[Members of] organized religious communities...can participate in the polite conversation of the day. Habitually, they talk and listen to men, whereas listening to God is hardly such a habit.

On the subject of sincere meditation or prayer, LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley stated the following in a 1998 priesthood leadership meeting: I daresay that most of those in this room today have not taken an hour in the last year to just sit down quietly, each man to himself, as a son of God, reflecting upon his place in the world, upon his destiny, upon his capacity to do good, upon his mission to make some changes for good. In a recent instruction to Brigham Young University department of religion faculty, an LDS general authority said it was apparent that only about five percent of the membership of the church studied the scriptures by topics; that is, rather than reading the scriptures as a textbook on reality, they read them as a mere literary work of history or philosophy.