He converted because of his wife and other social connections, which is how conversions are made.
www.glennbeckmormon.com/ gives his side of the story (and you can buy a DVD there, all procedes to the Mormon Church.)
Exmormon.org gives the other side of the story.
Quote:
Every religious organization is populated by sincere people who have important social needs met by the organization, and who confuse the strong feelings that come from that experience with a divine encounter that justifies belief that their organization has "the truth". So, you find one of those people who perceives the institution to be particularly important for him ("Without Mormonism, I would be a drunk with no family and no job", says Beck), get him to tell his story using the usual, formulaic salvation narrative - "Things were going really bad in my life; then I fell into a crisis of some kind; then I found [insert name of religion]; then I had a powerful emotion experience [insert tears]; then some really great things started to happen in my life that are a sign from God; and now things are wonderful for me and my family", and you have poster boy that is highly useful for marketing purposes. The more high profile the individual, the better this works.
A large part of LDS inspiration these days comes from a marketing firm named Edelman on Madison Avenue in NYC. Seriously. The Mormons are trying to catch up with the Evangelicals who for years have been using relatively sophisticated marketing tools, and largely as a result far outperform the Mormons in terms of conversions. Richard Bushman explained, in part, how this works to a crowd of well heeled Mormons at a dinner in Calgary recently. He did not name Edelman, but laid out the LDS marketing strategy in some detail. I know from other sources that this information is provided to LDS leaders, at high cost using tithing money of course, by Edelman. A Mormon who was at the Busman meeting summarized it for me. With typically naïve Mormon hubris, he was thrilled that his church was getting more sophisticated in terms of marketing and communications. That is prophetic inspiration for you. Call the gurus on Madison Avenue when you need to find out what to do. God must be leading each and every major business in North America, because they all use this strategy too. My acquaintance somehow missed this irony.
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09-06-2010, 12:14 PM
