Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — The 192nd Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this weekend will be a bit different than the last few general conference meetings.
It will feel closer to normal.
There will be 10,000 people in attendance, which is a little less than half the capacity of the Conference Center, but it will also be the first conference crowd in the building since COVID-19 first swept through into Utah in 2020. The past four conferences were broadcast to church members.
There would be more people in the crowd, but the size was reduced to account for the ongoing Salt Lake Temple renovation project, according to the church. Even with the crowd reduction, Salt Lake City police tweeted that the conference will "bring more traffic than usual" to the city this weekend.
This year's conference also comes days after Utah moved its COVID-19 response into what it calls a "steady state." It's not the end of COVID-19 but a process of "ramping down" from the heightened response of the past two years.
All of this draws some connections to what happened with the 89th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, held in June 1919, a conference delayed by two months as a result of the final wave of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.
One report from the time called it just the second time that the conference wasn't held by April 6. The other time was related to the Utah War of the 1850s.
1919 conference turnout
Since the start of COVID-19 shutdowns, there's been a clamoring for the return of normalcy; that hope moved from idea to action with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. That's only continuing as restrictions are lifted throughout the globe.
For instance, the U.S. Travel Association issued a report Thursday saying travel spending has climbed back to only 6% below 2019 levels (from a spending drop of 42% in 2020).
The report adds that about 85% of all Americans expect to travel this summer; of those, nearly half said they planned to take two weeks or more off to do their travel plans. Some tourism industry experts refer to this as "revenge travel" — people longing for the experiences lost during a pandemic.
So, how does this relate to the spring conference turnout in 1919? It turns out there are some similarities, as were other points in both the 1918 and COVID-19 pandemics.
Local newspapers from the time tracked the excitement around Temple Square when the conference began on June 1, 1919. It's estimated 20,000 people showed up on the first day of the conference alone; the Logan Republican referred to it as an "unusually large crowd" for the event.
"Immense throngs gathered at the tabernacle for the opening session of the delayed conference," the newspaper reported. "Every train entering the city brought hundreds of visitors and, by nightfall, the streets were crowded. Hotels were taxed to capacity and predictions were (made) by church authorities that the eighty-ninth conference would attract more visitors than any previous session."
The Salt Lake Herald-Republican added that "crowded meetings" were projected for every session, with members going to either an overflow section or outside services if they wanted to attend.
While some of the enthusiasm may have been tied to the church members sustaining Heber J. Grant as the church's new president, Christine Marin, an audiovisual archivist in the Church History Department, explained in a 2019 article by Church News that the context of the meeting also likely factored into large crowd size. It was after the quarantines and also the first conference since the conclusion of World War I.
Per the church's conference report from the time, influenza claimed the lives of nearly 1 in 5 members of the church in 1918. There were a then-record 5,752 total deaths in 1918.
"Health was returning, the sun was coming out and everything was right with the world," Marin said, reflecting on the 1919 conference.
Slow return to normal
With the construction constraints around Temple Square at the moment, this year's conference won't have the same record-setting crowds as the 1919 annual conference did for its time.
Still, thousands are expected to return to that area this weekend. It appears that many members are excited about the return of in-person meetings.
"I eagerly look forward to general conference weekend," one KSL.com commenter wrote on March 17, when the church announced its limited capacity. "I am looking forward to a return to normal."
