{"id":103338,"date":"2024-01-03T16:46:29","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T23:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=103338"},"modified":"2024-01-03T16:46:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T23:46:29","slug":"every-member-a-missionary-heres-some-important-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2024\/01\/every-member-a-missionary-heres-some-important-help.html","title":{"rendered":"Every Member A Missionary: Here’s Some Important Help"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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<\/a>

\u201cMormoner p\u00e5 bes\u00f8g hos en t\u00f8mrer p\u00e5 landet\u201d (Mormons visit a country carpenter)
Painted in 1856 by Christen Dalsgaard, this work hangs in the Statens Museum for Kunst, in Copenhagen. \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Christmas, a neighbor gave us a new book by her brother. \u00a0The book is Gary C. Lawrence, Millions Believe As We Do, But Haven\u2019t Yet Found the Church: \u00a0Conversation Ideas from a National Poll<\/em>. \u00a0Gary Lawrence<\/a> is an active Latter-day Saint \u2014 currently, I believe, an ordinance worker in the Newport Beach California Temple \u2014 and a professional public opinion researcher (with a B.A. in political science from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in public affairs communication from Stanford University).<\/p>\n

I was vocally enthusiastic about his 2008 book How Americans View Mormonism: Seven Steps to Improve Our Image<\/a><\/em>, which, in my judgment, is crammed full of insights that, if properly taken into account, could have a potentially enormous impact on Latter-day Saint missionary work and on how we present ourselves to the public. \u00a0I gave copies of it to several friends, with that hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2020,\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em> published one of the better recent journalistic articles about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:\u00a0 \u201cThe Most American Religion: Perpetual outsiders, Mormons spent 200 years assimilating to a certain national ideal\u2014only to find their country in an identity crisis. What will the third century of the faith look like?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Among other passages, I was struck by this one regarding the hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon<\/i>, a passage that strikes me as precisely right:<\/p>\n

But then I met a theater critic in New York who had recently seen the musical. He marveled at how the show got away with being so ruthless toward a minority religion without any meaningful backlash. I tried to cast this as a testament to Mormon niceness. But the critic was unconvinced. \u201cNo,\u201d he replied. \u201cIt\u2019s because your people have absolutely no cultural cachet.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How to develop \u201ccultural cachet\u201d?\u00a0 This is where a horde of faithful Latter-day Saint composers, playwrights, actors, novelists, artists, and thinkers would come in handy.\u00a0 Plus, we have a really interesting history to tell, with lots of drama.\u00a0 And our demographic center in the Great Basin West features a lot of spectacular terrain that should draw even more interest from tourists than it already does.\u00a0 But I doubt that achieving \u201ccultural cachet\u201d is a realizable goal for us.\u00a0 And we certainly shouldn\u2019t seek it directly, let alone with pathetic and needy desperation.\u00a0 It would be very nice if we were to be more engaged with the wider culture, neither completely disregarded because of our seeming oddness nor having sold out by \u201caping the Gentiles.\u201d\u00a0 And perhaps that day will come.\u00a0 However, even then our image as nice and polite, but prim, na\u00efve, weird, and intellectually dull \u2014 the likable simpletons of The Book of Mormon<\/em> on Broadway and in London \u2014 will almost certainly continue with us, whether or not it\u2019s really deserved.<\/p>\n

Our continuing (though much lessened) isolation in Utah and surrounding areas means that relatively few Americans or others get to know us.\u00a0 And, since we don\u2019t dress distinctively (i.e., wearing hijabs or yarmulkes), people elsewhere may well not realize that their dentist, carpenter, pharmacist, delivery man, nurse, attorney, plumber, kindergarten teacher, or accountant is a Latter-day Saint.\u00a0 They\u2019ll only know us as the Other, Out There.\u00a0 Strange, foreign, and exotic while, at the same time, boring, stodgy, uninteresting, and to be avoided if not actually feared.\u00a0 (I regard Gary Lawrence\u2019s How Americans View Mormonism<\/em> as a really fine treatise on the topic indicated in its title, with some very practical and easy recommendations for Latter-day Saints.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a good comment on the Atlantic<\/em> article that appeared in the Deseret News<\/em>:\u00a0 \u201cThe Atlantic<\/em> interviewed the prophet. Here\u2019s what it did right\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

But back to this new book by Gary Lawrence, Millions Believe As We Do<\/a>: \u00a0As its 2008 predecessor did, this book has suggested to my mind various ways of thinking about how to get our message out to those who have not yet heard it, and I wish that everybody interested in building and expanding the Kingdom would read it. \u00a0(It\u2019s a quick read, but I think I need to return to it and read portions of it very carefully, taking notes on the ideas that come to me as I do so.) \u00a0I see it as helpful not merely for full-time missionaries \u2014 and really, not even very much for them \u2014 but especially for ordinary members of the Church who wish that they could do more to help the Church in its mission of taking the Gospel to all the world. \u00a0Both How Americans View Mormonism <\/em>and Millions Believe As We Do<\/em> offer very practical and surprisingly painless methods of steering conversations toward the teachings of the Restoration.<\/span><\/p>\n

In explaining his thesis, Brother Lawrence cites the official Church missionary manual Preach My Gospel<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cThe people you meet often do not realize that they are looking for the restored gospel until they have found it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a crucial point. \u00a0Gary Lawrence\u2019s contention is that a sizable proportion of Americans already agree with us on certain centrally important issues. \u00a0They simply don\u2019t realize<\/em> that they do because, as he showed in his earlier book, despite our nearly two centuries of missionary effort they know remarkably little about<\/em> us.<\/p>\n

Of the doctrinal questions the survey measured, the following three beliefs are especially unique to us in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. \u00a0Here are the percentages of non-LDS Christians who agree with us on each as described in the survey questions:<\/p>\n

Pre-earthly existence \u2014 24% \u2013We lived with God in heaven before coming to the earth.<\/p>\n

Gradations in heaven \u2014 23% \u2014 There are different levels in heaven and in hell.<\/p>\n

Proxy baptisms for the dead \u2014 22% \u2014 Someone else can be baptized on his behalf after he dies.<\/p>\n

(105, formatting unavoidably altered)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Given such statistics (and many others), Dr. Lawrence concludes that there are audiences out there that are ready-made for our message, if we can only devise ways of reaching them. \u00a0I concur, and my thought is that many of the findings in this book would be especially helpful for Latter-day Saint social-media \u201cinfluencers\u201d and just generally for all missionary-minded Latter-day Saints who are involved, \u00a0even modestly, on various social media platforms. \u00a0I myself intend to return to the book and try to think of practical ways in which I can respond to it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 For Christmas, a neighbor gave us a new book by her brother. \u00a0The book is Gary C. Lawrence, Millions Believe As We Do, But Haven\u2019t Yet Found the Church: \u00a0Conversation Ideas from a National Poll. \u00a0Gary Lawrence is an active Latter-day Saint \u2014 currently, I believe, an ordinance worker in the Newport Beach California […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":19338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8660,2905,18380,37065,156,55],"class_list":["post-103338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gary","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-lawrence","tag-millions-believe-as-we-do","tag-missionary","tag-mormonism"],"yoast_head":"\nEvery Member A Missionary: Here's Some Important Help<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"  For Christmas, a neighbor gave us a new book by her brother. \u00a0The book is Gary C. 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