An RM's Take on the Book of Mormon Musical

My dad, brother, and I were in Chicago about three years ago as a last hurrah before I left on my mission to South Africa. We went to see 311 on their summer tour (since they weren’t going to make it to Utah before I left), but the Book of Mormon musical happened to be in town at the same time. We ended up buying tickets and laughing ourselves silly. It was the bits and pieces of Mormon culture the South Park guys got right that did it for me. We were on the other side of the country, yet the mural of Salt Lake City in the opening scenes had Crown Burger and Zions Bank painted into it. Elder Price dreamt he was in hell, and his idea of hell included dancing cups of Starbucks coffee. Brilliant!

I remember my dad saying it was the aspects of missionary life they got right that did it for him. I thought he was referring to the one-piece garments the elders wore to bed, but after seeing the show again in London as a returned missionary, I think he was actually getting at something deeper. The South Park guys didn’t just check off a bucket list of cultural particularities, they nailed attitudes, emotions, and desires that will resonate with members, returned missionaries, and non-members alike. They covered faith, doubt, and the human experience, and Elder Price offered some wisdom that could really help expand the tent of Mormonism.

Returned missionaries should be able to identify with Elder Price because all of us were Elder Prices at some point on our missions. Some were Elder Prices for longer than others, but none of us were completely immune to the “You and Me (But Mostly Me)” attitude. Parts of us secretly hoped we would personally “do something incredible that [blew] God’s freakin’ mind.” Part of the whole experience, though, was figuring out if we were there for ourselves or for the people we were serving and finding balance between the two.

In the beginning, Elder Price was there for himself. “I’ve always had the hope that on the day I go to heaven,” he sang, “Heavenly Father will shake my hand and say, ‘You’ve done an awesome job, Kevin!’” He saw his mission as a means of earning his celestial reward. It was evident that he didn’t care for his companion or the Ugandans as much as he cared about his own salvation when he knocked on his first door. He asked the woman if she felt there was something missing in her life, and she simply motioned to her run-down shack without saying a word. Rather than offering her something useful, Elder Price followed the “approved dialogue” and was shocked that she and the rest of the villagers were so unresponsive to his message. If he had listened to her, he would have learned that Christian missionaries had visited her village before but had failed to do anything meaningful about their AIDS, poverty, or warlord. I’m not sure there was anything Elder Price could have done, but he could have at least been more empathetic.

The more people I meet and interact with, the more I’m convinced that everyone in the world, regardless of their background, gender, race, or orientation, is searching for the same thing: happiness. We may define it differently, but we all want it. Elder Price understood happiness to be his reward in heaven. His companion, Elder Cunningham, understood it to be friendship and acceptance. The one person that listened to them, Nobalungi, understood it to be an escape from her dreadful village. In one of the most sincere, heartfelt songs in the musical, she sang about a paradise called Sal Tlay Ka Siti (Salt Lake City) and how wonderful it must be:

I can’t imagine what it must be like, 
This perfect, happy place.
I’ll bet the goat meat there is plentiful, 
And they have vitamin injections by the case.
The warlords there are friendly—
They help you cross the street.
And there’s a Red Cross on every corner,
With all the flour you can eat.
Sal Tlay Ka Siti, 
The most perfect place on earth.
Where flies don’t bite your eyeballs,
And human life has worth.
It isn’t a place of fairy tales—
It’s as real as it can be.
A land where evil doesn’t exist.
Sal Tlay Ka Siti.

She felt that if she could only make it to Sal Tlay Ka Siti, she’d find her paradise, similar to Elder Price’s hope that redeeming Uganda would would lead him to his. It’s something we all want, but something we’re not entirely sure how to find.

Toward the end, things were not going as Elder Price had planned. He hadn’t done “something incredible.” The Church wasn't growing in Uganda. He wasn’t serving in his “favorite place, Orlando.” All of this led him to question the faith he grew up with. Things were rough for the villagers, too—especially Nobalungi. When Elder Price left him alone, Elder Cunningham found that more people listened to him when he bent the truth about Mormonism. The villagers ended up learning and adhering to a bastardized version of the faith. When they presented it in musical form to the mission president, he was quick to tell them they were far, far from being Latter-day Saints. This was disheartening. Almost everyone hit rock bottom, but Elder Price learned something important:

We are still Latter-day Saints—all of us.
Even if we change some things,
Or we break the rules,
Or we have complete doubt that God exists.
We can still all work together and make this our paradise planet.

He learned that inclusion trumps exclusion and that helping others to be genuinely happy is often more important than sticking to dogma. That’s something we often forget.

Members who are comfortable with f-bombs and irreverence will appreciate the Book of Mormon. Returned missionaries will relive the excitement of opening their mission calls. They’ll resonate with how demotivating it can be to get called somewhere they don’t want to go or to show up to an area and see straight zeroes as the key indicators. They won’t be surprised to learn that Elder Cunningham never actually read the Book of Mormon before serving his mission, and they will most certainly recognize the assistants to the mission president. Members will appreciate how much attention the South Park guys paid to detail—from using real copies of the Book of Mormon to nailing the year the Priesthood was extended to all worthy male members to referencing Kolob. The only doctrinal inaccuracy I noticed was the timing of Christ’s visit to the Nephites, but that was a minor detail. Everything else was spot-on, and the overarching message was positive:

I am a Latter-day Saint,
Along with all my town.
We always sit together, 
Come what may.
We love to dance and shout,
And let all the feelings out,
And work to make a better Latter-day.

We'll be here for each other every step of the way,
And make a Latter-day tomorrow.

I like to think it’s healthy to laugh at yourself every once in a while, and I think that includes laughing at the things you believe in and hold most dear. Life should be taken seriously, but not so seriously that you miss out on something as beautifully hilarious, touching, and insightful as the Book of Mormon. I may be wrong and I may be destined for the Telestial Kingdom for going to such a crass musical, but if I am, feel free to have dinner with me.

Christ dined with sinners, after all.