Wikimedia CC; click to enlarge.
I posted an item about this curious study several months ago, as I recall. But Charles Steinman reminds me of it, and probably quite a number of you haven’t seen it:
Famously, an Israeli official once asked an interesting question during the period of the construction of BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, when there was great concern that we Mormons — who, for some mysterious reason, had the reputation of a proselytizing faith — would use it as a base for converting Jews. The Church and the University had entered into formal promises that we would not do missionary work in Israel. But still, he asked, “What are we going to do about the light in your students’ eyes?”
And his perception isn’t pure fantasy, whatever else it might be. Several times, I myself have picked people out on the street in Jerusalem and wondered whether I would see them in church that weekend. And, time after time, I have. What exactly I was seeing, I can’t really say. Surely it wasn’t merely that they were often (though not always) Americans. There are plenty of American tourists in Israel at any given time. And most of them, by a long shot, aren’t Mormons. No, it was something else. But I admit that I’ve never thought of glowing skin.
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