I am typically hesitant to speak critically of my experiences within the Church. To me, it is patently obvious that the Church is a force for good; in almost all cases, I have felt the Spirit working through its leadership and organizational structures. Furthermore, there is a certain Internet cottage industry that traffics exclusively in negative experiences, and in my observations that path rarely leads one toward more of the shiny fruit.
And yet, less savory things do happen. While these instances are often blown out of proportion by critics, pretending they don’t exist creates its own set of problems.
In my own case, while most of my mission was wonderful, I served under three different mission presidents (the result of being a “visa waiter”). One of them maintained an atmosphere that was almost cult-like, if not emotionally abusive.
One example among many, we were told it was unbecoming of a missionary to use the word “guys.” New missionaries were constantly corrected on this point. While that might seem merely eccentric, and it would have been fine if we were simply being trained to speak with the precision of a Barack Obama, the abuse began if you found the rule silly.*
I remember agreeing to play ball while privately maintaining reservations, but that wasn’t enough. I was eventually subjected to a struggle session where my district sat in a circle and took turns explaining that it wasn’t enough to just go through the motions—I had to believe in the rule wholeheartedly for the Lord to bless our mission. We were the chosen ones because of our mission president’s system; by far the top baptizing mission in Western Europe (it was delicious to find out with the next mission president that we were actually something like third, not first), with general authorities around the world visiting our mission to see how things were done. Everyone else had “gotten with the program” except me.
There were a bunch of other small eccentricities. In another instance, to show God our willingness to sacrifice, the mission gave up our medio-día (midday) break in exchange for meeting a baptismal goal. (I was relieved years later when the new missionary handbook explicitly forbade such practices.)
The looniness of these rules would have been fine on its own, they weren’t big deals, but they were paired with a rough socialization process to ensure compliance. There was an intense, guilting “why are you on a mission?” rhetoric that took on the character of hazing, with older missionaries dishing it out to the younger ones in a cycle of breaking down the newbies. It was a lot of fire for very little light. (The first book I read after my mission, while I was in Russia visiting family interestingly, was 1984, and I was astounded by how accurately Orwell captured the psychological toll of a highly controlled, sealed-off environment.)
When the time came for a new president the mission was whipped into a frenzy. “Nothing is going to change” became the mantra repeated at our final Zone Conference; to believe otherwise was treated as anathema because that would imply that the system wasn’t written in stone by God’s own hand. By then, I had learned to keep my head down, but it was fascinating from a socio-psychological perspective to watch the mission-wide malaise settle in as changes inevitably occurred. The elders and sisters slowly lost faith in that particular president’s “-ism.”
People often think they would be the ones to stand up to such silliness, but they almost never do. Usually, they are just loyal to a different group (what sociologists call “subcultural deviance”). True independence, when everyone around you thinks you are crazy or apostate, is incredibly rare. As the famous Asch conformity experiments demonstrated, most people will deny the evidence of their own eyes (such as the length of three lines on a page) just to match the group consensus. Out of the twenty or so missionaries I knew well during that era, I can think of only one sister who recognized it was all baloney. Everyone else was a true believer.
However, in the middle of all of this I was granted a vital landline to reality. During a call home (either Christmas or Mother’s Day, I can’t remember which), I was able to touch base with an outside perspective, puncturing the hermetically sealed ideological bubble that had been so carefully curated and enforced. My father agreed that these mission eccentricities were indeed weird and unproductive, and his validation provided the breath of fresh air I needed to get my bearings and I knew I could outlast the crazy.
I don’t regret serving under that president. It was one of those experiences I’d rather crawl through broken glass than repeat, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. The anchored thinking I developed while serving under that mission president served me well later in life.
I don’t want to exaggerate the scale of this issue. Based on my discussions with others, I’d shoot from the hip estimate that perhaps 5–10% of mission presidents go a little overboard with the extreme power they hold over young, zealous missionaries. This is very much a minority experience.
However, with the newer policy allowing missionaries to call home weekly, I doubt my experience would happen today. Maintaining that level of tight control requires sealing out external influences; you cannot allow people to triangulate their position against an outside source.
To be clear: I am not implying the Church is a cult. I am saying that specific missions can occasionally exhibit those characteristics. There are very few places in the 21st century developed world where you can find the level of information lockdown and intense socialization possible in a mission. In the right hands, this intensity is transformative for good; but in the wrong hands it can make the bad consequences all the worse.
I suspect the weekly call policy was implemented primarily for mental health reasons. But, much like the requirement for stake presidents to read patriarchal blessings, it serves as a structural check on the occasional “bad apple.” Out of 450+ missions, the law of large numbers suggests there will always be a few outliers, and it is great that there is now an additional built-in hedge against such potential abuses.
*(And it was quite silly; the missionaries simply started saying “y’all” instead of “guys.”)
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