All That Mormon Cash

For those like me who think the idea of Jesus literally returning to Earth and ushering in the apocalypse is ridiculous, I have to say this is kind of a sad story. It is well-known that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a very wealthy organization. The church requires that members tithe a percentage of their incomes and allegedly takes in over seven billion dollars per year. According to a complaint made to the IRS by David Nielsen, a former employee of the church's investment division, this money is earmarked for charitable causes but is rarely used in that way.

Nielsen claims that the church's cash hoard has not been used for the charitable purposes that the church claims, and should be subject to taxation. He is seeking an IRS bounty that is paid to whistleblowers who expose tax evasion. The church, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com, told the Post in a statement: 'The Church does not provide information about specific transactions or financial decisions.'

In his complaint, Nielsen described in a 74-page narrative how he became increasingly disillusioned while working as a senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak. The church collects about $7 billion each year from member donations, or tithes, according to the complaint. But as the cash poured in, Nielsen said that he never saw distributions for the charitable purposes the fund was allegedly intended to support. Instead, the fund made only made two distributions over the 10 years he worked there, both to support for-profit ventures, Nielsen claimed.

According to Nielsen, $2 billion from Ensign has been used over the past decade to bail out a church-run insurance company and a shopping mall in Salt Lake City that was a joint venture between the church and a major real estate company. Ensign's president, Roger Clarke, told others that Ensign's cash hoard would be used in the event of the second coming of Jesus Christ, according to the complaint.

Is the White Horse Back?

For years I've enjoyed poking fun at Mitt Romney, better known to his detractors as Mittens. Romney's general awkwardness probably cost him the presidency in 2012, and on top of all that it's pretty easy to poke fun at anybody who owns a car elevator. One thing that I will say, though, is that Romney has been a consistent critic of President Donald Trump. Romney was elected Utah's Junior Senator in November, replacing the retiring Orrin Hatch, and his return to politics did not disappoint.

Romney penned an op-ed for the Washington Post that was highly critical of the president, prompting predictable angry tweets. Despite how amusing I find these occasional exchanges between prominent Republicans and the president are, Amanda Marcotte at Salon points out that up until now Republican criticism of Trump has been little more than sound and fury signifying nothing. Criticism may be rare, but actual votes against the president's agenda are pretty much non-existent.

The one noteworthy case I can think of is the late Senator John McCain who voted for cloture on the ACA repeal and then turned around and voted against the bill, killing it on the Senate floor. For the most part even the president's critics rapidly become his enablers and fall in line with their party when a vote is called, and Senator Romney will probably be no different. Already, comments like these do not sound encouraging.

But the (very) small chance that he might be even a little different is where this post drifts from politics in Augoeides territory. For years, rumors have circulated regarding "The White Horse Prophecy," an old piece of Mormon folklore - and possibly more. From Wikipedia:

The White Horse Prophecy is the popular name given an influential but disputed version given by Edwin Rushton, in about 1900, of statements supposedly made in 1843 by Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, on the future of the Latter Day Saints (popularly called Mormons) and the United States.

The Latter Day Saints, according to Rushton's version, would "go to the Rocky Mountains and... be a great and mighty people," associated in the prophecy's figurative language, with one of the biblical four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation. Smith's supposed original statement predicts that the US Constitution will one day "hang like a thread" but be saved by Latter-day Saints. The embellished version portrays it to be "by the efforts of the White Horse."

On the basis of either Rushton's version, which is widely known as "the White Horse Prophecy," or Smith's original statement, both some critics of Mormonism and some Mormon folk doctrine enthusiasts hold that Mormons should or actually expect that the US will eventually become a theocracy dominated by the LDS Church. However, some observers interpret the Mormon cultural artifact more blandly.

The idea that members of the LDS Church will someday or at various times take action to save an imperiled US Constitution has been referenced by numerous LDS Church leaders, but as to the Rushton version of the Prophecy, the LDS Church has stated that "the so-called 'White Horse Prophecy'... is not embraced as Church doctrine; while numerous Mormon fundamentalists continue to preach the doctrine."

"MormonLeaks" is a Thing

These days just about everybody has heard of WikiLeaks. I recently found out about MormonLeaks, a website dedicated to posting leaked documents from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The 66 leaked documents posted so far mostly concern the inner workings of the church, and really aren't much of a bombshell. Nonetheless, the church has formally issued a DMCA takedown notice to the site, whose attorney accused the church of attempting censorship.

Gizmodo reported that the church responded with a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice demanding MormonLeaks remove PowerPoint presentations. The group responded via their attorney (PDF) that the group obtained the information legally and is entitled to use and distribute it as a journalistic source. Attorney Marc Randazza cited the church’s response to the musical “Book of Mormon,” which celebrates religious tolerance and free speech.

“Where most religions react to mockery with anger, and sometimes even violence, the LDS Church embraced what others might have considered to be an insult,” he explained in his letter. “There is no better way to demonstrate the strength of your beliefs than to tolerate criticism and mockery of them.”

He went on to argue that the efforts of the LDS church will ultimately be fruitless. Even if his clients deleted the information from their website the documents would still be distributed all over the world. “You tried to blow out a single candle, but in the process, you knocked it over into a field of dried leaves,” he wrote. “You may have extinguished that initial flame. However, your attempted censorship simply caused the document to be further reproduced and redistributed that even a hypothetical divine being could not possibly undo the dissemination.”

Here's one point that the linked article doesn't cover. A lot of people don't realize that you are required by law to defend any and all copyrights you hold, or you could lose them. The first step of that process is a DMCA takedown request. So this may not be about censorship at all. Rather, the leaders of the church may have been informed by their lawyers that they were opening themselves up to potential legal problems by not taking action against MormonLeaks.

The Book of Mormon musical is a totally different thing. The beliefs and history of the LDS church are not under copyright, and the musical is an original composition that is not affiliated with the church in any way. So the same legal burden does not apply, and judging from the response of church leaders, they don't seem to care very much about being made fun of or embarassed or anything like that. So I wonder if the same action would have been taken against MormonLeaks in a world where copyright law is treated differently.

The intent of the church could be more sinister than that, of course. But it doesn't sound like there's much in the leaked documents that is particularly weird or that I haven't heard before from other sources. As "leaks" go, it's actually pretty tame, at least so far. Of course, the church may be issuing the takedown notice now in advance of anything more incriminating that they fear the site might put up.

No White Horse After All

Sorry, Mittens. No White Horse for you!

As I mentioned in my previous article about the White Horse Prophecy, the Electoral College overturning the election of Donald Trump was always an incredibly long shot. So-called faithless electors are rare, and for the Electoral College to reject Trump, 37 individuals specifically selected for party loyalty would have had to defect. In addition, 29 states have laws requiring electors to vote for the state's popular winner.

As I expected, this did not happen - the total number of faithless electors turned out to be ten. In two of those cases, Democratic electors cast votes for Bernie Sanders, and in another a Democratic elector cast a vote for John Kasich, but because they were from states requiring them to vote for the state's winner, their votes were ruled improper and changed to votes for Hillary Clinton. So seven electoral votes for candidates other than Trump and Clinton were allowed to stand, making Trump's win official.

Of the faithless votes that were allowed to stand, two Texas Republican electors defected from Trump, one voting for Ron Paul and the other for Kasich. Four Washington Democratic electors defected from Clinton, three voting for former Secretary of State Colin Powell and one voting for Native American elder and activist Faith Spotted Eagle, who now has the distinction of being the first Native American to ever receive an electoral vote in the history of the United States. In addition, Sanders picked up one vote from a Democratic elector from Hawaii.

The two Democratic electors who attempted to cast votes for Sanders hailed from Maine and my home state of Minnesota, and the one who attempted to cast a vote for Kasich was from Colorado. So even though the official count of faithless electors was seven, it really should be counted as ten, since historically state "pledge laws" have not applied. Minnesota changed its laws after 2004 when an elector cast a presidential vote for John Edwards, the Democratic candidate for Vice President. I'm not sure when similar laws passed in Maine or Colorado.

The White Horse

To be fair, Mormons don't drink, so the wine probably wasn't that tempting.

As I mentioned in my post on the "pizzagate" conspiracy, aside from my focus on religious freedom issues, I try to write most of my articles from a neutral political perspective and only delve into political issues that touch on the general themes of this blog. Today I'm going to deviate from that a bit, in order to touch on a bit of religious lore that could become relevant to the current situation - this is, if a whole series of relatively unlikely events actually takes place.

Still, given all that's gone on in 2016, you never can tell. The bit of religious lore that I'm talking about is a prophecy attributed to Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church, dubbed the White Horse Prophecy. From Wikipedia:

Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith went to Washington, D.C. in November 1839 in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain help for his persecuted followers. Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune writes that from then on, Smith and his followers "considered themselves the last Real Americans" and "the legitimate heirs of the pilgrims and Founding Fathers", who would be called upon one day to save the U.S. Constitution. Smith is believed to have then said, in 1840, that when the Constitution hung by a thread, Latter Day Saint elders would step in on the white horse to save the country.

According to a diary entry made by John Roberts of Paradise, Utah in 1902, Joseph Smith gave the White Horse Prophecy in early May 1843, during the period in which the Latter Day Saints were headquartered in Nauvoo, Illinois. Smith is recorded as saying that the Mormons "will go to the Rocky Mountains and will be a great and mighty people established there, which I will call the White Horse of peace and safety." Adding that "I shall never go there" and predicting continued persecution by enemies of the church, Smith reportedly said that "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.... I love the Constitution; it was made by the inspiration of God; and it will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse, and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense."

The article goes on to explain that the prophecy is not official doctrine of the LDS Church, as aside from the diary entry that was written years after the fact, there is no other historical evidence of Smith actually making the recorded comments. It easily could have sprung up from misremembered quotes and evolving oral tradition. There was talk that during the 2012 election, Mitt Romney considered the possibility that he might in fact be the White Horse - though again, I have no idea whether that was really the case, or if it was just a rumor.

Satanic Mormons?

Every couple of years, fundamentalist Christians attempt to revive the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's. I've written a number of articles on this topic, but apparently the folks pushing this nonsense don't read them. Either that, or they consider me some sort of disinformation agent. Regardless of my what motivations might be, though, my criticism of the entire notion is based on real brain science that wasn't understood thirty years ago.

Today's example is this article from Charisma magazine, a fundamentalist publication that seems to produce more than its share of this sort of weirdness. The subject of the article is a woman named Beth, an "ex-witch" who claims she was subjected to Satanic Ritual Abuse by the Mormon church she grew up in.

In the last nine months, ex-witch Beth says the Holy Spirit used inner healing to uncover deeply repressed memories from her childhood, including ritual satanic abuse in the Mormon church.

"As I started to follow the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit, I started to understand (my childhood)," Beth says in a recent video blog. "At the Mormon church, I was a victim of satanic rituals."

While the revelation may shock some, Beth says the abuse is not limited to the Mormon church.

"Satan is evil and divisive and very tricky, so as long as it looks good and light, then he can find a way to sneak in there and work his evil ... ," Beth says. "It happens in places we would least expect."

As a point, I was corrected by a reader a while back that real Mormons don't call their church the "Mormon Church." They call it the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or LDS Church for short. If Beth really refers to it by the former name, it makes me question if she grew up in the church at all. But I'll assume she's sincere, because individuals reporting Satanic Ritual Abuse generally are. They just erroneously believe that their "recovered memories" are reliable.

First off, what needs to understood about the whole concept here is that there is no such thing as a "deeply repressed" accurate memory. To understand why this is, I direct you to this article. The headline is slightly misleading, as the brain does process information for some definitions of "process information." However, the key point still stands - the human brain does not have much in common with a digital computer, especially as far as memories are concerned.

FLDS Apocalypse Tomorrow

Once again, sorry about the late notice. I just found out myself today. 

According to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the world will end tomorrow. Of course, accepting that prophecy requires believing that Warren Jeffs, a man who has abused his position as Prophet of the Church for years and is currently serving time in prison for child rape. Let's just say that on my list of self-proclaimed prophets alive in the world, he's one of the folks at the bottom of my list.

Elissa Wall, who escaped the FLDS years ago, told The Guardian that on Wednesday, the FLDS people have been told that Warren Jeffs, the man they consider their prophet will be freed from jail when an earthquake crumbles the walls of the prison where he is jailed. At the same time, his brother Lyle Jeffs, who ran the FLDS community in his absence but was recently jailed on fraud charges, will break free from the Salt Lake federal court house when he appears for a hearing.

Tonia Tewell, Executive Director and Founder of Holding Out For Help, a group that helps about 200 people escape polygamy every year, said she too has heard about the end-of-the-world prophesy and she feels confident Warren Jeffs sent that message to his followers from his Texas prison cell. "I think it's very convenient that April 6 is the apocalypse," said Tewell.

She said her gut tells her that Warren Jeffs made the prophesy because he needs money for the legal defense of his brother Lyle and ten others who were also recently charged with committing food stamp fraud -- duping the government out of millions of dollars. Tewell said in the past, when Jeffs predicted doom for his people, he also asked them for money. In the past, some FLDS people have reached out to her group desperate for loans to fulfill the requests of their leaders.

It's not just the money. Lots of evangelists raise money on false promises and while I have a fair amount of contempt for them, it really doesn't rise to the level of contempt I have for Jeffs. When he took over his FLDS group it was already insular and conservative, but it was Jeffs who went full cult-leader on its followers. He issued dictates prohibiting basically everything members of the group enjoyed and at the same time used his position to enrich himself. Even among false prophets, the guy is pretty clearly a scumbag.

So here's my prediction. Tomorrow will come and go with no Apocalypse, and no miraculous escapes for Jeffs or his brother. Because there's absolutely no way that God would tell Warren Jeffs about the Apocalypse. You know, unless God was pranking him or something.

Joseph Smith's Seer Stone

A new book issued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes a fascinating piece of Mormon history that has never been published - photographs of the seer stone used by Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith is known to have been a magical practitioner, and getting a look at his tools provides some insight into how he approached his practices.

The pictures of the smooth, brown, egg-sized rock are part of a new book that also contains photos of the first printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon. Officials with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unveiled the photos at a news conference in Salt Lake City.

The religion’s drive in recent years to open its vaults and clarify sensitive beliefs is aimed at filling a void on the internet for accurate information as curiosity increased while church membership tripled over the last three decades, Mormon scholars said.

Church historian Steven E Snow acknowledged that dynamic, saying: “The internet brings both challenge and opportunities. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share much of collection through the use of the internet.”

Some critics of Mormonism argue that Smith's use of traditional magical techniques means that the Mormon religion is somehow false, but that really doesn't track. Many other holy books are known to have been "channeled" in some fashion, including the Quran and more recently The Book of the Law. My problems with the Book of Mormon have nothing to do with its origin and everything to do with the unsubstantiated history that it claims to expound. As just one example, genetic analysis tells us that Native Americans are not descended from the lost tribes of Israel. And there are many others.

However, as far as spiritual beliefs go, much of Mormonism is actually similar to Hermeticism. In the King Follett Discourse, the last significant sermon given by Smith before he was killed, he lays out what sounds like a slightly stilted version of the perfection of the self in order to become more divine. I find Smith's conclusions overly concretized and for that reason probably incorrect, but he does address many of the same ideas that the Renaissance Hermetics were working with.

The source of at least some of this was likely Francis Barrett's The Magus, published in 1801. Barrett's text compiled much material from Agrippa, some of which pertains to the Hermetic philosophy. Smith's connection to the text is shown by the design of his Jupiter talisman, found on his body after his death.

The talisman in turned sideways in the photo, but the arrangement of the symbols - Jupiter character above, sigil of the intelligence below, Jupiter glyph to the left side - is identical with the rendering from Barrett. I've gone back and forth over whether or not Smith had a magical teacher of some sort, and who it might have been. It's possible that he studied with a practicing ceremonial magician, but it's also possible that the techniques he worked with came straight out of Barrett.

As a Thelemite, I obviously see nothing wrong with a religion rooted in occultism, though many fundamentalists have serious problems with the concept. Mormonism is interesting to me because it represents one of the only attempts to synthesize magical lore into a coherent religious system that has proved highly successful in the modern world.

Utah's "Polygamy Ban" Struck Down

Back when Utah was originally trying to join the United States it was mostly settled by Mormons, many of whom practiced polygamy. As a condition of statehood, Utah was required to ban the practice, not only in terms of granting multiple marriage licenses but also in terms of prohibiting "cohabitation" between unmarried individuals.

Due to this history, Utah was until recently one of the only states where it was actually illegal for unmarried people to live together. This ridiculous law has finally been overturned. The case originated with the polygamous family of Kody Brown, stars of the reality television series "Sister Wives." In 2010, the state of Utah investigated charging the family with bigamy under the cohabitation statute, which led to the current ruling.

Federal Judge Clark Waddoups in December struck the section of Utah’s bigamy statute that can be applied when someone "cohabits with another person" to whom they are not legally married. Utah law made such a union a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Waddoups said the ban violated the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution. Waddoups let stand the portion of the statute that prevents someone from having more than one active marriage license.

In the final portion of his ruling Wednesday, Waddoups found the Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman violated the Browns’ constitutional rights when he oversaw a 2010 investigation into whether the Brown family was committing bigamy. At the time the Browns lived in Lehi. They have since moved to Nevada. Buhman eventually decided not to file criminal charges, but Waddoups said the investigation stifled the Browns’ rights to free speech, religion and equal protection.

So thanks to this ruling Utah's laws regarding these issues are finally in line with the rest of the country, and it only took them 120 years. This just goes to show how moral panics, such as that surrounding Mormon polygamy in the 1880's, can have long and far-reaching effects. It's always better to cut such nonsense off at the source if doing so is in any way possible.

It should be noted that you still can't legally marry more than one person in Utah, just like you can't in any other state. But this ruling means that Utah can no longer prosecute people based on their living situations.

So the Ayahuasca Was Right

The day before the United States presidential election a group of Peruvian shamanic practitioners (note: not "shamans" - the term is culture-specific to northern Asia) issued their prediction for the race. Following a ritual that involved the consumption of the hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca and coca leaves, they concluded that President Obama would be re-elected - and he was.

Members of the group placed flower petals on photos of the candidates that were also swept over with tobacco smoke. The shamans chewed coca leaves, a traditional ceremonial and medicinal plant since Inca times that helps fight altitude sickness.

And the crew took some swigs of ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew used widely among Amazon basin indigenous people. At least one thing was clear, they said: Obama should defeat Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday.

It seems that the Mormon prayers supporting Governor Romney fell short in the end. However, a pretty good case can be made that they did something. In early October it looked like the Republican nominee was on the verge of being put away for good, but a fortuitous set of events coinciding with the prayer initiative gave his campaign new life.

Fasting for Romney

With about a month to go before the presidential election, most polling analysis shows former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney lagging behind President Barack Obama. The race remains close, however, and Romney's best hope of pulling off an upset probably hinges on his performance in the two presidential debates scheduled for this month. In addition to being a politician, Romney is a prominent member of the Mormon Church, and some of his brethren organized a fast yesterday to improve his chances. The first presidential debate is this Wednesday.

A group of his fellow Mormons is organizing a fast Sunday so "that he will be blessed in the debates" with President Obama, which begin on Wednesday. "I know that fasting and praying brings about miracles," reads an email reportedly sent by a fast organizer. "I also know of no power greater than our Father in Heaven."

Fasting is nothing unusual for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church holds one fast day a month, usually the first Sunday of the month, and asks members to donate the money they would ordinarily spend on food that day to help feed the needy. Mormons often dedicate their fasts to asking God for special blessings.

Fasting has a long history as a spiritual practice, and many find cultivating the discipline that it requires to be rewarding. However, as a magician I can tell you that fasting does not make the transition into the practical magical realm very well. The practice appears in the old grimoires, but as part of the initial purification stage of the operation rather than the evocation itself. That is, even in traditional magical texts its efficacy is directly related to the state of the practitioner rather than the goal of the operation. The idea that in and of itself a fast will produce some sort of miraculous benefit seems to be rooted in the just-world hypothesis, in that self-denial is apparently assumed to result in some completely unrelated benefit manifesting in a paranormal manner. I've never seen any reason to believe that such things happen in the real world.

A Twilight Cult?

Disclaimer: I found this discussion over on LiveJournal without any external links documenting the existence of a "Twilight Cult." However, the whole idea is so ridiculous that even if it's all made up it's still amusing.

I'm seriously hoping that this is a joke. Because if it isn't, "Cullenism" has to be just about the stupidest thing ever. It's one thing to be a fan of a particular author's work, but another to go completely nuts and decide that the works of an author you admire are TOTALLY REAL. That sort of delusion can lead to some seriously messed up situations in no time flat. Just ask Mercedes Lackey. On the other hand, if it is a joke, it's pretty darn funny.

I've had little trouble avoiding the Twilight books because my oldest daughter is still too young to be interested in teen fiction, but I did wind up seeing the first movie because one of my neighbors has a teenaged daughter who's a fan of the series. I liked the cinematography of the film, which did a wonderful job of capturing the atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest, but otherwise found the characters totally flat and the story lacking where it wasn't cliche. The only real innovation to the vampire genre that Stephanie Meyer seems to have managed to make is that her vampires sparkle in the daylight rather than burst into flames or die in some other manner - and honestly that just strikes me as dumb.

Anyway, according this LiveJournal article there are now Twilight fans who have started their own cult, Cullenism, in which they offer prayers to both Meyer and her fictional vampire, Edward Cullen.

The people who make up prayers to Edward Cullen, the ones who basically worship the whole God-damn series and Meyer herself. Some may be joking, but I am convinced that there is a sizable portion who takes worship of the series pretty seriously. Now, I'm not knowledgable of the Mormon church and their beliefs, etc...but I am aware that Meyer is a fairly strict Mormon. Is anyone in her church concerned that she has basically spawned a cult? Does anyone in her church care that there are people who turn prayers to God into prayers to Edward and Meyer?

Well, Mormonism does teach that:

as God's children, mankind may, through the merits and mercy accorded all through the Atonement of Christ, become like God the Father. As Paul taught the Romans, "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together."[7] Eternity will be spent in a process of eternal progression becoming more like the Father (God).

One could perhaps argue that prayers offered up to Stephanie Meyer are all part of her personal process of deification, but I'm nonetheless pretty sure that such practices bear no resemblance to what any of the Mormon church fathers intended.

Some chaos magicians insist that you can make magick work by invoking fictional entities like the deities of H.P. Lovecraft's C'thulhu mythos, or, I suppose, Stephanie Meyer's characters, but in my own work I've found that there is a big difference between fictional entities and the spirits of the Western Esoteric Tradition. If you're working with your own internal magical power it is true that you can use just about any vaguely archetypal character to shape it, but when I work with spirits from the tradition the probability shift that my rituals produce is usually significantly higher. That suggests to me that the spirits of the tradition have some sort of external reality to them that fictional entities do not.

Meanwhile, I'm snickering to myself imagining what sort of practices following the teachings of Cullenism would entail. Would it be something like a fluffy-bunny version of the system laid out in The Psychic Vampire Codex where you drain psychic energy to increase your powers but only from animals (because, for those lucky enough to have avoided the whole thing so far, in the Twilight series the "good" vampires only drink the blood of animals)? Maybe you would sparkle when your psychic energy level gets high enough and that would give you cool sparkly-vampire powers that mysteriously resemble the effects of glitter makeup. Or something equally ridiculous.

Door-to-Door Atheists

Seeing as my last article was a real downer, I figured it was about time to post something a little sillier and came across this video over the weekend.

An independent filmmaker, tired of being bothered by door-to-door Mormon missionaries, decided to turn the tables on them. He and a friend dressed up as "atheist missionaries" and went door-to-door in Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the Mormon church, preaching the beliefs of atheism - or, I suppose, the lack thereof. The results are pretty much what you would expect. Even the Mormons, who themselves spend a year or two as young adults going door-to-door, don't much like it.

From a spiritual technology standpoint I've wondered for years about churches that try to recruit by going door-to-door. It amazes me that anything so generally annoying to most people would be even marginally effective at bringing in new members. But I suppose it's a little like spam e-mail - even though I've never met anyone who will admit to responding to ads for penis enlargers or letters from Nigerian princes looking to launder illegal funds, the scammers wouldn't keep doing it if there was really no money to be made there.