Now I don’t know of any documentation to confirm these stories, but it’s a matter of fact that the Church was very closely watched by the government, and I don’t think anyone would put it past the communists in charge to go as far as placing authentic-looking spies in wards across the region, even to the point of “infiltrating” the temple. While there was no direct financial reward for such spies for living their lives as supposed Mormons, other than appeasing the party and staying employed, a memoir of such a person’s life as a pseudo-Mormon, East-German spy would be a fascinating read if you ask me.

Maybe I should get started on mine… ;)

Jon

And the fact that Misha was not Jewish is intriguing — as you say, “who wants to create a fake life to join a marginalized and persecuted “cult”? ”

If someone claimed to be a Mormon with marvelous mission experiences, for instance, or miraculous priesthood healings while stationed in Iraq or posted at some obscure international post without a Mormon presence, I wonder whether it would be possible to be so convincing that we would accept the story for any length of time.

I don’t think it is possible. I wondered, though, whether any else was so diabolically clever that they had an idea of how it might be done. That’s all. Nothing more serious than that.

I think there are openings in almost any group’s history or world view for such an attempt. I can’t imagine someone wanting to do so within Mormonism in the 19th Century and early 20th Century – or even until very recently. After all, who wants to create a fake life to join a marginalized and persecuted “cult”? As to the possibility of it happening now . . .

Given the past missionary practices in some countries that didn’t exactly follow protocol, and the occurrence of natural disasters in third-world countries that literally wiped out entire villages, I could see someone claiming to have been baptized and “lost” – with no documentary proof. As long as they could answer the baptismal interview questions intelligently and “live a good Mormon life”, it might be very difficult for the local membership to see any problem.

The only motivation I can imagine for this, however, is financial. This could be access to the church’s assistance programs for members – now including the PEF, which might be a viable motivation in an area of abject poverty to fake membership and apply to serve as a missionary. That would be even more understandable if the Church Missionary Fund paid for the mission. However, an attempt like that would presuppose a level of understanding of the Church that is hard to imagine in an adolescent – someone young enough to serve a mission and receive assistance from the PEF. It also assumes someone would fake a cover story when they simply could pretend to believe, be baptized and receive the same benefits.

So . . . I just don’t see it happening like Misha’s example.

I suppose it was a dumb post, or at best unclear. I’m fascinated that someone who was not a member of a particular group would/could fabricate an entire memoir, insinuating herself into the events of the group as if she were one of them, and do it so well that she could get away with it as long as Misha Defonseca did (although there were apparently people who challenged her story almost from the beginning; still, she fooled most of the people for a significant period of time).

I’m only musing about whether or how someone who was not a Mormon could recast his or her life so thoroughly as to appear to be one of us, at least for a while. Are there openings in our history or our world view for a stranger to do that?

MRKH

Our history may be too short, or we may be such inveterate record keepers, that I haven’t been able to imagine a situation where a living person could palm off a Mormon memoir in the way Misha faked her Jewish life story — there are positive church memberships, for instance, and returned missionaries very familiar with the time and place where any forgery could be set.

Still, if anyone does come up with an idea of where and when a faked Mormon memoir could possibly be set, in the way Misha’s was set against the background of the Holocaust, I’d love to hear of it.