That's interesting that the Catholics seemed accepting. I wonder if it has to do with the lower level of training the average Catholic receives. I have found that their belief is based more on acceptance of authority of the Church than rational consideration. This is not a put down. In fact, it was the Catholic Church that traditionally produced more scholarly works in the last few centuries. It just wasn't as widely dispersed to the pews as Protestant doctrines. I think the shift began to occur in the 60's and 70's, when a trend toward Protestant scholarship began taking hold. Now majors in philosophy, apologetics, and comparative world views are quite popular at Protestant colleges and seminaries.
All that may be true. My take is that most Filipinos who are not Catholic have made a conscious decision to leave, and so they tend to be more invested. The non-Catholic churches (including the LDS church) also tend to focus on evangelism and actively prepare their members to defend their respective churches' beliefs. Another factor might be that the initial conversion to Christianity during the Spanish colonial period was shallow, resulting in a passive and cultural sense of Catholic identity. Catholicism in the Philippines is still very visibly mixed with pre-colonial traditions.
Just a note of interest, there's also a large Muslim population in the southern Philippines, including some radical groups operating who sometimes kidnap and ransom or kill foreign missionaries. I was assigned in the central Visayas region which is very safe, but things were tense for a while after 9/11, which happened while I was about 6 months into my field work.
Thanks both of you for the insights into your experience. I did a major remodel for a very nice LDS family and we had a few talks about their missionary experiences. I think the most memorable thing the husband told me was when he asked an Elder if it was worth sending them out because he didn't feel that they were very effective. The Elder responded saying that a main reason they are sent out is to teach them humility. I found that very interesting.
Yep. The most valuable aspect of the church's missionary program is that it creates a body of seasoned, passionate young people who go on to form the dedicated core of the church's next generation. Mormonism requires a lot of its members, and if you don't have a critical mass of committed people, a congregation will wither and die. The convert baptisms I think, honestly, are secondary. Especially because they don't really exist in the developed world (this is probably what your client was getting at). Almost all the church's growth is happening in developing countries like the Philippines, and even there retention is horrendously difficult. While I was there, most new members were going inactive within a year. So the church gets to report hundreds of thousands of convert baptisms each year (for example, I baptized around 30 people during my 2 years, and that was a relatively low number), but they don't mention that in congregations like the ones I served in there are 600 people on the books but only 50 that come to church each week.
Cynically, the missionary program is an indoctrination mechanism. Optimistically, it is spiritual boot camp and leadership training. As I said in my initial post, I came home energized and zealous and ready to continue serving God throughout my life. It took about 10 years for that energy to peter out, and even now that I'm separated from the church, I still honor the experiences that I had and the things that I learned. My mission changed me deeply for the better and caused me to internalize ideas about humility, grace, honor, and service to others that still form the basis of how I live my life (incidentally, I think this is a microcosm for the overall evolutionary value of religion). I don't regret going even though I am angry at the church for manipulating me into doing it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
