We visited good friends (mormons) in Rexburg, Idaho a few years ago. (Their brand new temple was just about to open up.)
The local Protestant church was small but nice. As visitors and on the young side with kids I felt like a rock star. It was sad - no doubt the population was shrinking. There were perhaps 20 folks there, all over 60. The preacher even asked of it would be okay for our kids to come up so he could do a “children’s sermon”. Even though our kids were borderline age-wise they went up. And the whole congregation loved the “children’s sermon” which I suppose they haven’t heard in a long time.
I commented on the beautiful front doors the church had. The preacher said “Yes - it was worth the trouble to finally get them in.” I asked him what the trouble was and he said “It’s a long story”.
I asked another gentleman and he said they ordered the doors from some door place in Utah that also supplied a list of installers throughout the areas. When the doors arrived to the church, they called the local installer and he said he would be out on Monday. Well, Monday afternoon came and he never showed up so they called him. He just got a big job and wouldn’t be able to install them.
They called all of the other places and no one would come install them. I’m not sure why they needed a special installer, but they finally found some guy from far away to come out to install them. That guy was not a mormon. Seems the mormon door company had mormon employees in most of their service areas, and they would not intall the doors on a Christian church.
The guy said it was pretty much impossible to get a job at any decent local company in town if you weren’t a mormon. He said it was good that a Walmart opened in town as they weren’t as bad on the discrimination.
It was weird spending so much time in a town where you were an “outsider”.
The local Protestant church was small but nice. As visitors and on the young side with kids I felt like a rock star. It was sad - no doubt the population was shrinking.
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that is sad, and surprising.
The Mormon church has been hemorrhaging members for the last 15 years or so and all of the evangelical churches I know in Utah are growing, many faster than they can integrate. I heard from a friend that the Calvary chapel in SLC tripled in size last year alone - I would expect similar things in Rexburg (which has a great pizza buffet btw).
The story about the door does not surprise me at all. A common phrase you used to hear about UT/Idaho as ‘behind the Zion curtain’, and in some ways it is, if you are not LDS you don’t matter, if you are EX-LDS you either keep it quiet or expect serious harassment.
I would go for job interviews and people would ask what ward( Mormon congregation)I was in. Mormons hire Mormons, rent to Mormons, buy from Mormons...they don’t trust or like ‘gentiles’ (outsiders).