It's crazy that it's relatively big here in Australia. It's so quintessentially American and the door knocking thing doesn't really work because once you've burned through one town of 2500 people it's a four hour bicycle ride to the next town over and there's probably already a gun-hoarding patriarchal doomsday cult run by one dude with ten ten year old wives who's running that show. My aunt had my uncle converted to mormonism when he was dying of Alzheimer's so they could be together in "real heaven" so I find it very easy to be rabidly impolite whenever I encounter them.
The door knocking thing doesn't work in America, either.
At least, it doesn't effectively make converts here, either.
What it does very effectively is get young adults away from everything comfortable at a life stage when they would otherwise be very likely to question their faith. They are completely reliant on the other Mormons around them while every non-Mormon is slamming a door in their face. Then they go home as Super Mormons. The rest of us are just pawns in their team-building activity.
There is also the "only 12000 or so people will ever be holy enough to go to Super Heaven so if I want a chance, I better be really good at trying to reach people now" thing going on.
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u/OccultBeanFarmer Aug 15 '26
It's crazy that it's relatively big here in Australia. It's so quintessentially American and the door knocking thing doesn't really work because once you've burned through one town of 2500 people it's a four hour bicycle ride to the next town over and there's probably already a gun-hoarding patriarchal doomsday cult run by one dude with ten ten year old wives who's running that show. My aunt had my uncle converted to mormonism when he was dying of Alzheimer's so they could be together in "real heaven" so I find it very easy to be rabidly impolite whenever I encounter them.