Few groups exist in the world like missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
More than a million of them have served in the church’s history, so missionary stories are practically as ubiquitous in the 194-year-old global faith as soaring steeples, crying babies and tiny sacrament cups.
Some accounts are inspiring. Some are scary (with odes to devilish humans and even Satan himself). Some are funny. And some are, well, tall on tale and short on truth.
In these excerpts (edited for clarity and style) from The Salt Lake Tribune’s latest “Mormon Land” podcast, folklorist Christine Blythe, executive director of the Mormon History Association, and her husband and fellow folklorist, Christopher Blythe, author of “Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse,” discuss what they have learned from collecting these narratives. Together, they host the podcast “Angels and Seerstones.”
What’s the difference between folklore and history?
Christine • Certainly, history informs folklore, or there are places where those two intersect. But when we think about folklore, we’re thinking about the traditions of everyday people. And when we’re talking about the academic study of folklore, we’re talking about looking at those vernacular traditions, and then tracing variants as those traditions move from one generation to the next, or from one person to the next.
Christopher • When someone thinks about history, they’re usually thinking about what really happened. The set, you know, the events of time, and there’s often in the past, been an emphasis on institutions. In folklore … we’re less interested in institutions; we’re more interested in people on the ground. And we don’t really care whether they happened or not.
What value do missionary stories have, both the real and the rumored?
Christopher • A mission is a really special place because here we have young people discovering their religion over time. They’re immersed in their scripture. They’re immersed in talking about it. These stories tell us what they value, what they’re concerned about, what they love, what their hopes are. Sometimes, rumored stories don’t tell us what’s really going on, they tell about the internal life of these young people.
Christine • These stories tell us a lot about what Latter-day Saints value. Their stories about conversion, kind of where the faith story begins for a lot of people. I’m a convert, Chris is a convert, so our stories begin with missionaries. But they’re also stories about young Latter-day Saints, so many of whom [have been] nestled in the Intermountain West, traveling the globe and having their first experience outside of their homes and interacting with people that are unlike themselves.
What is the danger, if any, in sharing these stories?
Christine • Ethnocentricity is something that we see a lot in LDS missionary folklore. Also [sexism]...We have this story that is really popular about sister missionaries in which she’s out driving with her companion and the car breaks down and there’s not a gas station in sight. There’s a bottle of water in the car, and they decide [that] the Lord can do miracles, [saying], “Let’s pray over the bottle of water. It’ll turn into gasoline, and we will go on our way.” They put the water in the car, and, of course, it completely totals the car. Now that’s kind of humorous. But we have similar stories about elders who are driving in their vehicles. They make it from Destination A to Destination B and when they arrive, they open up the car and the engine is missing from the vehicle. The power of the priesthood got them from Point A to Point B. So we have stories like that that are inherently sexist that we should stop telling.
How has globalization adapted and altered these stories?
Christine • Missionary narratives are reaching well across the globe. And it doesn’t matter whether someone’s served in Nevada or Japan or Africa. The same legend is making its way to those countries and back. … And so you have people from all over the world in other groups with other perspectives chiming in, and either adding to that narrative or criticizing that narrative.
Christopher • As a BYU professor teaching folklore, I have my students always do a big project. Last semester, I had a student collect stories from different geographic locations across the world that told the story of a convert discovering a Book of Mormon with its cover ripped off. … He reads this trashed book, and then is converted. Then 10 years later, he meets the missionaries and immediately converts. The original story is of a real guy, … But it’s been reset in Mexico and Brazil, in Germany, all these different locations.
What is one of your favorite missionary stories?
Christine • There is a group of missionaries, typically elders, somewhere, it could be any state or country around the world. Some subset of elders decide that they are going to form a secret society — maybe they’re the “Gadianton robbers,” [bad guys in the Book of Mormon], maybe they are the “12 apostates,” or whatever they named themselves. They come up with initiation rites in which they invite others to join the group. Sometimes, that includes leaving the mission field and taking photographs of where they’ve traveled to. It includes dating girls or hot-tubbing with sister [female] missionaries in the baptismal font. These missionaries continue on their way, documenting, in some book, all of their naughty deeds. And one day a general authority comes to the mission. Often this is an apostle. … For a couple of decades, it’s been [Jeffrey R. Holland]. And he comes in and he walks down the row of missionaries and divides a set of missionaries to the right and a set of missionaries to the left. He looks to the missionaries on the right and says, “Good and faithful servants, go on your way. You’re doing a great job.” He looks at the missionaries on the left and says, “You’re going home.” Elder Holland or whoever it is knows … by the [Holy] Spirit, who is a part of the secret group. There are a million different variations and they’re told all over the world. And it’s always elders. Sisters are almost never a part of the groups.
Christopher • So sisters are [portrayed as] dumb and elders are disobedient.
Why are there so many stories about missionaries who invite a battle with Satan?
Christine • It’s kind of paradoxical, right? … One of the most common stories is about a missionary who’s doubting whether or not God exists or whether or not Satan exists. So he decides to pray to Satan. I don’t know why, but that’s what he does. And he’s thrown from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. It can get really violent and bloody in these stories. In that case, they become cautionary tales about what not to do.
Why is the mission field so ripe for these stories?
Christopher • When we talk about demonic stories in general, it’s usually where cultures collide. … Latter-day Saint missionaries are getting sent out to foreign experiences where the culture that they’ve been protected in is now coming up against other forces. There’s a deep anxiety going on. They’re being introduced to other religions, particularly charismatic religions. Latter-day Saints had been apt to think of them as diabolic. So we see a lot of these stories in Brazil, in the American South and the Caribbean. Probably other places as well. … In these stories, you find out that there was a formula they needed to perform, that their priesthood or their endowment enabled them to conquer this. They’re for people who are already anxious, already experiencing anxiety, to [hear] a story of how they conquered it. … These are really stories about Latter-day Saint strength.
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