Angela Carson, a 28-year-old black woman, left her Baptist church in New York last year feeling uninspired and removed from the congregation. She visited many traditional black churches, but she found her new home with the Harlem branch of the Mormon Church.
The religious pillars of service and community outreach appealed to Carson, but so did something that may surprise many blacks: the commitment to diversity she saw at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
"I was approached by two younger African-American Mormon missionaries, and it made me think about the church in a different way," she said. "So many people have asked me why I joined a racist religion, which makes me sad that people would think this faith teaches hate."
Carson and other blacks who have left churches long associated with their communities, such as the Baptist and the African Methodist Episcopal congregations, say they often find cultural resistance from their families and friends who may be skeptical of how the Mormon Church can minister to a black American.
"I remember my dad telling me that if I joined the church, I would have a hard time finding an African-American husband," Carson said. "I thought about marriage prospects, but I date men from all persuasions, so it wasn't an issue."
There are roughly 13 million Mormons worldwide, and about half of those live in the United States, according to figures frequently cited by the church, which doesn't record members' racial or ethnic background.
However, about 3 percent of the Mormon Church in America is black, and less than 0.5 percent of black Americans are Mormon, according to a survey in 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Policy. That would translate to slightly less than 200,000 black Mormons in America - a huge increase from the 5,000 to 10,000 estimated by many experts at the turn of the century.
The growth of Mormonism among blacks is commonly tied to two events.
Read the rest of this story here. (Source: John Dorman/Columbia News Service)
The religious pillars of service and community outreach appealed to Carson, but so did something that may surprise many blacks: the commitment to diversity she saw at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
"I was approached by two younger African-American Mormon missionaries, and it made me think about the church in a different way," she said. "So many people have asked me why I joined a racist religion, which makes me sad that people would think this faith teaches hate."
Carson and other blacks who have left churches long associated with their communities, such as the Baptist and the African Methodist Episcopal congregations, say they often find cultural resistance from their families and friends who may be skeptical of how the Mormon Church can minister to a black American.
"I remember my dad telling me that if I joined the church, I would have a hard time finding an African-American husband," Carson said. "I thought about marriage prospects, but I date men from all persuasions, so it wasn't an issue."
There are roughly 13 million Mormons worldwide, and about half of those live in the United States, according to figures frequently cited by the church, which doesn't record members' racial or ethnic background.
However, about 3 percent of the Mormon Church in America is black, and less than 0.5 percent of black Americans are Mormon, according to a survey in 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Policy. That would translate to slightly less than 200,000 black Mormons in America - a huge increase from the 5,000 to 10,000 estimated by many experts at the turn of the century.
The growth of Mormonism among blacks is commonly tied to two events.
Read the rest of this story here. (Source: John Dorman/Columbia News Service)
No comments:
Post a Comment