I have never crossed the street to make a business deal. –Brigham Young
1.
In Utah, we’re all still Calvinists.
I base this claim on my experiences with “summer sales,” an annual ritual among the BYUs, wherein students, typically returned missionaries, are recruited to sell security systems during their summer break, under the strained promises of “Fast Money!!!” and “Financial Independence!!!” These companies are unique to BYU and Utah Mormonism in general; I am unaware of any similar enterprises so firmly entrenched among any other faiths, states, or college campuses. I myself installed systems for one of these companies my summer before grad school. The dishonest, unethical, and at times illegal tactics these companies engage in (all of which I shall catalogue shortly) all to push their questionable systems would appear to be antithetical to the professed doctrines of the Mormon religion—and indeed they are, yet these behaviors are not at all antithetical to the tenets of Calvinism, as detailed by Max Weber in 1905. And indeed, the early Mormon pioneers who settled the state of Utah were New England converts of Puritan, Calvinist origin. In this paper, I will detail my own experiences with summer sales, and strive to demonstrate through a close reading of Weber’s seminal book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalsim, how the practices of these companies, while nominally opposed to the professed doctrines of their LDS recruits, is consistent with the sublimated Calvinism that continues to lurk in the psyche of Utah Mormonism.
Security system companies have notoriously recruited among the BYUs specifically because they are full of returned Mormon missionaries with experience spending long, fruitless hours knocking doors. I’d first encountered these salesmen while myself a young LDS missionary in Puerto Rico—I remember being vaguely put off by these returned missionaries using the same skills by which they’d declared Christ to shill for shoddy security systems no Puerto Rican actually needed. I came to resent the false equivalency posited by these companies between missionary work and sales, as though the gospel was but a product, converts mere customers, and the Atonement of Christ a commodity. Simply put, I never considered myself a salesman, but a missionary, and didn’t feel the two professions had the slightest thing in common.
After the mission, at BYUI, my suspicion of these companies deepened—the large cars the more successful salesmen drove smacked of the conspicuous consumption of pimps and drug-dealers; their relentless recruiters and swarming billboards were loud and obnoxious; the recruiters’ promise that “there’s no limit to how much money you can make this summer, as long as you’re willing to work for it” were condescending and patronizing; and their use of Braveheart and 9/11 clips in recruiting videos was distasteful at best (I once attended a recruitment meeting for the free pizza; I hope I wasn’t the only one in the room who questioned whether a home security system would have really prevented the twin towers from collapsing). “The summer begins when Pinnacle leaves” became a byword in Rexburg. My gut feeling repelled at this entire industry.
But then after college, as I jogged through the backwoods of Washington in early ‘08, punishing my out-of-shape body on a 13-mile run, I reflected that I had lost the luxury of “gut feelings.” Where had my gut gotten me, anyways? I was a flat-broke college grad at the dawn of a recession, pathetically living with my Dad, working only as a substitute teacher, sleeping alone while my ex was engaged to be married. Exhausted, sweaty, and frustrated, I considered: Might I have been hasty in my initial judgments of these companies? Who was I to judge? Had I ever really given them a chance? How did I know these weren’t perfectly legitimate means of saving money for school? Was I not judging them prematurely, without experiencing them first-hand for myself? Did not such a prejudicial attitude violate not only academic training, but my very beliefs as a Latter-day Saint? And besides, if I truly desired to go to grad school, would it not in fact be more responsible to start saving now?
Mind you, I didn’t sincerely believe any of my own arguments; I was just hungry for a way out—“not an escape,” as Kafka once wrote, “but a way out...I purposefully do not say freedom…I made no other demand; even if the way out were a delusion; the demand was a small one, the delusion wouldn’t be any bigger” (Kafka 84). I didn’t expect freedom from these companies—I at least wasn’t that naive—but still I sought a way out, from my frustrations, from my stalled life, from my paralysis, nothing more. Hence, when a friend of a friend called me about opportunities installing security systems over the summer, in my moment of weakness, I was willing to listen.
Three months later, still in my moment of weakness, I was driving through the wastes of southern Wyoming, on my way to Denver, Colorado, for a first-hand experience with sublimated Calvinism and the Protestant spirit of capitalism.
2.
This spirit of capitalism is defined by Max Weber as “an ethos” wherein the “duty of the individual…[is] the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself” (Weber 51); in other words, capital is not accrued as a means to an end, but as an end unto itself, accrued for its own sake, with all other considerations subordinated to this one overriding imperative to gain. While Weber acknowledges that “Capitalism existed in China, India, Babylon, in the classic world, and in the Middle Ages,” and is different from “mere avarice” (which is present among all economic systems), still a “particular ethos was lacking” (Weber 52), one wherein gain is its own end. This ethos he terms the spirit of capitalism, which he claims is “overwhelmingly Protestant” in practice, since this ethos is much more present in Protestant nations such as England, Germany, Holland, and the United States, than in Catholic countries such as France, Spain, Italy, and Latin-America, which have long been suspicious of capitalism. This difference in ethos leads Weber to theorize that this spirit “is closely connected with certain religious ideas” (Weber 53) within Protestantism.
Weber theorizes that the spirit of capitalism is derived from John Calvin’s doctrine of pre-destination, wherein God has pre-ordained all mankind for either salvation or damnation, no matter what their works may or may have not have been in this life; John Calvin himself emphasized that “The elect differ externally in this life in no way from the damned…the membership of the external Church included the doomed” (Weber 104). But Weber notes that “Quite naturally this attitude was impossible for his followers…The question, Am I of the elect? Must sooner or later have arisen for every believer and have forced all other considerations into the background” (Weber 110). The Calvinist wants to know if he is elect, but can never know. By contrast, a Catholic is always sure of his own status before God; whenever he is absolved by his priest he knows he is once again in a state of grace, and was thereby “granted release from that tremendous tension to which the Calvinist was doomed…admitting no mitigation” (Weber 117) . The Calvinist has no such assurance, or even possibility of assurance. For his own peace of mind, the Calvinist must constantly prove to himself that he is one of the elect by acting as though he were one of the elect.
But just how do the elect act? The Calvinist determines that since God has predetermined the individual’s status in both this world and the next, then “the only way of living acceptably to God was…through the fulfillment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world. That was his calling” (Weber 81). Fulfilling one’s worldly duties thus became a strategy not for attaining election, but assuring one’s self of one’s elect status, for “however useless good works might be as a means of salvation…they are technical means, not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnation” (Weber 115). And if the duty imposed on one by an all-controlling, pre-determining God is to push security systems each summer, well then, the sales rep must push those systems at every opportunity, at every cost—any failure to do so only proves that one is not fulfilling their imposed calling, and is not of the elect. One can see this ethos in these company’s recruiting meetings and morning planning meetings, wherein sales reps are encouraged with film clips from sports biopics, war movies, and even their own LDS missions; the implicit message is that there was no difference between salesmen and world-champion athletes and war heroes. And really, in Calvinism, would there be any difference? For if God controls all things, and works are irrelevant, then really, fights for political independence really are no better than sales, and all that matters is merely if these imposed worldly obligations are fulfilled to the fullest. A hard-working salesman is thus made equivalent to a revolutionary or an Olympian, or even a missionary. One must work unceasingly in one’s occupation in Calvinism, for “Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace” (Weber 159), the one thing the Calvinist fears above all. The recruiter’s declaration that “There is no limit to how much money you can make this summer, as long as you’re willing to work for it,” is not just a promise, but a threat; for if you are not willing to put in the proffered hard work, then you must not be of the elect. Hard work therefore sanctifies whichever endeavor with which it is associated.
The Calvinist must accept the sales position (as opposed to, say, art or music), because, “if that God, whose hand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences of his life, shows one of His elect a chance of profit, he must do so with a purpose. Hence the faithful Christian must follow the call by taking advantage of every opportunity” (Weber 162). Similarly, if a starving young college student is offered this “amazing opportunity” to profit and gain through summer sales, then any failure to pursue that profit is disobedient to God’s will, and disobedience is a sign of damnation. Security sales is a chance to profit, and so the Calvinist must take advantage of this opportunity, and that with purpose. These companies brand themselves with names like “Apex,” “Pinnacle,” “Platinum,” “Elite,” and other such monikers that signify choice, or election—not for the customers, mind you, but for recruiting efforts. The implicit message of these company names is clear: only the elect can participate in this chance to profit. If you do not join our company, than you have revealed to yourself your own damnation; you are not of the elect.
3.
Although I was years that summer from hearing the name “Max Weber” in grad school (at the time, I hadn’t even an acceptance letter), I still saw Weber’s “Spirit of Capitalism” in full practice, and that among Mormons claiming no theological kinship with Calvinism whatsoever. By contrast, most the other technicians were not LDS, and treated installations for what it was—just another summer job. They weren’t interested in proving their election, merely in alleviating their student loans. The sales reps, however, were overwhelmingly LDS and returned missionaries, and approached sales as they did their missions, with something akin to religious fervor, wherein any other considerations—ethical, legal, or otherwise—were subjugated to this one overriding concern of fulfilling their mission at all costs. The Puritan owners of the Pequod in Moby-Dick, crying, “Don’t whale it too much a’Lord’s days, men; but don’t miss a fair chance either, that’s rejecting Heaven’s fair good gifts” (Melville 115) is as good an image as any for the sort of avariciousness present in Calvinists pressing every opportunity to profit, even at the expense of their most cherished commandments. For example, although the sales team was always diligent about getting sales licenses to sell in the municipalities that required them, they were not above knocking doors in communities where “soliciting” was legally prohibited.
Illegal activities were only the tip of the iceberg, however (for one can argue that just because something’s illegal doesn’t mean it’s wrong). The sales pitch itself was typically a mesh of half-truths and out-right lies, which included informing potential customers that there had been a rash of robberies on their street recently, when there simply hadn’t. A key part of the sales pitch was saying that the customer’s house was one of only four houses they were installing that day (in reality, a sales rep would be ecstatic to make four whole sales in one day, and would sell more than four if they could), and that they had chosen that customer’s specific house due to their strategic location, prime for advertising. “You get your system for free!” the sales rep would say smiling, “All we ask is that you put up our sign, reading ‘protected by [insert company name here]’ in your front yard, sign a contract, and pay the standard monthly fee…” That is, they got a free security system, and all they would have to do is get locked into a 5-year, $3,000 contract, that could not be escaped without incurring a $2,000 fee. Really, there was nothing free about this system. One sales rep sold 17 systems on one street; an irate first customer counted all 17 signs and confronted this same rep about his lies, who merely shrugged it off with, “Hey, I’m a salesman, what’d you expect?” For indeed, what could one expect? His first duty was not towards honesty, but the opportunity for profit God had granted him; to disregard such a chance was to disregard God and risk damnation. In telling rampant lies to make sales, he was but following the dictates of his conscience, and I don’t mean that facetiously.
If the reps made a sale, they then approached the neighboring house with the statistic (always unattributed) that a home without their “protected-by” sign was “40% more likely to be robbed when next to a house with a sign out front.” One might then hope the customer would respond with, “Well, then, why don’t I just buy a new sign, then, and save myself $3,000?” And in fact, trade magazines recommend that if a home-owner has a security system, to only put a generic “this home protected by a system” sign out front; for if a potential burglar can see what company installed the system, then the schematics are only a google-search away. But sadly, this counterpoint occurred to customers only rarely, and the sales rep certainly wouldn’t bring it up; the “give us free advertising so we can give you a free system” for three-grand over five years was too dear to the sales pitch to be sacrificed on the altar of honesty.
Compounding the dishonesty was the fact that the sales reps were often as disadvantaged as were the customers; for though the “free system” was part of the sales pitch, it was in the company’s self-interest to “give” away only as basic as system as possible. As such, each system component—whether it be a door or window sensor, a motion sensor, fire detector, even the key-remote—was assigned a “point,” and the system sold would only be free if worth 8 points. Any system sold with more than 8 points came directly out of the sales-rep’s commission. As such, it became in the rep’s best interest to sell as stripped down a system as possible. Consequently, though I had agreed to be an installer because I’d assumed I could thereby sidestep the dishonesty inherent in sales, I soon found myself having to cover the exaggerations and lies of the salesman concerning system capabilities. “If they ask,” they’d tell me, pulling me aside, “just tell them the one smoke detector can cover both stories of the entire house…and that the glass break can hear every window in the house…and that the motion sensor can see through walls…” Of course, all this equipment could do no such things; these were cheap sensors that worked by line-of-sight. One time a sweet old lady asked me point blank after the rep had left if the motion sensor could in fact see through walls. To my shame, I said, “yes,” and she believed me. I’ve never felt good about that. Every install after that, I vowed to be upfront with every customer, even if it cost the sale. I was typically likeable enough that even an irate customer would let me finish the install, for which I would always get paid. The customer would then cancel the contract within the federally-mandated three-day grace period (these companies would certainly never extend such a courtesy unless legally required), and get a full refund. The rep would then not get their commission, but neither the customer nor I felt particularly bad about that.
Now, these were not great systems to begin with; as a technician, I swiftly learned what shoddy equipment we were dealing with—the much-vaunted “wireless” nature of the door sensors, which the reps made part of their sales pitch, actually made the systems less reliable, not more; the motion sensors worked only haphazardly; and I’m not sure if the glass-break sensors worked at all. Now, there were newer units that came with a “cell-unit,” that called the call-center directly in case the phone lines were cut; but, a cell-unit was one “point,” and hence the rep preferred to sell a system tied into the phone lines, called a “line seizure.” Part of the line seizure involved me rewiring the phone lines in their demarcation box, which is always located in the backyard, and it never ceased to amaze me that not once did a customer ever wonder aloud, “Wait, couldn’t a burglar just cut the wires in my backyard and render my system useless?” This fact is common knowledge among buglars; a demarcation box can be opened with only a screwdriver. That is, you literally only need a screwdriver to disable any home-security system in America. And even if we did install a cell-unit, cell-jammers do exist; and moreover, the systems never call the police directly, but instead alert a call-center, which then calls back the house to verify that the system has been tripped, affording ample opportunity for a smash-and-grab thief to make a get-away. (And that’s assuming that the company hadn’t gone bankrupt in the meantime and shuttered its call center, as on occasion happens).
Since the sales-rep was under a near-religious imperative to sell to whoever they can, whenever they can, I often found myself installing for people who certainly didn’t need security systems at all. The denizens of a trailer-park, for example, own hardly enough possessions to be worth stealing, let alone the spare cash for the monthly bill, yet still we sold there. Even more disconcerting was when the sales rep sold to some poor elderly person barely living off social security, who did not even seem fully aware of what was going on. Once, an elderly woman told the rep that she’d have to discuss this decision with her son, who wouldn’t be in town till Tuesday; he in turn proffered, “Why don’t we just install it for now and you can decide whether or not you still want to keep it when he comes by,” full well knowing that Tuesday was beyond the three-day grace period. My co-worker Kyle was assigned that install. Noting her senile appearance, he showed her the system key-pad and asked which button he was pointing at. “Is that the 9?” she ventured. It was the # button. She was legally blind. “I can’t do this,” he said, and refused to perform the install.
The sales reps generally did not like Kyle. In contrast to the companie’s carefully cultivated clean-cut image, Kyle rode a Harley to work, smoked, drank, had a goatee and tattooed arms. If Calvinism were true, he would never be mistaken for the elect. The reps tried to claim that our office received so many cancellations, not because of the brazen lies pushed on discerning customers, but due to the “unprofessional appearance” of techs like Kyle; in reality, the customers loved him, found his amiable personality charming, and often offered to let him park his Harley in their drive-way. At the risk of sounding mawkish, Kyle was the epitome of the biker with a heart of gold, and he was one of my best friends that summer. He also once got the call to install for a woman who was completely deaf. Not knowing sign language, he communicated with her through written notes. He refused that install one on principle, too. Later, at a company dinner, he ordered a beer, and a sales rep in shock said, “You’re not actually going to drink that, are you?” This was the same sales-rep who had sold to the deaf woman. Kyle gaped in disbelief.
Kyle and the other technicians would get hammered drunk every Saturday night, and frankly I couldn’t blame them. They were not LDS, and so had no religious restriction against alcohol, nor an in-grained Calvinist zeal towards profit at all costs. I was sometimes tempted to join them; not because the piss-smell of beer attracted me, but because I, too, often wished to obliterate the past week of soul-crushing dishonesty from my exhausted mind.
I should’ve just quit—and I’m ashamed to say that the one time I tried to, it wasn’t the result of fraud on a customer, but only on myself. About mid-summer, all the technicians began to get mysterious deductions from our paychecks, nominally for “missing equipment.” Our weekly paychecks, now read $20.00, or even $0.00, which before had been comfortably several hundred dollars (higher than most the reps, I should add; very few reps break even in summer sales, fewer still actually get rich, despite recruiter promises to the contrary). We had no idea where this “missing equipment” could possibly be going, for all of us were very conscientious and organized. We had at least one technician who fastidiously kept all of his equipment in zip-lock bags, so that he always knew exactly how much he had, and even he had deductions on his paycheck. The first time this happened, the regional manager came down, apologized, performed an equipment inventory himself, overnighted us reimbursed paychecks, and bought us dinner. We were quickly placated. But then it happened again a second week. And again a third week. The fourth week, I felt that if I was going to sell my soul this summer, I’d hoped to get more for it than this.
Finally, in a rage, I through my paperwork to the pavement and shouted, “I quit!” I was about to march back to my apartment, pack, and speed off that very morning to Salt Lake City with my finger in the air. Someone stayed me with, “But if you go, you won’t get your back-end check!” That stopped me cold. For you see, these companies know our jobs are terrible, so to prevent massive turnover and ensure they squeeze every last dime of work out of us (as only a proper Calvinist can), they withhold a portion of each paycheck until the end of the summer, called a “backend check.” If you quit before summer’s end, you don’t receive your “back-end check.” The exorbitant nature of the back-end check is positively diabolical, and I mean that in every etymological sense—for the very question they were throwing out at us was, “Do you have any money? You can have anything in this world with money,” with the devastating corollary of, “Without money, you can have nothing.” As Nibley said, I needn’t remind anyone who first said that. And indeed, I needed cash at that moment more than ever; I’d recently been accepted into the University of Utah MA program, but still had hardly any money to pay for it. I was trapped in the devil’s employ. I grimaced at my poverty, grit my teeth, and continued the rest of the summer.
One Saturday night, a drunken co-worker said to me, “Man, if I didn’t know you, I’d think that all Mormons were crooks.” Though flattered at the compliment, I was distressed by what it signified—these sales reps, these BYU-educated, returned missionaries with bright smiles and sincere voices, weren’t just hurting customers, or me, or even themselves—no, they were hurting the reputation of my religion, they were undermining the Kingdom of God, and, as I would later realize, they were infecting my religion with the tenets of an apostate sect.
Of course, the reps didn’t see it that way at all; God had given them a chance to profit, and they had taken it, with purpose. Selling security systems was clearly God’s will, and the only manner through which they could adequately demonstrate to themselves that they were of the elect of God.
4.
According to Nibley, this perspective is nothing new in the LDS Church. In his book Approaching Zion, he catalogues how in May 1831, the Church hardly a year old, Joseph Smith rebuked the membership for “the spirit of speculation in lands and property of all kinds” in Mormon settlements in Missouri, saying, “it seemed as though all the powers of earth and hell were combining” (Nibley 345). As late as 1877, 20 years into the settlement of Utah, Brigham Young condemned those “Elders in the Church who would take the widow’s last cow, for five dollars, and then kneel down and thank God for the fine bargain they made” (Nibley 334). Even today, Utah notoriously swarms with pyramid and ponzi schemes (as evinced most recently in Utah radio-host Rick “The Free Capitalist” Koeber’s arrest in 2009); billboards clutter the I-15, distracting the view of the Wasatch front; federally-protected lands are sold to the highest bidder; and euphemistic “Right-to-Work” laws suppress Unions and depress wages. The security system companies that currently clog the Orem/Provo exits, and that even sponsor the banners reading “Integrity” and “Honor” at BYU’s football stadium, are all symptoms of a larger problem.
For ostensibly, this spirit of capitalism and its profit-at-all-costs ethos stand in direct conflict with LDS Church’s own scriptural canon; both the New Testament and The Book of Mormon champion a society where “they had all things common, and there was neither rich nor poor among them” (Acts 2:48, 4 Nephi 1:3). The Book of Mormon itself is full of declarations such “ye are cursed because of your riches…because ye have set your hearts upon them” (Helaman 13:21). The Book of Mormon speaks against those who claim the poor are so because they deserve to be, “say[ing] The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand [in alms giving]… for his punishments are just” (Mosiah 4:17-18), a thoroughly Protestant notion, for according to Weber’s Calvinist, “Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace” (Weber 159), and therefore those who fail to work are unworthy of alms. But such are denounced categorically by the Book of Mormon as sinners, “and except he repenteth…he perisheth forever” (Mosiah 4:8). He who claims the rich are so because they deserve to be, claiming that “every man prospered according to his genius; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength” (Alma 30:17), is not celebrated as the elect of God as a good Calvinist would do, for following through all of Heaven’s good gifts, but is instead labeled AntiChrist, struck dumb by God and trampled to death.
The worst thing that happened to Book of Mormon society was that after they achieved perfect economic equality, “they began to be divided into classes…to get gain” (4 Nephi 1:26), presaging their final destruction. Economic stratification, which in the Calvinist paradigm is the natural result of sifting the hard-working elect from the slothful damned, is in the Book of Mormon tantamount to apostasy. In the Doctrine and Covenants, God himself declares “it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:20), “what is property unto me?” (D&C 117:4), and “If ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things” (D&C 78:6). Economic equality, not endless profiteering, is the prevailing theme in LDS doctrine.
There is no LDS-equivalent to John Wesley, preaching that “We must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and to save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich” (Weber 175). Rather, Brigham Young declares “work less, wear less, eat less, and we shall be a great deal wiser, healthier, and wealthier people” (Widstoe 157), explicitly eliminating “hard work for its own sake” as an inherent value; Spencer W. Kimball in 1976 railed against those Church members who “have been surfeited with…wealth and have begun to worship them as false gods” (Kimball 3); the otherwise deeply conservative Ezra Taft Benson in 1988 condemned the sin of pride as “self-interest” and “essentially competitive in nature” (Benson 4), self-interest and competition being the twin pillars of capitalist economy; in 2009, “To Help the Poor” became officially codified as one of the chief missions of the LDS Church. One cannot find taught from the LDS pulpit a gospel of prosperity wherein wealth is a sign of God’s favor, as was taught explicitly by Wesley, by the Calvinists, and even some contemporary evangelical sects. Yet nonetheless, these companies vying for profit at all costs co-exist peacefully in Utah Mormon discourse.
I’m careful to say Utah Mormon, because this same Protestant commitment to the Spirit of Capitalism appears largely absent among other Mormon groups. Latino Mormons, for example, have as of late freely broken with the dominant Utah-conservative stances against immigration, demonstrating their allegiance to Latin-American values as opposed to Anglo-conservative ones. Likewise, F. LaMond Tullis details how Latin-American Mormons see “Capitalism and free enterprise…[as] not of God…if not of the Devil,” how to them “the Anglo-American Mormon’s frequent ‘religious’ commitment to capitalism…makes no sense at all,” for whom the pro-capitalism of the “flag-waving, let’s-all-get-back-to-the-principles-upon-which-this-nation-was-founded Anglo-American Mormon does indeed present a curious, if not incomprehensible, picture” (LaMond 84-85) . But then, Latin-America is predominantly Catholic, not Protestant, and therefore Latin-American converts would bring with them no prior commitment to the Protestant ethic’s spirit of capitalism.
Similar to Catholic-Latino converts, Utah Mormons carry with them the same theological proclivities as their Protestant forbearers; for, although Mormonism claims no theological kinship with Protestantism (nor Protestantism with them), its earliest converts did.
5.
Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith, in his personal history, indicates that before his First Vision, “my mind became somewhat partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to be united with them” (JS-H 1:8). Brigham Young was likewise a New England Methodist of Calvinist Puritan decent, as were most of Mormonism’s first converts. In fact, the one region of America where Mormonism failed to garner initial converts was in decidedly non-Puritan Missouri, part of the south, where, says Weber, “capitalism remained far less developed” than in “the New England colonies…founded by preachers” (Weber 55).
Weber scholar and LDS sociologist Lowell Bennion notes that “the adherents to Mormonism, [came] chiefly from the United States of America, Canada, England, and the Protestant countries of Europe” (Bennion 128), indicating that the very Protestants that Weber identified as giving rise to the spirit of capitalism likewise formed the entire initial membership of the early Mormon Church. Calvinist Protestantism, far from disappearing from this brand-new Mormon religion, instead continues to inform the readings of its first converts’ children. John Calvin has not been displaced, but sublimated; he has not been exorcized, but still haunts our reading of our own scripture.
Jacque Derrida stresses that every reading is inherently a selective reading, and our secret Calvinism is no exception; inconvenient scriptures are excluded while others are championed out of context. Weber does not stress this selectivity, but he does note in passing that Calvinists were not content to merely exclude inconvenient Biblical passages, but latched onto certain other passages as justifying their course, writing, “The parable of the servant who was rejected because he did not increase the talent which was entrusted to him” (Weber 163) and “emphasis was placed those parts of the Old Testament which praise formal legality as a sign of conduct pleasing God” (Weber 165), all of which indicate that a specific Calvinist reading was applied to those scriptures left un-excluded.
Bennion, however, does in fact stress how readings of select scriptures have influenced the development of what he calls “a Mormon ethic” (which I argue is the Protestant ethic in disguise). Right in his own doctoral thesis, Bennion singles out three LDS scriptures for analysis:
And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. (D&C 130:18-21)
Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known. (D&C 60:13)
Cease to be idle; cease to be unclean; cease to find fault one with another; cease to sleep longer than is needful. (D&C 88:124)
Of these scriptures, with their emphasis on avoiding idleness and calls to diligence, Bennion comments only briefly, “The Mormons have been exhorted to industry from the very beginning” (Bennion 131). The Mormons have certainly always been industrious, but it is not clear that these scriptures have informed any new work ethic unique from their Protestant predecessors. In fact, the above cited are precisely the sort of scriptures that a Calvinist convert might first latch onto when attempting to reconcile his new beliefs with his old ones. I will attempt to demonstrate, therefore, just the sort of selective reading of other-wise anti-capitalist LDS doctrine that a Protestant businessman might prefer to perform.
6.
I will begin, then, where John Calvin himself began, with Grace. As stated previously, for Calvin, man is saved by the election of grace alone, and it is impossible to ever know the state of one’s election; the Protestant ethic, according to Weber, originates from this need to know which “admit[ed] no mitigation” (Weber 117). The Calvinist therefore attempts to act as though he were one of the elect “through the fulfillment of the obligations imposed upon the individual by his position in the world” (Weber 81), a position determined by a determinist God. Constant work therefore becomes “a means of salvation… not of purchasing salvation, but of getting rid of the fear of damnation” (Weber 115). Hence, droves of students rush to the ranks of summer sales, to prove to themselves their own work ethic, and thus convince themselves of their own election.
However, in the Doctrine and Covenants, not only can one know the state of one’s election, but one must know: “The more sure word of prophecy [allusion to 2 Peter 1:19] means a man’s knowing that he is sealed up into eternal life, by revelation and the spirit of prophecy, through the power of the Holy Priesthood. It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance” (D&C 131:5-6). The Calvinist anxiety has here been vocalized; as historian Richard Bushman comments on this revelation, “Calvinist theologians had argued over the question of certain knowledge for centuries. Was it possible to end doubt about one’s standing with the Lord?” (Bushman 497). But now, one can and must know, for salvation is impossible without this knowledge. And unlike John Calvin’s unknowable grace, here not only is knowledge of one’s election possible, but it comes through “revelation and the spirit of prophecy.” That is, one does not convince one’s self by acting as if one were of the elect, but one will know through a personal revelation from God directly.
One might hope that now the Calvinist spirit might finally be exorcised; one’s status of election can finally be known, the horrid isolation is at last broken, the life-long tension of never knowing is at last released. The Calvinist’s monastic, austere adherence to a perfect existence, with even only one mistake shattering one’s belief in one’s election, is at last eliminated. One needs not punish one’s self with relentless door-to-door sales in the hot blistering sun to assure one’s self of one’s election.
But the Calvinist spirit is not so easily routed. For in LDS doctrine, while grace is still privileged over works, works are still requisite. As the Book of Mormon reads: “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23). In the Book of Mormon’s paradigm, although “everything they do falls infinitely short of divine standards” (Weber 115) as in Calvinism, the promise is that as long as one labors in all good works within one’s power, then no matter how far one inevitably falls short, then grace will make up the rest. Works still do not bring salvation, but nor do they merely “rid of the fear of damnation;” instead, works qualify one to receive divine grace.
Far from being exorcised, the Calvinist’s tension is now only worsened by the fact that the Calvinist now knows, not merely hopes, that his works matter in ensuring salvation. Indeed, the Calvinist must now wonder not just if, but when they have finally performed the requisite amount of works to qualify for election. Rather than seek this knowledge by “revelation and the spirit of prophecy,” the Calvinist falls back onto old habits; he instinctively decides he must still labor unfailingly at his calling, namely, to follow every opportunity to profit, to qualify for grace. Grace is acquired through “All we can do,” and if a Calvinist has not follow every chance to profit presented by God, then he has not actually done all he could do. Hence, if you have not done all you could in your calling, if you haven’t sold to that half-blind, to the deaf and the elderly and the poor—that is, if you have not squeezed every dime of work out of both sales rep and technician alike, and taken every opportunity, legal or otherwise, to withhold as much as their paycheck as humanly possible, then you have yet to qualify for the grace of God. Gain for its own sake once again ensures grace, and the Protestant ethic remains in full effect.
Now that the Calvinist has reaffirmed his initial trajectory, he now carefully picks and chooses other LDS scriptures to collect around this reading, such as, “He that is slothful shall not be counted worthy to stand, and he that learns not his duty and shows himself not approved shall not be counted worthy to stand” (D&C 107:100), and remembers that his duty is to gain all that he can. Those slothful in seeking gain shall not be counted worthy to stand, and so the cash-strapped college student enlists in Summer sales. Now, the duty that God says must be learned is to “keep my commandments” (D&C 11:20), which are to “seek not for riches but for wisdom ” (D&C 6:7), “covet not thine own property ” (D&C 19:26), “preach my gospel” (D&C 49:11), “lay aside the things of this world, and seek for the things of a better ” (D&C 25:10), and “impart of your substance to the poor” (D&C 42:31), but then the Calvinist, like the capitalist, is not an analytical reader; one’s duty must be fulfilled, and if one’s duty is to sell systems, then he must fulfill that duty to the fullest.
Moreover, in Mormonism, it is a scriptural command and a doctrinal duty to “pay all your debts…release yourself from bondage” (D&C 104:78); college is expensive, many go into debt to pay for it, and summer sales are offered as the most immediate manner by which to “pay all debts.” The Summer Sales billboard promising “Financial Freedom!!!” again becomes not just a promise, but a divine command. For the Calvinist it’s a very simple equation: the elect keep the commandments, the commandment is to pay off their debts, and therefore any profit that pays off debt is righteousness.
Also, the Book of Mormon’s declaration that, “Ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul” (2 Nephi 32:9) becomes for the Calvinist not just a call to consecrate all one’s labors unto God by prayer, but rather an assurance that any business endeavor, if prayed over, will de facto be sanctified and blessed by Heaven—and by implication, any increase in sales, in business growth, in profit margins, no matter how shady, no matter how dishonest the means, is a clear sign of God’s approbation and answer to said prayers. This interpretation is seconded by “Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks” (Alma 34:20), now no longer merely a call for divine protection, but rather an assurance that God will grant opportunities to increase your business endeavors. God will put you into the path of those sales by which you need to “pay off your debts” and become gain and increase, “for I know the Lord giveth no commandments…save he shall prepare a way for them to accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7). Cry unto God for the sales you need to acquire financial freedom, and when the poor, blind, and widowed open the door to you, then clearly God has prepared and opened the way for you to keep his commandments, and it behooves you to follow such divine opportunities to the fullest.
Another nefarious element of Summer sales is the pyramid structure of their recruiting efforts—recruiters are so ferocious in part because for every new recruit they gain, they receive a part of that underling’s sales. The more recruits you gain, the more levels you move up, and onward into eternity. Replace “levels” with “estates,” and I’ve often wondered what a multi-level marketer makes of the following from the Pearl of Great Price:
And they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; and they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom with those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever. (Abraham 3:26)
One level is added onto another, all adding up together to an ever-increasing gain, forever and ever; that is, the pyramid scheme follows the very order of heaven. Never mind that it is “intelligences,” not profits, that are to be increased, and forget the commandments to seek not for wealth but wisdom, and to help the poor; according to this scripture, the model of ever increasing gain has clearly been laid out since before the foundations of the world, and the Calvinist will conform to this holy order with all his heart, might, mind, and strength.
In this manner does the Calvinist in Utah reconstructs LDS doctrine in his own image, just as he did the Bible in northern Europe and New England. The key difference in Utah Mormonism is that the Calvinist no longer engages in capitalist gain as though he were one of the elect, as Weber observes, but rather the Calvinist now proceeds with the assurance that each new system he sells, each new sale he pushes on the poor, elderly, the widowed, the orphaned, in violation of every other doctrinal command we hold dear, ensures his own election. These Summer Sales companies are staffed by Mormons only nominally; they are filled with Calvinists who do not know they are Calvinists. We have yet to abandon the traditions of the fathers. Far from pushing forward a new religion and forging a new ethic, we are still under the full sway of a dead one. The swarming pyramid schemes, the Ponzi scams, the recruitment billboards cluttering the I-15 all the way up to the Apex banners hanging from Lavell Edwards stadium, all join together to testify: In Utah, we’re all still Calvinists.
7.
I must end on a more uplifting note: early in August of that wretched summer, I got a call from my Dad; my grandparents, both in their 90s, had passed away earlier that year, and their estate was at last being executed. They both had healthy government pensions from their respective jobs, but no one had ever accused them of being rich. Far from pursuing every opportunity to profit, these children of the Great Depression had lived simply and happily, saving what they had and feeling no particular interest to invest, spend, or increase it. Yet in spite of their prudence, every year for as long as I could remember, I’d gotten $20 from them in a card each birthday—and again at Christmas, as did each of their other 30-odd grandchildren, as they so thriftlessly, so un-Protestantly, just giving it away. Naturally we’d speculated from time to time how much money they really had. That August afternoon, I finally learned: they had savings in excess of a quarter-million dollars—and I would be inheriting a cut of that. Not a large cut, mind you, but plenty enough to get me started in grad school—and more than my company had falsely promised I’d make that summer. I’ve often reflected that if I had quit in July like I should’ve, all things still would have worked together for my good, the Lord would have cared for me, and I would still have had my conscience and my self-respect.
As I drove from that install, the sun was setting behind the Rocky Mountains, shining on the flowing fields of grain, and I felt, well, part of it again—part of the movement of the heavens, the passing of the seasons, the great festival of life, I was part of the great cosmic order once more. When I’d been jogging alone in Washington 6 months earlier, I’d felt cast-off, forsaken, forgotten—in other words, I’d felt un-elect, which in retrospect was a very Calvinist way of thinking, of which I needed to repent. “Behold the fowls of the air,” Christ had said, “for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they…And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith” (Matt. 6:26-30). The promise was “all things shall work together for your good” (D&C 90:24), and they had. I felt chastened, humbled—and a keen sense of awe and gratitude. I’d driven to Denver seeking not freedom, but merely a way out; I’d found something better—reconciliation, with God Almighty, with the world, with myself.
I quit shortly thereafter, burned my work-shirts under a full-moon with Kyle, loaded my car and sped off to Salt Lake City to start grad school at the University of Utah. As I left Denver, a weight lifted off my shoulders. Instead of retracing my path through the wastes of southern Wyoming, I now drove through much more scenic southern Colorado, glorying in the beauty of nature. First day of class, I donned a faux-Marxist shirt from Prague, my best pair of torn jeans, and shoulder bag, and marched out the door. On the way over, a clean-cut young man in a finely-pressed shirt and tie smiled and waved at me like an old friend; I waved back, wondering if I knew him from my mission or something. When we met up, he stopped, looked me square in the eye with a gentle smile, and asked sincerely, simply, compassionately, “Are you interested in new ways of making money?” I looked him square back and said, “No, no I am not,” and kept walking.
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