{"id":38948,"date":"2019-04-16T02:06:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T07:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=38948"},"modified":"2019-05-10T07:21:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T12:21:32","slug":"ethics-and-mormon-missionary-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2019\/04\/ethics-and-mormon-missionary-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics and Mormon missionary work: what memoirs tell us"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"They are still teenagers, 18 or 19, and are sent out to change the lives of adults. The boys dress up like CIA-agents, the girls like old-school women. They typically have no clue about the national, regional, social, cultural, religious, or familial identities of the people they try to interest in their alien sect. They pretend they are only adding to the truth people already have but have no idea which truths these people have. They work within a compelling frame of rules, goals, figures, and reports. Therefore they would do anything to drag a non-member to church on Sunday, even a drunk on the bus or a weirdo met on the way to church. If need be, they break up families to reach their goal, flippantly calling it getting wet, getting white, dunking, plunging, splashing, or putting on the Elvis suit\u2014even if they know in their heart the candidate is not ready.<\/p>\n

They call their targets \u201cinvestigators\u201d\u2014often loners or messed up people who let the missionaries in and who loosely acquiesce to lessons they vaguely understand. These targets are precious souls, ailing, but no patients for inexperienced teenagers. When genuine seekers or religious enquirers are eager to chat with the missionaries, the dissonance is awkward. The teenagers use testimony to dodge reasonable questions and objections. They repel the more thoughtful investigators by prematurely requiring commitments to baptism. They see Satan in the critic. It\u2019s \u201cus versus them.\u201d They have no time to waste on tangential topics because the weekly report is due with figures for various categories\u2014\u201dcontacts made,\u201d \u201cdiscussions given,\u201d \u201cattended sacrament meeting,\u201d \u201chave a baptismal date,\u201d and \u201cbaptized.\u201d From a few hundred for the first category to perhaps 1 for the last, but much more often zero.<\/p>\n

\"\"Between them they play roles to survive, comply, or impress. They sometimes go through hell with companions. They find out that the promises tied to strict obedience and intense work are idle rhetoric (worse: the easy-going and disobedient ones are more successful). Hierarchy, junior, seniors, trainers, transfers, secret crushes, and the Mission President are very much on their mind. Some hide their ambitions but display the expected signs to become DL, ZL, or even AP. Their moods alternate between dark and light. Even if discouraged and depressed, they still teach lessons on faith and happiness. They often wonder what they are doing here. Some discover their own religion.<\/p>\n

But occasionally they also experience unexplainable spiritual climaxes, revelation, and the power of grace. They develop resilience and compassion. They learn to sustain each other. They gather gripping life stories and magnify trivialities to major events. They mature, make lifelong friends, and dig into themselves to make sense of it all. They may discover humanity and love among and towards the few strangers they finally get to know well. They bond with the country, even if it\u2019s only for the national desserts. And when they look back after many years, they conclude or convince themselves they don\u2019t regret the experience. Which does not mean they always approve of what they were sent to do.<\/p>\n

All the above elements, candidly told as such, and more, are found in the autoethnographic genre or Mormon Missionary Memoirs.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

By Common Consent Press<\/a> published two recent ones, both valuable for their contribution to the genre: Angela Clayton\u2019s The Legend of Hermana Plunge<\/em> about her mission on the Canary Islands in 1989\u20131990 and Roger Terry\u2019s Bruder: The Perplexingly Spiritual Life and Not Entirely Unexpected Death of a Mormon Missionary<\/em> about his mission in Germany in 1975\u20131977. That means they were slightly older than the average missionary now. First I\u2019ll review these two books and from there expand to ethics and missionary work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hermana and Bruder<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Both Clayton (Hermana Plunge) and Terry (Bruder Terry) think their story is kind of \u201catypical\u201d\u2014Clayton because she knows her mission on the tropical Canary islands, without much supervision among a pretty loose local populace, was totally different than tightly-controlled missions in colder countries; Terry mainly because of his candid self-analysis and the disconnect he feels between the missionary he was and the person he is now. But their basic experiences are quite similar, just as they are in other memoirs. Both went on their mission because somehow it belonged to the natural order of things in their family and community. The anticipation of a stay abroad and of social capital upon return (RM!) play an obvious role. Absent from their descriptions: a deep desire to \u201cbring people to Christ.\u201d The rest of the plotline follows typically, from the coziness of pre-mission life to entering the MTC (or still LTM for Terry), the giant leap into a strictly structured life, the bewildering arrival in the field, the totally unrealistic goal-setting by the mission president or leading missionaries, the challenges of the junior status, the bizarre investigators, the uneasiness over the pushy approach (testify, challenge, and baptize promptly), the inter-missionary camaraderie, rivalry, and conflicts, the gossip and the rumors, the highs and lows, the concerns about goals and numbers, and the final reflections on pros and cons.<\/p>\n

Clayton still worked with the Alvin-Dyer approach of the 1960s and Terry experimented with it. The later Preach My Gospel<\/em> is not too far from it with its emphasis on short lessons, testimony, Spirit, and prompt commitments. Both missionaries felt uneasy about this approach. One Dyer-principle is that \u201cthe Lord knows who He wants in the Church. This has been determined beforehand and there isn\u2019t much that you and I can do to destroy that\u201d (Clayton, 27, quoting Dyer). It is the concept of the blood of Israel, the elect from the pre-existence who will recognize the voice. For the missionaries in the Canary Islands it meant: \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to prepare new Church members, just find them, ready-made. If they didn\u2019t progress, you\u2019d find someone else … In practice, this meant that, as missionaries, we were off the hook for what happened after baptism\u201d (Clayton, 29). Terry from his side wonders about the lack of response of the people: \u201cIf this really is God\u2019s only true church, you\u2019d think he could do a better job of either making it more attractive or communicating this fact to his children\u201d (p. 228).<\/p>\n

Clayton and Terry also have in common that they wanted to write a mission memoir, driven not only by rich reminiscences they want to tell, but also by a desire to sort out what it all meant and to revisit those with whom they shared emotional moments. Both are surprised when rereading their missionary journals, by what they perceived then, and how their outlook and even memories have changed since. They both struggle to write diplomatically about weird mission leaders and companions they had. Where needed, names are changed, of course. Above all, they mature: they discover that, when it comes to rules and obedience, humanity and common sense trump hypocrisy and idiocy.<\/p>\n

Clayton as well as Terry made a calculation of their investment. Clayton (16 months in the field) taught 814 discussions, had 69 investigators at church, and contributed to 20 baptisms. If that sounds successful, first read the details about the lifestyle of local Canarians. Terry (22 months in the field) talked to some 40,000 contacts and taught \u201cbetween 900 and 1,000 discussions.\u201d Of all his investigators, 13 joined the church, with Terry getting credit for two baptisms\u2014a lonely older lady and an Osmond-fan. Practically all converts, both from Clayton and Terry, turned inactive after their baptism. \u201cIt\u2019s as if they were never Mormons, other than to temporarily pad the inflated statistics the Church publishes\u201d (Terry, 230). Still, both our returned missionaries kept in touch, through mail or visits, with some of the people they had known. \u201cWhile the church may have introduced us all, it didn\u2019t define or limit the relationships we formed\u201d (Clayton, 225). Clayton and Terry cared, enough to give a prominent place to locals in their writings, which deserves a lot of praise.<\/p>\n

But each memoir is also distinctive. Professionally Angela Clayton became a business executive. Her memoir shows she was already in that disposition early on\u2013\u201dvery judgmental of Molly Mormon types\u201d (p. 6). As a self-conscious woman she is aware of her emancipated status and of the missionaries\u2019 gender, age, and leadership imbalances (certainly still in 1989). She undergoes the frustrations of being commanded and reprimanded by authoritarian males younger than herself. But she remains wise and lucid about it all. Her tale is basically good-humored and her personality jesting and self-affirming\u2014hence the nickname \u201cPlunge\u201d she gave herself as the \u201clegend\u201d who outclassed the male missionaries in bringing in baptisms, but ending as a \u201cwise and jaded has-been\u201d (cover). Her writing style makes the book pretty entertaining.<\/p>\n

Roger Terry is a product of the humanities\u2014precisely \u201cnot the corporate type\u201d (p. viii). His later career took the literary and editorial direction, moreover deeply embedded in Mormonism, working as an editor for the Liahona<\/em> and the Ensign<\/em>, and finally as editorial director of BYU Studies<\/em>. He knows the Church to be \u201cone of the most complex conundrums you could find\u201d (p. x). It is from that perspective that he looks back with the intensity of a meticulous and sometimes grim quest. When I review a book I highlight the sentences that strike me as important. With Terry\u2019s book I ended up highlighting about one third on many pages. He writes with non-members or uninformed members in mind, explaining church history, organization, and doctrine, intricacies and contradictions included. Understanding dogmas, faith, and spiritual feelings and struggling with inadequacy are recurring themes, sometimes expressed intellectually, sometimes lyrically. But the basic tone remains constructive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ethics<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To what extent is Mormon missionary work ethical? The missionary memoirs provide material that illuminates this question in the field of applied ethics. I define ethics here as \u201ca set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures.\u201d[2]<\/a> In other words: to what extent does Mormon missionary work help or harm? I list here a number of issues that I have developed in greater detail in Dutch here<\/a> (for those interested, requesting online English translation should enable a fairly understandable text). It should also be clear that I address the topic from the viewpoint of the church \u201cin the peripheries,\u201d the locale of the memoirs, outside of Mormon strongholds.<\/p>\n