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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a former Mormon, I served an 18-month mission, I 100% agree. 
[/quote]

Can you tell us your experience? What turned you off to this practice?[/quote]

Sure, and I'll try to be brief. Also I'm not editing so apologizes in advance if this isn't clear.

Mormonism strongly believes that they are the only true church in the world, and the religion entwined in a very distinct culture. That culture is almost cookie cutter 1950s-60s white conservative America (there are interesting reasons for why this happened that I won't get into). As a missionary I was taught that not only did people need to change their beliefs, but their culture as well.

So I knocked on peoples' doors, told them about my little religion and how it was truer than what they believed, and that if they wanted to go to heaven, they needed to basically become like white Americans in the 1960s (with modified beliefs). This meant everything from changing the beverages they offered guests to how they interacted with their friends and families to changing their facial hair to what they should do in their spare time. And of course give the Mormon church 10% of their already meager incomes.

The people who typically changed were people who were missing something in their lives, usually because of a lack of money or other difficult life circumstances. We were taking advantage of the vunerable and in doing so robbing them of their beloved ancestral culture. The change was distressing for many but they were convinced it was the only way.

And then if they changed their minds or wavered, they got an earful about how still God loved them, but they were making a choice that was robbing them of eternal salvation. Even if it was just about not being able to afford tithing, or feeling like they shouldn't have to give up coffee, or deciding they didn't want to believe that Joseph Smith's polygamy was divinely inspired. If they stopped going, Mormon friends tended to fall away, but their connections in their Orthodox and family communities had been disturbed so sometimes it was difficult to re-build a community.

Coming around to the idea that it's wrong to go on missions was a slow process, but I think what really solidified it was learning about White colonization. A few years after my mission, I realized that that's exactly what I was doing on my mission. Destroying a culture to replace it with mine.

I suppose banning missionaries outright might be a problem (even though I'd like it to happen), but our activities could have been fairly restricted. Maybe we should have been forbidden to knock on the doors of peoples' homes, maybe our street efforts could be restricted to certain areas, maybe they could cap numbers and require permits. I don't know. Freedom of speech in the US and other solidly democratic countries isn't unrestricted, so it's unreasonable to think that missionaries who are doing so much harm should get lots of free speech.

And another note: I think that missions are bad for missionaries either. It was basically brainwashing. Very little individuality is allowed. We were literally compared to soldiers in an army. You got sent home if you disobeyed, which can have pretty severe social consequences in Mormon communities (like if you get sent home early, that's a strike against you when you're looking for a spouse, and for a mormon getting married is literally your most important goal in life. So it's fall in line or suffer severe penalties). [/quote]

Another former Mormon here, and I agree 100%.  We went to Japan and told them to stop drinking tea.  I don't have anything else to add.  You nailed it.  [/quote]

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