The Mormon Cult: A Former Missionary Reveals the Secrets of Mormon Mind Control

by Jack B. Worthy

Book Overview

Scrutinizing the experience of growing up Mormon, this personal narrative tells the story of one man's disillusionment with his faith and subsequent excommunication from the Church. This account... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1884365442
• ISBN13: 9781884365447
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: See Sharp Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

An informative and enjoyable book

The most enjoyable part of this book is the author's personal story. Anyone who has ever seen Mormon missionaries and wondered what makes them tick will love this book. The author gives us an inside look at the life of a devout missionary who slowly becomes disillusioned. His story is not only interesting - with its colorful descriptions of Hong Kong and missionary life - it's also funny and entertaining. I highly recommend it. Many Christian sects call the Mormon Church a cult, so the book's title may cause people to wrongly assume that this is just another typical Christian rant against Mormonism. But it's not. The author did not convert to another religion, and has no agenda to convert his readers to his way of thinking. Anyone who reads this book will learn a lot about Mormon beliefs. The book is very credible because the author backs up his statements with plenty of quotes from official Mormon writings and scripture. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book is a detailed explanation of how adult Mormons are taught to indoctrinate children. The two people who gave one-star reviews of this book have given it the best possible promotion. One of them "knows" the author was guided by Satan, and the other gives no indication at all that he or she read the book, which means he or she probably gave a critique of the entire book based on its title alone. Those two reviews make the authors point very well.

You will be glad you read it.

As a former mormon, I can not recommend this book enough. Though it is a good read for anyone who is curious about the mormon faith, it is especially helpful to those who have left the church and will help bring them peace. It is true, as mentioned in another review, that the author gives a negative perspective of the church. This however is because he is trying to show how ridiculously far out in some regards the church is. The author does manage to do it with a sense of humor; I found myself laughing out loud at several points. Also to disagree with the aforementioned review, I found that while the title may not sit well with mormons, neither will the rest of the book. So what does it matter? If you ask me, the title is perfect. Just buy the darn book already.

Helped this recovering mormon understand his past

Although I left the church before serving a mission I can certainly attest that this book is very 'faithful' to the experiences of childhood in the church. It's been about 8 years since I quit going and I've already forgotten details that seemed completely mundane at the time but that I now know are completely reprehensible. When this book reminded me of the way that children are led up to the pulpit on Sundays to 'bear their testimonies' before they can even speak coherently, with Mom whispering in their ears: "I know this church is true," for them to repeat to the congregation, it made me realize that I had willfully neglected to think about such things since I left. That more than anything else demonstrates the concerted effort the church puts into indoctrinating youth. Well, that along with the constancy and total enveloping nature of mormon culture, which demonstrates the church's 'mind control.' Like the author, I still had an unwarranted respect for the church and was loathe to do anything that might tarnish it's reputation although I had personally never been able to accept it's doctrines. The author also tells about the secret temple rituals that I always wondered about as a child but never really understood. This really points out how hypocritical the doctrines of the church are. The 'secret handshakes' in the temple ceremonies are in direct opposition to the anti-mason stance of the church illustrated by the Book of Mormons depiction of the Gadianton society. And in a most poignant way the author details the church's obscene obsession with the sexual aspects of their members lives. Instilling intense levels of guilt for completely human urges and making sex seem worse than armed robbery, assault, and arson. Especially outrageous given the patriarchal society and it's past history of polygamy. My only concern is that by calling the church a cult outright (which of course it is, along with ALL religions) the title scares off those who could most benefit from reading it, namely those questioning their faith but who have yet to throw off the shackles. By marketing the book to those who already think of the LDS church as a cult the author seems to be speaking to other christians who are just looking for more mormon bashing sources. But I think readers of that ilk will not be as happy when towards the end of the book Mr. Worthy advocates for the undermining of all religious traditions.

Memoir as it should be

In an era where memoirs have become self-obsessed vehicles for inflated content that is designed to shock, Jack Worthy's book is a breath of fresh air. Worthy's focus on this memoir is not so much on himself as it is on the mind control methods used by the Mormon Church. Worthy never tries to inflate his claims nor does he ever dip into melodrama. He is respectful towards his parents and treats them with affection and he never accuses the church or any of its members of any kind of abuse other than mental. (He even seems to think that many of the Church officials are victims of this peculiar culture.) There are even times, when discussing his mission trip, that he appears to be a little nostalgic. This is perfectly understandable in that his transformative years took place within the culture of the Church. He does not try to make his apostasy a heroic triumph of reason over superstition. He is, in a way, expelled from the church because he believed in it and because of his own brutally honest way of dealing with himself. It was only later that he saw the Mormon Church (and all other churches, for that matter) for what it is: a cult. Because he keeps the focus on the culture of Mormonism and the culture of the mission trip itself, Worthy gives an historical account that is, thankfully, free of the self-obsession so typical of the modern memoir. I learned a great deal from this book, about Mormonism, about the culture of Hong Kong, about the Cantonese language, and about how the art form of memoir should be treated. This is highly recommended reading.

An Escape From Entrapment

This book presents a superb account by a former Mormon missionary of his journey through, and away from his pressure-filled entanglement with the church. I find it impossible to think of a suitable analogy to describe this complex social and human entrapment experienced by Elder Worthy, entrapment by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (otherwise known as the Mormon Church). (The author refers to himself as Elder Worthy, as that is how others referred to him throughout his mission.) Beginning with his two-year mission in Hong Kong at the age of nineteen, Elder Worthy takes the reader with him as he experiences the journey first hand. Everything he had been brought to believe told him this would be a wondrous experience. The whole support system of his social environment, as proscribed by the Mormon Church, including his parents and authority figures, all reinforced the idea that this mission would be positive almost beyond imagination. For, how could it not be when the Heavenly Father would be inspiring individuals to hear the Word he was about to bring? The mission itself was an ordeal--filled with frustrations, embarrassments, and feelings of inadequacy. Elder Worthy blamed all these shortcomings on himself. If only he were more diligent, more worthy, he was sure the Heavenly Father would cause the mission to be the success he had been certain it would be. Many of these frustrations were the direct result of the highly constrained rules and pressure for obedience concerning sexual expression. As the months wore on, Elder Worthy became disillusioned about the whole mission setup. He started seeing patterns across the other missionaries at his outpost that seemed consistent with his own experience, and saw that it might be the system that led to disappointing performance, not his lack of being sufficiently worthy. The more he became disenchanted with the system, the more he began to press the limits, more or less to see how the system would react. Ultimately, the combination of frustrated sexual desires and the rush that comes with pressing the limits led him to the most serious infraction of the rules. This led to disciplinary action, the premature ending of his mission, and the disgrace to his parents and himself when he returned amongst suspicions he may have done something unworthy. He of course was not invited to give his testimony about the wonders of his mission. Whether or not a person is familiar with the inner workings of the Mormon Church, I think the reader will gain an excellent understanding of what actually happens on these two-year missions that every 19-20 year old Mormon male experiences. Even more important in my mind is the account of one lonely person's struggle to make sense out of the many contradictions he saw on his mission, compared with all the glowing reports from the missionaries that went before him.