Not long ago I posted this thread:
http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/view.php?bn=exmobb_recovery&key=1283487851&modified=1283487851

Just wanted to follow up and once again thank you all for your advice. I went to a Fast & Testimony meeting at a ward that was one away from the one geographically closest to me. Overall impression: oy, *that* is what LDS spend hours upon hours of their lives doing? The weeping and boasting were sooo unprofound.

Funny, earlier in the day I happened to watch an old Nat Geo documentary where Lisa Ling joined a humanitarian medical team that was going to North Korea to do simple eye operations (to remove cataracts, I think). The doctors did the operations on people and restored their sight, in some cases after decades of blindness. The bandages were removed in a dramatic ceremony, and what did the patients do... no thanks to the the doctors, instead they prostrated themselves in front of a portrait of Kim Jong Il, where they started wailing and crying attributing all glory to him. Bleh. At the Mormon service, there were a few erie parallels.

Anyway, a synopsis: the Bishop and his assistants were borderline caricatures - all could've been hired to play smug Republican extras on The West Wing. He started off the service with some shallow tripe about how perfect his family was, then bragged about being a lawyer, then read a random poem with hilarious histrionic bravado. No scripture. There weren't even Bibles or Books of Mormon available in the pews. The ward was not huge and it sure felt like he (the Bishop) noticed I (an outsider) was there and kept staring at me. It was kind of funny because every time he mentioned Joseph blah blah, he would then make a point of looking me in the eye and adding something like, "**AND** WE BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST!" (WTF?)

I did not expect that every other person would cry. A few were so weepy that they could barely speak. Others were bizarre. A pattern I couldn't help but notice was whenever someone's ramble veered in a direction that started to employ simple logic, they would trail off. "I know the church is true, because....[trail off] Amen!" Etc. One extremely dorky gentleman reminisced about his mission and I just felt awful for him. He must've been an over-30 year old virgin and seemed quite lonely (and indoctrinated).

After they did the last hymn I bolted for the door and left. All in all I guess I'm glad I went and I do think it helps me understand Utah culture a smidgen better.

As our semester gets further underway, I suppose I feel some pity for the TBMs in my graduate program. Most look tired and I imagine are not receiving the excellent grades they want thus far. When asked to solve, prove, or defend something without a well-established protocol to draw upon they just flounder. None of them seem comfortable competing in the marketplace of ideas that the academic environment demands of them. I imagine it has a lot to do with the manner in which they've been indoctrinated into their church.

I was a missionary in Europe and trained at the missionary center in Provo. We were taught to do that...to look the "investigator" straight in the eye, radiate "sincerity" and bear our testimony. If we did it right, we were promised that the person we were teaching would feel the spirit of God and know that what we were saying was true and was from God. Now I know it's just a cheap sales technique, used in other professions.

Mormons, fairly recently, were told not to look up scriptures during the meetings because it was distracting from the spirit. So if a speaker quotes a scripture, you aren't supposed to stop and look it up or mark it in your own scriptures. It might bother someone. Around the same time, there was a big push to get all the elementary age kids to bring their scriptures every Sunday. But they were discouraged from using them. Weird huh? Appearance over substance at it's finest. Thanks for updating us on how your visit went.

So I guess that leaves me with the question, when *do* they study/use scripture? I was thinking it might be worth it for me to visit again someday when they weren't doing the F&T thing, but if it'll be round two of spontaneous/amateur performances, I'm not so curious.

I guess at a Catholic, Luthern, etc service the guy running the show has been to divinity school. It's kind of funny how the Mormon Bishop is a random suit willing to tow the company line who might not be a Biblical scholar at all. (correct me if I'm wrong)

New UT grad student Wrote:

> It's kind of funny how the Mormon Bishop is a
> random suit willing to tow the company line who
> might not be a Biblical scholar at all. (correct
> me if I'm wrong)

This is correct, it's an all lay clergy. Creepy right? How would you like to have your accountant counsel you and your spouse through marital problems? Probably not appealing, right? That's the mormon experience.