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主题 : 走近神秘的摩门教徒:虔诚和金钱的结合体
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楼主  发表于: 2010-07-22   

走近神秘的摩门教徒:虔诚和金钱的结合体

【原题】摩门精英

来源:南都周刊
作者:James Crabtree
编译_括囊

纵使在美国这样一个多元化的社会,摩门教徒仍承受着世人深深的误解。奇怪的是,很多成功的精英人士又都是摩门教的拥趸,摩门教徒在政府、华尔街等精英阶层颇受欢迎。


隶属摩门教的杨百翰大学是全美最大的教会大学。




  穿戴整齐的本·迈克亚当斯是个彬彬有礼的文人雅士,35岁的他是个不折不扣的居家男人,有6个兄弟姐妹和3个孩子。为人谦虚,工作上进,有道德责任感,迈克亚当斯颇受邻居和朋友的好评。他不抽烟,也不喝酒,即便是和普通朋友在美国盐湖城人烟稀少的快餐店吃饭,他也要一本正经地穿上西装、打上领带。

  换句话说,迈克亚当斯这样的传统男人正是摩门教徒们所期望的。

  然而在另一方面,他又是非传统的。直到最近,迈克亚当斯依然是纽约颇有名望的戴维斯律师事务所一颗冉冉升起的新星,从哥伦比亚大学法学院毕业的他,曾在律师事务所为克林顿和希拉里工作,并在35岁成为美国犹他州最年轻的州参议员。他是个保守派,通过帮助同性恋人争取权利在民主党中一举成名。他反对“8号提案”禁止同性婚姻合法化,这与2008年参加总统大选的米特·罗姆尼不谋而合。与此同时,在迈克亚当斯的思想和信仰中,自1890年以来一直被官方禁止的“一夫多妻制”完全是合法的,更是值得倡导的。

  迈克亚当斯是摩门教徒中的一员,而米特·罗姆尼可能是迄今为止美国政坛最有名的摩门教徒了。相传,早在两个世纪以前,不识字的农场工人约瑟·史密斯创立了摩门教,不过当时并没有正式的名称,由于其所代表的是耶稣基督的使徒在第1世纪时所建立的最原始的教会,故一般称“基督教会”,1838 年4月26日才正式称为“耶稣基督后期圣徒教会”,简称LDS。信仰摩门教之人被称作摩门教徒,而他们几乎无一例外地支持一夫多妻制。

  时至今日,摩门教正日益走近普通大众的生活,美国的摩门教徒已经颇具规模,而且大都是精英人士。从参选总统失败的罗姆尼到肥皂剧中经常看到的一夫多妻制家庭,摩门教徒的影子在美国这一代人中随处可见。参议院多数党领袖哈里·里德和罗姆尼是政客中的代表,著有《暮光》吸血鬼系列作品的传奇作家斯蒂芬妮·梅耶则是文学界的代表。此外,流行的保守派谈话节目主持人格伦·贝克和畅销书《高效能人士的7个习惯》的作者史蒂芬·柯维也是摩门教徒中的一员。

  这些都是家喻户晓的人物,而在大型公司和机构中,摩门教徒也比比皆是。美国俄亥俄州立大学校长Gordon Gee、捷蓝航空公司创始人大卫·尼尔曼、万豪国际酒店负责人小马里奥特、美国驻华大使洪博培等等,都是典型的代表。调查显示,在当下公司30岁到40岁的人群中,摩门教徒的数量正在大幅增加,而且增加的速度呈加快趋势。一名纽约的投资银行家说:“我大学的最后一年一直在JP摩根做接待工作,他们从普林斯顿、耶鲁、哈佛、伯明翰和杨百翰大学招收很多精英。杨百翰大学?是的,隶属摩门教的杨百翰大学是全美最大的教会大学。那时我才意识到,很多摩门教徒在前赴后继进入华尔街。”

  同时,美国中央情报局也把目光对准摩门教徒,著名的蓝筹公司也不例外。在哈佛商学院,女学生谈起吸引他们目光的男生无非是三种:参军者、麦肯锡管理顾问和摩门教徒。

  虔诚和金钱的结合体

  过去100年来,除了口碑和名声不断惹人注意外,摩门教徒的数量也在迅猛增长。美国人口总数的1.7%都是摩门教徒;在全球范围内,摩门教徒的数量也从1900年的25万人增长到1948年的100万人,再到如今的1300万人。摩门教堂的资产估计在250亿美元到300亿美元之间。按人均计算,摩门教堂可能是世界上最富有的宗教机构了。

  得克萨斯州贝勒大学宗教社会学家罗德尼·斯塔克曾大胆预测,摩门教将在本世纪下半叶成为自伊斯兰教以来另一个全球信仰的新教派,而其创始人约瑟·史密斯更是经常被称为“美国的穆罕默德”。芝加哥社会经济学家加里·贝克尔表示,美国各大教堂持开放态度,并不排斥其他信仰的人进来礼拜,所以教堂门前的长凳上总是坐满了人。这在一定程度上为摩门教徒提供了足够的发展空间。

  也许,摩门教不同于其他教派最有说服力的标志是:它的成员大都是虔诚和金钱的结合体。大多数时候,虔诚和金钱在宗教中结合得并不是很好,比如说虔诚的犹太教徒,往往收入比较低,受教育程度也很低。而在摩门教中,金钱与虔诚并不互相排斥,这无疑为其教徒标注了“精英”与“成功人士”的标签。

  谈到摩门教在美国精英人士中颇受欢迎,迈克亚当斯讲起了自己的故事:“我在犹他州一个普通的工薪阶层家庭长大。在我童年时,爸爸曾有一些就业机会,但没有一个能持续长久。他吸烟、喝酒,并不是摩门教徒。”童年时的迈克亚当斯并未足够开阔自己的眼界,他的故事也不是“成功+金钱”催生另一个 “成功+金钱”的范本。后来,一段传教培训改变了一切。

  19岁的时候,所有摩门教男人都要花两年时间执行一项培训任务(女性在21岁时执行,时间为18个月)。任务是异常艰苦的,而且需要教徒自己支付全部资金。尽管19岁时迈克亚当斯还在大学学习法语,但他还是到圣保罗执行传教培训任务。艰辛的训练过程在迈克亚当斯的记忆中打下深深的烙印,至今仍记忆犹新:“全世界有二十几个可供选择的训练中心,你在那里几乎每天12小时都在不停息地工作。”

  在犹他州传教士训练中心(MTC),门口挂着“游客不许入内”的牌子,记者说明来意打算进去采访,其中要走的程序竟然长达几个星期。今年2 月下旬,记者走进训练中心时,发现院子里有12栋崭新建筑,看起来像是积雪覆盖的山峰。在建筑内部,空旷的墙壁上到处挂着约瑟·史密斯的照片。

  在MTC和其他传教士训练中心,新来者往往被分配一个伴侣。他们在长时间的训练过程中一起学习,一起吃饭,一起运动,学员们的所有活动也都是分组的,谁也不能单独行动。MTC负责人拉尔夫·史密斯对记者说:“来这里训练的孩子都是19岁左右,这正是他们在学校上学或玩电子游戏的时节,但在这里他们却要努力训练,不停工作,并为自己定下长远的发展目标。”拉尔夫·史密斯随后叫助手递上来一份即将前往乌克兰的女性学员的时间安排表。她每天6点 30分起床,晚上10点30准时熄灯睡觉,大部分时间她都在学习乌克兰语,有时也研究饮食习惯和宗教习俗。

  迈克亚当斯说,正是在MTC自己才真正开了眼界。“我发现,那些学员的父亲有的是大主教,有的是大富翁,而我正与这些人为伍,这样的环境不是由我的父母决定的。”

  培训的秘密

  罗德尼·斯塔克的研究表明,成功的宗教信仰往往可以帮助青年树立正确的社交观念,“没有什么比做一个传教士更能让他们有责任意识了”。迈克亚当斯和记者谈到自己在巴西的那段传教时光。“每个人都说做一个摩门传教士要花费两年训练时间,事实上人们都忽视了之前的六个月语言训练时间。刚开始到巴西的时候我不能和任何人说话,人们也听不懂我在讲什么。有一次我做梦说着英语,醒来后发现自己仍身处巴西,挫败感顿时油然而生。”在做培训的这段时间,教徒们甚至不能与家人联系,除了圣诞节和母亲节外,连电话都不能打。此外,他们阅读的东西也都受到严格限制。一位资深投行家也曾在巴西传教,回忆那段经历时,他满腹酸楚:“我永远也忘不了第一次吃午饭的情景,我只是想喝一杯水,结果却不知道怎么表达。”

  美国华盛顿州立大学宗教社会学教授莫斯提出一个著名的悖论:在宗教领域,信仰的忠诚度是和所受的苦难成正比的。为了信仰所承受的苦难越多,忠诚度也就越高,也更容易成功。的确,在巴西和MTC承受的多年磨练帮助迈克亚当斯和其他同伴开发出现代企业和政府亟需的技能,在面对困难的时候知道如何想办法摆脱困扰,这为他们在政界和金融界成为精英人士铺平道路。后来,当教会意识到迈克亚当斯足够成功时,便聘请他为培训者,帮助其他摩门教徒培训技能。就是在这样的过程中,领导力一点点积聚起来。

  摩门教徒管理大师史蒂芬·柯维曾于上世纪70年代在伦敦传教,他说,那段时间改变了他以后的人生轨迹。“我在书中的很多观点不是基于摩门教信仰,而是建立在那段生活的基础上。此后,我可以在电影院、公共汽车、伦敦塔或其他任何地方演讲表达自己的观点。”回到美国后,柯维跟父亲说自己不想继承家族产业,而是想做一名教师。最终,柯维在哈佛商学院进修,用他自己的话说:“传教生活让我更早地承担起生活的重任,我可以自由表达自己的声音。”

  贴在他们身上的标签

  哈佛商学院一名领导曾对记者表示,过去20年来,到学校申请进修的摩门教徒越来越多。当然,最主要的摩门教学校是犹他州的杨百翰大学,在那里摩门教徒每年只需支付5000美元学费,相当于常春藤联盟院校学生的十分之一。在某种意义上说,杨百翰大学每一寸土地上都流淌着精英的血液。金·史密斯曾经是高盛的高管,现在他是杨百翰大学教授。他在上世纪80年代进入华尔街的时候,几乎没有摩门教徒。但现在正如他所说:“银行纷纷聘请摩门教徒就像是在争着买一只股票:价格低,却有超值的回报。”

  一个有趣的现象是,大多数从杨百翰大学毕业的学生马上准备结婚。一位不愿透露姓名的教授对记者说:“结婚组建家庭,会让你对生活更有责任感。你可以告诉你的父母你的毕业成绩不是很好,但跟配偶解释却要花一番功夫。”

  在高盛工作时,史密斯曾因工作原因不得不搬到东京。“对我来说,那是一个完全陌生的文化。但我和家人并未感到丝毫不适,我们把这当成是另一次摩门教徒培训。”迈克亚当斯的故事如出一辙。“当我和妻子毕业第一次来到纽约时,我们用一辆大卡车运了很多东西。早前我们并不认识那些邻居,但我们到的时候却有15个人帮我们装卸杂物。我的社会关系网早在摩门教徒培训时就已经形成了。”

  对摩门教徒来说,社会关系网尤其重要,因为教会没有专业的神职人员。12岁时,男孩开始进入教会,14岁时开始成为“老师”,16岁便可成为一位全职的牧师,每个名号下的教徒都有各自的职责。这套系统并非十全十美,不是每个人都安于自己的职责,而且大多数高级领导是男人,教会结构更像是传统的男性主导社会。

  当摩门教逐渐在社会浪潮中站稳脚跟之时,猎头公司也把目光对准了那些教徒们。摩根大通常务董事斯科特·奈科姆表示,华尔街已经把杨百翰大学看作是最优秀的生源地:“那里的学生阳光,成熟,受过良好教育,有让人印象深刻的职业道德和非常出色的团队意识——这极其符合我们的企业文化。”

  调查显示,杨百翰大学毕业的摩门教徒很少有华而不实的领导人,通常贴在他们身上的标签都是“勤恳敬业,价值突出”。据说,美国顶级律师事务所和中情局也非常喜欢摩门教徒,因为他们能掌握多种语言,在工作上有很大优势。

  迈克亚当斯认为,尽管当今世界对摩门教徒还有很多误解,但他们只是埋头工作,在实际行动中证明自己,这也是他们能成为精英的关键因素。当下,美国之外的很多地方也有摩门教徒,相对来说,华尔街那种宽容的氛围更容易为摩门教徒们提供成功的土壤。有趣的是,在一些经济快速增长的国家,摩门教徒的数量正成倍增长,其中就包括巴西。

  在摩门传教士训练中心走廊的牌匾上,写着教徒们必须要经过培训的十几种语言,其中还包括宿务语、苗语和他加禄语。牌匾旁边是一幅世界地图,摩门教会已经开始运行的国度被用红色标记标识出来,仅有中东和其他部分国家依然是灰色。相信在不久的将来,摩门教徒会在世界上赢得更多的认可,因为他们从不曾改变其精英本色。

  摩门教

  1830年,约瑟·史密斯创立了摩门教,不过当时并没有正式的名称,1838年4月26日才正式称为“耶稣基督后期圣徒教会”。“耶稣基督后期圣徒教会”自称为基督教,是由于它也以耶稣基督的教导和救赎为核心,并相信耶稣基督是神的独生子,也是旧约中先知所预言的基督及弥赛亚(救世主)。除了一般基督教会所使用的圣经之外,教会的标准经典也包括摩门经。因此,许多人士便以“摩门教”、“摩门”或是“摩门教徒”等别号来称呼“耶稣基督后期圣徒教会”以及其信徒。

  摩门教信仰和“主流的基督教信仰” (罗马天主教、东正教和大多数基督新教在内的宗派)自1820年代后期圣徒运动开始之时就在教义上有极大不同的意见。摩门教徒们认为自己是基督徒,但是自认在许多方面与其他教会宗派不同;他们本身热诚地拥抱犹太人和犹太信仰,这种热心主要是因为摩门教徒相信他们与犹太教在历史上和教义上有极大关联。

【原文网址】http://www.nbweekly.com/Print/Article/10771_0.shtml
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“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”  -----  Henry David Thoreau
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9楼  发表于: 2010-07-25   
看他们以后还敢不敢胡咧咧了。
一手臭牌打遍天下
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8楼  发表于: 2010-07-25   
卡总啊

专家一出手,就知有没有,

他们那是汗颜啊
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7楼  发表于: 2010-07-25   
可能由于我把我的译文贴到【南都周刊】网站这篇文章的读者留言里并且含泪劝告编辑对英文译文要把把关,今天发现【南都周刊】把这篇文章整个从他们的网站上删除了。
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”  -----  Henry David Thoreau
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6楼  发表于: 2010-07-24   
我们学校原来的外教有很多是摩门教徒。但是他们不可以在公开场合谈这个。问也不回答。

后来在一个私下场合,一个老师跟我谈了许多。

感觉他们都是很敬业的人,待人也很好。
杺栫杣杊椌柮栬,䒴蓉艿芖。
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5楼  发表于: 2010-07-23   
谢卡总释疑

最初看中文时还奇怪, 怎么跟我以前知道的一些事不对付

原来如此
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地下室  发表于: 2010-07-22   
我说这翻译很糟糕,而且不是一般的糟糕,我从中抽出一段自己译了一下,你们看这意思的差别有多大。


【英文原文】

In other ways, however, he is less typical. Until recently, he was a fast-rising star at Davis Polk, a prestigious New York law firm – a job he won straight from Columbia University’s law school. He then worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton, before becoming, at 35, Utah’s youngest state senator. His is the most conservative state in the US, and yet he’s a moderate Democrat who won his district – and his reputation – by helping to broker a deal over gay rights. This, mind you, from a man whose church was pilloried for bank-rolling California’s successful 2009 “Proposition 8” referendum against gay marriage. Whose faith was a headache to Mitt Romney throughout Romney’s 2008 presidential run. And whose religion has been unable to shake a reputation for “plural marriage”, officially abandoned in 1890.

【南都周刊的译文】

 然而在另一方面,他又是非传统的。直到最近,迈克亚当斯依然是纽约颇有名望的戴维斯律师事务所一颗冉冉升起的新星,从哥伦比亚大学法学院毕业的他,曾在律师事务所为克林顿和希拉里工作,并在35岁成为美国犹他州最年轻的州参议员。他是个保守派,通过帮助同性恋人争取权利在民主党中一举成名。他反对“8号提案”禁止同性婚姻合法化,这与2008年参加总统大选的米特•罗姆尼不谋而合。与此同时,在迈克亚当斯的思想和信仰中,自1890年以来一直被官方禁止的“一夫多妻制”完全是合法的,更是值得倡导的。


【我的翻译】

然而在其他方面,他又不是那么典型的摩门教徒。他从哥伦比亚大学法学院一毕业就直接进入纽约一家有名望的律师事务所—戴维斯•波克事务所工作,并且是那里快速上升的到明星。然后,他为比尔•克林顿和希拉里•克林顿效力。直到最近在35岁时成为犹他州的最年轻的州参议员。犹他州是美国最保守的州,然而他却是一个温和的民主党人并赢得了他所在的选区。他的声望是靠为同性恋争取权利而获得的。别忘记,他所在 的教会在2009 年加州为反对同性婚姻“8号提案”而举行的全民公决中是强有力的支持者。他的信仰却是米特•罗姆尼在2008 总统大选中始终头痛的问题。并且他的教会一直未能甩掉拥有早在1890年就正式废止的“一夫多妻”习俗的恶名。



文化背景可能需要解释一下,摩门教非常保守,绝大多数是共和党。摩门教反对同性恋。这一段是把本·迈克亚当斯和其他摩门教徒做比较。克林顿夫妇是民主党。罗姆尼在2008 总统大选中因为他的摩门教背景而很早就落选。
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”  -----  Henry David Thoreau
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地板  发表于: 2010-07-22   
收藏,一会看。看来翻译是有问题啊
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板凳  发表于: 2010-07-22   
我现在发现,有些人略通英文也就敢搞翻译。南都周刊也不请人校对一下也就发文。谁以后还敢相信中文媒体上的编译文章?
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”  -----  Henry David Thoreau
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沙发  发表于: 2010-07-22   
英文原文出自英国【金融时报】
The rise of a new generation of Mormons

The Financial Times
By James Crabtree
Published: July 9 2010 17:10 | Last updated: July 9 2010 17:10


Ben McAdams is neat, he’s helpful, he’s unfailingly polite. The 35-year-old is a family man, one of six siblings and a father of three. People warm quickly to him, and talk of his modesty and strong work ethic. He neither drinks nor smokes. And when we meet for breakfast in a sparsely decorated canteen in Salt Lake City, he is wearing a dark suit and a tie.

In other words, McAdams is what the world expects of Mormons.

In other ways, however, he is less typical. Until recently, he was a fast-rising star at Davis Polk, a prestigious New York law firm – a job he won straight from Columbia University’s law school. He then worked for both Bill and Hillary Clinton, before becoming, at 35, Utah’s youngest state senator. His is the most conservative state in the US, and yet he’s a moderate Democrat who won his district – and his reputation – by helping to broker a deal over gay rights. This, mind you, from a man whose church was pilloried for bank-rolling California’s successful 2009 “Proposition 8” referendum against gay marriage. Whose faith was a headache to Mitt Romney throughout Romney’s 2008 presidential run. And whose religion has been unable to shake a reputation for “plural marriage”, officially abandoned in 1890.



Mitt Romney and his wife Ann Romney speak with Harry Reid at the funeral of Gordon B. Hinckley
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (second row left) and his wife Ann Romney speak with Senate majority leader Harry Reid

Put simply, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS for short, has an image problem; and yet, tellingly, McAdams doesn’t. And he’s part of a much bigger crowd: for the first time in its nearly two-century history – one that began, according to the founding myth, with an illiterate farmhand, Joseph Smith, being visited by an angel in western New York state – Mormons are moving from the periphery of modern American life to the very centre. From Romney’s failed tilt at the presidency to the tales of everyday polygamous families in HBO’s popular drama Big Love, Mormonism has become increasingly visible over the last generation. Where its most famous acolytes were once the Osmonds, leading lights now include politicians such as US Senate majority leader Harry Reid (a Democrat) and Romney (a Republican); Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight vampire saga; Glenn Beck, the popular conservative talk-show host; and self-help guru Stephen R. Covey, the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Those are the household names. As important are the Mormons who play central roles at the companies and institutions that make America tick: Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University (one of the biggest in the US); David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airlines; J.W. (“Bill”) Marriott, head of Marriott International; and Jon Huntsman Jr, ambassador to China – to name a few. And while firm data are hard to come by, off-the-record interviews conducted for this article suggest that a generation of Mormons in their thirties and forties is accelerating the trend. For every Hill Cumorah Pageant – an annual set of performances starting this weekend in which a cast of 650 enact scenes from the Bible and Book of Mormon before massive audiences near Joseph Smith’s birthplace – there are much more mundane scenes being played out across the US: an investment banker in New York said, “I was at my final day of interviews at JPMorgan during my senior year in college. They took students from Princeton, Yale, Harvard, U-Penn and Brigham Young University [a Mormon university in Utah]. I was like, ‘what the hell? BYU?’ Then I slowly realised how many Mormons there are on Wall Street.”



Stephenie Meyer signs a book of a fan at the 'Twilight' world premiere in Westwood, California
‘Twilight’ author Stephenie Meyer

The CIA has its eye out for Mormons, who, people say jokingly, ace the mandatory drugs and lie-detector tests. Blue-chip corporations are recruiting, too. And at Harvard Business School, female students note ruefully that attractive male classmates are invariably associated with one of the “three Ms”: the military, the management consultancy McKinsey or Mormonism.

In that complaint lies the conundrum: much of the US still sees Mormons as weirdly strait-laced at best, cultish at worst. Yet elite institutions are embracing them. What does that fact say about the world’s youngest major religion – and about success in modern America?

. . .

Despite its public reputation, the Mormon church is the outstanding religious success story of the past hundred years. Approximately 1.7 per cent of the US population are LDS members, just slightly fewer than describe themselves as Jewish. Global membership rose from 250,000 in 1900 to one million in 1948, to 13 million today. The church is probably the world’s richest per capita religious institution, too, with assets estimated at between $25bn and $30bn. (That’s £16bn-£20bn; the Church of England’s portfolio in 2009 was £4.4bn.)

Religious sociologist Rodney Stark, at Baylor University in Texas, has predicted that the LDS will in the latter half of this century become the first new world religion since Islam – just one reason that Smith, who founded the church in the 1830s, is sometimes described as the “American Mohammed”. There is something special about Mormons, but what is it? The most fashionable theory regarding religious success at the moment comes from economics, drawing on approaches developed by the University of Chicago’s Gary Becker. Becker, a sociologist and economist, argues that American church pews are kept full – while those in Europe empty out – because the US is unencumbered by religious monopolies (such as the Church of England or the Catholic Church), leaving plenty of room for competition and choice. And indeed, one-quarter of US Mormons are first-generation converts. The US’s National Council of Churches data from 2008 rank the LDS fourth among church membership in the US, with 5.8 million members – a rise of 1.56 per cent from the previous year.

Yet growth alone doesn’t explain why some religions break into the boardroom and why some don’t. American Jews and Hindus stand out in socio-demographic surveys for their exceptional incomes and professional accomplishment, but this flows not from growing membership, rather from heavy investment in education and, in the case of Hindus, successive waves of immigration by highly trained elites such as doctors and engineers. Mormon success is different: unlike Hindu immigrants, the newest LDS members in America – converts – tend to be poorer and less educated than those with longer heritage in the church. And older generations aren’t exactly funding ever-greater achievement by younger ones: the PEW Forum on Religion in Public Life describes Mormonism as lying “roughly in the middle of other religious traditions on the socioeconomic spectrum”.

. . .


Jon Heder
Actor Jon Heder, who starred in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’

Perhaps the most telling sign that Mormon success springs from different roots is this fact: the church’s most successful members, in terms of education and wealth, are also its most fervent. In most religions, piety and professional success mix badly. Devout Jews earn less, and tend to be less educated, than their less-orthodox brethren. American Christian evangelicals save and earn less than those from more moderate traditions.

Back at the canteen in Salt Lake City, McAdams reflects on why growing up Mormon seems to help with professional achievement in modern America. “I grew up here in Utah in a working-class family,” he tells me. “My dad had any number of jobs over the course of my childhood. Never one for too long, and with gaps in-between. He wasn’t the greatest Mormon either, drinking and smoking. So we pretty much lived pay cheque to pay cheque.” His was a childhood of limited horizons. It wasn’t the case that money and success begot more money and success. Rather, says McAdams, the thing that started to make a difference was being a missionary.

At age 19, all Mormon men are expected to spend two years on a mission. (Women serve too, but for 18 months, and at age 21.) It’s tough. They pay their own way, often saving from childhood. There is no discussion over destinations: McAdams served in São Paolo, despite learning French for four years at school. And the pre-mission training is gruelling: held at one of two dozen training centres around the world (one is in Preston, Lancashire), “you get up early and work 12 hours a day”.

At the MTC’s headquarters, in Provo, Utah, visitors are not allowed: my request for a tour gives pause to the church’s otherwise well-oiled public affairs department. It takes weeks for the OK to arrive. When I visit the campus in late February, I find a dozen redbrick buildings with views of snow-capped mountains. Inside one building, I walk down a long, empty corridor with pictures of Joseph Smith on the walls alongside framed snaps of missionaries. A young man in white robes stands, mid-baptism, waist deep in the sea; the photo is labelled “Suava, Fiji, 1999”. In another shot, two teenagers in blue overalls stand next to a bale of hay: “Seridal, Japan, ‘85”.

Here and at the other training centres, new arrivals are assigned a “companion”; they will study, eat, exercise and sleep side by side through the length of their stay. Life inside is regimented, and leaving the grounds is not allowed. Ralph Smith, the MTC’s president, says: “These young people are like most 19-year-olds, going to school and playing video games. And here they are plunked down into a situation here which is very structured, with significant demands on them to study, work hard and set goals for themselves.” He swivels round his monitor to show me a typical timetable, for a female missionary heading to Ukraine. Her day begins at 6.30am, with lights out at 10.30pm, sharp. She spends most of her time studying Ukrainian, with shorter periods for eating, exercising and religious study.

McAdams says the MTC opened his eyes, not so much to discipline as opportunity. “I found myself there alongside peers whose fathers were bishops in the church, or from wealthier families. It was an environment which wasn’t predetermined by who my parents were.”

. . .

Rodney Stark’s work shows that successful religions normally find ways to “socialise the young”, and he argues that “nothing builds more intense commitment than the act of being a missionary”. If missionary training is tough for young Mormons, the sink-or-swim experience that follows is often worse. I met with McAdams after our talk in the canteen, for a conversation outside Utah’s gold-embossed senate chamber. I wanted to discuss his time as a missionary in Brazil. “Everybody says going on a mission is the best two years of your life,” he says. “But that quote is not given by anyone in their first six months.” McAdams remembers that, despite his language training, “I still couldn’t really speak to anyone, and no one understood me. I remember dreaming in English and then waking and remembering I was in Brazil, where there was no one I could communicate with. It was incredibly frustrating.” During a missionary posting, all contact with family is banned, except for phone calls at Christmas and on Mother’s day. And reading anything other than Mormon scripture is frowned on. A senior investment banker and Mormon based in London, who was also a missionary in Brazil, recalls how alienating this could be: “I remember one of the very first lunches. All I wanted was a drink of water, and I was ashamed because I didn’t know how to say it. I literally started to break down.”

Armaund Mauss, professor emeritus of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University who specialises in the study of Mormons, has noted a “seeming paradox” in religion, in which some faiths inspire loyalty precisely because “people become committed to that for which they suffer or sacrifice”. And yet the suffering built more than loyalty; it helped McAdams and his peers develop skills eminently useful in modern-day business and government. As his fluency improved and he learnt to overcome the rejection that followed unsuccessful attempts to convince converts, McAdams embraced the experience. And when it became clear that he was competent at his work, the Church asked him to become a “trainer”, helping other missionaries develop their skills. It was a subtle process of leadership development.

Mormon and management guru Stephen Covey, who served his mission in the 1970s in London, says the time abroad changed his life. While he is careful to stress that the ideas in his books are not based on his Mormon faith but upon what he calls universal, timeless principles, he does remember particularly enjoying the chance to preach in public. “I would hold public meetings at the front of movie lines, on the top of buses, at Speakers’ Corner, or outside the Tower of London. Anywhere I could get an audience.” He returned to America to tell his father he no longer wanted to enter the family business. Instead he wanted to be a teacher, ultimately signing up to become a student at Harvard Business School, and then an academic. His mission, he says, “taught me to take responsibility early in life. It gave me my voice.”

. . .

At the time, Covey’s decision to go to Harvard Business School was unusual. But a former senior figure at the school told me that, over the past 20 years, there has been a significant rise in Mormon applicants. A more worn path for those missionaries with ambitions leads to Utah’s Brigham Young University, the Mormon equivalent of Harvard. The church subsidises entry, so LDS students pay only about $5,000 a year, one-tenth of what full-paying students at Ivy League colleges do. In some ways, BYU looks every inch an elite American institution. In others it is starkly different: the day I visit, the campus is at a standstill for a sermon from a church elder. I have come to meet Kim Smith and Jim Engebretsen, two former executives at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and now both professors at BYU’s Marriott School of Business. Smith says Mormons were rare on Wall Street when he first got a job in the early 1980s. But, as he puts it, “banks like nothing more than finding an undervalued stock. And Mormon graduates were just that: a stock which was cheaper to buy, and which over-performed.”

Engebretsen uses a different analogy: Michael Lewis’s baseball book, Moneyball. “Remember how Lewis talks about how the Oakland A’s would find a second-rounder, and bring him in the first round instead? He’d perform way better. The same is true for someone at BYU. If they think this is their chance to play in the big leagues, they are going to work really, really hard.”

They are also going to get more support, from family and community. I’d seen piles of free wedding magazines near the dining hall, and no wonder: about half of BYU students are married when they graduate. A professor who asked not to be named says: “Being married, perhaps already having a family, makes you more serious about life. It’s OK to tell your parents your grades aren’t good, but try explaining it to your spouse.”

Smith argues that church membership smooths out other hassles, too. During his time at Goldman Sachs, he was asked to move to Tokyo, “a completely alien culture”. But, he says, “I was made to feel part of the LDS community within days. Because I felt comfortable, and my family felt comfortable, and I was more effective at work.” McAdams tells a similar story, of first arriving in New York for graduate school: “My wife and I packed up a van and drove our stuff across country. When we showed up at our place, there were 15 people there to help us unload. We’d never met any of them before, but they moved us in and invited us over for dinner. We had an instant social network.” He found that this same church network also provided helpful connections, both within his own law firm and to other people in the same industry.

The networking advantage is particularly important in understanding Mormonism because the church has no professional clergy. Mormon boys enter the priesthood at age 12, taking the title of deacon. At 14 they become a “teacher”, then a full priest at 16. Each title, and each progression, comes with new responsibilities, and at each stage a smaller number become leaders among their own age-group. The system isn’t perfect. Not everyone is comfortable with the responsibility the church demands. And most senior leaders are men; the church seems to implicitly rely on a traditional, single-earner family structure to help its male leaders balance jobs, church responsibilities and families. But the result remains that most of the church’s senior leadership positions are filled by professionally successful Mormons taking time off from their careers. Perhaps the most celebrated example is Kim Clarke, who quit as dean of Harvard Business School in 2005 to become head of BYU’s campus in Idaho. His colleagues were baffled: “For them, it was like going into the wilderness,” he tells me. Later he hit upon a phrase to explain his choice: “Try to imagine you got a phone call from Moses.”

. . .


Ben McAdams
Ben McAdams believes that going on a two-year Mormon mission, at age 19, helped prepare him for professional life

In the meantime, the calls are coming from headhunters. Scott Nycum, a managing director at JPMorgan, confirmed that BYU is now seen as a top source of graduate talent: “These students are bright, mature, well-educated, share our emphasis on adhering to highest standards of integrity, have impressive work ethic and are very team-oriented,” he says. “They fit extremely well with our firm’s corporate culture.”

Focus group research conducted with corporate recruiters by BYU’s Marriott School of Business found that its MBA students, while not noted as flashy leaders, were known in particular for their “outstanding values, principles, and work ethic”. A Goldman Sachs executive, meanwhile, says the bank is hiring LDS graduates in increasing numbers, also impressed by their work ethic. The same was true, I heard anecdotally, at top-tier law firms in the US. And the CIA is reported to snap up LDS graduates for, if nothing else, their language skills.

Will any of this change perceptions of the Mormons? As the late writer and journalist Molly Ivins wrote, anti-Mormon bigotry is an “old dog that still hunts”. But more up-to-the minute cultural analysis suggests otherwise: an episode of South Park cheers the way a newly arrived LDS family wins over the local community with pleasantries and acts of kindness.

Ben McAdams thinks that while outright discrimination is rare, many successful Mormons keep their heads down at work. Still, he says, “I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb in my New York law firm until someone offered me a drink and I said ‘no thanks’.”

The majority of LDS members are now abroad. Building a professional elite in foreign cultures may prove harder than winning success in all-American environments like Wall Street. But, interestingly, LDS is especially fast-growing in countries with dynamic economies, particularly Brazil.

In a corridor of the LDS Missionary Training Centre there’s a plaque listing the dozens of languages taught to missionaries who study there – including Cebuano, Hmong and Tagalog. Next to it is a world map showing the countries in which the church operates, highlighted in bright colours. Only China and a handful of Middle-Eastern states remain grey. The last century saw a Mormon conquest in America. During our lifetimes, we may see the rest of the world follow, too.

James Crabtree is the FT’s comment editor

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/938ff454-8a32-11df-bd30-00144feab49a.html
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”  -----  Henry David Thoreau
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