Posted by:
srichardbellrock
(
)
Date: December 14, 2017 06:43PM
It’s too long to fit into RFM post., so here are a couple of paragraphs to see if you might be interested, link at the end:
Presumably, we have all heard the notion that one of the primary purposes (if not the primary purpose) of the LDS proselytizing mission, is to “convert the missionary,” so to speak. It is widely held that those who put in the 18 or 24 months of missionary service are more likely to remain active in the faith and to be committed to continued service to the Church.
In this piece I suggest that to the extent that this entrenchment of commitment, activity, and service actually happens, it should not necessarily be interpreted as a positive reflection on the LDS Church, but as a result of normal and natural psychological processes occurring in reaction to the experiences typically had on the mission.
Faithful LDS members are likely to interpret this “conversion of the missionary,” this increase in commitment to Church activity by the RM (returned missionary) as a positive reflection on the truthfulness of the claims of the Church, perhaps as a result of becoming increasingly attuned to matters of the spirit while steeped in service, or as an inoculation against the future stresses of difficult Church assignments, or any number of things that reflect a positive glow onto the Church.
I humbly submit that the RM’s increase in commitment to the Church is independent of the truthfulness of the claims of the Church, and would occur whether those foundational claims held any truth or not. To put it even more bluntly, even if, for the sake of argument, the LDS organization were a complete fraud, the experience of serving a mission would result in the exact same dedication to future Church participation as it would were the Church entirely legitimate.
Regarding missionary service, the LDS sponsored website “mormonwiki” (http://www.mormonwiki.com/Returned_Missionary) employs an enlightening turn of phrase: “For young Mormons, and most especially for young male members, serving a mission is seen as a rite of passage into adulthood.” (italics added to emphasize the interesting use of the term)
The central thesis of this piece is that the RM’s increased commitment to the Church can be accounted for by precisely the same “rite of passage” phenomena that occur when students, soldiers, athletes, etc., are “hazed” by their fellow soldiers, teammates, etc.
To that end, I first try to lay out a definition of hazing, then offer a simple discussion of some principles of psychology, followed by an application of those principles of psychology to hazing to show some reasons why hazing has the effects that it has. I then try to make a case that a description of a proselyting mission has sufficient similarity to the description of hazing to justify a claim that the mission qualifies as a form of hazing. By that point the heavy lifting is done, and I conclude by trying to pull it together with a necessary but brief section tying the mission back to the psychology of hazing.
Please read on:
https://unexaminedfaith.blogspot.com/…/the-lds-proselytizin…
BTW, I’d be very interested in your comments and experiences.