Mormons get a lot of things right. Apart from strange Masonic temple rituals, they lead rather normal—and even excellent—lives. Mormons enjoy a longer lifespan,[1] Utah is the #1 state for volunteering,[2] and their language training programs are so successful that missionaries are a known source for foreign service and intelligence careers.
Throughout this post, I'll be making generalizations of Mormons rather than hedging the claims properly. I grew up in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Utah, and many of the claims are more true of the Utah/Idaho/Arizona corridor (affectionately called the "Morridor" by some ex-Mormons) than the rest of the US, and certainly the rest of the world.
Religions share much in common with AI safety and other impact-driven movements, and even more so the Mormon church. There are a few reasons for this:
Commitment to the cause. Anecdotally, nearly all of the ~500 Utah Mormons I've interacted with have been true believers, and only a handful just went to church out of habit.[3]
High stakes. Mormons do believe (I've heard they are trying to disavow this, but it was taught) that they will get a planet or some portion of the cosmos as their own if they are good in this life, and become Gods of their own. This is not far off from many transhumanist utopic visions. However, it's also true that they believe that before God's Second Coming, the world will go into a state of war and disarray, not unlike the forecasts of extinction-level risks bearing fruit.
Urgency to attract new members. Given the stakes, it's not a hard followup to believe that you should do what you can to teach more people about the awesome[4] benefits and risks awaiting them. Talent-constrained movements feel a similar urgency that is a little more impact-focused than community-focused.
Insularness. It's hard to be friends with someone outside the church, since being a member is a significant social and time commitment, and most people (in Utah) you interact with are members anyway. This contributes to both a sense of community and lack of viewpoint diversity.
Building community is a first-order priority
Mormons' focus on fostering community enables them to be effective at all the non-religious stuff they do.
Geography
First, some background: wards are composed of perhaps 50 to 100 families. There's no shopping around for congregations—ward membership is determined by where you live. This facilitates getting to know people. Each Sunday, the whole ward gets together for services, which are sometimes followed up by potlucks. Wednesdays, the kids get together for activities. Saturdays are for a rotating schedule of cleaning the church. Throughout the week, families are often close enough together that they see each other frequently.
Ministering
Within a ward, families are assigned a pair of people that minister to them: visit them once a month to check in, and maybe go over a spiritual lesson. While in the worst case these feel contrived, oftentimes people feel like they can count on their ministers to support them. With a few rotations of these over the years, you begin to develop a network of people that you wouldn't have naturally become friends with. This parallels the adage of "you get most job opportunities from acquaintances, not close friends": creating connections from across the network helps everyone to be fewer degrees away from each other.
Trek
Every four summers, the youth of the ward recreate the Mormon pioneers' crossing of the plains. In true 1800s fashion, they pull handcarts. A particularly exciting phase of this when I went involved the "Womens' Pull", where only the girls pulled and pushed the handcarts. (I think this was to simulate the number of men who died during the crossing). Afterwards we learned how to square dance. The only inauthentic aspect was how delicious the food was; we weren't served gruel. As my grandmother has often stated, "They didn't have McDonald's back then", and this increased our shared gratitude. Most of all, it increased our friendship.
Callings
Adult ward members are assigned callings, which range from choir director to primary instructor (children's religion classes) to bishop (equivalent of a pastor or imam). Callings aren't application-based, and a former bishop might be called to run nursery, the Sunday activities for toddlers. This flattens the hierarchical structures that would otherwise arise. Additionally, switching positions over the years helps each ward member feel connected to others, no matter their skills or interests that would normally push them to certain roles in the workforce.
Fast offerings
On the first Sunday of every month, Mormons hold a 24-hour fast from eating and drinking, aside from the sacramental rituals of eating a gob of (normally white) bread and a thimbleful of water. Aside from making the Sunday dinner delicious, Mormons save fast offerings, payments meant to cover the expenses of what they would have paid on food. Young men go door to door, collecting these payments (this is increasingly not the case; when I was doing it at 14, many people paid online. But they did give me amazing frozen Hershey's almond bars, which they made us promise not to eat until after breaking our fasts). The offerings go to the Bishop's Storehouse, where the money is converted into food for the hungry. The only other thing I heard about that place was that they had the best chocolate milk.
Being ingroupy allows you to move faster
When there is a shared value framework, people develop trust quicker. Upon moving into a new ward, a Mormon family will immediately have a community of like-minded people who do similar activities to them. Since they don't have to figure out whether they have to watch their tongues while discussing their morals, they can put more energy into getting to work and learning more about the people around them.
This also enables Mormons to dedicate more time resolving the surface-level issues, rather than revisiting foundational differences when interacting with others.
Do I think it's worth it to increase the ingroupy-ness of mission-driven movements? Not necessarily. Viewpoint diversity matters a lot more when the answers aren't legislated. Ingroupy-ness also limits the number of people who can join the movement.
Implications
Here are a few ideas vaguely inspired by Mormonism:
Create a platform for facilitating virtual 1-1s, especially between people from distinct backgrounds or positions
Create a travel grants program, so that people can benefit from geographic proximity
Instead of e.g. donating 10% of your income, precommit to donating a 24-hour period of your time each month to helping other people
Overall, I think we could do well by taking cues from other movements that have succeeded—in one way or another—at building community.
Probably due to the frequency they attend religious services; similar effects have been observed for other religious adherents. A 2004 Utah study finds that, compared to non-LDS people, there is a 7.3-year difference in life expectancy for males and a 5.8-year difference for females.
This leaves out the people who were PIMO: physically in, mentally out. However, amongst those people, I've found that they developed a strong belief that the church was not true, so the same principle holds.
Mormons get a lot of things right. Apart from strange Masonic temple rituals, they lead rather normal—and even excellent—lives. Mormons enjoy a longer lifespan,[1] Utah is the #1 state for volunteering,[2] and their language training programs are so successful that missionaries are a known source for foreign service and intelligence careers.
Throughout this post, I'll be making generalizations of Mormons rather than hedging the claims properly. I grew up in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Utah, and many of the claims are more true of the Utah/Idaho/Arizona corridor (affectionately called the "Morridor" by some ex-Mormons) than the rest of the US, and certainly the rest of the world.
Religions share much in common with AI safety and other impact-driven movements, and even more so the Mormon church. There are a few reasons for this:
Commitment to the cause. Anecdotally, nearly all of the ~500 Utah Mormons I've interacted with have been true believers, and only a handful just went to church out of habit.[3]
High stakes. Mormons do believe (I've heard they are trying to disavow this, but it was taught) that they will get a planet or some portion of the cosmos as their own if they are good in this life, and become Gods of their own. This is not far off from many transhumanist utopic visions. However, it's also true that they believe that before God's Second Coming, the world will go into a state of war and disarray, not unlike the forecasts of extinction-level risks bearing fruit.
Urgency to attract new members. Given the stakes, it's not a hard followup to believe that you should do what you can to teach more people about the awesome[4] benefits and risks awaiting them. Talent-constrained movements feel a similar urgency that is a little more impact-focused than community-focused.
Insularness. It's hard to be friends with someone outside the church, since being a member is a significant social and time commitment, and most people (in Utah) you interact with are members anyway. This contributes to both a sense of community and lack of viewpoint diversity.
Building community is a first-order priority
Mormons' focus on fostering community enables them to be effective at all the non-religious stuff they do.
Geography
First, some background: wards are composed of perhaps 50 to 100 families. There's no shopping around for congregations—ward membership is determined by where you live. This facilitates getting to know people. Each Sunday, the whole ward gets together for services, which are sometimes followed up by potlucks. Wednesdays, the kids get together for activities. Saturdays are for a rotating schedule of cleaning the church. Throughout the week, families are often close enough together that they see each other frequently.
Ministering
Within a ward, families are assigned a pair of people that minister to them: visit them once a month to check in, and maybe go over a spiritual lesson. While in the worst case these feel contrived, oftentimes people feel like they can count on their ministers to support them. With a few rotations of these over the years, you begin to develop a network of people that you wouldn't have naturally become friends with. This parallels the adage of "you get most job opportunities from acquaintances, not close friends": creating connections from across the network helps everyone to be fewer degrees away from each other.
Trek
Every four summers, the youth of the ward recreate the Mormon pioneers' crossing of the plains. In true 1800s fashion, they pull handcarts. A particularly exciting phase of this when I went involved the "Womens' Pull", where only the girls pulled and pushed the handcarts. (I think this was to simulate the number of men who died during the crossing). Afterwards we learned how to square dance. The only inauthentic aspect was how delicious the food was; we weren't served gruel. As my grandmother has often stated, "They didn't have McDonald's back then", and this increased our shared gratitude. Most of all, it increased our friendship.
Callings
Adult ward members are assigned callings, which range from choir director to primary instructor (children's religion classes) to bishop (equivalent of a pastor or imam). Callings aren't application-based, and a former bishop might be called to run nursery, the Sunday activities for toddlers. This flattens the hierarchical structures that would otherwise arise. Additionally, switching positions over the years helps each ward member feel connected to others, no matter their skills or interests that would normally push them to certain roles in the workforce.
Fast offerings
On the first Sunday of every month, Mormons hold a 24-hour fast from eating and drinking, aside from the sacramental rituals of eating a gob of (normally white) bread and a thimbleful of water. Aside from making the Sunday dinner delicious, Mormons save fast offerings, payments meant to cover the expenses of what they would have paid on food. Young men go door to door, collecting these payments (this is increasingly not the case; when I was doing it at 14, many people paid online. But they did give me amazing frozen Hershey's almond bars, which they made us promise not to eat until after breaking our fasts). The offerings go to the Bishop's Storehouse, where the money is converted into food for the hungry. The only other thing I heard about that place was that they had the best chocolate milk.
Being ingroupy allows you to move faster
When there is a shared value framework, people develop trust quicker. Upon moving into a new ward, a Mormon family will immediately have a community of like-minded people who do similar activities to them. Since they don't have to figure out whether they have to watch their tongues while discussing their morals, they can put more energy into getting to work and learning more about the people around them.
This also enables Mormons to dedicate more time resolving the surface-level issues, rather than revisiting foundational differences when interacting with others.
Do I think it's worth it to increase the ingroupy-ness of mission-driven movements? Not necessarily. Viewpoint diversity matters a lot more when the answers aren't legislated. Ingroupy-ness also limits the number of people who can join the movement.
Implications
Here are a few ideas vaguely inspired by Mormonism:
Overall, I think we could do well by taking cues from other movements that have succeeded—in one way or another—at building community.
Probably due to the frequency they attend religious services; similar effects have been observed for other religious adherents. A 2004 Utah study finds that, compared to non-LDS people, there is a 7.3-year difference in life expectancy for males and a 5.8-year difference for females.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/01/volunteering-and-civic-life-in-america.html
This leaves out the people who were PIMO: physically in, mentally out. However, amongst those people, I've found that they developed a strong belief that the church was not true, so the same principle holds.
In the biblical sense