Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: January 30, 2011 07:01PM
The missionaries in my area never encouraged investigators to attend church. ("The members mess it up for us"). Only once a baptism was scheduled did the bishop require that they attend at least once, maybe twice, prior to dunk day. So nobody caught a clue about the boredom factor.
As doctrine is rarely, if ever, specifically discussed at SM, going just once or twice would not clue you in to the variations from the Christian theme (3 levels of heaven, heavenly polygamy, we will be gods, etc). You would also not notice that in many wards (such as mine) the foundation blocks of Christianity are absent (celebrations for Christmas, Easter, use of Bible, worship of Jesus/God etc).
I don't recall being told about callings beforehand. For me and other converts I knew that was a shock.
I didn't realize you don't _have_ to go to the temple - I got the impression after baptism that there was a laundry list of steps to go through and that it was expected of all members. Too, whenever I had a question nobody would answer me but said to wait for the temple where all would be revealed (uh, didn't happen for me).
I didn't know until after the temple endowment session that the g's replace one's civvy underwear. (It was part of all that was too sacred to reveal beforehand). You have to just obey instructions and stifle your questions, I found.
You also don't realize ahead how cold and dry and repetitious and depressing Mormonism is. I kept myself in longer than I should have because I thought you can't withdraw your commitment ("promises", "covenants") just because you're bored or because Mormon Church depresses you. In fact, following the program from Mormonism and other fundy-type religious groups, I thought it was my fault and "sinful" even to be bored or to have questions or to change one's mind about oaths once taken (even if not understood at the time).
Once I could get past that way of thinking, I could get out. I think that with incoming information shedding a different light on a situation it is okay and often advisable to change course. It's okay to do what you like and want and what feels right rather than to force yourself to keep on doing what is making you unhappy or even depressed (as happened to me).
I think that finding the "key" to what will help someone see things with a different perspective can go a long way to them choosing to try another route (i.e., leave the church or group or job or whatever it is that's not working for them but in which they feel stuck).
Of course, knowing then what we know now, few, if any, would get baptized. I think a lot of active BICs and exmo BICs and nevermos and forever-atheists can't comprehend why non-BICS would ever join the Mormon Church because they don't realize just how little information we have beforehand and how little contact we have with the meetings, the members and the doctrine and practices of Mormonism as they are implemented today. Certainly very few know much about Mormon history.
The biggest error on the part of potential joiners, at least prior to the Internet explosion, is assuming way too much about Mormonism as opposed to researching it independently first (for instance, assuming that it's just another Christian denomination, albeit off-mainstream). That was certainly a big factor in my case (pre-Google).
The biggest blind spot in understanding converts is as I described above, assuming they have far more information and understanding than they do. I have personally witnessed missionaries actively discouraging church attendance and research, pushing the spirit, the spirit, the spirit in choosing to "convert". For those who fall for that, whatever concerns or questions arise after baptism are answered by versions of the comment "But you felt the spirit", as if that is true, as if it answers all questions, as if there is no turning back because of that one "fact". In my case, when I went to the bishop with questions he would unfailingly answer "But you've been to the temple" as if that would (1) answer all questions or (2) cause all questions to disappear without needing answers.
I'll go on record, again, as opining that (many) exmos constantly display a really bad attitude toward converts. Even after all these yrs at RfM it still irks me to read some of the comments (not on this thread, at least so far). I consider that members or ex-members with such negative opinions of converts are actively supporting Mormonism, which treats its converts badly. Members and exmos uphold this tradition by dissing people who, after all, merely believed what the church's missionaries and members and leaders told them, some or all of which turns out to be half-truths, misinformation, or outright lies (all of which I have witnessed in missionary efforts).
The Mormon conversion technique as I have experienced and observed it includes:
1. Tell the investigator as little as possible (so they won't find out potentially off-putting information - this doesn't work so well now in the 21C where the Internet and the God of Google abound).
2. Get them baptized as soon as possible (there is unholy pressure during the first discussion to get baptized; some even do it before they get all the discussions or the mishies "teach" all the discussions in one or two days to speed up the baptism date; of course, this is a high pressure sales technique to catch the person and dunk them before they have time to think or study up on Mormonism).
3. Post-baptism keep them so busy their head spins (they don't have time to ask questions before they get in as deep as it's possible to go; for me, getting shunted onto the speedy temple track from day 1 post-dunk kept me quiet for a whole yr, plenty of time to get indoctrinated, or so they thought).
4. If they don't settle down, accuse them of being lazy, sinning, disrespecting their covenants to God, asking too many questions, rocking the boat, causing contention, etc (I will never forget how truly peculiar it was, and highly embarrassing, to be told that I had "stirred up contention in the congregation" for merely asking at an RS event about the doctrine of the Trinity. "We don't discuss doctrine in church" said one Mormon woman sternly.
Uh, OK, all righty then, didn't know that. How bizarre.
So, yeah, I have feelings about the convert situation, from both sides of the aisle.
I was going to write this on another current thread about converts but I just went and splurted it all here. Again. Sorry if it's misplaced, but the sentiments remain sound.
Don't support Mormonism by dissing converts!
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2011 07:40PM by Nightingale.