Last week Fred commented on my post and said he lived “in the mission field”. That is a phrase I’d not heard of for some time. The last person to use it in our ward about 20 years ago was the wife of my counselor when I was Bishop. She was from Utah County, and would say things like “well out here in the mission field….”, then usually throw in something about how different the church was here in California compared to Utah, and how the Utah was was the correct way.
I would imagine the origin of this phrase was to refer to everyplace in the world where missionaries were sent. Since they didn’t send missionaries to Utah or South East Idaho, that was NOT the mission field. Everyplace else was. But today missionaries are even sent to Orem Ut, probably the most Mormon place on earth. So everywhere is the mission field, and the phrase has lost any meaning.
Is it still used in Utah, or by Utah transplants? Is it just used to denote “not Utah” as Fred used it, or it is it used as with a put down as the sister did in my ward used it? This sister was the only person I’ve ever know to use it, so I always associated it with signaling that Utah is better, and the “mission field” is somehow “less than”. Kind of like how Church leaders will used “so called” in front of anything they want to diminish. I realize Fred did not use it this way, but it did trigger in me the negative connotations associated with this sister’s speech.
What is your experience with this phrase? I’m I the only one with negative feelings toward it?
Wheat & Tares 
I was raised in southern Wyoming and we had a special disdain for “Utah Mormons”. In our opinion the Mormons outside of Utah did things right and the Utah Mormons were less faithful to the gospel in every way.
I think we just feel comfortable to “us” “them” other people. We feel superior when we divide people into groups and define ourselves as the more righteous ones.
We do it in politics, religion, ethnicity, race, and nationalism. It’s the root of some very nasty inclinations that aren’t congruent with following Christ. It’s something all of us can work on.
As I said all of “us”. It’s not “them” that need the work.
Oh no, that is (was?) common among us Utahns. Anywhere away from Utah is “in the mission field”. One of my most interesting findings when I had to spend a summer in Florida was that the locals had no interest in coming to the church for the 24th of July party (which was ginned up by all the Utah-transplants in the Ward).
Well, we inactive (sorry, “less active to the point of total passivity — as in ‘I’ll pass on the whole church thing'”) folks here in Orem are doing our bit to make this hotbed of Mormon-dom (sorry, “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”-dom) — which is now a tromped-down, over-grazed field — strike despair into the heart of any missionary or door-to-door salesman of any variety.
And yes, tho’ I haven’t been to church in years, I have heard the older generations still use the term. Pretty pompous considering the decline of the church in Utah.
IMO it’s use is more of generational thing. I haven’t heard it used by people younger than maybe the older Gen X, who grew up in the church of the 70s and 80s. But I also mainly heard it used when living in the Midwest, didn’t really hear it in Arizona.
In other words, only used by the people who grew up attending firesides about the horrors of face cards, ouija boards, caffeinated soda, and satanic music like AC/DC, KISS and Ozzy Osbourne. And people older than that.
I think it’s still used, but it is used both ways – I’m sure there are people that use it as a way to express a Utah-based perspective, but there are others “out here” that use it more as an expression of pride that we are not dealing with the unique cultural distortions of the “mormon corridor” perspective. But to lws329’s point, I agree that it is yet one other way that we all try to tribalize ourselves from either perspective. We all have work to do on ourselves, whichever “field” we find ourselves in.
I still hear it here in Utah as a way to refer to outside Utah or eastern Idaho where most people aren’t members and where you have ample opportunity to have “missionary experiences” and “teach people about the gospel.”
The only folks I’ve heard use “the mission field” in my mid-Atlantic ward are recent transplants from Utah (and those that spend their entire time here just waiting to go back to “Zion”).
We have multiple individuals who refer to Utah as the “mothership,” though, so there’s that.
Having lived in Utah, Oregon, Arizona and Washington I definitely noticed a difference in the way the church members felt about their membership and they way they approached their callings. Of course there are great people in the church in Utah (where I currently live) but it seemed that people outside of Utah were generally more committed. It might have been because they were unique in the surrounding society.
It’s a phrase I find annoying but very understandable and forgivable. I’d agree that most people tend to think of the “mission field” as where they send missionaries or where lots of missionary work is to be done. With the exception of my mission and an internship, I’ve lived in Utah my entire life. In my childhood, I only saw the missionaries seven or eight times, most of which was right before my mission (that may have been me taking more notice or could have been some careful orchestration by my parents). I knew a guy from Pleasant Grove who saw them just one time before his mission, which I could hardly believe.
The Utah missions are some of the highest baptizing in the world, and I think the Church started to realize that in the last twenty years or so. Our northern Utah County stake was assigned its own set of missionaries for the first time about ten years ago, where most Elders or Sisters had multiple stakes before that. You see them a lot more often now. Outside of the Mormon corridor, it’s not uncommon for every branch or ward to have them.
With just one or two exceptions, I’ve never heard anyone use it as a means of elevating Utah members of the Church.
My mother used that, but it was not derogatory in any way. We were a navy family when she was raising her family in the latter 40’s, 50’s, and early 60’s. They lived up and down the east and west coasts and in Hawaii. They referred to these the mission field because membership was sparse and widely spread out. This meant that the active members had to wear a lot of hats and had the missionaries in our area over to our house regularly dinner. That extra involvement with the missionaries really made this the mission field. I was raised, from the time I was 8, in Provo, about 2 miles from the MTC and the Provo temple and the only missionaries that we ever saw were around the MTC, or walking to the temple, or at the University Mall or P-Day. There was nothing derogatory intended, just a differentiation between the areas.
I issue my strongest possible condemnation to this use of the phrase “mission field.” It is used in a derogatory and condescendingly judgmental manner. This has no place in a true Zion Culture.
Well, go leave in a place that is only covered by a mission with no district even or an area HQs, and it’s used. Also makes sense. That’s a fair chunk of the world still.
Born and raised in the PNW, did an overseas mission, BYU, and further education in PNW. Have lived the last 11 years with the family around the world on four continents now. Have heard it in all phases of my life and never saw an issue with it.
Always understood it to mean any place with a really low concentration of members, anywhere outside the Mormon Corridor.
It’s only derogatory if you intend it that way. Just like any adjective, noun or verb.
Well, before I read everybody else’s comments, let me just say that in my experience Mormons “out in the mission field” are so much more accepting and loving and Christlike than “Utah Mormons”. I grew up in Utah, as did my husband and then his draft number suggested that if he didn’t enlist in the Air Force, quickly, he would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. So, since he was married and the Air Force has the best reputation for treating families well, he enlisted. We decided to prolong the enlistment, so he could finish his degree and be commissioned as an officer. When that commitment was up, we looked at getting out or going for retirement, and decided to stay in for 20 years. So, in that 20 years, we were stationed in seven states and two foreign countries. When he retired and we came back to Utah, because family, we suffered bad culture shock and horrible disappointment in our ward. My oldest hated release time seminary, compared to early morning, she hated how everyone acted like matching behavior to beliefs was totally optional, started thinking deeply about church and her own values and started fighting up about church. I couldn’t fit into the ward and went inactive. The second child waited till college and then started hating the sexism at church more than she liked church. She had also had a bad experience with a YW advisor who put her boyfriend’s “future priesthood” above her physical safety when she tried to tell the advisor the young man was abusing her. He later raped her.
Moving back to Utah felt like we lost everything good about the church and the church community.
So, to me, if I say “mission field” I mean it as a huge compliment.
I have however experience the kind of “Utah Mormon” who think anybody not raised in Utah doesn’t know how the church really should be run. Had a bishop like that who about blew a ward in half. They look down on converts, and some even hold their pioneer ancestors up as making them better somehow. Now I dismiss such people as idiots. They probably even voted for Trump. (Joking/not joking)
To give you an idea of my own prejudice, my ministering sister begged me to go to Daughters of the Utah Pioneers with her. I didn’t dare tell her that I just don’t associate with “those people”. “Those people” being Mormons who thinks their ancestors make them special.
I saw a map recently that plotted religious affiliation per capita in the US and the world. What it demonstrated is that after all these years, all the full-time missionaries, all the money spent on media campaigns and web sites and other PR, the COJCOLDS is basically a Mormon corridor religion. This corridor is centered in Utah and extends north to Idaho and south to parts of Arizona (and a cut out to Polynesia). That’s it folks. It’s not really a world religion unless you count the buildings.
Josh H,
If the 25-30 million members of Sikhism can be called a world religion with about 20 million members living in India, and the 17 million Jewish population can be called a world religion with 7 million living in Israel, then I think it’s fair to call Mormonism a world religion with less than 15% living in Utah and less than half in the United States. It’s that or a redefining of what World Religion means.
I think “mission field” is just a polite way of saying “us vs them.”
Just look at the comments here at Wheat and Tares or in the Deseret News or Salt Lake Tribune and it’s easy to see the slinging of labels is also used as justification for us and against them. It’s an easy way to ignore small differences and magnify them without thought. It turns off critical thinking which can be used to address any particular issue.
I was raised in Ohio (the mission field) and spent my adult life in Utah even though I’ve visited Ohio multiple times per year ever since. I’ve found that any positive or negative trait you see in one place you see in the other it’s just a matter of degree.
I was raised in the mission field of England, no stakes or wards at that time, but missions, districts and branches. Then moved to another mission field in Eastern Canada. Members for the most part were tight-knit, relied on each other and created strong bonds with one another. I wouldn’t have thought the term derogatory at the time, though did feel that many of the American missionaries were sometimes a wee bit paternalistic towards us novices in the faith. The Canadian missionary that I ended up marrying was refreshingly and noticeably different in that sense and fit in more comfortably, perhaps because he came from another mission field area. We now live in a part of Canada that is fairly dense with church membership due to the migration northwards from Utah with hopes to continue the practice of polygamy. I wouldn’t refer to it as the ‘mission field’ but I’ve heard the term used to refer to other places. One concern is that most of Southern Albertan members are all interrelated and might want to check their DNA before marrying 😂 Not a concern for us later move-ins, but sometimes if you aren’t from here you can also feel like outsiders without those familial connections.
I rarely hear the term used that way. I haven’t lived in Utah for 20 years, though. Even when I lived in Utah it wasn’t a common usage. I grew up understanding the term to refer to the time a person spent on a mission, so I always disliked the other use of the term primarily because it is needlessly confusing. It does also seem to convey a certain hierarchy of status in the church, which I consider antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. If the usage is fading away, good riddance.
I had never heard the term “mission field” until I started participating with Americans online. It immediately rankled.
I’m going to give a unique spin on the whole issue by giving you a Canadian perspective, starting with a bit of a geography lesson: 6 of the 10 Canadian provinces are BIG. Alberta is the same size as Texas, and it’s only the 4th largest. Alberta is more rectangular than Texas – it’s 750 miles from the northern border to the southern border that abuts the US.
That southern border is also part of the Mormon Corridor, as it was settled by pioneers sent by Brigham Young. Southern Alberta (and when many Mormon Canadians talk, you can almost hear the capitalization) is almost exclusively towns and is still very rural. The combination of majority members and farming communities is… interesting. Just last month I heard a new joke: “In Southern Alberta, how do you know which girls at the party are Mormon? When someone brings a six-pack, they put their clothes back on and go home.” (BTW, I heard this from a missionary.)
My father grew up in a tiny town in Southern Alberta and said, “I’m not raising my family down here,” so he went the opposite route and moved his young family 3/4s of the way up the province into a district. When Albertans speak disparagingly of majority Mormon populations, it’s far more common for us to reference Southern Alberta than it is Utah. And when the rest of the country speaks disparagingly, it’s often just “Alberta.” My southern Albertan grandmother would unironically say, “When are you planning on moving back to Zion?”
Southern Albertans send their kids to BYU much more than anyone else, and there’s this weird thing there where many members consider the US to be better. My SIL, who grew up there, assumed she’d move to the States as an adult. This is NOT the attitude of the rest of the country. So if you went to BYU and met a Canadian….they were likely an outlier.
I know about the whole “let’s compare ancestors” thing and “my uncle is a GA” thing, because Southern Albertans do it. Honestly, I could do it myself if I wanted to, as my lines go back to early church history in New York and I’ve got living relatives who’ve been temple presidents and area authorities, but the idea that I’m *better* because of that is ridiculous. Growing up in a district burned all such notions out of me. I’m far more impressed by the stalwart few that attend church faithfully in a tiny branch.
I think the thing that irritates me the most about the mission field assumption that if an area is not majority LDS, it must be small and struggling. There are cities in Alberta with multiple stakes and members that have lived there for five generations.
This comment is already ridiculously long, so I won’t cover what it’s like living in British Columbia, or the name-dropping history of the Edmonton Institute, or “Ontario Mormons,” or the influence of politics, or what some American members are like when they move here,
Raised in Salt Lake County. Moved out of state when I graduated from college— now, nearly 2/3 of my life have been outside of Utah.
Growing up in UT, I was led to feel that good Mormons associate with other Mormons. Any non-Mormon neighbors were okay if they were open to receiving missionary visits. It seemed then that “the mission field” wasn’t some place you would want to live.
So glad I had the opportunity to move away. Have moved 5 different times in 2 different states outside of UT. There were only 1 or 2 other Mormon families in our school district when my kids were growing up.
What I found, of course, is that some of the most Christlike people I’ve known can be people of other faiths or those not associated with any particular religion. I’ve also experienced some of the least Christlike people as members of the COJCLDS. (and vice versa).
Church leadership and membership can vary from place to place. But mostly they come from the mission-BYU etc cookie cutter.
Example:
Our youngest son was treated like crap by ward members/leaders when he chose not to go on a mission or attend BYU—opting instead for the higher ranked university for his particular major. Then, at the university, the LDS student ward leaders treated him like crap too— because he had the audacity to bring a nonmember to church with him.
That was the last straw in him having anything to do with the COJCLDS.
As a side note, if they still exist, the church needs to do away with inner-city missions in Utah. We don’t need any more white saviors.
^ inner city missions for older couples
@Margot
Yeah, I also am familiar with southern AB. There’s a lot of truth to what you say, though it’d be nice to have more social science studies to confirm.
Trivia for the rest of the W & T community, but that entire Lethbridge area is where many of Canada’s domestic YSA go for schooling and marriage prospects.
Southern AB is also where much of the current UCP government comes from, as they have recently formed a majority government, the narrowest in AB’s recent history. Church members from southern AB are an influential minority- but still a minority- within AB’s conservative politics, and provincial politics overall.
This is not to say that the government isn’t legitimate, or lacks a democratic mandate, but it does demonstrate how things have changed since the ‘ole Progressive Conservative (the name of the previous ruling conservatives) hegemony, and the Social Credit Party before them.
Social scientists who study the church in the US may find interesting comparison and contrasts in studying how members and former members negotiate political and civic culture(s) within Canada.
The first time I heard it was in Utah as a BYU student, which was my first experience being in Utah, and I found it shocking and weird. I thought, at least before that point in my life, that it was a global church (it’s not, not really), and that it was basically the same everywhere. I had very limited exposure to “Utah Mormons” up to that point, with the exception of a family that moved to my home ward when I was 17 and basically tried to take over everything, correcting local traditions, claiming authority to speak on behalf of “the way things should be done” because they were the true Mormons, the ones from Utah. It definitely rubbed me the wrong way, but I honestly did not have any idea what people were referring to when they said “the mission field” without asking more questions. The phrase made zero sense to me. I wasn’t on a mission in my home ward; I just lived there.
This ended up being a really interesting topic in our family. One of our adult daughters (8 years living in Georgia) and I (BYU alumna) understand “mission field” as a cultural signifier. For the rest of the family, who are essentially Utahns without BYU ties, it totally relates to missionary service. My husband kept telling me that the division could only be used in the past before missionaries were actually called to serve in Utah. Obviously Utah is now part of the mission field. I don’t think I was ever able to explain the concept in a way that made sense to him.
So maybe it’s really just a BYU idea?
PWS, in reading the comments, I got wondering if this “mission field” thing could be a Utah valley thing. So, when you said BYU, it really confirmed that. I heard it a lot growing up in Provo. But it really wasn’t used anywhere else that we lived, even in Utah, Arizona, or Wyoming.
I grew up in Southern California in the 80’s and 90’s, with convert parents (some pioneer legacy) and use it culturally as “outside Utah Corridor”. I did read Christian fiction, so I might have picked it up there.
I think it has merit with the “multiple hats” perspective.
It’s not a phrase I hear often in Utah anymore, at least in that context. “In the mission field” is pretty much reserved for missionaries who are out on missions, with the mission field just being wherever they happen to be working.
As far as terms about people outside the Mormon corridor, the term “California Mormon” gets thrown around sometimes. Sometimes it’s meant as a pejorative and other times as a compliment, haha. It can be sort of a “Yankee-go-home” vibe or admiration that someone is nuanced and isn’t beholden to Utah Mormon culture.