If there is one genre of literature unique to Mormon letters in terms of its culture (as opposed to being unique, say, in terms of its theology), it is the missionary memoir, the autobiographical account of the two years a young Mormon man (or woman) spends spreading the message of the church in distant lands.
For a kid from Provo, Utah, that "distant land" may well be Los Angeles. For a kid from upstate New York, it turned out to be Tokyo, Japan. This is not to say that the narratives penned by ministers of other faiths possess less literary merit, or a less unique perspective. The missionary memoir measures itself only against its own experimental constant: always the same, only different.
The typical missionary is from North America, hails from a similar social class, begins his service at the same age as his companions (nineteen), and sallies forth with a thin comprehension of his religion, but with confidence more than sufficient to compensate. In the end he has been there and done that with the rest, been subject to the same mindless routines and institutional regimes, has dealt with the same heroes and jerks.
Yet the inescapable beauty of it all is that these identical pressures and deformations, punishments and rewards, so often yield such wildly different products at the end of the spiritual assembly line.
The majority, to be sure, escape any actual physical hardships and are spared any true trials of the soul. They carry purse and scrip and wear shoes made for walking. They are citizen soldiers in a lay army, and the work is of a kind to temper a young mind for the challenges of the post-industrial world: long, dull hours of seemingly pointless work interrupted by moments of inexplicable wonder and discovery.
These moments can propel them into the shocking comprehension of a world completely different from everything they thought they knew. It shakes the complacency out of them, and a good complacency-shaking is just what the average teenager needs.
It is not, of course, the stated purpose of the program--the stated purpose being the business of Preaching the Gospel and Saving Souls. Except that as a purely evangelical enterprise, the missionary program does not constitute the best use of the church's resources. Even though the number of graduates from the Missionary Training Center has more than doubled since I spent my two months there--evidence of enormous success, one would think--the admonition that "every young man" serve a mission has been qualified of late to mean not every young man. (And you know who you are.)
Similar and understandable objections are raised by professional soldiers when they encounter proposals to reintroduce the draft--not to better fight wars, but in pursuit of high-minded (and impractical) goals of social engineering).
Ideally, yes, the mission should not be the venue of choice for Personal Growth & Rehabilitation. But we are an imperfect species, and if not now, when? More importantly, the church remains in short supply of what universal conscription supplies the nation in times of crisis (an organized religion, by definition, being constantly in a time of crisis): a common cause and experience that reaches simultaneously across entire generations.
All politics is local, Tip O'Neil observed, and it's additionally true of religious politics. A church so demographically and geographically concentrated can only achieve "worldwide" status by uprooting its youth and sending them abroad--as metaphysical pirates, scavengers, and ambassadors of good will--so that they will bring home with them a more expansive sense of the world out there.
The missionary program is not sustainable in its historical format: self-funded and run and staffed by part-time volunteers. But important things are always lost in the pursuit of efficiencies, beginning with that universal, shared experience. It is especially important for young men, for whom little is provided by modern society in the way of a publically-acknowledged "coming of age."
(Which is why I find it hard to disparage missionary farewells and homecomings, their frivolous, self-aggrandizing tendencies notwithstanding.)
A similar problem has developed as the Mormon population has grown beyond the carrying capacity of the Church Education System. We are fast approaching the time when BYU becomes the long-trumpeted "Harvard of the West"--not in terms of academic reputation, but in terms of meritocratic exclusivity.
If not "every young man" is cut out to be a minister of the faith--and not all are--the church could perhaps instead begin to transition its agricultural and international programs (the Benson Institute and the Kennedy Center) into the mainstream of ecclesiastical life, building a pragmatic equivalent of the Peace Corps that would welcome all comers.
Yet I cannot wring my hands too tightly, or bemoan fates that have yet to fall. We are dealing here with institutions that move at the speed of continental drift. The rise and fall of the Tokyo South Mission (itself a Buddhist metaphor for the fleeting nature of things) set in motion a reactionary response that, decades years after the fact, still strictly proscribed anything even vaguely resembling "catch sales" proselyting methods.
It may be impossible to discern at any given moment when a sea change has occurred. Perhaps this was the end of a great era, when a naive teenager from upstate New York could for the first time mingle with saints and sinners equally (and I mean the saints and sinners found among my fellow missionaries), without anybody asking what in the world he was doing there.
So I remain grateful for those two years when The Powers That Be shrugged at my real reasons--because I was supposed to, because it was what all my friends at church were doing, because I had never actually considered the alternatives, or, for that matter, questioned deeply any aspect of my religious life--and said, "Fine, if that's what you want to do. Maybe it'll do you some good."
Well, it did. Sort of.
