Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Can I just say that these were great answers? As odd as this may sound to some people, one thing I really like about the Church in Utah is how much diversity there is. Where I grew up, there was a decent-sized LDS population (about 10% of my very small town), but everyone was white, very conservative, relatively uneducated, etc. All of the stereotypical things that people think of when they think of religious people. Not that there's anything wrong with being any of those things, but when you happen to be a very liberal young woman who's planning to go to grad school some day and people in your ward act as though being a conservative housewife is a commandment for women, it's a bit difficult sometimes. I have some crazy stories I could tell you about things that my bishop said and did to me and my family when I was growing up, but I won't get into that. I used to say that the main problem I had with the Church was that I had a testimony and I couldn't leave it. Anyway, when I came to BYU, I was shocked to find that there were other people in the Church like me. It was pretty life-changing and I really began to understand the difference between the Gospel and people's political views, and I found ways to cope with the way people at home treated my family. I also started to understand that we are all flawed people but that God wants to overlook those flaws and become united, and that I can work on building unity with people even if they don't seem interested in being united with me. And I really feel like I have to thank Utah Mormons for showing me those things.

On another unrelated tangent, a girl in my ward who got married recently told me that she didn't want to ever raise kids in Utah because she didn't want it to be "too easy for them to gain a testimony". I told her that I didn't necessarily think it was easy to gain a testimony in Utah and that even if it was it seems a bit odd to me that she would want it to be difficult for her kids to gain a testimony. She just looked at me like I was crazy.

Anyway, thank you Dragon Lady and Waldorf.

Am I going off topic if I add my thoughts on your unrelated tangent?

Probably not, 'cause you started it. : D

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I've lived not just in Utah but in Provo my whole life (aside from a few young years in Orem), and I don't think my testimony came "too easily." I'd also like to say, at the risk of sounding rude, that I think parents can have as much influence on testimony-building as location, peers, etc. I think that may be why some Utah Mormons don't have a strong testimony - parents assume that it will be acquired due to the gospel-saturated air or something and don't bother trying to help their children directly.

bobtheenchantedone wrote:I think that may be why some Utah Mormons don't have a strong testimony - parents assume that it will be acquired due to the gospel-saturated air or something and don't bother trying to help their children directly.

I've lived in Orem my whole life, and I agree with this statement. I've never really thought about it this way before, but it makes a great deal of sense.

wow "gospel saturated air"!! Can you ship me some of that?!?

One thing that people fail to understand about Utah is that there is as much diversity here among the cities as in any other state of comparable size. Salt Lake City ain't Payson, and I doubt someone from St. George would hold up well in a Logan winter. The same goes for the wards, the attitudes of people, the cultural atmosphere . . . I think anyone who assigns a false homogeneity to Utah is as absurd as someone who says that Jackson Hole is no different from Gillette; Seattle might as well be Kennewick; Barcelona, Madrid . . . es igual . . . so I think people should decide to live here or not based on more salient factors than some LDS-saturated ether.

Besides, if you want that, go to Mesa, Arizona. ;)

Oh ouch... We've got diversity! We're really close to the border!

I should mention as well that the girl in my ward who didn't want to raise kids in Utah has never spent any time in Utah aside from the two weeks she was in the MTC before her mission. I just wish that people would form their opinions on Utah based on facts instead of myths.

NerdGirl wrote:As odd as this may sound to some people, one thing I really like about the Church in Utah is how much diversity there is.

This is a good point and one that a lot of people fail to grasp. The sheer size of the population of BYU and Utah means that there are likely more intellectual Mormons, Democrat Mormons, educated Mormons, etc. than anywhere else, even accounting for the fact that Utah and BYU may be proportionately more conservative, etc., than the rest of the Mormon population.

I'll admit that there are a lot of things that Utah Mormons simply don't have to deal with, by virtue of being in the majority (i.e. dealing with vast misconceptions about the Mormon Church on a daily basis), but there are other challenges that Mormons raised outside of Utah often fail to grasp.