Taking a BITE out of Mormonism

Last week I had a couple of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Missionaries visit me. They called me a few days in advance to ask if it was okay to come round, and then I totally forgot about our meeting until I received a call saying they were having problems finding my house on the street.

I usually welcome religious visitors in my home. I figure that, although it's not the right place for me to question someone's religion when I visit their places of worship, when they're the ones reaching out to try to convert me it's fair game to give a bit of pushback. I'm still never rude or argumentative, but I'm happy to ask some uncomfortable questions about their beliefs, especially when it comes down to the treatment of minorities. There aren't many religious groups that score well in that regard!

We talked for an hour or more, and of the two missionaries one was almost at the end of her 18 month mission, and the other was just starting. In fact, this was the very first house visit of her mission. Normally a Mormon mission is a two year event (18 months for women) in another country, but with the advent of COVID international travel has been cancelled and Mormons are finding themselves sent to a destination within their own country. From what I can tell, though, this is often still an exciting occurrence for these domestic missionaries as many of them have never really travelled much - I assume dedicated Mormon families have very little time or money to spend on frivolous activities like holidays.

I know enough about Mormons that when I invited them in I didn't offer them tea or coffee. Instead we sat down and started chatting about their religion, with me asking questions and them seemingly working through a set of pre-ordained steps that a mission visit is supposed to entail. We had prayers, testimony, the quoting of scripture, a description of what sets Mormons apart from other Christians, and veneration of the current “prophet”, their leader - a man called Russell Nelson. Unsurprisingly, this happens to be an old, white man, and I was shown a printed picture of him as if it was something precious.

One of the points I bought up was that their God seems to have always chosen old, white men as the prophet, with nobody of colour ever having been chosen for the top job. In fact, the church didn't allow anyone of colour to hold a leadership role at all until 1978. And it'll be no surprise to skeptics to hear that this God also doesn't want women in leadership roles.

At the end of the meeting (closed with a prayer, of course) I was left with a copy of the Book of Mormon. I said I didn't need one, as I already have a copy - so now I have two. If you're interested in learning about the inception of the Mormon church, although this sounds silly, I highly recommend the classic South Park episode about Joseph Smith. Sadly, us in NZ can't watch the free online version - but if you have a VPN, or own a copy of the Season 7 DVDs, or you're a pirate, enjoy!

A few days after our chat, I was watching a video from the Genetically Modified Skeptic about the Multi Level Marketing (MLM) scheme his family had been involved with - Young Living essential oils. He mentioned an idea that intrigued me - that under the BITE model, it could be considered that MLMs like Young Living are a form of cult.

Okay, so let's back up a little. The BITE model is a way of analysing the behaviours of groups to see if they're likely to be a cult. The model was created by Steven Hassan, who was once a member of the Unification Church (better known as the Moonies) and since leaving the church has been tirelessly helping people who want to leave high control groups like cults.

Steven's BITE Model breaks down the controlling tendency of cult groups into four areas - Behaviour, Information, Thought and Emotions. Under each of these categories, Steven's BITE model lists a set of ways that these four aspects can be controlled. For example, under Behaviour Control there's punishment for disobedience, control over sexual activity, and financial exploitation (among many others). The Information control has six main areas - deception, restricting access to outside info, compartmentalising, spying, internal propaganda, and the use of confession. Thought control includes getting people to change their name, having them reject critical thinking, and pushing an us vs them mentality. Finally, the Emotional control section includes the use of fear, alternating between extremes of affection and rejection, and shunning.

This is far from the only attempt to define what makes a cult. I regularly listen to the Let's Talk About Sects podcast from Sarah Steel (she's Australian, so the podcast regularly features content relevant to New Zealand, such as a great couple of episodes on Gloriavale), and quite like the definition she often uses. According to Sarah, a cult is a group:

1. Dominated by a charismatic leader, or leadership, that closely controls its members, particularly with regards to their exercising their free will to disengage with the group and its ideology,
2. Who believes that they exclusively have access to the truth, and the rest of the world is wrong, and
3. Who are largely secretive of the workings of their society to outsiders.

The BITE model has been received well by cult researchers, I think because of how well respected Steven is for his deep knowledge of cults, his long time dedication to the subject, and because of the academic work he's applied to his model - including it being the topic of his recent PhD thesis titled “The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control: Undue Influence, Thought Reform, Brainwashing, Mind Control, Trafficking and the Law”.

And so, having heard the idea that some of the more nefarious MLMs appear to align well with Steven's BITE model, and with my recent visit from the Mormons still on my mind, I wondered if anyone had tried to apply the BITE model to the Mormon church. Sure enough, when I typed “BITE Model” into the Google search box, before I'd even had a chance to start writing the word Mormon, up popped Google's suggestions. And there, at the top of the list, was the suggested search phrase “BITE Model Mormonism”.

I clicked on this suggestion, and immediately found a great article where the author had colour coded all the bullet points of each of the four categories - Behavioural, Information, Thought and Emotional Control - according to whether the church of the Latter Day Saints was known to use those techniques to control their members. Red was for regular use, orange for occasional use and green marked techniques that the church was not known to use. Although there were a few green and orange lines (such as sleep deprivation and speaking in tongues), most of the points were coloured red, suggesting that the Mormon church uses a lot of the control techniques that are the hallmarks of a cult.

This got me thinking - what else might the BITE model be relevant to? It seems to be good for assessing fringe religious groups we often consider to be cults, and may also be good at figuring out which of the larger religious groups are using cult techniques for control. But it sounds like it might also be good at assessing how dangerous Multi Level Marketing schemes can be. We'll hear some more about this from Bronwyn, in her article in this newsletter about MLMs, and possibly also some more details at a later date.

Given my recent crusade against NFTs, I wondered if maybe the insular communities who promote and invest in cryptocurrencies and NFTs - people sometimes called Crypto Bros - would also score highly under the BITE model. But, although there does seem to be some effort to control what information people consume, and there's talk about outsiders “not understanding crypto” and “spreading FUD” (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt), it's obvious that this fad hasn't risen to the point of being cult-like. At least, it isn't that bad yet!