Gary Cornia, dean of Mormon-run Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management, is often asked what makes Mormons so successful. “I’m not going to say we beat everybody out, but we do have a reputation,” says Cornia. “And one of the defining opportunities for young men and young women is the mission experience.” Reflecting on his own mission to the mid-Atlantic states, Cornia adds, “When I left, the son of a relatively poor mother and a father who died when I was young, I frankly didn’t know if I could do anything. I came back with the confidence that I can accomplish most hard things. I may not have had that otherwise.”
The Mormon Church is 181 years old, and its adherents compose less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, according to a 2009 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). Yet Latter-Day Saints hold, or have held, a seemingly disproportionate number of top jobs at such major corporations as Marriott International (MAR), American Express, American Motors, Dell Computers (DELL), Lufthansa, Fisher-Price (MAT), Life Re, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Madison Square Garden, La Quinta Properties, PricewaterhouseCooper, and Stanley Black & Decker (SWK). The head of human resources at Citigroup is Mormon, and in 2010 Goldman Sachs (GS) hired 31 grads from BYU, the same number it hired from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Until recent times, the same could be said of the Episcopal Church. Wealthy members, many political leaders throughout the history of America. Don’t look for that trend to continue though.
With one crucial difference. By the 1860s, to declare oneself an Episcopalian was to signal an ‘upward’ movement in social – as well as religious – terms.
Even today, to declare oneself a Mormon is to affirm a countercultural identity that sixty years of mainstreaming still hasn’t quite overcome. It clung to George Romney and it still presents a challenge to his son, despite the fact that the Latter-day Saints have managed in the post-WWII era largely to embrace a free-market outlook (for the century that fell between the exodus from Nauvoo and the Second World War it was definitely not part of their economic identity).
[url=http://catholicandreformed.blogspot.com]Catholic and Reformed[/url]
The missionary experience is indeed a crucible, one that largely results in men of stronger material than they possessed before they undertook their missions. I unfailingly extend courtesy and hospitality to these young men when I encounter them. They get a lot of rejection and abuse. While I have never been able to get past what I regard as the completely wacky historiography that is the predicate for the religion, I don’t think I have ever spent time with these guys without being impressed with their sincerity. I can imagine that when they return home and get on with their lives, they find most of life’s challenges to be a little less daunting than those who have not had the experience.
Agreed NoVA Scout.
Another interesting aspect of Mormon missionary activity is its near universality for North American males, a consequence of postwar Mormon affluence. To go on mission – even within the United States – was simply not possible for many residents of the Mormon culture zone (Utah, Nevada, eastern Idaho and northern Arizona) in the 19th and early 20th centuries, not least because they were wholly responsible for their own upkeep (no church-wide assessment at that point). All that changed after 1945.
I used to think that the missions gave Mormons a more cosmopolitan view of the world, but, as the article reveals, so hermetically sealed is the missionary experience that it’s rare for Latter-day Saints to engage with local culture on its own terms.