Spreading the Word : Mormonism’s Traditional Values Appeal to Converts of Many Ethnicities

Standing at the pulpit of a Mormon meeting house near the Koreatown District, Virginia (Ginger) Johnson looked out at the Sunday morning crowd and said, “This is what I always envisioned Heaven to be like.”

Johnson was sharing her fast-day testimony with a crowd made up of blacks and whites, Asians and Latinos, five-generation Mormons and recent converts.

“It’s now like a mini-U.N.,” said Johnson, who is black.

The scene at a recent meeting of the church’s Wilshire Ward underscores the remarkable success of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the nation’s fastest-growing religious denominations and one of the biggest in California.

While it is not quite the fastest-growing religious group in the United States--that honor goes to black Pentecostalists known as the Church of God in Christ--Mormonism’s gains are striking compared to declines of up to 40% reported for some mainstream Protestant denominations.

According to Mormon figures, church membership worldwide has climbed from 5 million in 1982 to 9 million today. For the first time in the church’s 164-year history, half of the world’s Mormons now live outside the United States, officials said.

The church is on the march at home as well. Fueled by a high birth rate and aggressive missionary work, the church in the United States grew by 22.3% between 1982 and 1991, according to figures reported by the National Council of Churches.

The Westside of Los Angeles, site of the largest Mormon Temple outside Salt Lake City, provides a striking illustration of the church’s new diversity.

The church does not keep records of membership by race. But from Hollywood to Westchester, from Pacific Palisades to Koreatown, Spanish-, Korean-, Tongan- and Cantonese-speaking wards and branches share leaders and buildings with older, English-speaking congregations.

The area is home to Mormons who come from as far as Armenia and Nigeria, and from as near as Hollywood and Mar Vista, part of a growth rate that church officials estimate at 5% to 6% a year in California.

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After more than a century of denying the priesthood to blacks, the announcement of a divine revelation opened that door in 1978 to “every faithful, worthy man in the church.” Since then, Mormonism has drawn an increased number of African Americans.

The long ban on entry to the priesthood did not bother James A. Moody, an African American who serves as first counselor, the No. 2 position, in the Wilshire Ward.

“It took a long time to get a mayor of a different race in this town, so everything takes time,” said Moody, 63, a retired oil-truck driver.

“There’s a lot of beautiful people in this church,” he said. “And if they’re not beautiful, I make them beautiful. I love them whether they love me or not.”

The attraction of Mormonism for people who may feel out of the American mainstream is not new for the religion, which made many of its early converts among workers who were pushed aside by the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution in the United States and Europe.

“Mormonism continues to appeal to many socially and culturally disoriented members of society,” wrote Klaus Hansen, author of “Mormonism and the American Experience.”

“They are attracted by a lay church that offers active participation to all of its members and . . . an instant, socially cohesive group whose authoritarian male leaders set boundaries while providing recognition for behavior that conforms to group standards. Many converts are especially drawn to the Mormon family ideal.”

Ginger Johnson, who now is president of the Relief Society, a women’s auxiliary group at the Wilshire Ward, knew little about Mormonism when she got a call out of the blue on Christmas Eve 14 years ago. The caller said her name was Sister Lofton, and she asked Johnson if she would accept “a wonderful gift.”

“I was thinking nuns would come by with a present,” she remembered, “and since when did nuns start doing that?”

Sister Lofton turned out to be a Mormon missionary. Her gift was an introductory lesson about Mormonism--an intricate, controversial and demanding system of beliefs and social ties that was shaped in the backwoods of upstate New York and forged by decades of persecution in the 19th Century.

“All I knew (about Mormonism) was Donny and Marie Osmond, Brigham Young and plural marriage,” said Johnson, a fortysomething contest coordinator for a cable TV show.

“They told me to pray about it and I did,” she said, “and I knew it was true.”

What is Mormonism? Neither Protestant nor Catholic, it is a family-obsessed lifestyle, a welfare system and a business empire as well as a religion.

Even now, many other Christian groups find Mormons to be “kind of far out,” according to Ronald Enroth, a sociologist at Westmont College in Santa Barbara who has studied the church.

The primary reason is Mormonism’s view of the Bible as a flawed document in need of modern prophecy, he said, along with the church’s unique view of the afterlife, the virgin birth, and the nature of God and Jesus.

Mormonism proclaims itself to be the restoration of Christ’s church on Earth, with Joseph Smith Jr., its founder, and his successors speaking as prophets of old.

It offers men a priesthood tracing back to biblical times, and women a role as wives, mothers, missionaries and advisers.

In rites held behind closed Temple doors, white-clad spouses and offspring are “sealed” to each other “for time and eternity.”

The spirits of dead ancestors, identified by zealous genealogical research in the church’s data bank of more than 2 billion names, are also offered a chance at glory, and those found worthy are promised resurrection as celestial beings, with the privilege to learn at God’s feet and eventually to rise to a godly status.

Even God himself, and his consort, the divine Mother, are said to have been creatures of flesh and bone in some remote past, who perfected themselves to the highest state.

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The faith is rooted in the Book of Mormon, which tells the story of immigrants from the Middle East who founded elaborate civilizations in the Americas.

Visited by Christ after the Resurrection, they prospered for centuries, only to disappear after falling victim to evil ways and fighting among themselves.

Their story, inscribed on golden tablets, was said to have been found by Joseph Smith in 1823, guided by a vision of an angel named Moroni. It is an image of Moroni, covered in gold leaf, that can be seen holding a trumpet atop the Westwood Temple.

Over the years, church leaders have set aside some of Smith’s teachings, notably polygamy. But many singular features of the Mormon lifestyle remain, providing its believers with more than enough study, duties and supervision to keep them busy. Singing, socializing and entertainment such as “road-show” plays put on by youth groups take the edge off the seriousness of it all.

Mormons are expected to donate a tenth of their income to the church, along with the money it would cost to pay for the two meals they skip every month to help feed the hungry. They also give time and money to support the church’s building program and welfare system.

Mormons wear special undergarments decorated with markings that symbolize a covenant with God. They also follow dietary rules known as the Word of Wisdom, which bans alcohol, coffee, tea and tobacco and urges the consumption of “little meat.”

Families gather on Monday nights for a “home evening” devoted to prayer, study and other activities that can range from board games to night skiing.

Classes, worship and meetings can fill up to 10 hours a week, with volunteer pastors, known as bishops, and higher-ranking church officials putting in much more time.

Devout Mormons pray, study and socialize every Sunday at chapels, or meeting houses, that are scattered across Southern California.

For strictly ritual purposes, such as marriages, family “sealings” and proxy baptism for the dead, they go to temples like the one that has been a landmark on Santa Monica Boulevard for 38 years. Only Mormons in good standing may pass beyond the building’s lobby.

The Mormon church has virtually no professional staff, and the demands on the time of members are often cited by dropouts as the reason for drifting away from the church.

Those who stay find it tiring, but comforting.

“You’re going to be growing yourself and putting these principles into action, so I always say yes,” said Jeanine Bentz, 30, of Santa Monica, a former radar engineer and mother of three who advises the young women’s group in her local ward. “It’s hard, but I say yes.”

“It’s a stretch for us but we look out for each other,” said her husband, Scott, who runs a copying and subpoena service. “That’s why Monday night is a dead night. Nobody calls because nobody wants to interrupt the Family Home Evening.”

The Bentzes, both born to Mormon families, belong to a ward in the church’s Santa Monica Stake, which covers most of the area west of the 405 Freeway.

A stake is a regional unit like a diocese in the Catholic Church. According its president, Robert E. Hedrick, the Santa Monica Stake is not growing as fast as others in areas where houses and apartments don’t cost as much.

“Mainly what we have are longtime people who’ve put a lot of time into the community,” said Hedrick, 59, who converted as a teen-ager, largely out of admiration for the hard work of one of his predecessors as stake president, the father of two childhood chums.

It is elsewhere on the Westside--in the Los Angeles Stake, the oldest in California, which extends through Latino and Asian areas to Downtown, and in the Westchester-based Inglewood Stake, which stretches down to the South Bay--that changes in the church can best be seen.

For James Pak, president of a Korean-speaking branch of the Los Angeles Stake, it was the force of his brother’s clean living, and his family’s lack of commitment to its ancient faith, that brought him to the church.

“We called ourselves Buddhists, but there was no sense of belonging,” said Pak, 43, of his family in the Korean city of Kwang-ju.

When his older brother converted after meeting Mormon missionaries at the University of Seoul, he was quick to do the same.

“He set a good example. He was respected by many,” Pak said. “He brought pride to the family.”

Now an accountant living in La Crescenta, where there is a Mormon chapel within a three-minute drive of his house, Pak makes the 40-minute trip to Koreatown a few times a week. There, he runs the affairs of the Korean branch and looks out for the spiritual and temporal welfare of its members.

“There’s a need for my service,” he said.

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Mormons are generally required to join the ward where they live, but exceptions are made for immigrants to study and socialize in their native language.

“We had no choice but to accommodate that need,” said Howard B. Anderson, president of the Los Angeles Stake. “In many ways this helps strengthen (immigrant converts) and provide acculturization in a way that’s comfortable to them.”

Many families switch to their local wards when their children become teen-agers and want to socialize with their high school friends, said Titus K. May, Inglewood Stake president.

May, 57, who traces his roots to Hawaiian and Napoleonic royalty, presides over English-speaking as well as Tongan wards, where some men come to meetings in their native garb of long robes and straw belts. His middle name, Kealiihoolulaauopuowaina, means king who made plants flourish at Opuowaina, a place on the island of Hawaii.

The attitude among his parishioners is not a divisive “us versus them, but, ‘What can we do to help?’ ” said May, a security officer at Northrop.

Still, he said, he vetoed a proposal to take in a Samoan-dominated ward from the Carson area as part of a recent restructuring.

“The Samoans and the Tongans, they’ve got a little thing going on, going back to the island times,” he laughed.

Most of the Tongans converted on their home island, where more than half the population is Mormon, said David Latu, 46, a building contractor who is a leader of a Tongan-speaking ward based in Westchester.

“I met a girl and she was Mormon,” he said, “and when I saw the example they set and the principles they teach, it amazed me. So I thought it wouldn’t hurt if I tried to become a Mormon.”

He said the church’s emphasis on education causes many members to follow friends and relatives to better opportunities on the mainland.

For many new converts, especially Latinos who grew up as Catholics or Pentecostalists, one attraction is the opportunity to baptize their children or their spouses themselves, and to practice the healing rite of the laying on of hands, said Keith J. Atkinson, a church spokesman who served as a missionary in Mexico.

“Not to be critical of the Catholic Church, but some of our Hispanic friends indicate that kind of empowerment, for them to be able to do those things themselves instead of going to the priest or minister to do it, is something they found very attractive,” he said.

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Bobby Herrera, a 19-year-old missionary from Boston, said that empowerment made a difference for his parents, natives of El Salvador, when they converted after moving to Massachusetts. He was baptized at his father’s hands.

“I see a big difference between them and others in the family,” he said. “My dad’s really dedicated. He drank and smoked before, and now he’s completely left it.”

Herrera is attending church at the Wilshire Ward with other young people who devote up to two years after high school to preaching the gospel wherever the church may send them.

Although they still knock on doors in the time-honored way, they spend most of their time talking to potential converts referred by new members or attracted by radio and TV ads.

With 200 envoys working in the Los Angeles area, they record about 1,300 baptisms a year.

“We’ve had a good response in the month after the earthquake,” said Bart Peterson, a newly arrived missionary from Star Valley, Wyo. “People seem to be so humble that they’re willing to listen.”