Seeing those missionaries that go door to door all over the world, and most seem to be 18-21 years old, I would imagine that over time at least one Mormon missionary was ‘turned’ by the people he tried to convert.
Is there any evidence of this happening?
Or would their faith be so strong they would never be turned? I would seem that a Mormon Missionary in say, the deep U.S. south, would be knocking on Southern Bapist doors long enough to get some serious counter-arguments.
Anything’s possible, but this would be suprising. It’s not that their faith is so strong, it’s that while they’re serving as missionaries, they’re ensconsed deeply into a social system that powerfully reinforces their religious identity. They are always together with their missionary partner, everything they do all day every day is focussed on the practice of and confirmation of their faith, they know their families back home have invested alot both financially and socially in their serving as missionaries, and so on and so on. It would be really inordinately difficult, if only for psychological reasons, for a mormon missionary to be converted away from Mormonism while on his or her mission. Much more difficult than it would be for him or her to be converted at some other time.
Now as to whether questions might be seeded into their minds during their missionary service, which only grow to fruition later–that’s entirely a different story of course.
-FrL-
My brother almost did, or maybe did. I don’t know.
A couple nice young men came by the house one day, and my brother the PhD’d molecular biologist was feeling feisty, and invited them in. About three hours later the one young man was feeling really uncomfortable and wanted to go. My brother invited them both back for more discussion. The one didn’t, the other one did later, by himself.
My brother wasn’t trying to convince them God doesn’t exist or anything, because he himself kinda thinks there’s something out there, but he was determined to teach these young men to think critically.
I’m not going to say that such a thing is impossible, but I suspect that it’s very unlikely. In my opinion, religious conversion (and for that matter, allegiance) is an emotional affair, not a logical one. And I suspect it follows tendencies established in childhood.
I am a Neo-pagan; I realised this after a dream one night. A few months previously, I had gotten involved with a Witch, and then broken up. But that relationship only occurred after I had done a large project with a ecological theme. And when I did the project, I didn’t even know that neo-pagans actually existed in the world. So the realisation did not come out of the blue; it was just a further step in a direction I was already going.
In another data point, one of my best friends has returned to church. She seems much happier, and the social connections seem to be doing her good. But what church did she return to? The one she grew up in.
My guess is that conversions only follow the tendencies people already have. If the missionary is already doubtful, the retro-conversion might work. But logically convincing someone secure in their faith? No.
Trying to convert someone by logical argument is exactly the wrong way to do it. Instead, be nice to them, and offer them solace or a haven in a hard world. If you do this for long enough, they might transfer their emotional allegiance. But it has to be a long-term ‘live it and show me’ kind of thing.
Now, I would be very interesting in hearing about this from Dopers who have consciously converted to a religion; I know there have been several.
I’d find it hard to believe any sort of missionary being converted while acting as a missionary.
That said, I do know of a former missionary who later lapsed in his faith, but that was long after his missionary days. That;s probably not unusual, for any religion
I’m not LDS but I live in Utah. There are quite a few young men from my town that have been on missions. I think it’s quite rare that anyone converts from LDS to another church. However, the very purpose of the mission is to get you to test your faith. It’s not uncommon for some of these folks to just loose faith altogether. They get tired of living in Ecuador and want just bag it; then, they think ‘Why not bag the whole thing?’ It doesn’t happen a lot but it does happen. The more common thing is for these people to go and fall in love with a gentile; then they convert to the young ladies’ faith.
Anyone see Dancing at Lughnasa . . . isnt the joke that the missionaires were turned by the pagans?
To be honest, that sounds a bit like a cult-ish love-bombing.
I’ve lived in Salt Lake City all my life, and while I’m still nominally a member of the LDS church I’m actually an agnostic leaning to strong atheism, and have been for about forty years.
Over the years I’ve known and seen a bunch of missionaries. The retention rate is pretty good for young men on missions (I’m not personally familiar with many young women missionaries).
I think this is for a variety of reasons. The ones who go on a mission are more likely to be the ones who hold stronger beliefs to being with. They are usually young people (18 to 20), and at that age you’re more likely to be passionate about any belief. As mentioned above, they may feel some pressure to “live up to” a perceived obligation to family and friends, for either monetary or social pressure reasons. And they are definitely surrounded by a group who are heavily invested in belief.
Having said that, there are some who bail during missions, and more who leave the church after returning home. I know of a handful who came home early (or not at all) because of a loss of faith, a couple who were sent home for “conduct unbecoming” (a pregnant convertee is tough to explain to your mission president!)
But in my experience, the vast majority are very sincere, very dedicated, and come back having had good experiences. Most say they wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I have a friend (attractive straight female) who swears she shagged one once. It was his second or third visit (she asked him to come back and discuss his religion some more) and one thing led to another and… Anyway, she says he did tell her he wasn’t a virgin, and that he wasn’t as good a Mormon as he wished. This was in Georgia.
She said he was really really good incidentally.
Yeah, pretty much what RJKUgly said. People do come home from missions–IME the guys much more than the women (since the women are both older and usually more dedicated in the first place). I had a good friend whose mission companion was disinclined to do any work, and disappeared one night, never to be seen again–he just took off and got a job somewhere in town. It happens, but it probably doesn’t happen very often that someone invites the missionaries in and convinces one of the error of his ways in a couple of hours.
Now, it’s not actually that hard to stump most missionaries–they are, after all, 19-21 and are trained to teach the basics of LDS doctrine, not to discuss the intricacies of various obscure points. Usually they’ll just write the question down and promise to research it and get back to you, or put you in touch with someone who can answer the question. That doesn’t mean they’re about to lose faith, it means they’re young and it’s not their job to know everything about LDS theology.
But yeah, I’d say most missionaries work hard, serve well, and come back the better for the experience. A mission serves as a rite of passage for an LDS guy–he returns a very different person, and usually a better one.
Sampiro, while your story certainly isn’t unbelievable, I’m wondering where the guy’s companion was in all of this? Missionaries always go out in pairs–they aren’t supposed to be out of each other’s sight (except for the bathroom obviously). You just don’t get one missionary at a time–and this is why!
Not sure. Perhaps he came back alone, or perhaps his partner wasn’t that particularly observant.
Another story about the same friend I mentioned above- it wasn’t her first encounter with Mormons and sex, which is one way she got her brief Mormon boyfriend to keep coming back.
I’ll call her Stephanie. She’s one of those women like Mae West and Queen Latifah who’s sexy because “she by God says she is”- i.e. not a conventional beauty [she’s heavy, very tall for a woman, wears Coke bottle glasses, a bit coarse at times, etc.] but if she sleeps alone it’s because she wants to sleep alone.
I met her when she was about 30. A decade before she had lived in Idaho and started college there, living in a dorm that was nicknamed “The Mormotorium” because most of its residents were teenaged Mormon girls. She said (and I’ve heard this from others I’ve known who’ve taught there) that it was incredible how many students, male and female, were married with 2 or 3 kids in their early 20s.
Anyway, Stephanie isn’t now/never has been a shrinking violet in any way and has always been into alternative music, went through the pierced lip and pastel hair dye phase, etc… She had posters of (openly gay British folk singer) Billy Bragg and of kd lang on her wall while her roommates had, according to her at least, pictures of Jesus and Joseph Smith. She said the worst thing about them was how damned impossible to offend they were- just genuinely nice people- and how it made her feel bad to listen to their conversations and they sounded like 13 year old girls at a slumber party instead of young adults, though she also said that with very few exceptions they weren’t judgmental.
Anyway, she was about 19-20 and feeling her oats and in that “ah but I love to shock” phase and one night when the Mormonettes were discussing kissing she interjected something into the conversation about how “I remember my first ‘real kiss’… I was about 15 I guess and it was with a basketball player… I remember thinking ‘kissing’s okay but I really prefer oral sex’”. The immediate result was what she’d expected and hoped for- stunned silence, awkwardness, a nervous giggle. The long term result was something she completely did not expect.
“I expected to be ostracized of course… didn’t really care because I was just so tired of wholesomeness. Instead the word got out and suddenly I became ‘*the big girl who’s had premarital SEX [including the non procreative stuff]!’ and damn! I became like the most popular girl on campus with all the Mormon girls! Of course they were all either saving themselves for marriage or if they hadn’t they weren’t admitting to it, but it turned out that they were damned sure thinking about it and curious about it and wanting to ask some questions they couldn’t ask their mom or their stake leaders and I became the go-to Dear Abby-Dr. Ruth woman for ‘how bad does it hurt when your hymen is broken?’ and ‘do you prefer giving oral sex or getting it and why?’ and ‘what’s it smell like when you’re down there?’ and other graphic questions.”
Anyway, she said that after she got over the shock she came to really respect them and, most ironically, “they had me embarassed that I hadn’t waited until a lot later to have sex!”
That’s the key to it right there. I’ve heard lots of historical accounts, in hagiographies and the like, of individuals being converted by being defeated in an argument. But that never rang true for me. Your idea is what actually does it.
That’s not surprising; I deleted a sentence about North Korean brainwashing. But part of the purpose of military training and morale building and chaperoning and togetherness exercises and group singing and all those things, is to break down old social structures and build new ones. Brainwashing and love-bombing are just extreme examples.
I’m sure that’s part of the reason that missionaries travel in pairs and have so much support. It’s not just to keep them fed, watered, and mobile; it also provides a social structure to underpin their faith.
IMHO, the logical arguments follow conversion; they don’t precede it.
:dubious: Well, yeah. Of course they were.
I lived in Berkeley and thus ran with a slightly looser crowd–we were all waiting of course, but we sure talked about it a lot. Once I was married I had a “Dangermom’s Facts of Life no one ever tells you” list to tell friends. We had a whole stack of books to pass around to the engaged couples, too (ones you wouldn’t want to keep forever or anything, we bought our own copies of the Joy of Sex).
Just because we wait doesn’t mean we don’t want to be prepared. Quite the opposite, most likely.
There are lots of sites with former Mormans telling their tales and almost all say when they were on their missionary work they really believed in it and that they could change the world. This is not really so much a product of religion (though it helps) as a product of youth. Youth always have strong opinions and the idea that THEY are the ones to change the world. They haven’t been pushed around enough yet to see how the world really works, so they give it their all.
It would take a few years of disillusionment to convert Mormons to other religions or to simply change young people’s mind about trying to save the whales (as Marge Simpson says “Face it their doomed.”)
There is the famous all-night talk where J. R. R. Tolkien convinced C. S. Lewis of the existence of God.
Sampiro, while I quite enjoyed your story, I am almost certain that Billy Bragg is not gay… though he certainly is an ally:
I’ve seen Billy in concert a few times and he made mention of the wife as well. Anything’s possible, but I really don’t think he’s gay.
He did a song a few years ago called “I’m not looking for New England” (or something to that effect) that I liked and that is literally the extent of what I know about him really. I’m going totally on Stephanie’s description and she’s been wrong before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s straight. (IIRC he’s a friend of Michael Stipe’s, which may be where she got the idea he’s gay.)