The LDS Proselytizing Mission as Hazing

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.

It is widely held among LDS believers that a principal objective of missionary service is to ensure a continued post mission commitment to belief in, activity in, and service to the Church. I doubt that many readers will require convincing, so a few brief representative illustrations ought to suffice.

In his blog “this week in Mormons,” (http://thisweekinmormons.com/2014/04/real-reason-mormon-missionary-surge/ ) LDS blogger Geoff Openshaw, refers to the 2014 reduction in minimum missionary age (from 19 to 18 for boys, from 21 to 19 for girls), resulting in a sharp increase in the number of missionaries, and opines that the “[t]he surge is less about bringing more converts unto Christ than it is bringing more extant Young Men and Young Women unto Christ…the Lord needs His extant members to stick around even more than He needs to claim new souls…So do not completely bemoan the fact that the rapid growth in the number of missionaries currently serving has not been met with a boom in convert baptisms. Instead, rejoice that out of a standard sample of Young Men, just a few more than before will actually get out on a mission and stay involved in the Church.”

LDS journalist, Peggy Fletcher Stack, in The Salt Lake Tribune (http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57862203-78/missionaries-church-converts-lds.html.csp), is of the opinion that “[u]ltimately…the goal of Mormon missionary work may be as much about converting the proselytizer as converting the proselyte.” She quotes David Stewart, physician and amateur statistician, as saying that “[a] mission is seen as a pivotal experience in solidifying commitment to the church among missionaries themselves." Stack concludes that “[i]t works. Stewart says there is a strong correlation between missionary service and ongoing church activity, compared to young Mormons who do not serve missions. So the most important number of conversions per proselytizer may be one: the person the missionary sees in the mirror every day.”

Current missionaries use a teaching manual called “Preach My Gospel.” The introduction to the manual, speaking directly to the missionary, says that “All of the chapters in Preach My Gospel will help prepare you to fulfill your purpose as a missionary…Most of the chapters are addressed to you.” https://www.lds.org/manual/preach-my-gospel-a-guide-to-missionary-service/introduction-how-can-i-best-use-preach-my-gospel?lang=eng (italics added)

The subject of the missionaries’ commitment was discussed by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in an address to trainees at the Provo Utah Missionary Training Center (MTC) on January 15^th, 2013: “Missionaries are under obligation to come home having had at least one convert, you! There is no excuse in time or eternity for you not to have that one precious conversion.” The idea behind the current missionary guide, Preach My Gospel, is, in Elder Holland words, first “to convert you, then help you to convert the [individual] investigators.” (italics added)

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.

Hazing

Hazing occurs when a person wishes to become part of a sorority or fraternity, team, gang, society, armed forces, or some other group to which membership might be particularly desirable. A new or potential member (a pledge, initiate, rookie, greenie) is subjected, by those who are already part of that group, to some embarrassing, difficult, or painful initiation ritual.

In most cases, hazing tends to be short and concentrated into a “hell night” or a “frosh week.” But it can occur over a prolonged period of time, and rites of passage like a post-doc, articling (unpaid service to a law firm by a prospective lawyer),[i] or medical internship,[ii] can last months or years, and are described by some as a type of hazing.

Since definitions and understandings of hazing are quite varied, I have tried to triangulate in on a broadly acceptable operational definition by examining the definitions from a number of sources[iii] and extracting the more common elements into the following (hopefully uncontroversial) list of characteristics:

-          an initiate (candidate, potential member), desires to join a group

-          participation of the initiate in the hazing is voluntary, however…

-          …the initiate understands that affiliation in the group is explicitly or implicitly contingent upon participation in an initiation ceremony/hazing ritual, and that they cannot undergo the desired transition from outsider to insider without participation in the rite

-          the hazing is rooted in tradition, and reinforces the traditional hierarchical structure of group

-          hazing is a product of a positional power relationship. For hazing to occur, at least one person must perceive themselves to be in a position of power, and choose to exert control over the initiate. Even if the person with the dominant status does not recognize it, they could be in the position of power simply due to their position or status within an organization or team

-          hazing is cyclical, those in power positions were hazed themselves. It follows, they reason, that new members should experience the same in order to achieve status

-          the initiate performs/endures ritualistic physical and/or mental test/task

-          …that is generally considered to be humiliating, intimidating, abusive, hazardous, exhausting, or sexually violating,

-          …to prove worthy of membership in the group

-          …and could be seen by a reasonable person to risk emotional or physical harm

-          may require temporary suspension of individual values of the initiate, and of the dominant status member(s) enforcing/requiring the ritual

-          may include alcohol, random and meaningless tasks, personal servitude, sleep deprivation, restrictions on personal hygiene, yelling, swearing and insulting new members/rookies; being forced to wear embarrassing or humiliating attire in public

-          during a concentrated period of time,

-          is typically covert—not the whole of the team, unit…away from scrutiny

-          is intended to promote loyalty, camaraderie, continuity with past and present participants and members, and an insider/outsider, us v. them mentality

The typical results of hazing include conformity (Keating, et al, 2005) among new members, visceral bonding and pro-group behavior (Whitehouse, et al, 2017), increased identification with and loyalty to the group, and camaraderie (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Pershing, 2006; Waldron & Kowalski, 2009).

This resultant increase to commitment and cohesion with the newly joined secret societies, fraternities/sororities, teams, clubs, etc. can be explained by recourse to some basic principles of developmental and social psychology.

Psychosocial Stages

Much of our psychological development can be described in terms of developmental stages. Theorists who subscribe to stage models of psychological development typically describe each stage as involving a crisis or task, the resolution of which marks the end of that stage.

Psychosocial theorists like Erikson (1950, 1968, for example), and Marcia (1966 for example) hold that the biological changes of puberty trigger a “crisis” of personal identity. Rapid growth spurts, changes in appearance, increasingly complex emotions, enhanced self-awareness, heightened sexual awareness and drives, new types of cognitions, and a myriad other factors, lead a youth to feel as though they are not the same person they had been until even relatively recently.

A lot of adolescent energy is spent in the task of resolving the identity crisis triggered by puberty. At the beginning of the teenage years, a large part of our identity is still shaped by our relationship to our families, and is contingent on relatively impermanent factors like current appearance, current mood, and recent successes and failures. As we approach adulthood we might try to “find ourselves,” often by trying out different versions of ourselves to see if we best fit the role of the athlete, the poet, the rebel, the romantic, the academic, etc. In trying to navigate toward our “real” adult self, we individuate—that is, our personal identity depends less on our relationship to parents, less on malleable changeable determinants, and becomes increasingly dependent on our own long term characteristics, values, and traits.

The beginnings of the adolescence stage might be clearly demarcated by the biological changes of puberty, but the end point varies from society to society as it is our sociocultural environment that provides the scaffolding in which we construct our adult identity. The transition from adolescence to adulthood will be marked by milestones provided by the culture in which we mature (18^th birthday, first drink, moving from parents home, first New Years following 20^th birthday, acceptance to post-secondary school, first fulltime job…).

The adolescent crisis of identity is ideally resolved when, after a period of youthful exploration, we commit to an adult role, achieving sincerity, genuineness, and sense of duty to relationships, in what Erickson (1950, 1968) refers to as fidelity.

Critical Periods

The notion of critical periods (brief overview here: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(07)01519-9) is that there are brief genetically determined windows of opportunity during maturation when an organism is maximally sensitive to a specific stimuli. Structures in the brain do not develop at the same time, and as one part of the brain “comes online” it requires specific stimuli in order to develop properly.

You may be familiar with the Ethological research of Konrad Lorenz (1935), in which he observed that newly hatched greylag geese “imprint” on essentially the first thing they see moving. It seems that there is a critical period for attachment in these animals, lasting from about 12-36 hours after hatching. If the gosling fails to latch onto a moving object during that period, they are unlikely to do so after the window closes. Furthermore, once they have attached to one moving object they are unlikely to detach, even if the initial object was not a mother goose, and even if an actual mother goose is introduced at a later time.[iv]

There is a lot of research into critical periods regarding vision, language, coordination, the effects of chemicals, etc. Research points to windows of opportunity for specific brain structures, during which a stimuli is necessary for normal development—necessary in that the time frame is inflexible, and once the window is closed, the effect (or lack of effect) is essentially irreversible.

Although Psychodynamic theorists (including the psychosexual theorists like Freud, Jung, and Adler, and the psychosocial theorists like Erickson and Marcia, mentioned above) worked independently of the ethological research that led to the understanding of critical periods, the language of developmental stages and critical periods is quite similar, and some theorists (e.g. Bronson, 1962; Erickson, 1968) describe crises and crisis resolution in psychodynamic theory in terms of critical periods.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive Dissonance is a concept commonly misapplied in colloquial use in the ex-LDS community.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory was proposed by Leon Festinger (1957). It refers to a feeling, typically unpleasant, that we get when we hold attitudes that conflict with our other attitudes, or that conflict with our behaviors.

When an individual realizes that their attitudes are inconsistent (out of harmony, or “dissonant”) with other attitudes or with behavior, the resultant unpleasant experience motivates them to try to restore harmony, to make those attitudes, or attitude and behavior, more consistent or consonant.

If, for example, your lovely bride asks if she looks good in that dress, but sadly, she doesn’t, you might find yourself in a situation of thinking that she looks fat (an attitude), but since your couch is lumpy and your doghouse is cold, you might feel motivated to tell her that she looks lovely (a behavior). But your attitude of thinking her fat, and your behavior of telling her that she looks lovely would be in conflict with one another, and would lead to an unpleasant psychological sensation of dissonance.

Because the dissonance is a negative feeling, one is motivated to restore harmony. You could change your behavior (cautiously tell her the uncomfortable truth). You could change your attitude (change your mind, no longer think she looks fat). You could change your cognitions about the behavior (“I might be lying, but I’m lying to protect her feelings, that makes the lying okay”). You could acquire new information that minimizes the inconsistence (“hey! muffin tops are in this year, so in fact, she looks stylin’”). Or you could simply minimize the inconsistency (“she might look fat, but she’s lovely to me”).

It turns out that when motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance, we typically follow the path of least resistance (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959); when attitudes and behaviors are in conflict, it is quite often easier to change attitudes than it is to change behaviors. If you hold the attitude that smoking is harmful, but engage in the behavior of smoking, what is easier to do—change your attitude toward smoking, or give up smoking? The option with the less effort is most likely to win out, and you are less likely to give up smoking, and more likely to change your attitude toward your habit. If your attitude toward pre-marital sex is that it is a sin, but your nocturnal proclivities indicate otherwise, it is likely to be easier to modify ones attitude toward sexual activity than it is to rediscover an attitude involving the joys of celibacy.

An interesting corollary of Cognitive Dissonance Theory could be referred to as the “less is more effect” (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Riess & Schlenker, 1977). It is possible to have a potential conflict between attitude and behavior because some external force (a paycheque, an avoidance of sleeping on the couch, a potential promotion, risk of ridicule) imposes a requirement for a behavior that is contrary to an attitude.

You might expect that the person who is constrained in such a way as to act contrary to their attitudes would experience cognitive dissonance. However, a sufficiently influential external constraint can function as a justification for behavior that is contra to ones attitudes. When that external justification is present, feelings of dissonance are diminished, and the person does not experience an increased need to attain consonance.

For example, Freedman et al (1992) asked subjects to perform a boring task. The subjects experienced Cognitive Dissonance in that they thought the activity boring (attitude), but performed the activity anyway (behavior). Some subjects were paid $5.00 for their efforts, and some were paid $12.00. Those paid $12.00 experienced less dissonance because they could justify their behavior because of the promised reward. Those paid $5.00 experienced more dissonance because they had less of an external motivator, and thus felt a desire to minimize their dissonance. As a result, those participants paid the lesser amount changed their attitude and convinced themselves that they enjoyed the behavior. Later, when asked if they would perform the task again, those paid $12.00 (and therefore not motivated to reduce dissonance) were less inclined to agree than those paid less, i.e. were less likely to agree than those subjects who were motivated to reduce dissonance by convincing themselves that the activity was not boring.

Those paid less reported enjoying the boring task more, and reported an increased likelihood of doing that task in the future. This result is significant, and counter-intuitive at first blush. Imagine that your mind has only so much room set aside to hold motivation. Once that room is filled, there is no room for more motivation. If your motivation quota is filled by an extrinsic motivator, then there is no room to further add an internal motivator. When there were no external motivators, the subjects needed to reduce cognitive dissonance by justifying their participation in a boring task by constructing their own internal motivation, so the subjects convinced themselves that they enjoyed the activity, and found it intrinsically interesting or fun.

As a result of this less is more effect, those who volunteer for an activity might be more committed to it than those who are paid to do that same activity, those who are underpaid (police officers, schoolteachers, EMS, nurses, missionaries) might be more dedicated to their vocation than they would be if they were paid more, and those who start getting paid or evaluated for something they previously did for love of the activity (sports, arts) can lose their interest in what was previously their passion.

The less you are rewarded, the more likely you are to convince yourself that you enjoy a potentially negative activity. Less is more.

A similar corollary is the Effort Justification Effect (Aronson & Mills, 1959). This occurs when one invests a lot of effort, resources, or time into something, but gets little payout on that investment. The result is going to be conflicting cognitions that lead to that unpleasant dissonance, consequently motivating the holder of the conflicting cognitions to modify one of them in order to reduce the dissonance (for example Axsom & Cooper, 1985).

If, for example, I spend a lot of money (effort—leading to the attitude “I just spent a lot of money on this.”) on a concert that turns out to be disappointing (with the resulting attitude “The Bananarama[v] concert was rubbish.”), I cannot change the amount of money I spent after the fact, so I cannot change the first cognition. If I am motivated to reduce the unsavory dissonance between the cognitions, the easier option is to change the second attitude, and convince myself that I enjoyed the show. Perhaps paradoxically, this means that the more we pay for our concert tickets, or any other item for that matter, the more satisfied we are likely to be with our purchase.

As a result of the Effort Justification Effect, the more effort we put into attaining a goal or obtaining an object, the more likely we are to form a positive attitude toward that goal or object.

Now, to tie hazing and the discussion of psychology together…

The timing of hazing is significant. It occurs at a time when we desire to be part of the group in the military, to be a part of a sorority or fraternity, to be a part of the in-group on the college team, to join the secret society of the Skull and Bones. A common element in virtually all of the reports of hazing is the age at which it occurs—it typically seems to happen when we are in the range of 18- 20 years old.

In terms of psychosocial development, 18-20 is at the tail end of the psychosocial stage of adolescence, at the borderlands of adulthood. The 18 year old is coming to the end of the period of identity exploration and is primed to commit to an adult version of self. Keep in mind that although adolescence kicked off with biological changes, it is external social and cultural milestones that mark the transition from adolescence into adulthood.

One of the reasons that hazing is so effective is that, at the end of adolescence, after spending years trying to figure out who you really are, one is at a “critical period” for committing to an adult role. Part of psychosocial theory suggests that if the crisis of any given stage is not resolved successfully, then the developmental tasks of later stages are increasingly complicated. If one does not commit to an adult version of self around this period, one is less likely to be successful at the forthcoming adult tasks and responsibilities. A critical period indeed.

There are a few theoretical concepts converging here. The young person is at the end of the psychosocial stage of adolescence, and in a critical period for committing to an adult identity. But that adult identity is going to be determined by the culture in which one is embedded.

As we have individuated (defined ourselves independently from our family relations), a large part of our emerging adult identity will be informed by integration into new social structures, into grown up institutions and organizations, and by allowing ourselves to be defined by the grown up social structures with which we affiliate.

To become affiliated with these grown up social structures, while in the midst of our critical period for forming our adult identities we “voluntarily” submit to a potentially intense and immersive hazing rite of passage. And cognitive dissonance now makes it virtually impossible that we do not highly value our new affiliation. How?

First, one may experience dissonance because the actions involved in the hazing could be considered negative for a variety of reasons. The required behaviors could be physically or mentally painful or exhausting, risky, humiliating, or in violation of one’s personal values. In such a case, an attitude (a value, a perception of self-esteem) is out of harmony with the behavior required in the hazing. Dissonance theory suggests that the initiate will want to reduce the incongruity between the hazing and his attitudes towards the experience. What is more likely to change? Well, the initiate ostensibly volunteered to participate, and a change of heart will mean backpedalling in front of a group of desired peers, potentially indicating an unworthiness for affiliation with the group, with the likely outcome of the rejection of the application for membership. So the initiate is not likely to withdraw. Then once the event is in the past, it is impossible to change the behavior. While the behavior was fixed by the period of time in which the hazing occurs, the attitudes toward it could potentially last for the rest of the participant’s life. It is, therefore, easier to adjust ones attitude toward the ritual, and interpret it as a positive experience.

Let’s consider the “less is more” effect. This effect occurs when one is constrained in some way to engage in a behavior that could be considered negative under some description, and is then rewarded for performing that behavior. Cognitive Dissonance theory suggests that the less the resulting reward, the more the participant will be motivated to construct an internal justification for participation. So the greater the reward, the less positive the attitude toward the behavior; the less the reward, the more positive the attitude toward the behavior.

The initiate in a hazing ritual, even if that ritual was entered into voluntarily, is still constrained to the extent that he understands that lack of participation will exclude him from full acceptance into a desired group. i.e. if you don’t play along, you are not really part of the team.

So one participates in the hazing, and is now a team player, a gang member, a freemason, a sorority sister, etc. If the experience of being a group insider is a rewarding one, then that goofy hazing thing was all in good fun, a gateway to becoming an insider. If the experience of being a member doesn’t really add up to much, and is a bit of a disappointment, then “less is more” predicts that the new member is going to be motivated to find an internal justification for enduring the hazing rite, and will develop a positive attitude toward the experience.

Whereas the “less is more” effect considers the output, or rewards part of the equation, and says that less reward equals more a positive attitude, the “effort justification” effect considers the input, or the behavior in question, and focuses on how much effort the actor invests.

“Effort justification” predicts that the more effort the initiate puts into the ritual, the more difficult it is to endure, the more painful, the more embarrassing, i.e. the greater the investment, the less likely they are to ever admit to being disappointed in the outcome. So the greater the exhaustion, embarrassment, pain, etc.—the worse the hazing, then the greater the resulting conformity, identification, bonding, camaraderie, loyalty, and pro-group behavior towards the new affiliation.

When one takes into account the timing—a critical period for committing to adulthood at the final stages of our adolescent stage, and the powerful effects of cognitive dissonance—“Less is more” requiring one to have a positive attitude toward the effort of joining a group, and “effort justification” requiring one to identify and cohere with the new group—it is hardly surprising that long into adulthood, individuals continue to identify themselves with the groups into which they were hazed. Adults continue to define themselves according to their college team, sorority or fraternity, battalion, gang colors, etc.

The crux of the matter: Can a mission qualify as hazing?

It is probably not necessary, but a quick point of clarification. The question being considered here is whether the mission as a whole constitutes a form of hazing. It may be true that missionaries pick on the greenie with some practical joke(s) intended to be a kind of hazing, but that is not what is at question here. My favorite example comes from a friend who had served in France (in Paris I think), and the traditional practical joke on the greenie was to hide all of the bathroom tissue in the apartment, and place a bucket of water and a wet sponge next to the toilet and tell the greenie “this is how it’s done in France…” But I digress, that sort of individual hazing is not what this post is about. We are concerned with effects of the mission as a whole.

In the interest of full disclosure, I honorably completed two years, and on balance it was a positive experience. I made some lifelong friends and visited some places that I may never have travelled to otherwise. Before I reached the half way mark, I had more baptisms than anybody in the mission. I discovered a virtually untapped ability to learn, and experienced an inkling that I might have a propensity for teaching. So in no way should this essay be interpreted as an exercise in sour grapes. The key phrase above is “on balance.” The benefits derived from two years as a missionary came in spite of an abundance of negatives. The positives may have outweighed the negatives, but that does not negate the argument that those negatives might amount to an instance of hazing.

Of course, the whole argument is moot if nothing in the description of the mission overlaps with the description of hazing.

I placed the description of hazing toward the front of the essay specifically to allow some distance between it and the attempt to draw a connection between hazing and the mission. I did so with the intention allowing the concept of hazing to percolate away somewhere back there in the recesses of the mind of the reader. To the extent that this rhetorical tactic has worked, I hope that those of you who have served missions have already been making connections between the description of hazing and your own mission experiences.

The following discussion will necessarily be anecdotal, and the description of the mission will be extrapolated primarily from my own missionary experiences, and from those of friends and colleagues. While I understand that protocols and culture will vary from mission to mission and across time, I suspect that the experiences of myself and my friends will be quite representative of a typical mission. Some readers will have mission experiences that are less hazing-esque than mine, while the experience of some will be more so. No doubt some readers will have experiences that overlap with the description of hazing more than my experiences do, so the RM reader is invited to fill in a few blanks from their own experiences.

-          an initiate (candidate, potential member), desires to join a group

-          affiliation in the group is explicitly or implicitly contingent upon participation

-          participation of the initiate in the hazing is voluntary, however the initiate understands that they cannot undergo the desired transition from outsider to insider without participation

-          …to prove worthy of membership in the group

The pool of potential candidates for local and general leadership in the Church is drawn almost exclusively from RM’s. My Mission President (MP), who had previously worked in the Salt Lake City Church Office Building, explicitly used the phrase “The Lord’s University,” not in reference to BYU, but in reference to the mission being the training ground for future church service.

There is a degree of respect reserved for RM’s not offered to non RM’s. As young men, we see our brothers and friends leave for missions as boys, and return as men.

Marriageable women in the Church place the qualification “RM” at or very near the top of their list of desirable attributes in a potential husband, and the young women of the Church are counselled to let their young men friends and dates know that they will only marry RM’s. It might sound shallow but there is an informal tradition among missionaries and RM’s that the quality of your future spousal relationship (even the “hotness” of your future wife if you are particularly shallow) depends upon your degree of faithfulness in mission service. My companion and I were at dinner with a local family, and the father of the home shared with us what he considered to be an inspirational anecdote. He had recently had visits from his son and son in law, and had asked them, separately, what they thought had been their number one blessing for serving a mission. Both had answered, independently, that it was their wives. He thought he had shared with us something profound and spiritual and motivating, but it sounded to me, even as a naïve 19 year old, that in describing a wife as a reward, he was, in a sense, reducing the value of women to something of a commodity…

For our entire formative years we are immersed in a sociocultural environment that impels us toward missionary service. We sing about it from our earliest days in Primary. On one hand we were told that it was not quite a commandment, in that the Church does not compel us to go, but on the other hand President Kimball drew an analogy between missions and tithing,[vi] in that the Church can’t compel you to pay tithing either, but tithing is clearly a commandment.

Then Sunday School and Primary, Priesthood meetings, Mutual, and Seminary are all geared toward ensuring that all young men serve missions. Our families presume we will go, our older RM peers paint the mission as glorious, our friends are all preparing and saving for missions, and our girlfriends won’t marry us unless we serve.[vii] We might honestly believe that making the choice to serve is voluntary (I did), but just as the fish is the last to discover the existence of water, the prospective missionary is probably unaware of the sociocultural forces that made the choice to serve all but inevitable.

If one intends to spend their life in the Church, then the only way to make it work is to put in the two years of missionary service. So we “volunteer” to serve.

-          the hazing is rooted in tradition

-          reinforces the traditional hierarchical structure of group

-          hazing is cyclical, those in power positions were hazed themselves. It follows, they reason, that new members should experience the same in order to achieve status

From the earliest days of the Church, Joseph Smith sent out missionaries. It is embedded in the LDS scriptures—we were required to memorize D&C Section 4 while in the MTC, and chant it out for visiting church dignitaries. There has been a continuous cycle of missionaries from the foundation of the Church until now.

Among the volunteers with whom I served, there were a few who were there because their fathers were going to buy them cars upon completion, some whose parents were going to pay for their education, and one companion’s parents were going to set him up in an import/export business upon returning home. And there were a few who would be disowned/shunned by their families if they did not complete an honorable mission. To be clear, I’m not implying that a majority of the missionaries I knew were doing it for self-serving reasons; most of us earnestly believed in the claims of the Church, believed that we were there voluntarily, and were seeking to bring people into what we sincerely thought was the Lord’s one and only church.

The traditional hierarchical structure of the Church, and specifically the Priesthood Leadership hierarchy, is reinforced by each mission having an explicit and well defined dominance hierarchy, in which every individual knows that he is a junior companion, a district leader, an assistant to the President, etc. One’s assigned location, assigned companion, and assigned position in the hierarchy were designated by the Lord Himself, we were told. Every new assignment was given with the directive “The Lord extends a call to you…” Everybody knows his or her place. The hierarchy is strictly enforced, and obedience to the correct authority is not optional.

The mission is quite clearly cyclical. Fathers who have previously been on missions encourage or pressure their kids to follow in their footsteps. Those who make the assignments, decide and enforce entry requirements, roll out the programs and campaigns, create the rules, promulgate the culture, dictate the desired outcomes, etc. were missionaries in their younger years. The MP, who pushes for better outcomes, applies rules, blames the missionaries, enforces correct procedures, and collects and tabulates weekly numbers, was in almost all cases a proselyting missionary in his younger days.

All those who speak to prospective missionaries, or speak about their missions, always do so in glowing terms. Any aspect of the mission that cannot be described in glowing terms is recast in some sort of inspirational terms, perhaps it was a “test of faith” or the “The Lord was trying to teach me a lesson about...” or some such, but it needs to be described as a positive, not a negative. The effect is that no RM or church leader ever reveals any negative aspect of missionary service.

We were encouraged to have a goal of returning to the mission field in a few decades to fulfill the role of an MP, further encouraging the cyclical nature of the mission tradition.

-          hazing is a product of a positional power relationship. For hazing to occur, at least one person must perceive themselves to be in a position of power, and choose to exert control over the initiate. Even if the person with the dominant status does not recognize it, they could be in the position of power simply due to their position or status within an organization or team

Who holds this position of power? Prior to the mission, parents, older siblings, youth leaders and teachers, and the Church as a whole create the impression that the mission is not optional, is an invariably wonderful experience, and is the only acknowledged path from adolescence to adulthood—especially for boys.

Once on a mission, the MP is the ultimate authority. Many of those serving outside of their home countries report having their passports confiscated by the MP upon arrival, thus giving the MP an incredible power to lord over the now dependent young missionaries. The culture of many missions makes obedience to the MP a paramount virtue.

While local bishops and stake presidents did not hold much sway over the missionaries in the mission in which I served, or in that of many of my friends, the words of visiting general church authorities were effectively equivalent to the words of the good Lord Himself.

-          the initiate performs/endures ritualistic physical and/or mental test/task

Rise at 6:30, set amount of time for required lesson practice and study time with companion, then set amount of time for personal study. Set time for leaving the apartment. Required amount of time for proselyting activities. Knock on door, same spiel, knock on door, same spiel, knock on door, same spiel…all day. In apartment at set time. Lights out at set time. No unapproved materials of any sort—no books, magazines, newspapers, music, television, nothing except scriptures and missionary training material. With the exception of an approved list of 5, we were not even allowed books published by the Church.

Then if somebody showed an interest, we were essentially allowed to have six conversations with them. For two years we had the same six conversations over and over and over until we could recite them in our sleep. Part of our training and practice was to ensure that the investigators did not veer the discussions into a tangent, thus ensuring that we had no variation in those six conversations.

The mission experience in general was very ritualistic in that because the Church teaches that obedience is the first law of heaven (a principle with which I profoundly disagree[viii]), and that obedience would result in blessings in the form of baptisms, there was to be no deviation from the prescribed course of action in any aspect of our lives for two years. If we did not experience blessings in the form of baptisms it was our fault. It could not be a fault in the message, not in the form of delivery, not in a lack of interest on the part of the public. A lack of baptisms was emblematic of the personal flaws of the individual missionaries. Such thinking was almost “magical” type of thinking.

It was physically and mentally draining.

-          …that is generally considered to be humiliating, intimidating, hazardous, exhausting, or sexually violating,

-          …being forced to wear embarrassing or humiliating attire in public

Humiliating? Frequently, yes. What message were we trying to deliver at the door? “Hello, your religion is an abomination in the sight of our Lord; the only way to get to Heaven is through Mormonism; when you die, God will separate families from each other forever unless you all join our church ”[ix] Maybe we didn’t use that approach verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Equipped with all the bold self-assurance of an ill-informed and uneducated 19 year old, little did I realize that the message I was pushing actually ridiculed the faith held dear by the people we met. When they realized that we were saying that their religion was a sham, of course they became defensive. But because we were on an errand from the Lord, we took their defensiveness as somehow being a sign that we were right, that the wicked take the truth to be hard (1^st Nephi 2:16), and that only “the elect” would be receptive to the truth. The contempt and ridicule that we experienced at the door may have been an indication, at least to our minds, that we were sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it was contempt and ridicule nonetheless.

We were never to be seen without approved attire. We were openly mocked at the laundromat for doing our laundry in a suit and tie. We, at times, had objects thrown at us from passing cars (a slurpee to the back of the head still sticks to my memory).

Did we identity such as humiliating? Possibly, but nobody was willing to admit it. To do so would be an admission of weakness, signifying a lack in the fortitude necessary to make it through the mission (not having the endurance to get through the hazing). Instead, when faced with humiliating circumstances, outwardly we wore it as a badge of honor, a sign that we were being persecuted for standing on the side of the Lord.

Was it hazardous? Actual danger was infrequent in the regions I worked. There were one or two times that we were threatened, or that we tracted into the odd dangerous neighborhood. But in my personal experience this was never much of an issue.

However, I have heard many stories from others that reference being assigned to gang controlled areas, living in unsanitary apartments, becoming infected with parasites, experiencing malnutrition due to budgetary limitations, or not being permitted to seek adequate medical assistance for physical or mental health problems. That is not to claim that such conditions are the norm, but if an RM did not experience something like this for themselves, they know someone who did.

Was a mission sexually violating? Well, in some ways, yes, it was.

First of all, at around 20, an overabundance of testosterone ensures that young men are that their peak in terms of sex drives. On a mission, while at that peak, we are required to muzzle those drives to a greater degree than at any other time in our lives.

Going through the experiences of a mission with the other Elders and Sisters, experiencing the same isolation from the familiar, the same highs and lows, successes and disappointments, and joys and pains, missionaries start to feel tremendous solidarity and closeness with their fellow missionaries. Fellow missionaries become close like brothers and sisters. Hugging a woman—any woman—is a violation of the “sexual” boundaries that missionaries are required to observe. So when a fellow missionary left the field to go home, we were not allowed to hug our missionary Sisters goodbye. It was literally like being told you will probably never see your sister again, but you cannot hug her goodbye. Not being allowed to hug your sister is hardly “sexually violating.” I bring it up to emphasize the extent to which the mission exercises control by inserting itself into the missionaries’ psyche in an attempt to get him or her to darken even the faintest glimmer of a sexual impulse.

Considering the age at which missionaries serve, repressing that sexual impulse is not always going to be successful. Luckily the Mission President is likely to be on top of that with frequent “worthiness” interviews. The day I arrived in my assigned mission field, the cohort of 5 with whom I arrived (including 2 Sister missionaries) was individually taken behind the closed doors of the MP’s office so he could ask us if we engage in, as he euphemistically put it, “self-abuse.” Subsequently, in every one of the frequent “worthiness” interview for two years, we were probed with regard to our private sexual habits. As grown adults we had to repeatedly tell another adult whether we “touched ourselves in an intimate way.” As grown adults! That, dear friends, is sexually violating.[x]

Furthermore, you might think that after revealing one’s private sexual habits in confession, that that information would be protected by some sort of professional confidentiality, as with a lawyer, or physician, or professional clergyman. You would be wrong. There is no professional clergy in the LDS church, so “confessions” are not held to the same confidentiality as in other churches. Our MP announced, from the pulpit, that more than 50% of the Elders and more than 25% of the Sisters practiced “self-abuse”.

Why was “self-abuse” such a significant concern to the MP? Keep in mind that sexual sin is second only to murder in LDS tradition[xi]. “Self-abuse,” being a sexual sin, would disqualify missionaries from the companionship of the Holy Ghost. We had been instructed that in seeking out contacts we were not to randomly knock on doors. Instead, we were “spiritually harvesting.” We were to be guided by the Holy Ghost in every possibly way. We were to pray to know to which area we ought to go, then pray so the Holy Ghost would reveal the correct street to tract, and to pray on street corners to know behind which doors we would discover “the elect.” Consequently, if we were not worthy of the constant companionship of the Spirit, the elect would not be found. Since the LDS church is the only source of salvation,[xii] if ‘the elect” are not found they don’t go to heaven, and it is the fault of the moral shortcomings of the individual missionaries. So follow this: If I touch myself in an intimate fashion, I’m not worthy of the spirit, so I’m not guided to you, and I was your only chance to get to heaven. Or more succinctly, if I “shake more than twice” after peeing, you don’t go to heaven.

While I may be stating it in a light hearted way, that message was delivered to us in a most non-light hearted and non-ambiguous way. In my humble opinion, being told that normal healthy private sexual expression robs other people their chance for salvation qualifies as sexually violating.

Following the meeting during which the MP announced the “self-abuse” statistics, he gathered the Zone Leaders, and instructed them to use their spiritual gifts to discern whom among their fellow missionaries were engaging in the sinful behavior in question, and to call them to repentance, with the instruction that they needed to confess to the MP at their next available opportunity. Imagine, if you will, two 19 year old boys going door to door. They pause between houses, and in all seriousness, one tells his companion that the spirit has revealed this dirty little secret, and tells him, in all solemnity, that he needs to repent by confessing his weakness to the Prez. Sexually violating? Humiliating? Degrading? Just plain bizarre? I’ll leave that conclusion to the capable judgment of the reader,

-          …and could be seen by a reasonable person to risk emotional or physical harm

The worst harms that I experienced were relatively minor compared to the stories we hear of the experiences of some missionaries. We were not permitted to include greyhound fares during transfers in our budget reports, and a bus ticket cost about the equivalent of two weeks groceries, the quality of my diet suffered significantly due to budget issues, especially after transfers. I wore holes in my shoes before I could afford new ones, I had to buy clothes at charity shops a couple of times when funds were low, and went door to door in -40 degrees. I served on a Reservation where we were told that by tracting a particular neighborhood we had recently covered, we had allegedly taken our lives in our hands. I worked myself to exhaustion for about 18-20 months, then physically (maybe mentally too) hit the proverbial wall, then somewhat coasted for the final few months. I did not throw in the towel, but being burned out, I slowed down significantly.

Realistically, in terms of serious physical peril, I was lucky. We had relatively hygienic apartments, had easy access to medical care, and came across little in the way of gangs or dangerous neighborhoods.

But we all know people, or at minimum know of people, who returned with parasites, or who lived in neighborhoods where they risked bodily harm for wearing the wrong (gang) colors on the wrong side of the street, or were assaulted, lost too much weight or had food poisoning, suffered significant anxiety or depression or both, lived in unhygienic conditions, were told they could not seek medical care, or felt trapped and intimidated because their passports were confiscated and the only way to get it back was through the MP. And although I suspect it is rare, there are missionaries returning from the field with symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.[xiii]

Such conditions are not the norm for missionaries. However, that is not the point, every missionary who enters the field faces the potential for finding themselves in such circumstances. And so, as per the description of hazing, could be seen by a reasonable person to risk emotional or physical harm.

-          may require temporary suspension of individual values of the initiate, and of the dominant status member(s) enforcing/requiring the ritual

As a general principle, most normal non-missionaries don’t go door to door telling people that their religion cannot get them into heaven. Virtually everything done by a missionary would be contrary to the norms they live by before and after the mission. In our non-mission lives we don’t normally get up at 6:30 and spend two hours practicing the skills of guiding conversations with others toward the Church, then spend the entire day getting doors slammed in our faces. Other than using the bathroom or showering, we were never permitted to be alone. We never listened to any unapproved music, read a magazine, watched the odd film or sitcom, caught a game, or kept up with current events. We had no contact with family, other than 4 phone calls, and weekly written communications. We were permitted no photographs of girlfriends on the nightstand.

I had one companion who was so adamant about never violating the mission rules that he refused to go into a McDonalds Restaurant on the off chance he would inadvertently hear some pop music and lose the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

Any RM could add to the above list extensively. Virtually anything that we valued outside of the mission was considered a violation of mission rules.

At a Zone Conference, one Zone Leader started his lesson with what he hoped was going to be a thought provoking question. He asked us to consider the difference between obedience and righteousness. My ears perked up, as it was a question that I had given a little bit of thought to since hearing it raised by a speaker in a Sacrament meeting as a teenager, and I thought that in the context of the mission it ought to lead to an interesting discussion. I later learned that he had hoped to steer the discussion in the direction of concluding that obedience was a subset of righteousness, so righteousness, being the larger category, included obedience. He hoped to propose to us that doing things for reasons of righteousness was better than doing things out of obedience. He had recently had an epiphany that he wanted to share—that is better to try to convert people out of charity and love for them, than it is to try to convert them because you are commanded to. And I agree—if one actually believes the LDS version of the gospel, then his epiphany is noble and accurate.

He never got the chance to even make the proposal. Other than myself, every missionary who spoke up tried to argue that there was no difference between obedience and righteousness, that obedience was a sort of uber-value. They were convinced that morality as a whole could be reduced to obedience, that all moral questions could be answered in the language of obedience, and that once the moral question was answered in terms of obedience, there was no remainder left over to be explained.

I’m obviously paraphrasing, but my point is that once on a mission, virtually all individual values were set aside in favor of obedience. It was, in principle, obedience to the will of God, but the will of God, we were told, is revealed by leadership of the Church, and our connection to the Church was the MP. So in practice, virtually all values were superseded by obedience to the Mission President and the rule book. We suspended our normal values in lieu of an unfaltering fixation on the work.

There was a temporary, albeit two year, suspension of individual values on the part of the missionary.

-          may include alcohol,

I guess the inclusion of alcohol is an easy characteristic to eliminate.

-          random and meaningless tasks,

The question of random and meaningless tasks is not so easy to eliminate. Virtually every moment of every day was assigned and accounted for. We were to be busy without exception. Much of our behavior would appear random and meaningless to someone outside of the mission. The same six conversations repeated a thousand times. And when we weren’t engaged in those six conversations we were practicing them. Praying on street corners. Wearing suits to wash the car. Reading the same books over and over. I had read the Book of Mormon 22 times by the time I completed the mission. Knocking on doors ad nauseam. Ensuring that every ritualistic aspect of every ritualistic behavior is performed with exactness so as to be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost.

One issue that the MP thought was important was to stop the missionaries getting together socially for dinner breaks, member family visits, or Preparation Day activities (unless approved by the Mission Office). He thought the issue of keeping missionaries socially isolated so important that if any pair shared an apartment with another pair, he had them close down that apartment and open two new ones where each would house one companionship. If missionaries were to meet socially without the permission of the Mission Office, he labelled it “congregating” and described it as a “Secret Combination,”—a Book of Mormon term for evil conspiracies (2^nd Nephi 9:9, Alma 37:30, Helaman 2: 4-13, 6: 21-31, Ether 8: 19-23).

One evening we had an approved missionary Christmas party in the Relief Society room at the chapel; unbeknownst to us, a local ward was having its Christmas party on the same night in the gym. So a few of us wandered over and were visiting with some of the families. Before I get to the next point, I want to reiterate that it was a Christmas party, at the church, and we were visiting with families. We were called back into the Relief Society room and literally shouted at for visiting with the families when that had not specifically been approved.

For much of the two years, we had full use of vehicles. We were expected to fill out and mail in weekly (…or monthly…?) vehicle reports detailing mileage, and costs. If the report was not in on time, we had to pay a monetary fine. If we went over our allotted mileage, we had to pay a monetary fine. We were living on very strict budgets, and the only possible item that we could cut back on in order to pay a fine was the grocery budget. However, fines were strictly enforced, even though it would guarantee that missionaries had to go without. Early in the mission I decided that because going over the mileage limit sometimes facilitated the work, I was willing to go without a little if it meant I would be able to fulfill the call to serve more efficiently. Once again I found myself on the receiving end of a stern reprimand from the MP because, even though I was sacrificing in order to be a better servant of the Lord, I was being disobedient to the rules of the mission, and obedience is the first rule of heaven. Obedience, even to the minutiae, takes precedence over everything.

-          personal servitude,

As to the question of whether personal servitude is a characteristic of mission life, keep in mind that the question we are addressing in this section is whether the mission as a whole constitutes a form of hazing. And as a whole, the mission is an exercise in personal servitude. We self-identified, in principle, as humble servants of the Lord, though in practice we served as obedient servants of the Church. Our every waking moment taken up by obedience to the will of the Church. We acted on every suggestion from the Church and the MP as if it were a direct communication from God.

-          sleep deprivation,

Not everybody’s suprachiasmatic nucleus (the brain’s clock, in the hypothalamus) is set exactly the same, and for those whose body clock was slightly different than that of a milk-man, the strict sleep schedule was virtually impossible to adapt to. I would guess—and it is only an estimate based on an admittedly insufficient sample size—that 25-50% of missionaries suffer from long term sleep deprivation. I did.

-          restrictions on personal hygiene,

Were there restrictions on personal hygiene? Not formally, obviously. Informally, missionaries are sometimes at risk for hygiene issues like lack of hot water, lack of access to regular bathing, hygienic quarters, cockroaches, bed bugs, weevils, and lice.

-          yelling, swearing and insulting new members/rookies

As you might expect, there was yelling and swearing directed at missionaries from people whose doors we knocked on, or who we approached on the street, or random passers-by. Being exposed to that sort of ridicule was already addressed above.

What is more salient here is the question of whether we experienced this from those who were in positions of authority over us. While I cannot recall any examples of actual cursing, we were roundly berated fairly regularly by the Mission President and by visiting General Church Authorities (GA’s). I have already offered some examples above. Here’s another.

There was a recurring theme in most of the talks delivered by visiting GA’s: we would be told that the area in question is about to be blessed by God in such a way that the Church is on the verge of a rapid flourishing and expansion. It is the will of God that the Church is to grow in that specific area in the near future, and so we as missionaries are expected to be instruments in the hands of the Lord to bring about His will. Because it is the will of God that it is to happen, when the prophesied deluge of baptisms failed to materialize, it was the fault of the missionaries. Either we did not work sufficiently hard, did not desire it with enough sincerity, or we were not sufficiently obedient to be worthy of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost so were missing the opportunities to find the individuals that the Lord had prepared on our behalf to be ready to receive the truth.

One visiting GA posed what sounded like an interesting metaphysical question. He asked us what is more accurate, prophecy or history? The answer was that prophecy comes from God, and God’s knowledge is perfect, therefore prophecy is always 100% accurate. He referred to two types of prophecy in order to drive home the point he was about to make. The first type was a GA or the MP telling us that the Lord is going to open the windows of heaven and bless the area with a bounty of converts. The second was the missionaries’ weekly planning sessions when we would prayerfully set goals with regards to how many new investigators we would meet, how many Books of Mormon we would place, how many discussions we would teach, etc. Prayerfully set goals and prognostications from the MP or visiting GA’s constitute prophecy, and are by definition 100% accurate. If, when our final tally at the end of the week failed to match the ostensible prophecy, then the problem was not with the 100% accurate prophecy, but was with us, the individual missionaries. When the Church failed to blossom, it was the missionaries that were blamed and berated, and our worthiness (i.e. obedience) was called into question.

-          during a concentrated period of time,

The time frame of a proselyting mission is well defined and it is concentrated. It starts with a bang when you enter the MTC. I know that a new missionary is technically a missionary from the time he or she is set apart (hands laid on head, an ordination of sorts, usually from a member of the missionary’s home Stake Presidency), but the actual start of the unrelenting intensive directed activity is the moment of entry into the MTC. And the end point is equally sharply defined. It is that moment, 18 or 24 months later, that one departs the mission home in the field on their journey home. As with the setting apart prior to entering the MTC, the young Elder or Sister is still technically a missionary until they are released (again by the laying on of hands by a member of their home Stake Presidency), upon returning home.

Although most instances of hazing occur over a single night or perhaps a week, there are some who describe medical residencies and legal articling as hazing, and like the mission, these can last for years as well. The intensity of the clearly demarcated time period, similar that of residencies and articling means that a mission does match the “concentrated time period” aspect of hazing.

-          is typically covert…away from scrutiny

Missionaries, with few exceptions, serve at least one state/province/region away from their home, and often away from their home country, away from direct interaction from family and friends.

Interestingly, we were explicitly instructed that all of our communications home were to be faith promoting. We were to share our spiritual experiences, and never discuss hardships unless they were reframed in some way as to be faith promoting. If we were experiencing personal difficulties, relationship issues with our companions, unsanitary or unsafe living conditions, lack of missionary success, etc., we were either directed to not report these issues in our communications, or to use them as examples of trials of faith or character/faith building learning experiences. Either way, we were to keep our families and friends unaware when there were hardships.

A simple illustration of this occurred very early in the mission when some of the other Elders had fixed a photograph of the MP’s wife to a dartboard and were throwing darts at her image. Being a naïve greenie, I was shocked at what I characterized at the time as terribly un-Christ-like behavior, and I mentioned it in a letter home. My Mother, trying to do the helpful thing, wrote a letter to the MP to let him know that it had happened. I was called to the MP’s office to discuss it. The meeting wasn’t because he was upset with the missionaries who had disrespected his wife, in fact, he didn’t even care to ask who they were. His concern was that I had included something less than faith promoting in my letter. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that that was unacceptable—communications with home, without exception, were to be faith promoting.

Any and all missionary communications are to be considered potential proselytizing tools. Who knows who might come across a missionary Facebook post? I’m sure guidelines vary from mission to mission, but I’m hard pressed to recall the last non-faith-promoting story contained in a letter home, blog post, or Facebook entry from a current missionary.

-          is intended to promote loyalty, camaraderie, continuity with past and present participants and members, and an insider/outsider, us v. them mentality

I don’t recall ever reading a guideline or talk that made this case explicitly, and you may recall that my MP seemed determined to isolate missionaries one from another. However, informally the experiences of the mission do have the effect of building camaraderie, continuity, and loyalty.

From time to time believer and ex-believer RM’s are criticised by ex-believer or non-believer non-RM’s for serving missions and trying to convert people to what the ex-believers have concluded is a fraud. Whenever this happens, other RM’s, whether believers or ex-believers, defend the individual(s) being criticised. I don’t want to draw too close an analogy between military veterans and RM’s, but vets and RM’s will share a number of similarities. If, for example a Viet Nam vet was being criticised for taking part in an unjust war (whether it was or not is irrelevant to this point), other vets—even ones who agree that the war was unjust—will defend the vet from criticism from non-vets.

When RM’s join social media sites like Facebook, who are the first people they look up? I can’t speak for anybody else, but the first people I looked up, before family in other countries and high school or university buddies, were the missionaries with whom I served.

Like the former college athlete and the military vet, decades after returning from the mission, being a member of the RM class remains a core defining characteristic. I had a job interview recently. I did not know this at the start of the interview, but my potential employers had already decided to hire me, and there were no other interviewees lined up. So after 30 minutes of perfunctory questions, they offered me the job, and then we just visited for a while. It turns out that the two interviewers were both RM’s (and both still practicing members). Although between the three of us the cumulative post mission years added up to more than 60 years, the interview quickly descended into a two hour mission-story-fest. We had studied similar subjects at University, attended Grad School, had had a variety of church assignments, now lived in similar small town communities, had kids, or had any number of things in common, but it was our RM status that was our unquestionable common ground. They knew that I am an ex-believer, but that didn’t matter, our status as fellow RM’s gave the three of us an immediate common language that would probably appear more or less pointless to any non-RM.

So…

I hope that the above discussion sufficiently describes the overlap between the description of the mission and the description of hazing to suggest that serving a mission qualifies as an instance of hazing.

Just when we find ourselves at the end of the psychosocial stage of adolescence, just as we need to commit to an adult version of ourselves, the not so subtle social and cultural forces in which we had been immersed constrain us in such a way that we believed that we were volunteering to give up two years of our prime in order to serve a mission, offering a social scaffold inside which we can achieve adulthood, and a conduit through which we can become a part of the adult male group that holds so much influence in the Church.

That individuals are likely to change attitudes before changing behaviors is not unappreciated by LDS church leadership. According to Boyd K. Packer ("The Candle of the Lord," Ensign, Jan. 1983, pp. 54-55), if one has doubts about one’s testimony, then that person ought to bear their testimony because "A testimony is found in the bearing of it." So if I harbor doubts about the Church (attitude), yet I continue to bear testimony (behavior) that I don’t have doubts about the Church, according to Cognitive Dissonance Theory, what is most likely to happen? My attitude is likely to change and I will “discover” that I possess a testimony of the Church. Is this a reflection on the truthfulness of the claims of the Church? Or course not. Anybody with even a passing familiarity with psychology recognizes that it is nothing more than the normal function of the human mind when faced with dissonance resulting from incongruity between attitudes and behaviors.

This “if you act like you believe it, you will believe it” principle is also employed in the Book of Mormon. Essentially the whole of Alma 32 asks the reader to develop a testimony of gospel principles by acting as though they already believe those principles to be true.

It is also found in Moroni’s Promise (Moroni 10:3-5) which asks the reader to pray to find out if the Book of Mormon is true. Of course, Moroni’s Promise is found inside the Book of Mormon, so praying about the Book requires prior acceptance of the validity of the challenge, and by extension, the validity of the Book. Praying to know if the Book of Mormon is true is acting as though you believe it to be true, and so by natural psychological processes, the seeker is likely to change her attitude to one of belief in the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

Once on the mission, the impressionable young missionary is isolated from any sociocultural forces not dictated by mission rules and culture, and has little choice but to “act as though you believe it.” According to well established Cognitive Dissonance Theory it would be extremely difficult to complete a mission and still harbor any doubts. This would be true even if every claim made by the Church was false—normal psychological processes would still convince the missionary that the claims of the Church are true.

As discussed above, there are a number of negative aspects of the time served in missionary endeavors. There is exhaustion, monotony, belittling, dress code, lack of privacy, etc. These negatives very closely match the common elements found in the descriptions of hazing. And just as fraternity, team, or secret society hazing leads the initiates to form a stronger affiliation with the groups that they are trying to join, so the mission will entrench the missionary/RM’s conformity, pro-Church behavior, identification with and loyalty to the Church, and camaraderie among fellow missionaries and RM’s, all adding up to a commitment to continued belief in and service to the Church.

If the hazing like aspects of the mission are out of harmony with the young person’s previous values, dissonance will occur. Being figuratively trapped in the mission culture (and possibly literally trapped if the MP has confiscated your passport), the behavior is likely to remain consistent while it is the attitude that is most likely to be modified. In the case of the mission, attitudes are likely to be modified by changing them (“I enjoy the challenge;” “real joy is found in service; pre-mission that wasn’t real joy…”), or adding new cognitions (“the opposition is a sign that Satan is trying to stop the work;” “Persecution is because people know we are speaking truth and the wicked take the truth to be hard.”). These things are done out of psychological necessity, to reduce the unpleasantness of the discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors. Cognitive Dissonance theory predicts that the missionary will complete the mission with a positive attitude toward the work.

The Less is More Principle applies to missions. The young missionary is constrained by sociocultural forces to enter the mission field, then once serving is further constrained by mission rules and culture to act in way that is frequently embarrassing or exhausting or monotonous.

While on the mission, rewards come in the form convert baptisms and callings to move up the dominance hierarchy. But what if baptisms and promotions are either not forthcoming or are not quite as satisfying as hoped?

And following the mission, the reward could be ones’ desirability to the ladies, Priesthood Leadership responsibilities, doors opened for educational and career opportunities. But what if those rewards not as wonderful as hoped. After a week or two of pats on the back, you discover that single ladies at church are more interested in an MD or MBA than an RM, and the Priesthood Leadership responsibilities are time consuming and exhausting and not as glamorous as they appeared from the perspective of the pews, and mostly reserved for dentists, lawyers, and doctors.

These perceived lacks of reward would lead to a gaping chasm between the effort and the reward. Having given two years of his life, the young missionary or RM has a natural psychological need to regain consonance, and so is motivated to construct an internal justification that is independent of the external reward. If the rewards are there and as sweet as hoped, then the missionary/RM is not likely to question whether he is satisfied with his efforts. If the rewards are not there or are not so sweet, then he has to…needs to convince himself that the missionary work itself was worth all that he put into it. And he will. He will likely sincerely believe that he enjoyed a wonderful experience, no matter the actual quality of the experience.

In regards to the Effort Justification Effect, the implications for the mission ought to be rather obvious. Missionaries pay their own way in order to serve. If they don’t pay their own way, they are, at minimum, working for free. Furthermore, missionaries sacrifice comforts, miss time with family, forego employment and educational opportunities, lose out on academic and athletic scholarships, and give up a large chunk of their prime years. The Effort Justification Effect tells us that missionaries being reimbursed for efforts decreases any psychological motivation justify behaviors and sacrifices, thus convincing themselves that they did it out of an internal commitment. If a missionary does not become convinced of an internal commitment, future participation will suffer. Consequently, if missionaries were paid for their efforts, their dedication to the work and long term commitment to the Church would be diminished.

Entering the mission at a sensitive period for committing to an adult identity, being immersed in a sociocultural environment dictated entirely by the Church, doing it for free, putting in a Herculean effort, suffering intense hardships, experiencing less reward than is deserved for the effort. Much like the broader category of hazing, it points to the all but inevitability of adopting an adult identity that has the Church at its very core.

References

Aronson E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect if severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181.

Axsom, D., & Cooper, J. (1985). Cognitive dissonance and psychotherapy: The role of effort justification in inducing weight loss. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 149-160.

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[i] http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/4686/Unpaid-articling-legal-but-is-it-ethical.html)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=199645514

http://lawstudents.ca/forums/topic/40201-solicitor-articles-to-litigation/

https://www.slaw.ca/2010/04/13/changing-legal-education-the-need-to-get-real/#comment-731026

[ii] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/the-misery-of-a-doctors-first-days/408004/

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-a-medical-interns-initiation-harmful-to-your-health/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/are-doctors-in-training-really-no-better-than-indentured-servants/

Cousins, N., (1981). Internship: Preparation or Hazing. Journal of the American Medical Association, 245(4):377. doi:10.1001/jama.1981.03310290045025.

[iii] http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2005/nov/hazing/allannewsletter.pdf,

https://www.gannett.cornell.edu/hazing/issues/laws/index.cfm),

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Hazing

http://www.phikappapsi.com/news/archives/endinghazing-thecreedcomparisoni

http://ocm.auburn.edu/stop_hazing/recognize/elements.html, and

https://www.insidehazing.com/definitions.php

[iv]I’m not bringing up Lorenz’ imprinting studies because I want to make the case that hazing in general, or the mission specifically, is an instance of imprinting. I only mention it as an accessible, non-technical illustration of the concept of critical periods in development

[v] No disrespect intended toward Banarama or their fans, they were chosen at random, mostly because the name sounds a little bit silly

[vi] https://www.lds.org/ensign/1974/10/when-the-world-will-be-converted?lang=eng, https://www.lds.org/new-era/1981/05/president-kimball-speaks-out-on-being-a-missionary?lang=eng

[vii] …and then, while we are gone, they marry someone else who has just returned from the field

[viii] https://unexaminedfaith.blogspot.com/2017/07/ctr-rings-embodiment-of-misguided.html

[ix] “Every baptism of the Catholic Church, and of the Episcopal Church, and of the Baptist Church, or any other church, if God Almighty did not ordain and authorize the man who performed the ordinance even though he performed it in the right way and used the right words, is null and void…” (Charles W. Penrose, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 25, p.339)

[x] Why did we answer? Why did we not storm out and book the next flight home? Because that sort of sexually violating interview behind closed doors had been normalized by growing up in the LDS church, and being asked detailed questions of that sort from about the age of 11.

[xi] Alma 39: 3-5;

The notion that sexual sin is 2^nd only to murder has often been repeated. The following references from Presidents of the Church is not intended to be exhaustive.

Joseph F. Smith, Improvement Era, June, 1918, Vol. 20, p. 738;

Harold B. Lee, The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, edited by Clyde J. Williams [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1996], 215

Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1972], 177; The Miracle of Forgiveness [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1969]; The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, edited by Edward L. Kimball [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982], 150.

Ezra Taft Benson, This Nation Shall Endure [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1977], 122.

[xii] “…membership in the church is essential for salvation, and “[t]here is no salvation outside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" (Mormon Doctrine, p.670).

“[p]resumptuous and blasphemous are they who purport to baptize, bless, marry, or perform other sacraments in the name of the Lord while in fact lacking the specific authorization.” (Spencer W. Kimball The Miracle of Forgiveness, p. 55).

[T]here are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth. 1 Nephi 14:10

[xiii] http://www.provomormondude.com/2015/04/what-it-was-like-to-be-early-returned.html, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/10c1/f540cb9daabd859bb5d1903623e0cd9520a7.pdf, https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/4nm02q/so_i_have_heard_that_missonaries_are_facing_ptsd/, http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1766528,1766694