If you look at Mormonism as a corporation, then missionaries are its advertisement and sales force. They're the main exposure non-Mormons have with this religion, and missionaries deliberately only tell people certain things about it--not the fine print--to make it appealing, saving the juicy bits for later after you signed the "contract."

It's mostly been this way for decades, with Mormons skimming public exposure and eventually its criticism. They've had a nice run of having really good control over how their religion is exposed, especially through the missionaries.

Then Romney runs for president and the public starts investigating Mormonism on their own, using the internet to circumvent missionaries who only give out controlled information. Mormons lose control over WHO sees their religion and WHAT they see. The public--especially VERY public people like Bill Maher and Steven Colbert (and the BoM Musical)--make stabs at their religion, and Mormons begin to see how they really look to the outside world, and realize their religion's true colors have been seen.

Magic underwear? Kolob? Baptism for the dead? 33 wives? What?!

Mormonism responds to this by beefing up their sales force, the missionaries, to try and regain control over how people are exposed to this religion, and what they are exposed to. They're trying to recover some of that image management they've lost through the last presidential campaign.

That's my conspiracy theory, anyways.

I think my tinfoil hat has a rip in it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2013 10:02AM by liminal state.

I think they lowered the missionary age because they were sure Mitt would win and the hoards of barbarians would rush to become Mormons because everyone would want to be like the Mormon president. When Mitt lost, the COB must have realized they jumped the gun but now they've got a scrum of missionaries at the door of the MTC. Now I can see the church using those missionaries to try to clean up the dirt that was spilled in the media frenzy - such nice, wholesome, clean cut kids. Who, unfortunately, are in no way prepared to answer the questions about the dirt and probably aren't going to inspire most grown-ups with their Primary geared religious message. It will be interesting to see how this effects the missionaries, going at a younger age, because I don't think it's going to effect their potential investigators one iota.