LDS conundrum: A few bad seeds or a need for more missionary training?
By Jessica Ravitz
The Salt Lake Tribune
03/14/2008
Posted: 3:18 PM- Robert Fotheringham had seen these missionaries at
their best. He can speak to how they assisted the elderly, dug cars
out of snowbanks and hauled firewood to people who were stranded.
So the news that broke earlier this week, after photographs
revealed three LDS Church missionaries allegedly mocking Catholicism
and vandalizing a shrine in San Luis, Colo., has left the Colorado
Springs mission president more than shocked.
"I can tell you story after story that's noble and uplifting and,
of course, this is just the opposite," said Fotheringham, who's served
this mission for about 2 1/2 years. The behavior depicted in these
pictures, taken in
August 2006 and discovered on the Internet by a Sangre de Cristo
parishoner late last week, is "so counter to the regular pattern that
it's just stunning."
Two former missionaries, and one whose call has now been
terminated, reportedly snapped pictures of themselves preaching behind
a church altar, while waving a Book of Mormon, pretending to sacrifice
one another and holding the head of a Mexican saint whom one
missionary claimed to have decapitated. The photos, taken at the
Stations of the Cross, the Chapel of All Saints and the Shrine of the
Mexican Martyrs - all located on a mesa overlooking San Luis - were
found on Photobucket, a Web site. They have since been taken down, but
their discovery and their impact continue to rock the small southern
Colorado town and have set online chatrooms ablaze.
Many entries, including those on The Salt Lake Tribune Web site,
are cries of outrage and dismay, sentiments echoed by The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has issued an apology,
promised disciplinary action and vowed to seek ways to restore
goodwill. But handfuls of writers are swapping stories of similar
behavior from their own mission experiences.
Though people may chalk the behavior up to immaturity, typical of
the age, this explanation doesn't fly for Fotheringham.
"It's not enough for people to say they're just 19 years of age,"
the mission president said. "They're held to a much higher standard,
and that's part of the disappointment."
The events in Colorado raise the question: Are Mormon missionaries
properly equipped, through training, to go out into the field and
uphold this higher standard?
Mark Tuttle, spokesman for the LDS Church, said in a written
statement that Missionary Training Centers teach missionaries "to
respect people of all faiths, to be sensitive to doctrines and beliefs
that other religions hold sacred, and to obey the law. Once in the
mission field, mission presidents provide additional training on local
customs and traditions."
A former Provo MTC Finnish teacher, Anthony John, said he wasn't
aware of a "regimented senstivity training" and believed the
responsibility rested primarily on individual teachers. He, for
instance, remembered offering do-and-don't tips to his students and
discussing the predominance of the Lutheran faith in Finland, a
tradition that needed to be respected. His own mission president, he
added, encouraged him and the other missionaries to visit and simply
take in other churches on their free, or preparation, days.
"A lot of them were very impressive," said John, 27, who's working
on a master's in organizational psychology in Missouri. "Even as a
Mormon person," visiting other houses of worship "doesn't mean I can't
have a religious experience."
It's one thing, however, to be heading to a foreign country, where
obvious cultural differences are fodder for discussion and where
missionaries spend many more weeks in training, in large part because
they're learning new languages. John had his students for 11 weeks;
missionaries who don't need language training, he said, only attend
the MTC for three weeks. But Fotheringham was quick to recite from the
missionary handbook a line oft-repeated and meant to guide behavior
for the more than 53,000 full-time Mormon missionaries who span the
globe: "Respect the culture, customs, traditions, religious beliefs
and practices, and sacred sites in the area where you serve."
Perhaps nowhere have the repercussions of ignoring these
guidelines been more salient than they were in Thailand in 1972.
Only four years after the Thailand Mission was established, two
LDS Church missionaries touring an ancient and famous Buddhist temple
area whipped out cameras and snapped photos that sparked an
international incident and landed them in jail for six months.
R. Lanier Britsch, a retired Brigham Young University history
professor and author of From the East: The History of the Latter-Day
Saints in Asia, 1851-1996, recounted the story of what happened.
He said the young men were walking through the ruins, "a highly
venerated place," when they came upon a large Buddha statue that was
easily accessible. One elder climbed onto the statue, straddled the
Buddha's neck, placed his hands on the Buddha's head (the top of which
"represents the Buddha's enlightenment, his expanded
capability,. . .thus making the head the most sacred part of his
body," Britsch explained) and smiled for the camera.
The Thai store proprietor who was later asked to develop the film
was so upset when he saw the images that he submitted them to a
newspaper. The two young men "paid a rather severe price for the
indiscretion," serving six months in a Thai jail, and the incident
"set the church back for many years" in that part of the world,
Britsch said. And this, he added, wasn't an event that left anything
broken.
What happened in Colorado, he said, "sounds like zealous
antagonism," worse than the "momentary cultural insensitivity" that
happened in southeast Asia.
"I find it unconscionable and extremely difficult to explain,"
Britsch said.
As for what punishment seems appropriate for these three
missionaries who served in Colorado, the historian speculated that
that will take care of itself.
"Their souls are going to be roasted for years over this. I don't
think anyone else is going to have to put their feet to the fire.. . .
They're going to feel so stupid."
http://www.truthandgrace.com/Mormon.htm
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