Meadowchik wrote:It's good to see such effort at improving conditions for missionaries. However, there needs to be a total prohobition on taking passports from them. If they cannot keep their own personal documents safe, they shouldn't be there. Second, they should in my opinion be treated like any other adult volunteers. Stop the infantalizing!
The church simply could not continue to exist if it wasn't a big babysitting job for God's "children." A good sentiment however, but quite unrealistic.
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
Meadowchik wrote:It's good to see such effort at improving conditions for missionaries. However, there needs to be a total prohobition on taking passports from them. If they cannot keep their own personal documents safe, they shouldn't be there. Second, they should in my opinion be treated like any other adult volunteers. Stop the infantalizing!
The church simply could not continue to exist if it wasn't a big babysitting job for God's "children." A good sentiment however, but quite unrealistic.
Sure, but this is a big machine with many moving parts. I think in this Nelsonoak era, the Eye might be more focused on gender essentialism and loyalty than the missionary experience.
But Cicotte also challenged some of the first episode’s assumptions, including the idea that if these proselytizers are obedient and aware, they will be fine. “Sometimes both of those things together are not enough to keep you safe,” she said. “You need a pathway to change your situation or your location, to be able to say, ‘I don’t feel safe in this area.’” The failure of “some of our missionaries to be situationally aware led to some really painful consequences,” she quotes from the video. Cicotte was situationally aware and obedient, she said, but there were “still really painful consequences.” It’s victim blaming, she said.
These videos are putting all of the responsibility for improving safety onto the missionaries (18 year olds living away from home for what is likely the first time), and also providing the Church with a disclaimer in the event an incident takes place..."Well, we told you it was dangerous..." It's also quite a relatively cheap solution.
As an example of what I think the Church should be doing, let's take accommodation. They should put in place a policy of only renting accommodation that meets a certain safety standard and proper risk assessments of both the accommodation and the area should be undertaken. If the risk assessment shows a fail in either area, missionaries shouldn't be placed there. End of. But I guess that would be a bit too sensible and costly for an organisation that tends to operate on the cheap when it comes to their missionaries. As a simple rule of thumb the Church could apply, if you wouldn't place the Mission President in that accommodation, don't put missionaries in it.
Safety Videos are a cheap and easy way of fooling yourself and others that you're doing something. A bit like putting windows in office doors thinking that prevents grooming. There are so many other things the Church could/should do that would be more effective in reducing the risks to missionaries, but instead it makes some videos that will be watched once and forgotten.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')