Guest column: MTCs need to put a higher emphasis on cultural competency

Attending USU has me interacting with a lot of twenty-somethings, many of whom are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and have recently returned from a two-year mission proselytizing in a foreign country. As I have met more of these returned missionaries, I have begun to understand the truth behind a common LDS joke — the missionary who comes home acting like they know more about where they served than the native people.

There’s no doubt that living in a foreign country for two years can instill a love for the culture in a starry-eyed young man or woman. But does this sort of cultural appreciation reflect genuine competence when interacting across cultures? Absolutely not.

LDS church missionary training centers, or MTCs, are not preparing their missionaries to navigate foreign culture in a way that goes beyond simple respect. Because, for a missionary, respect for a culture just isn’t enough. They must gain a full understanding of it and maintain the humility to understand their place as interlopers in a country’s rich political and religious history.

The National Center for Cultural Competence, or NCCC, advises businesses to have a defined set of principles aimed at adapting to different cultural contexts and valuing the diversity that results. Doing so will help people of different backgrounds feel safe and seen. This idea can also be applied to the business of proselytizing, and could be implemented into the ways missionaries are trained. Using the NCCC’s principles as a guideline, MTCs can prepare missionaries to prioritize cultural competence as they go out into the mission field to preach.

I spoke to my brother, Lewis Miller, who at the time was in his fourth week at the Provo, Utah MTC. He had full days of classes meant to prepare him to serve in the Bangkok, Thailand mission. I wondered if he was learning something akin to these principles.

“We mostly just work on learning the language,” he told me. “It’s really difficult, so it feels necessary. Sometimes one of the Thailand natives who teaches us will explain a few things you should and shouldn’t do, like how pointing the sole of your foot at someone is like flipping them off.”

In Thailand, over 94 percent of people identify as Buddhist, but Lewis told me that Buddhism has only been mentioned in passing. It’s a severe oversight to skim over the religious history of a country like Thailand, where religion can be seen in so many elements of its culture. This is especially true when your intention is the introduction of a new religion. I could only encourage Lewis to do his due diligence in learning what he could about it.

While learning the language is important, it seems like only the fundamentals of respect are being taught, along with a few lesser-known elements of the country’s culture. The priority seems to be only the immediate comfort of the missionaries.

Seth Beckett agrees. He returned from his mission to Argentina after only three months due to disagreements with the way it was run. He explained to me how his desires to connect meaningfully with the native people were disregarded in favor of increasing baptism numbers. Beckett’s aim for cultural competency through inclusion and understanding didn’t fit within the goals of the mission. This alienated Seth from the church, and in his opinion also alienated the people he was trying to reach.

Beyond competency within another country’s culture, Missionary Training Centers also fail to teach competency within familial cultures as well. Most missionaries are young and ill-equipped to deal with different family dynamics, or the drama that can occur within families as a result of conversion to a new faith.

Wilfried Decoo wrote for the LDS church member-run blog “Times and Seasons” about the reasons many have for disliking LDS missionaries. He focused primarily on the rifts that can occur within families and communities when not all are willing to convert, and cites the missionary handbook’s lack of helpful instruction for navigating these complex situations. He spoke of his mother’s reaction when he decided to be baptized: “This was the utter ruin of her son’s future and her own lifework… What had she done wrong?” Conversions are dramatic and filled with big emotions— emotions that missionaries are not taught to handle.

Empathy and understanding are key to cultural competency, but the missionary handbook seems more intent on treating confused family members as barriers to another baptism. “For the rather flippant missionaries who taught me at the time, my mother was just a frustrating obstacle,” Decoo remembered. This attitude can be very offensive, especially when family members are devout to their own religions and doing good in their own way.

LDS church Missionary Training Centers need to put a bigger emphasis on cultural competence when training their new missionaries, focusing on the points outlined by the National Center for Cultural Competence. Doing so will protect the cultures and history of foreign countries, protect families who may be disrupted by new faith, and make missionary work a bit more Christlike.

George Miller is a junior studying biochemistry and math. You may also know him as an SI leader for BIOL 1610 and as a member of the USU club gymnastics team.

— miller.george2020@gmail.com