Given the general failure of my Conference prediction posts, I’ll understand if you doubt me, but I think it’s probably a safe bet that this weekend’s General Conference will feature the announcement of several new temples. Of course, right? The Church is in a spree of building (or at least announcing) new temples, and where else are they going to be announced other than Conference?
I would have figured that of course temples are announced in Conference, but then I have a relatively short memory. I got to thinking about this question when reading First Presidency letters for my last post, when I stumbled on one about the Rexburg, Idaho temple that came out in December, 2003. December? That’s not Conference!
I went through the Church’s list of temples and noted the announcement date for each one. Rather than checking against historical lists of Conference dates, I just counted a temple as announced in Conference if its announcement date was in the first week of April or October or on March 31st or September 30th (since the Saturday sessions sometimes take place on those days). This graph shows both the number of temples announced (indicated by blue shading) and the percentage announced in Conference (indicated by the red line). Note that because the data in some years is thin, even with years prior to 1975 excluded, I grouped the years in threes to try to make patterns easier to look at.
The announcement venue has gone back and forth between Conference and elsewhere (typically, in conferences for the areas where they were to be built, in the few I checked) far more than I would have expected. This sometimes happened even from year to year, although the grouping of years in the graphs doesn’t show this level of detail. For example, all seven temples announced in 1997 were announced in Conference, but then only one of the 44 temples announced in the next two years was. (You may be able to guess the exception because of its historical significance. It was the Nauvoo temple.)
The most recent year in which more than one temple was announced outside of Conference was 2008, when only five of nine new temples were announced in Conference. President Monson and President Nelson have moved to consistently announcing virtually all new temples in Conference. The only exception in the past few years has been the Ephraim, Utah temple, which was announced as part of the Church’s reversal on preservation of the Manti temple.
I’ve seen the suggestion that the Q15 are emphasizing the building of new temples as an indicator of the Church’s strength or growth in place of membership growth. They see the flattening of membership growth, and perhaps fear that it could eventually turn into shrinkage. (I’m sorry I don’t recall who I originally saw saying this or I’d link to it.) I think this argument makes a lot of sense. It was President Nelson’s first General Conference–April 2018–where the annual statistical report was moved to being available online only, without being read in Conference. This was just another logical step in the process of de-emphasizing it, after the number of statistics it reported had already been drastically cut over the previous few decades. Pushing the statistical report, with its report of membership growth, to the side, while being sure to announce temples in Conference, seems entirely consistent with this argument. In a decade or two, only the fringe members like me will even follow the membership count. The orthodox will make themselves known by tracking only the Church’s progress toward 500 temples.
I believe George Costanza originally talked about shrinkage.
Another item shifted out of General Conference last April:
“It is proposed that we sustain the new Area Seventies as announced by the Church earlier this week.”
What is the Church is trying to hide by no longer having Oaks or Eyring pronounce aloud to the church the names of each of the proposed Seventies? Maybe nothing at all, except to distract with this change from the other changes that are meant to hide something. Such devious high priests.
I understand that you think this is conspiracy-theory nonsense, John, but I do think it’s a bit more than an administrative change to de-emphasize membership numbers while at the same time trumpeting the count of new temples.
The emphasis on statistics in this post and the accompanying graph are fantastic. Far too many in today’s society do not understand how to use statistics, or even understand them. This is leading to great difficulties.
In all seriousness, I found sustaining people without ever naming them a bigger change than moving the membership numbers off-session, and I really do think it is just the prophet-surgeon cutting off things he sees no point in carrying on, rather than a plan to de-emphathize the negative. But the trend is that what is moved off-session, such as numbers of endowments, very soon cannot be known at all. That will be different, no longer knowing however many millions of people are on the roles. “Last I saw it announced was the twenty million milestone, but that was sixteen years ago.”
So, anyone have a clue about what happened to the Herriman Temple? It seems like it was announced about 15 years ago and then suddenly disappeared/translated. As recently as 3 years ago when my wife was scouting homes in the area she was told by a real estate agent that “this is the site where the Herriman Temple will be built”. Can’t find that anywhere on the internet, which sees all things and knows all things.
Sorry, Rick, I’m not sure. I couldn’t find a mention of a Herriman temple in Conference, although I guess it’s the whole point of this post that it might have been announced elsewhere. The best guess I have is that it became the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, which President Hinckley announced in Conference in October 2005. He said that it would be built “in the so-called Daybreak development,” which looks like it’s right next to Herriman. Here’s a link to his talk:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2005/10/opening-remarks?lang=eng
And here’s the location so you can judge whether you think it’s close enough to be what was thought of (or expected to be) the Herriman temple.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oquirrh+Mountain+Utah+Temple/@40.5512226,-112.0574526,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x87528f6ed0cac1cb:0xa33c63c98de2e87f!8m2!3d40.5512273!4d-111.9871999
You spurred me on to do a little more research and I found this in a footnote of a blog called Stokes Sounds Off:
“A temple site was publicly mentioned as being held in reserve in April 2005 for a temple in the Southwest Salt Lake Valley. Though no official confirmation has occurred, if my research is correct, the land in question has been the subject of a border dispute between Herriman and Bluffdale cities, but is currently owned by the city of Herriman.”
I actually served on the 10 member committee that conducted the Oquirrh Mountain Temple dedication and open house. The announcement on Herriman was separate from that.
Interesting, Rick! Thanks for the further info. I wish Stokes had linked to his source so we could look at the original mention from the Church. For anyone else interested, here’s a link to his blog. Rick’s quote comes from note 23. The post is from 2019, so long after the Oquirrh Mountain Temple was opened, and like Rick said, Stokes is clearly referring to a separate temple.
https://stokessoundsoff.blogspot.com/2019_05_20_archive.html
Actually, having looked back at President Hinckley’s talk, I wonder if he wasn’t mentioning both the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and the Herriman Temple (although he didn’t say Herriman specifically). Here’s what he said:
“We have previously announced a new temple in the southeast quadrant of the Salt Lake Valley. We have two other excellent sites in the west and southwest areas of the valley through the kindness of the developers of these properties. The first one on which we will build is in the so-called Daybreak development, and this morning we make public announcement of that.”
Here’s a Salt Lake Tribune story that has a map that clarifies that the Daybreak temple was what became the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and that the southwest valley one is the one missing.
https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?itype=NGPSID&id=3080682
And here’s a Deseret News story from early the next year saying the location of the new temple is still unknown.
https://www.deseret.com/2006/1/12/19932366/salt-lake-county-temple-site-still-unknown
Sorry I don’t have any answers Rick, but thanks for pointing me to this mystery! It’s strange that the Church said they’d build one there and then just . . . maybe hoped that the location hadn’t named a city so nobody would notice when they didn’t? I don’t know.
It would be interesting to know how many temples have been announced and then never built. I certainly don’t have any list, but have a vague “feeling” that I’ve heard announcements for temples that I don’t subsequently see.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict zero new temples this time. And some vague references to the stiffneckedness of the membership.
Wow, Last Lemming! That does seem like a long shot! I feel like if the theory that the Church is centering temple building as the key indicator of church strength, they’d make it a point to never let a Conference go by without announcing any new temples. So if that did happen, I think I’d say the theory looks substantially weaker.
PWS, that’s a great question. I’ve never tracked temples starting from when they’re announced. I’ve always started from the Church’s list, but I guess as Rick’s example shows, if one doesn’t make it onto that list, I’ll miss it. I do wonder how temples like the ones announced for Russia and China will play out. Like if they stayed on the “announced but not started” list for a decade, would they ever be dropped? I thought a little through some questions like that in a post last year: A Temple-Announcing Spree
off topic but i have just found your blog. can u please do a breakdown of most likely next lds prophet . with odds. life expectancy . known health problems ect.. . and percentages for all 14. also an age called breakdown cuz thats what really says whos gonna be it. bednar is settting up to be prophet for 30 years. being called at 52 . at this point i dont think it will be jeff hollands church for long if at all .
thanks
great blog
Thanks, Aaron. I typically only post an update to Church president probabilities when someone in the Q15 dies, because that’s the only time they really move. It would be great if I knew all their health problems and how to include them into the calculation, but I really don’t know them, and don’t have a systematic way to include them even if I did.
Here’s a post I wrote a few months ago where I tried to include each man’s parents’ lifespans as a factor, but I really don’t think it added anything much to the main analysis.
https://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2021/04/22/church-president-probabilities-adjusted-for-q15-parents-lifespan/
[sound of branch breaking followed by blood-curdling scream]
LOL, Last Lemming! It was worth a shot! You can only be right on some long-shot predictions if you make some long-shot predictions!
Great research, Ziff!