Mormons in the Mist

My favorite Mormon

Hello(Selected verses; find full musical version here)
ELDER PRICE:Hello!My name is Elder PriceAnd I would like to share with youThe most amazing book. ELDER GRANT:Hello!My name is Elder Grant.It's a book about AmericaA long, long time ago.ELDER PRICE:It hasSo many awesome partsYou simply won't believeHow much this book can change your life.

(snip)
ELDER PRICE:Hello!ELDER HARRIS:Hi!ELDER PRICE:My name is-ELDER GREEN:Jesus Christ!ELDER GRANT:You have a lovely home!ELDER CROSS:Hello!ELDER YOUNG:It's an amazing book!ELDER SMITH:Bonjour!ELDER WHITE:Hello!ELDER HARRIS:Ni hao!ELDER WHITE:Me llamo Elder White!
ELDER GRANT
Are these your kids?
To break up the 32-hour trip home from SouthAfrica this summer, we stayed over in London a few days…just enough time to see at long last the stage musical The Book of Mormon. The creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are not, as the Brits say, my usual cup of tea. I’ve never been able to last through any episode of South Park, their TV show, nor any of the feature length movies they’ve made. But we gave Book of Mormon a try based on the suggestion of people we trusted and as a result our trust in those people is now sky high. It was one of the best nights at the theater we ever had…catchy music, hysterical (albeit outrageous) lyrics, and not a little philosophical provocation.

Coincidently on our recent follow-up trip to Johannesburg I got to watch through my hotel window real life Book of Mormon unfold…without the catchy tunes or funny lines, but with no less philosophical provocation. As in Parker and Stone’s creation, two classically attired Mormons in ties, white shirts and dark pants were trolling the streets of Africa attempting to enlist black converts to a religion which until rather recently specifically barred black men from even becoming priests. The road they were working was lined with taxis and their drivers waiting to whisk away weary players from the nearby casino. There were also people handing out flyers for various businesses, street artists singing and dancing for their supper, and poor folks just looking for a handout. I’d walked that street a few times myself with my studied see-nothing/hear-nothing tunnel view look straight ahead. That is my usual look whenever I feel a stranger in a strange land, but it was particularly severe in Jo’berg, which, if you haven’t heard, is one of the most crime-ridden cities on earth. So it was rather stunning to see these two Mormon missionaries, surely as alien to African culture as I, walking up to all these dark, distant people in an attempt to sell them on an American pioneer religion of quite dubious relevance to their lives.
Mormons walk away without making a sale, Jo'burg, 2015
Quite dubious relevance to my life as well, truth be told. I’m rather brutal when they come calling at my door…and that’s even with knowing that to get to my door they have to climb a long, steep driveway, which in summer can suggest Brigham Young's trek across the plains. I either don’t answer the door when they come or immediately shut the door on them when they catch me off guard. The last time they were here, however, they caught me digging in the garden. As portrayed in The Book of Mormon, they were polite to a fault:
ELDER BROWN:Hello!ELDER HARRIS:Ding dong!ALL:And if you let us in,We'll show you how it can be done!ELDER GRANT:No thanks?ELDER GREEN:You sure?ELDER GRANT:Oh, well.ELDER GREEN:That's fine.ELDER GRANT
Goodbye!

Unless Abby Huntsman--my favorite Mormon with her pulpy, luscious lips--comes knocking, I do not have time for anyone selling religion door-to-door, and I told my unwelcome visitors so. As they cheerily turned to depart, one of them complimented me on the statue we have standing at our front gate. “Thank you,” I replied. “That’s Don Quixote, the  icon of missions in vain.” He laughed, and in doing so scored more points with me than he ever could’ve scored with his book of Mormon. 
I get lots of affirmation for my cold-hearted dismissal of these folks from my cohort of liberal thinkers, be they atheists or not. As a lot, liberals…progressives…whatever we call ourselves these days…do not relate well to door-to-door solicitation, whether it’s for solar panels or Jesus. We just don’t like having people come to our homes unsolicited trying to sell us things. We pretty much hold such people in contempt…or ridicule at best.
But I must say in watching those two young men working what must have been for them a very strange and lonely road in Johannesburg that day gave me a different perspective…if just for the moment. For the first time ever I thought about what deep conviction it takes to go out into the world and try to convince total strangers to see the world as you do. The liberal mind is repulsed by such behavior because the liberal mind by definition believes everyone should be free to come to his or her own conclusions about how the world works. 
Liberalism pays a price for its reluctance to engage others in conversion…at least political conversion. On state and local levels throughout the US, liberalism is losing the battle for hearts and minds in stunning fashion. Every off-year election sees significant drop-offs in voter participation, especially among more progressively inclined voters, resulting in election of legislatures ever more extreme in hostility toward women, children, minorities, workers, and the environment. This is an issue that only seems to be growing as an obstacle to advancing a liberal agenda, and political operatives, organizers, and activists on the left and center seem incapable of matching their rightwing counterparts in building energy and enthusiasm for their beliefs.
I once asked a friend from a Mormon family if her people really believed in all that nonsense about the Angel Moroni, the golden plates, and the magic underwear. She replied, and rightly so, that in the context of Christianity’s foundation in a virgin birth and an arising from the dead, the Angel Moroni is not all that far-fetched. And then she made an even more salient point: Mormons--like Catholics, Hindus, Muslims--are not really as committed to the details of their religion as outsiders think they are. In fact, she said, the community Mormonism creates, at least for her family, is far more important to adherents than the actual theology.

Liberals, as is their wont, seem to have mastered technology for the good of the cause. Barack Obama’s two election victories were case studies in how to manage databases for electoral success. Left-leaning activists readily employ social media to launch movements, like Black Lives Matter, or to shame some institutional miscreant into apology or resignation. Yet this mastery seems ineffective in countering the rightward tilt of the nation’s legislative bodies. There are no doubt multiple layers of explanations for this. The philosophical provocation I experienced watching two Mormon boys trying to convert Africans suggests one. That is that a virtual community is not a real community. Ultimately it will take liberals of courage and conviction to overcome their aversion to venture into American neighborhoods election after election to sell voters face-to-face on policies and principles that will make them part of a bigger, stronger, more caring community. To say, in short, "Hello."