One aspect of the story of Ammon and Lamoni that draws my attention is the interaction of peers. When the junior Lamanite chief met Mosiah’s son, he surely knew it was not a common Nephite before him. For the king’s son missionary, appearing before Lamoni was the most familiar setting he could have found among a foreign people.
Once I asked a Russian emigré about the use of French in Anna Karenina. She responded, with a hint of bitterness, that the aristocrats of that era spoke French better than Russian.
Tolstoy’s father was held in Paris as a prisoner of war during a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and a similar quantity of civilians. Five decades later, Tolstoy honeymooned in Paris. Preference for speaking French or Russian was a source of tension among Russia’s officers. A Russian aristocrat likely felt more connection with his peers in France than with the peasants of his own country. Alma teaching the poor Zoramites was more out of his element than was Ammon in Lamoni’s court.
While teaching the gospel in Argentina I entered hundreds of homes. Only five of them were markedly more prosperous than the lower class one I came from. Two were homes of Latter-day Saints, and we taught in the other three. In a couple of those teaching situations, I was a bit disoriented in dealing with my social superiors. In the one where I wasn’t, credit is probably due my upper-middle class companion.
Once when I worshiped with a portion of my old home ward there was a missionary farewell for a senior couple I’d long known. The wife of that couple was an active participant in the Nevada Democratic Party. The bishop read a letter from Governor Miller congratulating and commending two of his state’s citizens for the service they would render abroad. U.S. Senator Richard Bryan sat in the congregation in the center toward the front. Senator Bryan’s presence initially struck me as a showy thing, but my view changed. Assignments to speak in church, particularly on so significant an occasion as departure for the mission field, provide an excellent reason to invite friends to our worship services and give the friends more motive to accept and come. The talks that day taught good doctrine and practice; Senator Bryan needed to hear such just as all do. He deserved an invitation to sacrament meeting from a friend just as my friends deserve one from me. Ammon would have invited him.
[Bonus name-dropping trivia: Which future peer of the House of Lords sat at dinner with me in 1998? One nice little story about Mormons came up due to my presence at the table. The occasion was a gathering to honor Owen Phillips' forty years teaching environmental fluid mechanics at Johns Hopkins.]
Interesting point to notice.
One of the things I noticed in Brazil was that it really is more difficult for a camel to get through a needle’s eye than for a rich Brazilian to hear the gospel. Missionaries can’t tract at the rich peoples’ apartments or homes (you can’t get past the doormen and security guards). When I would bring up the gospel with the relatively rich people I was exposed to at work or at social functions, they would politely demur. Yet, getting middle-class or poor people to try out coming to Church was relatively easy.
Just recently, last summer, a close friend passed away in a tragic work accident and at the time he was in the Bishopric in the ward next to my own. At the funeral, there was such an interesting cross-section of people such as family, church officials, and close friends all of which i felt comfortable with because i knew them and had associated with them for some time in my life. The other associates included the mayor of the city and all of the mayor’s colleagues and close political associates, and non-member friends all because the Mayor was the father of the man who had passed away. The funeral was held at the chapel and all of this perhaps means nothing in reality of teaching the gospel except for the fact that because the city media were there in full force, and they wrote an article about the man and his beliefs and could say nothing but good things about the church and how it had been the source of strength to this man before his passing. It was a tremendous opportunity in the end to share the gospel not only with close associates but with the city in general as the article was front page of the city paper the day following the funeral!
“One of the things I noticed in Brazil was that it really is more difficult for a camel to get through a needle’s eye than for a rich Brazilian to hear the gospel.”
I noticed something similar (not exactly the same) in Brazil. But my interpretation of it is a bit different. In one area, every Wednesday we ate lunch at a massively rich family’s house (they owned a supermarket chain). They even let us bring our zone for churrasco and futbol at their house on p-day. They even forced all the guests at their daughter’s birthday party to stop and hear the first dicussion from us. Didn’t want to hear all the discussions or go to church, but they welcomed the message in general and really liked the missionaries, American and Brazilian alike. In the same city we had other well-off people who went even further as investigators.
I never saw anyone rich get baptized. But of the middle class and rich people I actually got to talk to (there are fewer of them in Brazil in general and I was always in the country), a whole lot of them wanted to hear something. If I compare that to my ward here in Indiana, we are far worse. Members in our ward are constantly griping that we only baptize poor people. But the missionaries tract middle class areas all the time. No one wants to hear. Multi-millionaires in Brazil will have Mormon 20 year olds over for a religious message but an American accountant won’t give the elders the time of day.
In general Brazilians of every economic class seemed to be more religious than Americans (for which reason our political discourse reminds me of Gabriel Almond’s observation, that ideology posits what is not already present in the underlying culture). But another problem is that in our society we have no norms of hospitality anymore. In my mission people viewed it as a standard and enjoyable part of life to have people (even strangers) in your home. No one would ever refuse a class of moderately chilled water to a strangers, and many wouldn’t refuse an hour of time. Most Americans wouldn’t dream of just giving time in their living room to anyone who asked.
“Members in our ward are constantly griping that we only baptize poor people.”
Sorry, that’s a very bad way to put it. My ward is full of people who are constantly trying to serve whoever comes into the ward. But we do, fairly regularly, hear the question, “Why can’t we baptize people who don’t need a ride to church every week?”
Jeremiah J, you could create an entire new branch if you could convince one rich Brazilian family — and their staff and bodyguards — to get baptized!
Geoff B–absolutely! I served in Rio, where kidnapping has got to be the biggest industry after tourism. So a lot of bodyguards. I have a great story about that. In that area with the rich family, we tracted into a guy who was unusually rude to us. Then one day coming out of the forest and up to the house of this rich family, we’re met by the same rude guy, but this time he had a gun. He was one of their bodyguards! But he didn’t remember us, and when he figured out that we were legit visitors he got very nice.
This family lived on one side of a decent-sized foothill. On the other side was a whole little neighborhood in which we worked almost everyday. One day I told them that we actually spent most of the day a few hundred yards from their house. The very kind father of the family said, “I know there’s a lot of poverty over there.” He was right, but he said it like it was somewhere a thousand miles away.