Talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England

Orphaned references in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "iht":

• From International Herald Tribune: "History". International Herald Tribune. Retrieved 2010-07-04. Entrepreneur James Gordon Bennett Jr. founded the New York Herald's European edition in 1887. Cosmopolitan and innovative, Bennett was the embodiment of an international spirit that thrived through changes of ownership and name until the newspaper became the International Herald Tribune in 1967.
• From Mormon sex in chains case: AP 2008

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 17:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

England/United Kindom: Do we need two articles?

I've just begun to expand The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom and feel it is unnecessary to have separate articles for the constituent countries. There is a great deal of duplication (they were practically the same before I began editing the UK page, and they still aren't that different) and no other European country is split up in this way (Russia has plenty of republics, and German states are fairly independent).

Is there an argument in favour of keeping this separate rather than simply expanding the UK page and making sure there are mentions for all the constituent countries? Jae 09:24, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I know you and some members of the London media have trouble distinguishing the two, and see us as counties/"regions" of your green and industrialised land. If there is major duplication of material between the UK and England articles, it is because the UK article is anglocentric (like most Mormon histories of these islands). The Scottish and Welsh articles are staying.MacRùsgail (talk) 12:42, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Sarcasm should, I hope, be beneath you. What is the argument for keeping them separate when other European countries aren't? The UK one certainly is Anglocentric and I've already begun researching the sources I need to correct that (and expand the Scottish page, which is woeful too, if it's kept). The Northern Ireland page doesn't even exist and goes directly to Ireland (despite Northern Ireland being the main scene of the historical LDS action, as it were, on that isle) which is hardly consistent with having pages for each constituent country. Consistency is all I'm after. Jae 13:31, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

NI isn't a country according to either political camp. It's the result of divide and conquer.

Presumably you also wish for your colonies to give up their own teams as in the Olympics.

If you wish for consistency why not try and delete the articles on Scottish art and Welsh law and see how far you get.MacRùsgail (talk) 20:40, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

This makes no sense - the article itself cannot decide if it is referring to England, or the United Kingdom. These terms are not interchangable - it should be renamed as being about the LDS in the UK, rather than England.

Aremay (talk) 12:08, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

2011 UK Census

32,944,493 people identified themselves specifically as "Christian" in the 2011 Census and not a specific denomination. Less than 350,000 identified themselves specifically as a Christian denomination such as LDS (Mormon), Catholic, Baptist, etc. Consequently, this does not give an accurate account of those affiliating themselves as LDS or Mormon. In addition, more than 4 million others did not identify a religion on the 2011 census.Dmm1169 (talk) 23:05, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dmm1169, both statistics have some context that should be taken into account. I think adding back some of the text you removed along with some of the context you gave here would help shed light on the situation. stvltvs ^(talk) 23:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I support having surveys and census records which are included in a number of other similar articles such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints membership statistics (United States), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Zealand and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tonga. These surveys are hard to come by especially in areas where the church is the far minority (even in the United States).

The issue with the UK census is that the majority who viewed themselves as Christian does not specify which denomination. With the nearly two-thirds majority either simply saying Christian or not specifying a religious affiliation at all, it become very unclear how many actually affiliate themselves in the LDS belief. This has so far been the only census I've removed from a Wikipedia page for this reason. At the same time, I feel the 2011 census could be included in the article as long as it is explained that the vast majority of those surveyed in the census did not specify which denomination they are affiliated with.Dmm1169 (talk) 04:27, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Very few people attend the Church of England on a given Sunday, so it wouldn't be too surprising that very few feel affiliated with it. I don't find the 2011 census inconsistent with other statistics. How about we include the official LDS number with the caveat given at lds.org that it represents affiliation at some point in their life rather than activity, and the 2011 census with the caveat that very few Christians specified a specific affiliation? stvltvs ^(talk) 17:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I personally don't have a problem with your request. What was removed in the article appeared to imply that that number represented how many active members or believers. While it's likely a large part of the membership is not active, In order to support 39 stakes, 248 wards, and 34 branches (between England and Wales) requires, at a minimum, much more than 9,712 actively attending each week.Dmm1169 (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Personally I don't think the "Christian" stat is much use for individual denominations. Many people who describe themselves as such don't go to church. It can't be used here at all really. Church attendance must be more accurate.--MacRùsgail (talk) 16:31, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree church attendance is what most would like to see. Typically, the LDS Church doesn't generally release that info to the public, occasionally from time to time, parts of it gets released, and rarely reported by geography (ie UK). Consequently I've been unable to include this info.Dmm1169 (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

The 2011 UK census figure of 9,712 LDS in England and whales would not be near enough to support the 39 stakes that exist there (assuming they are all active). I don't know how many active members there are in England, but a stake with 1,000 active, weekly attending members is a small stake.Dmm1169 (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Membership & Attendance

Membership does not equal attendance.

• Membership Statistics are based on those that have become a member whether they are active or not. It does not include those who consider themselves LDS or Mormon who have never been baptized, and it does not contain records that have been removed from the church. The LDS Church provides membership statistics to the public.
• Attendance: Though attendance is recorded, but the LDS Church does not provide that info to the public. Sacrament meeting attendance is not limited to membership. Whereas "Members attending" is limited to members within that organization.
• Believers: There are some that claim they are LDS, but are not members. In addition, many less-active (not regularly attending) still claim LDS as their religious belief.Dmm1169 (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with all the comments you make here. Clearly neither church figures, not census stats are acceptable, but there are unfortunately no substitutes. As I understand it, all of these are bundled into the church figures.

• Active
• Semi-active - Attends occasionally, maybe a few times a year.
• Inactive, might return.
• Inactive, will never return.
• Cultural - usually has family links, background etc. Not common in the UK, common in the States.

Quite a number of LDS churches are kept afloat by "investigators", live in missionaries, and transients (Americans, students etc). Not to mention a stream of new converts who hang around for a matter of months. --MacRùsgail (talk) 17:57, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Mormon sex in chains case

This should at least get a mention. It's probably the most publicity the LDS church had in England itself, other than what happens internationally.-MacRùsgail (talk) 18:20, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I propose that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United Kingdom be merged into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England. I think that the content in the UK article overlaps much of the information in the England article. There are already existing pages for other countries in the UK: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wales, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ireland, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Scotland. The information in the UK article can easily be placed into the context of the article focused on England, and other information pertaining to the other countries can go to those pages. Merging the UK page with the other pages will help add expand those pages, while reducing the excess duplicate information that exists now. Amgisseman(BYU) (talk) 18:18, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I have no objection with the merger. Dmm1169 (talk) 18:49, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

I do object. This would be inconsistent with the other existing European countries whose pages on the LDS Church are not split into their regions at all, let alone only into their regions. The UK has existed for the entirety of the history of the LDS Church so unsure as to why a page regarding the LDS Church in the UK should be removed. The current arrangement seems to work okay (though for even greater consistency I'd refer to my previous suggestion on the England talk page of merging the nation's pages into the UK page as I hardly feel that England, Wales and Scotland [things get complicated around the island of Ireland I know] have sufficient LDS Church related content on their own to warrant their own pages but that's a debate for another day). The UK should be treated in the same way as any other country on Wikipedia. I understand I'll be in the minority with this opinion however. Jae 11:13, 2 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by LondonJae (talk • contribs)

@LondonJae: The main reason to have separate pages for Scotland/Wales/Ireland is to prevent one page from becoming really long. If we merge the UK page with the England page, we can take the information on the UK page about the different regions and put it on their separate pages. Amgisseman is planning expand the England page and possibly the others, so we were looking for ways to organize the information more effectively. It's true that no other European country has a history of the LDS church page for a specific region, but the United States has a few for specific states (like California). The LDS church's history in the UK goes back quite a ways, so I think it's justified that its page have more information than the church's history in other countries. What do you think? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Since there hasn't been any response and no other opposition, I will proceed with the merger. It seems like the general consensus is that performing the merger is fine. Amgisseman(BYU) (talk) 21:24, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.