Home›The Americas and the Caribbean›Sacred ToBrowse BySacred ToThis page groups sacred regions by the specific worship they were built to hold. Wikipedia notes that "the Temple in Jerusalem ... was the central place of worship for Israelites and Jews and serves as the namesake of the Temple Mount." Browsing by sacred-to lets a visitor find every region built to hold the same worship.FactsSacred ToSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedRegions 1Sacred ToFilter Results2 entriesAdherents Today MaximumAll17,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll17,000,000 (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllChurch-Reported Rolls (1)Era of DeclineAllAztec public religion was suppressed following the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan, with temples destroyed and conversion to Christianity enforced through the sixteenth century. (1)Era of Decline End YearAll1600 (1)Era of Decline Start YearAll1521 (1)Form of the ConfessionAllThe Articles of Faith, thirteen statements written by Joseph Smith in 1842, are the movement's closest equivalent to a creed. (1)FounderAllJoseph Smith, who organized the church on 6 April 1830 (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllPreached Expectation, Not Enforced (1)Legal StatusAllUnited States: Reynolds v. United States (1879) upheld the federal anti-polygamy law; Edmunds-Tucker Act 1887 dissolved the church's corporation; Utah 1896 statehood constitution bans polygamy (1)Membership Figure As OfAll2022-01-01 (1)Membership Over TimeAllAcross the whole Latter Day Saint movement, the family of denominations tracing their origin to Joseph Smith's 1830 founding of the Church of Christ, the constituent churches collectively have nearly 18 million nominal members as of 2022. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself accounts for about 98 to 99 percent of that total; the Community of Christ is the second-largest denomination, at about 252,000 members as of 2019, with a scattering of smaller denominations, including fundamentalist groups, making up the remainder. (1)Origin AccountAllAztec, or Mexica, religion developed within the broader Mesoamerican religious tradition and reached its best documented form in the Triple Alliance centred on Tenochtitlan before the Spanish conquest of 1519 to 1521. (1)The movement traces its origin to Joseph Smith's account of receiving and translating the Book of Mormon, published in 1830 in upstate New York. (1)Origin Period End YearAll1428 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll1325 (1)1830 (1)Place of OriginAllThe Valley of Mexico, centred on Tenochtitlan (1)Upstate New York, United States (1)Position on SexualityAllThe body holds no single settled position; the question is actively and openly contested within it (1)Practice StatusAllDiscontinued as a state religion (1)Restoration ClaimAllHistorians describe this as the movement's founding religious claim rather than a verifiable historical event (1)The tradition holds that the primitive church and its priesthood authority, lost in a Great Apostasy, were restored through Joseph Smith from 1820 (1)Sexuality Position DetailAllThe Latter Day Saint movement traces to a single founding by Joseph Smith in 1830, and it split into successor churches that hold opposite positions on this question today. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City and the movement's largest body by far, teaches that same-sex sexual relations violate the law of chastity and extends church discipline on that basis, while stating that experiencing same-sex attraction is not itself a sin and that LGBTQ individuals remain welcome as members. The Community of Christ, the movement's second-largest body, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, formally approved same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ clergy in 2013. No statement speaks for the movement as a whole. (1)Standing Giving ExpectationAllTithing traces to one shared founding revelation across the Latter Day Saint movement, Doctrine and Covenants 119 (1838), naming "one tenth of all their interest annually," and the practice remains named as a core institutional expectation in the movement's two largest present-day branches, though they have diverged in how fixed it remains. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints keeps the historical calculation at a strict ten percent of income and ties it directly to temple access, recorded on its own denomination-level fact on this axis. The Community of Christ also names tithing as a core practice, historically calculated as ten percent of "net increase" (gross income less basic living needs), but its 2016 World Conference resolution on tithing, grounded in its own Doctrine and Covenants 165:2d, reframes the practice as "a spiritual practice that demonstrates willingness to offer every dimension of one's life to God" rather than a rule tied to a fixed calculation. The movement-wide constant is the named practice and its shared scriptural origin, not a single uniform rate or a single enforcement mechanism; only the Latter-day Saints branch specifically gates standing on it. (1)Status TodayAllHistorical; not practised continuously (1)Living tradition, practised today (1)TheologyAllMonotheistic: one God (1)Polytheistic: many gods (1)BrowseCompareAztec ReligionSacred To1 entryLatter Day Saint MovementSacred To1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category TreeComments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.