I have wanted to bring up the point with a TBM who likes to defend tscc by comparing it to companies or the military. I want to point out to her that in those organizations people are only required to follow rules and directives that are legal/ethical. I can tell that she would counter with, "what mission rules or church rules are immoral/illegal/or unethical." Well, I could answer that, but I would like to hear other people's personal experiences with being told do do something that was wrong by a church leader, and being expected to follow through unquestionally, because obedience is a virtue. thx

This did not happen to me but I've heard of mission presidents holding onto a missionaries passport in order to keep him/her from being able to leave a foreign country without his permission. (Illegal and unethical)

I did see a mission president take away and hold onto a missionaries personal property because the other missionaries could not afford the same items. This was probably a wise thing to do if the missionary gave up the items voluntarily but I question whether or not it was ethical.

I did see a mission president intimidate elders who were ill in order to prevent them from seeking medical help. One almost died. (Immoral and unethical)

Ordering missionaries not to contact friends and family at home by phone or internet while on their mission. I don't consider this illegal because the M.P. could not enforce this but I see it as immoral and unethical because it causes a lot of unnecessary stress and and sometimes actual emotional breakdown.

My mission president started reading problem missionaries mail and looking in their packages. One Elder knew he was doing it and set him up and called him on it and told him it was a federal offense.

I would need about two hours to write an essay on this from my missionary experience. Briefly mission presidents and their minions can make a large array of rules that determine what an elder can think, listen to, read, what, where, when they can eat, when, where they can sleep, bathe, what clothes they can wear (these can be very specific and a missionary can be penalized for wearing the wrong shade of a color), they cut off all contact to family, friends, girlfriends. Mind control techniques are used to wear down the individuality of the missionary and public shaming and verbal abuse are common. In short mission presidents create environments that are classical cult control environments. In the Military you can go on leave, you can maintain contact with family and loved ones, off duty you have a large amount of personal freedom that is completely lacking on a mission.

Oh I forgot. In my mission my mission president required us to tract for 60 hours a week, this did not include time spent on buses or walking to get to areas. This did not include time spent in Sunday meetings or District or Zone meetings. When I got sick on my mission the doctor who was taking care of me looked into the schedule LDS missionaries were expected to meet and looked into pressing charges against the Church for violation of the country's labor laws. This did not help me with the situation to say the least. And yes the mission president tried to keep me from seeing medical attention and contacting my family and home doctor.

My TBM brother told me that he and his wife wouldn't be allowed to return home for our Mother's funeral if she passed away while they were on a senior mission to New Mexico. Mission rules wouldn't allow it. Personally, I would never be part of any organization that would try to stop me from coming to my own Mother's funeral.

How about requiring people to pay tithing and then not disclosing how that money is spent? Same could be said for the money families pay for their missionaries.

I think in the top 5 in unethical rules is not allowing families to communicate with their missionaries over the phone. The missionaries are young and need advice often from people who care about them, especially in foreign countries. Mail is too slow, and you can't have a back and forth conversation or tell the tone of voice. I think this has prevented families and friends from giving advice to missionaries to keep them safe and out of trouble, especially in a crime ridden area, or if they need medical help. This one rule might have easily cost several missionarys' lives and health over the years, such as the missionaries who have gotten shot that we've heard about, or who get dangerous tropical diseases.

Cutting off people from their friends and family is one of the biggest markers of a cult. The Moonies did it to Steven Hassan (who wrote Combatting Cult Mind Control) when they first indoctrinated him. The church of Scientology does it to people they put in their SeaOrg and in their prison-like reform camps.

There is no good reason whatsoever to cut missionaries off from their families by discouraging their visits and phone calls in the mission field. It's a manipulative and abusive tactic to use on a vulnerable young adult who's far away from his friends and family for the first time.

"Cutting off people from their friends and family is one of the biggest markers of a cult." +1000

TSCC is a cult.. plain and simple. However, I don't think your argument holds too much water in the way that you are using it. The military and corporations do unethical things.

Focus on cult-like behaviors of TSCC instead.

The questioning of under aged children, alone, without a parent present, about their sexual habits borders on pedophilia. If that's not illegal, it's at least unethical.

No television...not even news. The MP was obviously trying to isolate us from the real world. No music except MOTAB...

By the time I was out for a year I was watching the NBA playoffs (LA & Boston) at a members house, and we were listening to my comp's "Loverboy" tape on P-day....and I did feel a little guilty...

Not even allowing you to watch the news or read newspapers is definitely the markers of a cult. TBM apologists like to claim that it's not true, or just an idiot bad apple MP that did it, but they're too blind to see the culty traits.

The MP advising missionaries not to write real concerns or problems that you were going through on your mission to friends or family because by the time the letters were recieved and a reply was given the issue would already be resolved. (snail mail was being used at the time)

Basically this meant there was no outlet for personal issues or concerns other than the missionaries or mission pres. Very Unethical.

I think email is used today but I doubt the isolationist mandate/strong-encouragment is different.

the monotonous, testimony-like tone of letters we got from our son while he was on his mission. In my letters, I would go to great lengths to try to draw him out about the area he was in, the kinds of food they had there, how he was doing with the language, any funny experiences he had, etc. I wanted to know ABOUT THE PLACE and ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE.

He never answered those questions. And he is capable of telling very funny, interesting stories. But this NEVER came through in letters. All he talked about was the people they were teaching (and not even anything quirky or funny about them!), how strong the Spirit was, how they were led to do this or that, yada, yada.

After he got home, I asked him why he never answered any of my questions about what it was actually like, being out there. He just said, "We were told not to." He remains TBM to this day.

One pair of zone leaders in my mission decided to make a rule that all the elders had to put gel in their hair. My hair sits flat with basically zero effort from me, so I just ignored the rule since I looked perfectly acceptable. One of the zone leaders actually came up to me and started feeling my hair to see if I had gel! WTF? I slapped his hand away and told him I don't swing that way! Lol!

Another set of zone leaders decided to secretly search missionaries' apartments. So they asked for a copy of everyone's keys, pretending it was "just in case you get locked out." Silly me, I was pretty new in my mission and actually bought their lie. I never got around to getting the copy made, though. Good thing! Because once they'd gathered up a few keys to missionaries' homes, they just started going around at times when they knew the mishies wouldn't be there and broke into their homes and looted the places! They gathered up anything not strictly allowed by their interpretation of the mission rules and threw it out. A car poster, some DVDs, EFY music, whatever they felt like, really. Then they left the place ransacked for the missionaries to come home to, not sure if they'd been robbed by some random thieves, or robbed by the "servants of the Lord!"

There is nothing ethical about forcing or coercing a young man or woman to subject themselves to 2 years of rejection and disappointment, while being controlled by a bunch of egotistical, self righteous a$$holes.....

Ron Burr

Their own handbook states they should call ahead and make appointments to go home teaching. But many don't.

Brainwashing children from a very early age that they "want to be a missionary" (think of the primary songs). Very unethical and immoral.

Ditto to everything that has been said about mission rules and policies. Being cut off from family, very little concern about missionary safety. My mission pres had one of the elders in my house secretly write to him every week and update him on what the rest of us were doing.

The difference between rules and practices of companies or the military and the rules and practices of ChurchCo is that the former are employers who pay you. In Mormonism, you're volunteers who pay the church. So your friend's argument falls apart right there.

One of the very oily things the LDS church does is that it puts enormous pressure, from the top down, on its leaders for arbitrary numbers. If you are a bish and want to make it to stake pres you have to perform. If you are a stake pres and want to make it to mission pres you have to perform. Whether its home teaching numbers, activity rates, etc. Of course the brass ring is the 70 or higher where you get the "golden parachute" because that is the job where you get a real shot at money and power.

So what you see happen is that the higher ups at the church don't even have to hand down many specific rules, they just say "we expect these results if you want to advance" then the go-getters will do whatever it takes to grab that brass ring. This is how come there are so many arbitrary and insane rules that don't match from mission to mission or ward to ward.

My brother's mission president (his first one) in Korea was a real dick (this was long ago...). He wouldn't let the elders wear a cap on their head in the winter to stay warm. It was really cold there.

My mission president was really cool, a farmer from Spanish Fork. He didn't make any bone head rules.

Why are they not allowed to accept cash? BUT...they can accept a CASH CARD! Go figure that one out.

I really think its because if they get caught with extra money, someone will take it.
My nephew had every penny his mother sent him go "missing". The envelopes themselves and the letters and cards in them made it to the mission home, but not the cashier's check or the four prepaid visa cards. Suspicious much??

Telling missionaries who they can or can't call is manipulative and unethical. Controlling behaviors like that are damaging.

Forcing missionaries to live on small allowances while the mission presidents receive much larger ones is also unethical. Hiding the amount of money a mission president receives is also unethical. Why the secrecy? It's unethical and they know it.

I'm a physician and I was called by the MPs wife to see a depressed missionary. I explained I wasn't a psychiatrist but I'd be happy to make a referral. She said that would be fine IF...1) the psychiatrist couldn't say the mission was causing the depression or 2) going home would be a recommended treatment.

I told her that all I would assure is that he received good care since I knew the psychiatry group very well. That wasn't good enough.

WOW!!! I'm speechless on this one. Unethical to say the least, this toes the line on criminal activity. So, basically she's asking you to put medical liscense on the line, ignore the mental health of the mishie, all so the Morg doesn't look bad potentially.

Ignore Nonmalficence, beneficence, and just diagnose on her version of Mormon-Paternalism... This doesn't surprise me, but it's sickening.

Furthermore, with all their stipulations, why are they geting an actual doctor at all? Seems like it might have been less hastle for them to just get someone off the street to pretend to be a doctor? Since the outcome has pretty much already been determined before meeting with a doctor...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/06/2013 12:22AM by transylvania.

well I would probably get into that except for the fact that my missionary experience was such an epic mind fuck that it still really upsets me.

Let me say this, I'd love to see one of those puss bag MORmON ASSpostHOLES out on a bicycle in the dead of freezing winter at night dodging traffic.