ABSTRACT
For much of humanity's evolution close kin contexts have provided the basic social environment of survival where patterns of ancestral descent and alliance frequently involve schemes of authority and respect aligned with forms of inheritance of land, property, or reputation. The extensive bureaucratic and ritual activity enhances links between the living and their dead, fostering their salvation in the eternal world, all within an ancestral worldview. The complexity of the LDS church is such that no single worldview embraces the totality of its outlook, so while the ancestral worldview is unmistakably significant, another of its properties will require further comment under the prophetic worldview. Highly influential in China as also in South Korea, Confucianism is also deeply ‘social', according deep significance to relationships between parent and child, teacher and pupil, the living and the dead, all framed by its own ethical system of duty and obligation.
