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They discovered new ways to spread the word during COVID-19, and they will keep using those technology tactics, but in-person contacting isn’t going away.
| Updated: April 5, 2021, 12:25 a.m.
Strong denunciations of cyberbullying, racism and violence against people of color along with pleas to embrace the “unmarried, widowed or divorced” in the family-focused faith highlighted the first day of the 191st Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“We have been heartbroken to hear of recent attacks on people who are Black, Asian, Latino or of any other group,” apostle Gary E. Stevenson said Saturday morning. “Prejudice, racial tension or violence should never have any place in our neighborhoods, communities or within the church.”
Two fellow apostles, pointing to statistics that show more than half of Latter-day Saint adults are widowed, divorced or not yet married, lamented that single members sometimes feel “alone” or that “they don’t belong” in a faith that preaches eternal marriage as its loftiest religious rite.
Every six months, Latter-day Saint authorities address millions of members around the world.
These General Conference sermons streamed, beamed, published, pondered and perused sometimes make history; other times they just make memories.
Times and Seasons blogger Chad Nielsen has released his list of the “most significant” conference talks of the past decade. It includes:
• Apostle Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s October 2013 speech in which he conceded that church leaders “have simply made mistakes” and “said or done [things] that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine.”
“We openly acknowledge,” Uchtdorf said, “that in nearly 200 years of church history along with an uninterrupted line of inspired, honorable and divine events there have been some things said and done that could cause people to question.”