posts:
Mormonism and a determined dream of 2-hour church (oh greatfully can we?)
Top 5 Mormon rumors about this weekend’s General Conference