Mormons are one of the most active proselytizing of religions. From the beginning, the Mormon message has been aimed at other Christians rather than non-Christians. The same is true for most of the apologetics. Mormons seem content to leave general Christian apologetics to other Christians. Consequently, Mormon apologists are generally poorly equipped to handle challenges coming from a secular, agnostic, atheist, or non-Christian religious perspective. The missionary discussions also suffer from this weakness, being presented with the assumption that potential investigators already accept Christ and the Bible.
The first missionary discussions I became familiar with in the early 80s were commonly referred to as the rainbow discussions. It is difficult to find much information online about the specifics of past missionary approaches so most of this information is from my own memory of my experiences, although this article from Sunstone Magazine is helpful. The rainbow discussion where so named because the printed discussions were kept in a binder with each discussion on paper of its own pastel color. These discussions contained extensive text that was expected to be memorized and delivered word-for-word.
In 1981 when I was in high school, one of my friends listened to the first few missionary discussions with me sitting in. These were from the rainbow discussions. I remember that the first few discussions introduced Joseph Smith right away and told the story of the First Vision, Moroni's visit, and the Book of Mormon. Material about Jesus was sprinkled in here and there and mostly focused on the unique aspects of Mormon theology where it differs from mainstream Christian beliefs. Missionaries reasoned from the Bible, the assumption being that the investigator already accepted the Bible. The focus was on trying to convince the investigator that the unique aspects of Mormon belief are at least in harmony with the Bible, even if they cannot all be completely derived from the Bible.
What happened when the missionaries encountered someone who did not already believe in the Bible? Missionaries were poorly equipped to handle this case. In contrast, some of the Catholic apologetic books I have read spend much of their effort on arguments for the existence of God, at least arguing that belief in God is reasonable. Regardless of whether these arguments would convince a skeptic, it is significant that at least the attempt is made, which is hardly ever the case in the Mormon missionary approach and Mormon apologetics.
The missionary discussions changed sometime before I served a mission from 1983-85. The discussions I learned did not contain nearly so much material to memorize, and we were more free to put some of it into our own words. The order also changed. The first discussion introduced the Mormon take on Jesus and the second introduced the Mormon plan of salvation. The Joseph Smith story was not introduced until the third discussion. This change was primarily made to answer the criticism that Mormons are not Christian rather than to introduce Christ to non-Christians. Whether Mormons should be classified under the Christian umbrella is the subject for another post. The main point here is that the Mormon approach was still generally inadequate and ineffective among non-Christians.
I served a mission in North Carolina where the majority of people we met were Bible believers. The new approach actually worked rather well, as long as we used our own modified version of the first discussion that was unique to our mission. The version we learned in the MTC was way too basic so we adapted it for our primary audience. Postponing a discussion of Joseph Smith gave the impression that we could have been just another Christian church. Then, once we had their trust, we would spring the Joseph Smith story on them, hoping that we had dispelled some of their previous prejudice against Mormons with the first two discussions. Still, the approach fell flat with the occasional Jew, Muslim, or secularist we happened to encounter. If we knew a household was not Christian, we would generally avoid it. We had nothing to even get a conversation started.
The first anti-Mormon literature I encountered around this time was The God Makers by Ed Decker. Ed Decker left the Mormon church to become an Evangelical Christian. We were advised not to read books like this, but I bought the book and read most of it on my mission anyway. While I found some of its contents disturbing as a sincere believer in Mormonism, it did not really effect my belief. Its sensational, dark tone did not resemble my experience with the Mormon church. I threw away the book before I finished it. When I returned from my mission, my institute director (teacher of off-campus college-level Mormon religion classes) gave me a book called, The Truth About the God Makers by Gilbert W. Scharffs, which is a refutation of Ed Decker's book. I found Scharffs answers quite satisfactory at the time.
Another book I read on my mission and then re-read when I got home was The Day of Defense, by A. Melvin McDonald. This book presents a mock trial where ministers of various Christian denominations accuse the Mormon missionaries of teaching false doctrines. The judge is a Jewish Rabi. The combatants make a series of arguments from the Bible with the missionaries getting the better of the ministers. The judge rules in favor of the missionaries who defend themselves convincingly while the prosecution cannot even agree among themselves. McDonald drew some of the material for this book from actual live debates in which he participated.
These two examples of '80s apologetic literature illustrate a Biblical-based approach to apologetics. Just as in the missionary discussions, the focus is on demonstrating that Mormon beliefs are in harmony with the Bible. These are defenses aimed at other Christians who accept the Bible. One of the major flaws of this approach is that it uses a technique called proof-texting, where passages are taken out of context possibly obscuring the original intent of the author. However, the main weakness is that this approach has no meaning at all to someone who approaches the Bible from a historical-critical point of view recognizing that each author has his own agenda and that the various Biblical authors do not speak with a uniform voice.
Recently, the Mormon church has begun to lose a significant number of members, not to other churches, but to a rational, skeptical, scientific world view. Church apologetics are struggling to catch up with this trend. A book that was influential for me and for many other skeptical-minded former Mormons is Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. Sagan debunks many paranormal and supernatural claims including UFOs, alien abductions, psychics, and religion. The apologetic arm of the church is aware of this trend as evidenced by this review of Sagan's book on the Maxwell Institute website, published in 2005 by Allen R. Buskirk.
Given that the Buskirk review was not published until 10 years after Demon Haunted World, it is clear that the church did not view it as a threat at the time. It was only after increasing numbers of disaffected Mormons mentioned the book that the Maxwell Institute decided that they better do some damage control. The gist of the review is that Buskirk agrees with Sagan regarding pseudoscience, but does not agree that the same critical thinking can be applied to religion. Buskirk is missing the whole point of the book. It is less about the specific cases than about critical, skeptical thinking in general. Sagan is trying to give people tools to think for themselves and recognize that confirmation bias, misunderstanding of probability, and the human propensity to find patterns in randomness often lead us to believe things that are not true.
The church is probably fighting a losing battle against rational skeptics, but they could probably do better among religious non-Christians. When a new area is opened for missionary work, other denominations typically outperform Mormons in gaining converts to Christianity among non-Christians. This blog post by a believing Mormon recognizes this need and provides some suggestions. The problem is that grass roots efforts are very difficult in Mormonism because information typically flows only one direction: from the top down.
