The Missionary Men

(Note: this entry is reposted from my myspace blog, in an effort to generate some interest in THIS poor attention-starved blog. Shameless, I know.)

Last night Matt and I had an unexpected (and unwelcome) interruption of our evening -- two high-ranking officials from the local ward of the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints knocked on our door, wanting to speak with Matt. By name.

My spouse handled the situation with a commendable level of tact and composure but was very direct with them -- he was NOT interested in having them come into our house that evening, and was NOT interested in their coming back at another time. In fact, he told them (politely but firmly) not to return -- ever. Please and thank you.

This is not the first time that Matt's had to deal with visiting missionaries...the Mormon church maintains a notoriously thorough record of anyone who has ever been a member of their congregation (even if only as a child, apparently). A couple of times a year we get the odd phone call and / or visit from a pair of pimply but earnest-as-hell teenaged boys by way of Matt's name and address popping up on some list or another. These intrusions are irritating, but usually we just chalk it up to being par-of-the-apostate-LDS-course (either in actuality or by proxy) and then forget about it.

However, last night's visit got both of our backs pretty far up. First off, we've only been living at our current address for two months. Although our home telephone number hasn't changed in several years, the fact that the local chapter of the church knew Matt's new address so soon leads me to conclude that they didn't dig his information up via postal records / whatever, but were INFORMED of our new address by "someone on the inside", i.e., a church member. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that this "someone" is almost certainly a person in Matt's family, and very probably one or both of his parents.

This is further compounded by the fact that the individuals who visited us last night were NOT the usual and aforementioned 19 year old boys, but a 50-60 year old ward Bishop and his 1st Counselor -- essentially, two of the bigger guns in local-level Mormon missionary work. This makes me suspect that these officials went out of their way to make a personal visit to us by way of a personal appeal from whoever tipped them off to our address (again, probably Matt's parents). Both Matt and myself cannot help but be discomfited by such a breach of our privacy, not to mention rather flagrant disregard for our clear choice not to be involved with ANY church (Mormon or otherwise).

Most of my friends already know that Matt was brought up in a devout LDS family, but discontinued his own involvement with the church by about 14 years of age. Given that Matt is the eldest of seven kids (nearly all of which are boys), and that his entire immediate family (as well as some of his extended family) remains staunch practicing and tithe-paying Mormons, one can imagine how difficult his teenage and young adult years were.

It is both remarkable and praiseworthy that Matt and his family have been able to remain close despite this "schism" (for the lack of a better word), but understandably the subject remains an extremely tense one for Matt. For myself I can only say that the overt religiosity of his family made me pretty damn uncomfortable at first, but I've since become desensitized to it. In general, Matt's fam are a very kind and welcoming bunch of folks -- I like them, and in many ways they've been far more accepting and warm to me than my own family. I'm not nuts about the ever-present Mormon agenda, but I take it with a grain of salt -- there's no law that says everyone in the world has to think exactly like I do, and I accept their choice to bow before whatever imaginary friends they wish (snark snark).

That being said, by offering such tolerance I think that it's only fair to expect the gesture to be returned in kind. I fail to see how surreptitiously providing our contact information to church officials (combined with personal requests to visit with us?!) demonstrates anything resembling "respect", "acceptance", or even mere "tolerance". To be blunt, it seems underhanded, presumptuous and disrespectful (not to mention a smidge cowardly).

Neither my husband or myself wants to create a big shit storm out of this, but we feel that we may be forced into a situation where we have to "get up, stand up!" so to speak. Ignoring this elephant in the room for much longer will only cause more potential for tension and hurt feelings, and no one needs that.

Naturally, the fact that we have a child on the immediate horizon only makes this seem even more imperative. Forgive me for jumping to any conclusions, but finding out that my child was subjected to some sort of indoctrination in my absence / against my will is something that could push me well beyond my normal levels of tolerance and acceptance (not to mention tact!). Simply put: DO NOT GO THERE!

I'll state for the record that I have no proof that Matt's parents / family members had anything to do with this recent church visit (even if common sense and simple deduction leans strongly toward it). Therefore, I'll temper this blog-screed and extend the benefit of the doubt with the following logical statement: "IF Matt's family informed the church of our address change AND requested that they come and speak with us, THEN I accuse them of violating our privacy and disrespecting our wishes to not be involved with the church".

And THEN, boys and girls...we got a problem!