The World Congress of Families & The Church

I have had some limited involvement with the World Congress of Families back when I was still a marketing consultant. Those I worked with were very nice people, worked hard and were passionate about their “activism” in the organization. They were members of the church and saw their role as doing good around the world.

I am not an all-out fan of the organization however. Of course they do a lot of good, and overall they represent a core belief of the church regarding the importance of traditional families. But their approach seems off base sometimes. They are definitely appealing to very conservative people, not because of the primary objective of the organization, but because of their approach, as well as because it appears that most of those involved are very conservative women (the Mormons in charge of registration and the local event in Salt Lake City, the first for the organization in the United States, included a copy of the very conservative Cleon Skousen book, The 5,000 Year Leap in the “welcome bag”).

On the other end of the spectrum are those that consider this an organization of “hate”, which is far from the truth (but approach could help with this). The self and media proclaimed authority on what is and isn’t a hate organization, The Southern Poverty Law Center, has them on their hate group list for some rhetoric against the LGBT community.

Wherever they can do good around the world, I wish them well. However, they might want to look at the church and how it has recently approached a secular world that fights against the traditional family (see here) and maybe they would attract more people to their cause.

The World Congress of Families & The Church