STRAIGHT OUTTA DODGE

When the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, dove headfirst into the Mormon pool by producing the satirical hit Broadway play "The Book of Mormon" they received a lot of criticism and adulation from all sides of the religious debate. The Mormon church actually bought ads in the program inviting patrons to read the book after watching the play. The church was betting that many who saw the play would think, "Wow, that's so cool that they are good sports about all this. Maybe I'll check it out." When the more self-righteous mainstream Christians clamored about Mormons not being real Christians and that the play normalized a cult, Matt and Trey came to the defense of Mormons saying something like, "Yeah, Mormons are weird, but they aren't any weirder than the rest of you Christians. At least when we run into Mormons they are super nice and happy all the time."

I get it. Mormons seem quaint and quirky to outsiders. A lot of people view Mormons in the same way they do the Amish: a little backwards, but ultimately harmless. And sure, maybe they aren't as subversive and nasty as some religious zealots can be. But that's how they get ya.

You see, for a Mormon, there is an ulterior motive to their overt pleasantness. They are literally selling you something. For the low, low price of 10% of your income, you, too, can achieve eternal life. Act now and they will even allow you see your family in heaven.

Their greatest marketing tool is their kindness. By being nice to you, the customer, they hope that you will be impressed by their graciousness and want to join their church. It is not unlike Coke-a-Cola spending millions to advertise their charitable givings during the Superbowl. And Mormons are not subtle about it either. They literally talk about it as a way to encourage non-Mormon friends and family to talk to the missionaries and get baptized whenever they have Sunday school lessons about how every member is a missionary. In fact, as an actual missionary one is required to do weekly public service so that locals will see the church in a favorable way.

In my mission we offered free English classes at the church for anyone who wanted to attend. I remember one time we were starting a new round of classes and we pushed extra hard to have a great turnout. We printed new eye-catching posters and plastered the city with hundreds of ads. It took us a week or two to post them all. When the class started we had our highest attendance ever. Dozens of people filed into the entry level class, most of whom I had never seen before. We were ecstatic. Another missionary and I were teaching together, and I started the class by explaining who we were, and what the class would be about. Suddenly, I felt "impressed by the spirit" to bare my testimony that the church was true and the Book of Mormon was a real historical document and all the other typical sound bites Mormons use during a sales pitch. Part way through my testimony, which was starting to drag and feel a bit forced (as they often do), the other missionary interjected and started writing basic words on the white board. He turned to me and whispered, "You gotta include more English, man." I was deflated. I really felt like god wanted me to say what I said, and that I would touch the heart of someone in our captive audience. After all, we were missionaries in post-communist Bulgaria. Business was slow and we were desperate for success.

The next week maybe 25% of the students came back. The week after we were back to our regular crew of about half a dozen people for all three classes.

Sometimes I think about that incident and regret sharing my testimony. Maybe I could have done some actual, no kidding good for the local people who obviously had a desire to learn English (learning English meant having a better chance of winning the Green Card lottery and moving to the USA). Maybe then my two-year mission wouldn't have been a complete waste of time. Other times I think it was a good thing that I put off so many people on the first day of class. At least that way they were able to see our true intentions--and let's be clear, converting them to Mormonism was our intention--and get out while they could.

Maybe it's a wash.

Fast forward to this past weekend when my wife and I went to her parents' home for dinner. We had a pleasant evening. There was good food, we played a board game, my dog got to spend some quality time with her third favorite person in the world. As the night was wrapping up, I thought to myself, "wow, this was actually a nice little get-together." When it was time for us to leave, my wife announced that we needed to get going, and without hesitation my father-in-law said, "Let's have a family prayer." It wasn't a question.

I was livid. I reluctantly stood by as my in-laws and my wife all kneeled on the floor and my father-in-law said a prayer about, well, I don't know, I was too upset to pay attention. The whole evening was a sham. It was coercive, passive-aggressive manipulation. He was betting that we wouldn't want to be rude after such a pleasant evening and would just go along with it. Then god would "do the rest" and soften our hearts and we would leap back into the Mormon pool once again.

Was is a big deal? Could I have gone along with it? Sure. I have in similar situations. But my wife and I have had conversations with her parents about Mormonism and our relationship with the church (we have both removed our names from the church's records). They don't know all the details, because my wife isn't all that eager to get in to it with her parents. And that's fine. She gets to dictate the pace with her family. But her parents know enough about our position to be able to reasonably infer that at the very least things like prayers and firesides and sacrament meetings and General Conference and reading scriptures is touchy for us and very likely to make us uncomfortable. Especially when put on the spot in front of other family members who may not know as much about the situation. What if our roles had been reversed? What if I made it a point to have a movie playing which I knew would offend my guests as they come in? What if I had steered the conversation to things like the health benefits of coffee and tea, or the moral case for abortion. What if before they left my home I insisted that I read a passage from Christopher Hitchens' book god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything? At the very least I would be a poor host. But when religious people pull that nonsense knowingly in mixed company, they presumably get a pass. Frankly, it's rude and shows a lack of respect for our beliefs and boundaries. But Mormons don't care. The ends justify the means. In their view they are doing us a favor. They are offering us eternal life, after all, for the low, low price of 10% of our income. And if we act now we can spend eternity with pushy, self-righteous assholes.

I really need to get out of Utah...




BONUS MATERIAL:




Christopher Hitchens on how religion poisons everything.

CRAZY FOR JESUS

Note: I found this saved as a draft from last February. I never finished it and I don't really remember where I was going towards the end. I gave it a kinda sorta conclusion so that it didn't just end. Mostly I'm publishing this because I was going to write a similar kind of post about another recent occurrence of Mormons mormoning all over the place. I'm sensing a pattern...



I work in mental health treatment and the facility where I work has specific guidelines concerning the way in which staff should talk about certain topics with patients, the long and short of which is staff should generally avoid controversial topics, especially religion and politics. Living in Utah County, where everyone assumes locals are Mormon and "every member is a missionary," this is easier said than done since many people feel a strong desire to save souls from damnation and, after all, Mormonism is totally 100% true, so obviously it can't be a bad thing to use one's influence over vulnerable and impressionable patients in one's care to bring them to the truth which will totally change their life for the better.

You get the idea.

One would think that Mormons, of all faiths, would be able to respect this therapeutic boundary since they believe that those who don't join the church in this life will have an opportunity to do so in the afterlife. This, in turn, raises the question of what the deal is with those tens of thousands (notably not hundreds of thousands, Mr. Holland) of young pre-adult missionaries whose sole purpose is to convince other people that their worldview is fundamentally wrong and they should join the Mormons instead. What could possibly be the purpose of missionary work if the afterlife will surely tie off any mortal loose ends? (Tithing. The answer is tithing.)

The other day a few co-workers and I were chit-chatting between meetings. Apparently some Mormon co-workers not in the room have been bad in this regard. Very bad, indeed. Even after a superior lectured them and told them to stop trying to convert the patients to Mormonism, they kept doing it. And now they got one, because of course they did. Some time in the next couple weeks a mentally compromised and impressionable patient will be baptized into the Mormon church in part because they want to make their Mormon mentors happy. And because this is Utah County, other than a second slightly firmer talking-to, there will be no corrective action for the staff who broke this very important legal boundary (the fact that the staff broke this boundary could open up the institution to a law suit, although it's unlikely).

One person present in our conversation was very vocal in his opposition to proselytizing patients in our care. So much so that I thought I might have found a secular ally. That is, until he went on to clarify his position that although he would never talk to a patient about his personal religious beliefs, he really likes the fact that part of the treatment program at our facility emphasizes the importance of having a Higher Power and how it invariably helps in therapeutic treatment.

I was taken aback by this comment for a few reasons. First, I had completely forgotten that this was part of the program as I have literally never heard anyone--staff, therapist, nurse, psychiatrist--mention a Higher Power as part of the program in the two years I have work for this company. During training meetings prior to starting the job, I didn't make too much of it at the time because, again, this is Utah County and that kind of thing is pervasive within the professional community.

The second reason this mention of a Higher Power struck me was the apparent contrast, no, contradiction it has with the boundary staff are expected to hold regarding discussing religion with patients. I had never realized this before, probably because I had never been presented the two conflicting ideas so close together.

How can a treatment facility simultaneously promote the notion of a Higher Power as an integral part of its program and discourage staff talking about religion with patients? As my co-worker explained, it is because "a Higher Power can be anything."

Well, how is that not just offensive to everyone involved? Believers, non-believers, deists, Buddhists, everyone should find the idea that "a Higher Power can be anything" utter nonsense which belittles all worldviews. Allow me to explain.

For a non-believer (this would include Buddhists and other eastern philosophies which do not necessarily promote a god or deity which would intervene in our affairs) the notion that a belief in a Higher Power is necessary to be successful in treatment is offensive because it implies that since they do not believe they will not be successful. In addition to being offensive, this can be very damaging to the patient, and I have seen this first hand. Furthermore, the notion of a Higher Power in a therapeutic sense originates from Alcoholics Anonymous, which started out as Christian support group during the Prohibition which sought to bring vulnerable and dysfunctional drunks to Jesus. It is inherently religious. Only in recent years has AA and its affiliate organization NA (Narcotics Anonymous) softened the religious verbiage in order to reach a broader base. But the supernatural roots are still there. It should also be noted that the success rate of AA and NA is no better than other secular support groups, because what is really important in treatment and sobriety is social support.

For a believer in a specific, monotheistic god, like a Mormon, say, the fact that a Higher Power can be anything (i.e. a rock, a bag of chips, Donald Trump's dentures, etc.) suggests that the supposed benefits of believing are literally in one's head. What could be more offensive to a believer than to imply that god is psychosomatic, tantamount to a delusion?

For a deist, a Higher Power which would intervene and help a person with mental health issues runs contrary to the central tenet of deism which is that whatever Prime Mover started the Big Bang has left the universe to its own devices. Divine intervention is incompatible with deism generally. Even the softer notion of a Higher Power which would not intervene directly but would simply be disappointed if a person relapsed runs contrary to the core of deism. A deistic Prime Mover simply would not care about a person's treatment.

I could probably keep going, but you get the idea. What I'm driving at, despite my meanderings, is that I'm just tired of Mormonism. I left the church over a decade ago and I'm frankly exhausted. I guess it's true what they say, "You can leave the church, but the church can't leave you alone," or whatever...