Interview With A Mormon Missionary

W. gets curious:

You've seen those Mormon "elders" -- those college-age kids, traveling in pairs, usually on bicycles, usually wearing ties, visiting folks and trying to convert them. But what's up with them? I had a long conversation with a young LDS guy, "Bill", who did his two-year missionary stint recently. Here are some observations:

• It is voluntary; Mormon boys are not forced to do it.
• Nevertheless, Bill feels that "elders" who don't do their time are wimps.
• Its a 2-year stint, and you don't get to choose where.
• These days, most kids are sent overseas.
• They are looked after somewhat by a middle-aged Mormon volunteer from the US, who does full-time service in the field for several years, keeping tabs on the elders & helping them out.
• Some kids can't handle the challenge, and quit before finishing.
• Bill knows one kid, who was assigned to Spain, who was recalled after one month because he was doing drugs and fornicating! Bill went to the South Pacific.
• Elders concentrate their missionary efforts in low income, high crime areas.
• Bill said lots of elders get beat up, or robbed, sometime during their tour.
• The people they visit: 10% are receptive, 70% are courteous but not interested, 20% are hostile.
• Bill's most memorable house visit: The guy told Bill to wait in the living room, then went out the back door, let his mean dogs into the front yard, and Bill had to run through two biting dogs to get away.
• Bill has been punched in the face several times.
• In one town, street gangs were threatening the elders. Fortunately, a local prison official was a Mormon. He visited the gang in their headquarters, and told them "You know I'll be seeing many of you in a few years. These kids here are my friends, and I like my friends. If they get hurt, I'll remember when you come stay in my house". They had no further trouble with the gang in that town.
• Mormon converts in the South Pacific like to name their kids Moroni, Nephi, and Lehi. They stopped doing that in the US about 1930.
• Bill, as a practicing Mormon, does not use vulgar words. However, he does say "sucks", so I guess "sucks" doesn't count as a vulgar word anymore.

When I lived in Salt Lake City for a year, I was struck how cosmopolitan the place was. (I had assumed religious centers of any sort would tend to be unusually conservative and insular, particularly one that was so far from the coast). The reasons, of course, are these missions, which expose young Mormons to a wider world. In turn, they bring back a fascination with foreign cuisine, foreign languages, foreign cultures, etc. The experiences are still refracted through Mormon lenses, of course, so no one is bringing back very much in the way of foreign religion, for example, but your typical 22-year-old Mormon will have a better grasp of foreign policy and foreign relations than a typical 22-year-old non-Mormon will, for example.

Salt Lake City is about 50/50 Mormon/non-Mormon, but it was clear to me that Mormons were the ones adding foreign spice to the place. Despite the many, real foreigners and outsiders on the University of Utah campus and in the general area, strangely enough, they contributed less to the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city than the supposedly homebound natives did.

The University of Utah neighborhoods seemed intensely anti-religious, even more so than places like, say, University of California, Berkeley. (Studious Mormons seem to prefer BYU instead, in Provo.) Anti-clerical zeal has more meaning and more bite if you actually live in a religious center.

Also, SLC probably has more churches and denominations of all religions than any other city in America – at least, more than any other place I’ve ever seen (even church hothouses like Prescott, AZ).

Mormon sincerity comes out in strange ways. The “flat tax” movement was doing pretty well recently in Utah, until the Mormon hierarchy got a good look at it, and realized how much damage it would do to charitable giving of all sorts, not just tithing. The Mormon Church pronounced whatever the Mormon equivalent is of a “fatwah” against the “flat tax” movement, and the movement there, quite popular too, died an instantaneous death. Mormons are very conservative, ultra-conservative even, but there are some things Mormons will not do.