I'm personally not at all surprised that the success rates are so low. If the evangelists had actually internalized the idea that they're doing it to save people from hell, they'd take it much more seriously. Instead, it's generally framed as a matter of duty to the religious community, or a sign of personal virtue for making the effort at all. It doesn't need to have a significant success rate to sustain itself, although I imagine that if it were inefficient enough that most door to door evangelists had never heard of a successful conversion, they might reevaluate their methods.
If you really wanted to convert others though, not merely to do the most that was comfortable, or convince yourself you had made an honest effort, I think that the mainstream Mormon approach would not be the most effective method. Or rather, it doesn't take the approach far enough. Maybe I'm merely projecting an atypical attitude, but I think it would be far more effective to dedicate your life to moral causes. Give away everything you own, work your hands to the bone to give away more, try to set a standard that would make Ghandi look undercommitted. The number of people who will be impressed and interested in the beliefs of a mere upstanding community member is nothing compared to that which would be interested in a moral paragon.
Of course, one might argue that people will be driven off if they suspect that the religious beliefs demand too much of them, but while religious believers tend to claim status from the efforts of the most exemplary members of their faith, they rarely try to meet their standards. Also, I'm highly skeptical of any argument that states that the most effective approach conveniently intersects with what is most comfortable.
Of course, in this context, it's easy to see how putting one's beliefs into their proper perspective and fully internalizing them can be a tremendous disadvantage. It's no wonder if most people interpret their religions to only demand as much of them as is convenient.
Related to Your Rationality is My Business
Among religious believers in the developed world, there is something of a hierarchy in terms of social tolerability. Near the top are the liberal, nonjudgmental, frequently nondenominational believers, of whom it is highly unpopular to express disapproval. At the bottom you find people who picket funerals or bomb abortion clinics, the sort with whom even most vocally devout individuals are quick to deny association.
Slightly above these, but still very close to the bottom of the heap, are proselytizers and door to door evangelists. They may not be hateful about their beliefs, indeed many find that their local Jehovah’s Witnesses are exceptionally nice people, but they’re simply so annoying. How can they go around pressing their beliefs on others and judging people that way?
I have never known another person to criticize evangelists for not trying hard enough to change others’ beliefs.
And yet, when you think about it, these people are dealing with beliefs of tremendous scale. If the importance of saving a single human life is worth so much more than our petty discomforts with defying social convention or our own cognitive biases, how much greater must be the weight of saving an immortal soul from an eternity of hell? Shouldn’t they be doing everything in their power to change the minds of others, if that’s what it takes to save them? Surely if there is a fault in their actions, it’s that they’re doing too little given the weight their beliefs should impose on them.
But even if you believe you believe this is a matter of eternity, of unimaginable degrees of utility, if you haven’t internalized that belief, then it sure is annoying to be pestered about the state of your immortal soul.
This is by no means exclusive to religion. Proselytizing vegans, for instance, occupy a similar position on the scale of socially acceptable dietary positions. You might believe that nonhuman animals possess significant moral worth, and by raising them in oppressive conditions only to slaughter them en masse, humans are committing an enormous moral atrocity, but may heaven forgive you if you try to convince other people of this so that they can do their part in reversing the situation. Far more common are vegans who are adamantly non-condemnatory. They may abstain from using any sort of animal products on strictly moral grounds, but, they will defensively assert, they’re not going to criticize anyone else for doing otherwise. Individuals like this are an object example that the disapproval of evangelism does not simply come down to distaste for the principles being preached.
So why the taboo on trying to change others’ beliefs? Well, as a human universal, it’s hard to change our minds. Having our beliefs confronted tends to make us anxious. It might feel nice to see someone strike a blow against the hated enemy, but it’s safer and more comfortable to not have a war waged on your doorstep. And so, probably out of a shared desire not to have our own beliefs confronted, we’ve developed a set of social norms where individuals have an expectation of being entitled to their own distinct factual beliefs about the universe.
Of course, the very name of this blog derives from the conviction that that sort of thinking is not correct. But it’s worth wondering, when we consider a society which upholds a free market of ideas which compete on their relative strength, whether we’ve taken adequate precautions against the sheer annoyingness of a society where the taboo on actually trying to convince others of one’s beliefs has been lifted.