Religion: Mission to Europe

The made-in-America Mormons are making notable strides in the Old World.

Last week eleven chiefs of Mormon missions in Western Europe met in Frankfurt, Germany, to review the past and plan the future. Under their direction, some 3,500 missionaries fish for souls, and the number of souls is growing fast:

¶ In Britain last year the Mormon Church doubled its membership to 40,000; last month there were 1,200 baptisms.

¶ In France there were 1,000 conversions to Mormonism in 1960, with some 2,500 projected for this year; the number of missionaries has zoomed from 140 to 250.

¶ In West Germany there are 16,000 Mormons, and 1,400 in West Berlin (twice as many as three years ago).

In Harmony. Spreading the Mormon word in beleaguered Berlin are 56 missionaries—all Americans between 19 and 22, all but four of them men—whose living expenses, like those of all Mormon missionaries, are met by their own families and friends. Berlin’s first red brick Mormon church was built eleven years ago. Another church, of radically modern design, was built last year in the northwestern Spandau section, and two more will go up soon.

All Mormon missionaries are volunteers, and all Mormon young men are encouraged to serve (about 40% of them do). The usual term of service is two years in the U.S., 30 months when a foreign language must be learned. Typical of those now in Berlin is boyish, sandy-haired David Owens, 22, of Berkeley, Calif. He lives with a German family, in a cheap room, rises at 6 a.m. and meets his partner (Mormon missionaries generally work in pairs) for an hour’s study of German, Scripture and lesson plans. At 9 they take to motor scooters for three hours of in tensive house-to-house canvassing, devote the afternoon to visiting prospects referred to them by others. Shunning dating, dancing, even swimming, they spend evenings in paper work, and it is not uncommon for Mormon missionaries to put in 70 hours a week.

Several times weekly converts are baptized (by total immersion) in nearby Grunewald Lake. Mormon converts under go no elaborate instruction, have only to declare themselves “in harmony” with the basic principles that 1) Jesus Christ is the Son of God, 2) Mormonism’s founder, Farmboy Joseph Smith, was called by God to bear witness to sacred truth, 3) through Mormonism the Church of Jesus Christ was restored to its original purity, and has full power to bring about that order necessary for the blessedness of mankind, and 4) the Book of Mormon was given to the world by divine inspiration.

The Mormons claim 5,000 “saints” (members) in East Germany, but are discreet in their contacts with them. East Berlin Mormons have no church of their own but meet in a rented building.

Too Cold in the Sea. Even Frenchmen, traditionally set in their views, whether Catholic, Protestant or skeptic, are giving a hearing to the young Americans who come to call. In the southern industrial city of Nimes (pop. 90,000), Craig Colton, 22, of Los Angeles and Gary Harris, 20, of Taber, Alberta talk with 50 to 100 people a day.

Missionaries Colton and Harris have attracted prospects by organizing an English-language class and a softball team, sometimes prepare the way for interviews by leaving folders in mailboxes. In a first conversation, they avoid Mormon doctrine ; in the second, they are likely to put forward some Mormon ideas and to end by saying: “We know we can’t convince you, but we’d like to ask you to make the effort to ask God about the truth of what we are saying.”

Mme. Marceline Zannelli and her husband, a maitre d’hotel, were both Roman Catholics when Missionaries Colton and Harris knocked on her door. “I told them to come back and see my husband. They did and we discussed religious matters for two months. Finally I was baptized in Marseille. No, not in the sea, as they suggested; it was too cold. So we settled for the swimming pool in Nimes. I had never heard of the Mormons a year ago.”

Colton and Harris have made a dozen converts in Nimes during the past nine months. “That may not seem like very many,” commented a Midi-Libre journalist in what was meant for praise, “but these young Americans are better recruiters than the local French Communists.”