Meetings for single adults in the Mormon Church
Dadzie briefly discusses how the Mormon emphasis on family affected single people in the church. According to Dadzie, the Mormon Church had special meetings for single adults, at least for those below a certain age, with the intention that young people might meet other single people who shared their faith.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Patience Dadzie, October 21, 2001. Interview R-0156. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- BARBARA COPELAND:
-
I understand that one of the main things about the Mormon church is they
place a heavy emphasis on everyone being married because they say that
being married allows you to have the highest to gain the highest
exaltation or salvation. When there are members there that are single,
how do the church leaders do they make a push to get them married or do
they try to match them up with other members in the church?
- PATIENCE DADZIE:
-
I don't think they try to push them, match them up. I know
they have single adult meetings where they go on Sundays. So I know, I
was, I have never been to that; so I can't tell here, but I
know they have a single adult meetings where the mostly the single
people go to have meetings on Sunday. So they can see each other and
pick up a date or something.
- BARBARA COPELAND:
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That gives them a chance to meet other.
- PATIENCE DADZIE:
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Chance to meet, yeah, singles.
- BARBARA COPELAND:
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Singles that are in the church.
- PATIENCE DADZIE:
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Church, yeah.
- BARBARA COPELAND:
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Another member told me because she's single and
she's thirty-one, and she said that once you become
thirty-one that's the cut off point that you can no longer go
to the singles meetings that they have there at the church. Do you know
anything about that?
- PATIENCE DADZIE:
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I really don't. I wish. I really don't. I have a
friend who used to be in a single meeting. She probably can tell you.
She's very nice. Because she was one of the single people in
the church I know. They used to go there, but now they tell her to come
to the main because meeting rather than the
singles. So I've never been there so I don't know
anything.
- BARBARA COPELAND:
-
I guess because the majority of the singles there are like teenagers,
older teenagers, eighteen nineteen years old. So at some point I guess
they have a cut off age. So that they don't feel like they
are mingling with a lot of teenagers.
- PATIENCE DADZIE:
-
Yeah, probably would be some—yeah you're right.
I'm not sure but might be one—I don't
know anyway.
