Day 43: Election Prayer Focus Utah

Utah - Beehive State

Motto: Industry

Capital/Largest City: Salt Lake City

Leaders

Governor John Huntsman, Jr. (R)

Senator Robert F. Bennett (R)

Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R)

1. Rob Bishop (R)
2. Jim Matheson (D)
3. Chris Cannon (R)

Prayer Points

*Declare revival comes to the state of Utah.

*Declare signs and wonders follow the preaching of the Word in Utah.

*Declare the people of Utah are open to the truth of the Gospel.

*Declare divine strategies come to Christian leaders to effectively evangelize the people of Utah.

*Declare the leaders of Utah walk in wisdom and the fear of the Lord.

*Declare prosperity comes to the state of Utah.

*Declare protection over the state of Utah.

*Declare protection over the National Guard, military personnel, and military bases in Utah.

*Declare Christians in Utah get out and vote for the party platfom that lines up with the Word of God.

*Declare an accurate accounting of the vote in Utah.

*Declare an expansion of Christian media in Utah.

The region was first explored for Spain by Franciscan friars Escalante and Dominguez in 1776. In 1824 the famous American frontiersman Jim Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake.
Fleeing religious persecution in the East and Midwest, the Mormons arrived in 1847 and began to build Salt Lake City. The U.S. acquired the Utah region in the treaty ending the Mexican War in 1848, and the first transcontinental railroad was completed with the driving of a golden spike at Promontory Summit in 1869.
Mormon difficulties with the federal government about polygamy did not end until the Mormon Church renounced the practice in 1890, six years before Utah became a state.
Rich in natural resources, Utah has long been a leading producer of copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc, and molybdenum. Oil has also become a major product. Utah shares rich oil shale deposits with Colorado and Wyoming. Utah also has large deposits of low sulphur coal.
The state's top agricultural commodities include cattle and calves, dairy products, hay, greenhouse and nursery products, and hogs.
Utah's traditional industries of agriculture and mining are complemented by increased tourism and growing aerospace, biomedical, and computer-related businesses. (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108279.html)

Utah is known for being one of the most religiously homogeneous states in the Union, with approximately 58 percent of its adult inhabitants claiming membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church or the LDS Church), which greatly influences Utah culture and daily life. It is also known for geological diversity ranging from snowcapped mountains to well-watered river valleys to rugged, stony deserts and open plains.
The state is a center of transportation, information technology and research, government services and mining as well as a major tourist destination for outdoor recreation. St. Georg, Utah was the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000–2005 with Utah being the sixth fastest growing state overall in 2006.

Morman Settlement

Following the assassination of Joseph Smith, Jr., in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844, the more than 11,000 Latter-Day Saints remaining in Nauvoo, IL struggled in conflict with neighbors until Brigham Young, the President of the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, emerged as the leader of the largest portion.
Brigham Young and the first band of Mormon pioneers came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Over the next 22 years, more than 70,000 pioneers crossed the plains and settled in Utah. For the first few years, Brigham Young and the thousands of early settlers of Salt Lake City struggled to survive. The barren desert land was deemed by the Mormons as desirable as a place they could practice their religion without interference.
It is not widely known that Utah was the source of many pioneer settlements located elsewhere in the West. From the beginning, Salt Lake City was seen as only the hub of a "far-flung commonwealth" of Mormon settlements. Fed by a constant supply of church converts coming from the East and around the world, Church leaders often assigned groups of church members to establish settlements throughout the West. Beginning with settlements along Utah's Wasatch front (Salt Lake City, then Bountiful and Weber Valley, then Provo and Utah Valley), irrigation enabled the establishment of fairly large pioneer populations in an area that Jim Bridger had advised Young would be inhospitable for the cultivation of crops because of frost. Throughout the remainder of the 1800s, Mormon pioneers called by Brigham Young would leave Salt Lake City and establish hundreds of other settlements in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, California, Canada, and Mexico. At the time, Young had an expansionist's view of the territory he and the Mormon pioneers were settling, calling it Deseret - which church founder Smith had taught meant "honeybee" - hence the beehive which can still be found on the Utah flag, and the state's motto, "Industry."

Religion
A majority of the state's residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormons or the LDS Church. As of 2007, the percentage of Utahns that are counted as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is 60.7 percent of the state's population. The Salt Lake Tribune has projected that Latter-day Saints may no longer be a majority in the state, not just the case in Salt Lake City, as early as 2030, though the LDS Church refuted the Tribune's findings by publicly reporting its end-of-year 2007 statistics in January 2008 that 1.8 million (or 72 percent of total Utahns) are recorded on its rolls.
The LDS Church's doctrine's has historically had a strong regional influence and as historically law makers have been church members, the effect has contributed to the state's restrictiveness towards alcohol and gambling. Another doctrine effect can be seen in its high birth rate (25 percent higher than the national average; the highest for a state in the U.S.). The Mormons in Utah tend to have conservative views when it comes to most political issues and the majority of voter-age Utahns are unaffiliated voters (60%) who vote overwhelmingly Republican.
The self identified religious affiliations of adults (note that numbers below do not include children, a possible cause of the disparity with the percentage identified above, though it does include non-lds mormons) living in Utah are:
Latter day saints/Mormon 58%
Unaffiliated 16%
Catholic 10%
Evangelicals 7%
Mainline Protestants 6%
Black Protestant Churches 1%
Don't know or Refused to specify 1%
Totals are rounded. Jehovah's Witness, Orthodox, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other world religions each make up less than .5%. Other faiths total 1%.

Early suffrage
Utah granted full voting rights to women in 1870, 26 years before becoming a state. Among all U.S. states, only Wyoming granted suffrage to women earlier. However, in 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act was passed by Congress in an effort to curtail excessive Mormon influence in the territorial government. One of the provisions of the Act was the repeal of suffrage; full suffrage was not returned until Utah was admitted to the Union in 1896. To this day, Utah is one of the 15 states that has not ratified the U.S. Equal Rights Amendment.

Politics

Utah votes predominately Republican. Self-identified Latter-day Saints are more likely to vote for Republican ticket than non-Mormons, and Utah is one of the most Republican states in the nation. Utah is much more conservative than the United States as a whole, particularly on social issues. Compared to other Republican-dominated states in the Mountain West such as Wyoming, Utah politics have a more moralistic and less libertarian character.

Miscellaneous

Due to its high total birth rate (highest of any state in the U.S.), Utah has the youngest population of any state.

Utah ranks 47th in teenage pregnancy, last in percentage of births out of wedlock, last in number of abortions per capita, and last in percentage of teen pregnancies terminated in abortion. Statistics relating to pregnancies and abortions may be artificially low from teenagers going out of state for abortions because of parental notification requirements.

Utah has the lowest child povertyrate in the country, despite its young demographics.

According to Internal Revenue Service tax returns, Utahns rank first among all U.S. states in the proportion of income given to charity by the wealthy.

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, Utah has the highest rate of volunteerism.

Jell-O is the official snack food of Utah, giving rise to the term the Jell-O Belt

.
According to the National Restaurant Association, Utah has the lowest rate of restaurants per capita, with 4,691 restaurants at a rate of 1.90 restaurants per person.

According to Walmart, Utah has the fewest number of Walmart stores per capita at .081 per 100,000 people.

High School Musical 3 was filmed in Salt Lake City at East High School.

Home of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.