I figgered the T-shirts and the group trip were more of a social-club thing. Most churches serve a social function as well as a religious one – you meet people who share something in common with you (in this case, your religion), you chat a while, you bond with each other, you pass out business cards, you make snide remarks about the snottier members behind their back … you know, social stuff.
Okay, God-fearing only means God-respecting. Fear had a different meaning way back when the Bible was first translated into English. Unfortunately, some people take it too literally.
Bizarre fundie incident:
My sister joined one of those new “nondenominational” churches. I avoid it, so I don’t know if it’s fundie or not. Anyway, I spent one Friday night at her house & attended the Bible study meeting she held at her place. I’m always quick to jump at Bible study in the hope that something intelligent will be said.
Anyway, after the study part was over and the social part was getting into full swing. I was in her kitchen getting ice or something and her pastor cornered me by the sink and asked me if I had accepted God into my heart. I just replied “Yes” & got out of there. What I wanted to say was, “Well, duh, I did when I was four.” I just hate the way some people infer that their faith is better than mine because they found it at a later age.
So, you see, even nice, normal little Christians can get annoyed by the Jesus freaks.
But the irritating people can belong to any denomination. I recall a protracted argument on another website with a Catholic lady who was convinced, God bless her, that Catholicism was the one true religion. I and a Pagan finally beat her into submission.
I do believe that God can have a hand in little things. It’s not “I am more important than anything else,” it’s “even the little things are important to God.” Still, I don’t think He gives a damn who wins the football game.
And the thing I hear that I hate is “God must have had a reason for” whatever. I think anyone who has ever lost a loved one in a particularly tragic way has heard that. Because, of course, God delights in causing His people pain.
By the way, I have one of those Truth eating Darwin fish on my car, & it’s just because I’m sick of a freaking theory being preached as the gospel truth. Sure, maybe we’re descended from monkeys, and maybe Whites really are meant to triumph over the “barbarian races” of the world. (A lesser-known Darwin theory.)
You can, of course, provide a citation where Darwin actually said this,right?
It is within the realm of possibility that Darwin, writing in the heyday of the European ethnologists might have included a comment on a hierarchy of races. It is more likely that an ethnologist who happened to have read Darwin may have said it. However, I have never seen any such statement and I would be very interested in seeing where Darwin wrote it.
(On the other hand, if it is one of those inventions (along with his purported death-bed recantation of his life’s work), it probably isn’t worth the time to try to find it.)
I went to college in the South. I was in my off-campus apartment when I heard some door-to-door Baptists coming down the hall. Every time someone asnswered the door, they would say the same thing: “Have you heard the good news about Jesus Christ?” So I had a little time to formulate a reply. When they got to my door, and asked me the question, I replied (very quickly) “You mean that God so loved the world that he gave is only begotten son, that whomsoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life? Never heard it.” and slammed the door in their faces.
My dream:
To answer the door to one of these people, and be wearing a special pair of blood-red contact lenses.
One favorite door-to-door story (yes, living in the Bible Buckle, I have a few):
Some SCA friends lived in a neighborhood where missionaries came through on a regular basis. JW, LDS, SBaptist…who can keep track?
Anyway, their crew was practicing for Pennsic. They’d just finished their battle practice and had all gone into the house to revel for a while, still garbed, of course.
Missionaries knocked and, as usual, whoever was handiest answered the door. This time it was a Viking. I think he was actually wearing a horned cap; I know that he was carrying his battleaxe. Missionaries hesitatingly asked if they could enter, Viking merrily agreed and led them in. Upon entering the living room, they were of course greeted by a room full of sweaty folk in battle armor and bizarre garb, most carrying weapons.
The missionaries stammered and stuttered and blushed. They finally managed to squeak “Sorry, I think we’ve got the wrong house” and fled.
They never came back. Not only did they never return, but neither did any other missionaries. Missionaries still visited the neighborhood, but they would hit every house on that side, cross the street to pass this house, then cross back and continue door-knocking.
When those folks moved, I told them they should list this as a feature of their house & charge extra for it.
Come to think of it, I know several SCA/missionary stories like that. They’re all pretty funny (IMO anyway), and they all seem to end with ‘they never came back’. Hmmm.
Nope, not a chance. The lineage that became great apes (which includes us modern humans) branched off from the lineage that became monkeys loooooooong before anything we would call a “monkey” evolved.
We’re descended from mammals, primates, great apes, and hominids, but we ain’t descended from monkeys.
We now return to our regularly scheduled Fundie debate.
Sagesgirl:By the way, I have one of those Truth eating Darwin fish on my car, & it’s just because I’m sick of a freaking theory being preached as the gospel truth.
I know just how you feel, Sagesgirl. A lot of us are sick of a freaking bunch of ancient myths being preached as the gospel truth.
Sorry to disappoint anyone, but I’m not going to waste my time defending myself. I only get into fights with bizarre fundamentalist christians. It’s more fun that way.
I have heard of a variety of ways of dealing with the door to door people. I know my habit of taking whatever literature they had and reading it in the peace of my own home is not the favored method. I don’t care. Here’s one for y’all…mark of high intelligence: arguing only over what’s important.
I do know of one woman, though, who handed some Pagan literature (she was just back from a conference) to someone who handed her Christian literature. And I will admit, I have felt tempted to respond to “Do you know the pleasure of God’s love” with “Yes. Do you know the pleasure of Satan’s?”
And my uncle has always wanted to do the red eye bit!
While I’ve never had a really horrible encounter with Evangelicals, telling the folks that come to my door that I practice an “alternative religion” works, and works very quickly.
I had some Mormons knock on my door a few months ago, wanting to spread their word. I told them “no thank you, I am a Wiccan.” They looked at me and said “What?” “I’m a witch,” I replied. “Oh, okay. Have a nice day!” they said, and they left. It worked just as quickly on the Baptists who came to the door (I swear I am not making this up)* 20 minutes later*, trying to get people to come to a church fundraiser.
I’m not actually a witch, but I am a pagan. I just thought that telling them I was a witch would be a little more effective. It was. I highly recommend it to anyone who just doesn’t feel like conversing with folks who want to preach at or to you.
You reminded me of a funny incident I had once. I have a million of them, really. I swear, I’m a fucking “Get Out Of Hell Free” Card.
Anyway, I am in Nashville, TN walking along the main drag there and going into a bunch of record stores, bars and whatnot one night. I am with a couple of friends of mine.
I am talking with them on a corner and up walks two gentlemen. The main one who did the talking looked somewhere between 75 and 250 years old, replete with more hair coming out of his ears than most people have on their heads. I forget what his partner was like, since he simply nodded to everything the guy said, like he was Teller to the main dude’s Penn or something. He held a Bible that was HUGE, raggedly bound in leather, and looked as old as the guy did.
Hell, he might have been Moses. I should have asked for ID.
Anyway, he starts talking the usual stuff, and my friend is giving him shit so I am staying out of it. Sometimes I appreciate this kind of thing, but we had to hear to Memphis and I didn’t want to waste any time.
Despite this, he is naturally DRAWN to me and starts asking me if “I know who Jesus Christ is,” and the like.
So I looked him in the eyes and said, “I’m Jewish.” Since my mom was Jewish, this was not a lie. I am totally non-practicing, of course, but this was my way of avoiding the issue. It usually buys me enough time to escape unscathed.
The guy smiled at me. “Well that’s GREAT!” he said. The smile got bigger. “You’re one of God’s chosen people!” he said. He then smiled a smile wider than I thought humanly possible and said - and I swear, I am not making this up - “You killed Jesus!” In the most kindly manner one could say such a thing, I might add.
I was flabbergasted. I could have went into the fact that the Romans killed Jesus. I could have went into the fact that the Pope already said that the Jews didn’t do it. I didn’t get into the fact that Jesus was Jewish, and if he would treat Jesus the same way if He came down to talk to him. I didn’t even call him a goat felcher.
I simply walked away, saddened yet again as humanity once more let me and God down…
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Four months, one week, 3 hours, 41 minutes and 45 seconds.
5166 cigarettes not smoked, saving $645.77.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 3 days, 22 hours, 30 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey!*[/sub]
There’s this car in my neighborhood that’s infested with Jesus fish. I’m extremely tempted to go key a little fishing boat with a line and a hook just above one of them.
It wouldn’t bother me if it was one, or more discreet, but there were like five of them in different languages. Are they trying to win a toaster in the convert-a-heathen contest at their church? If only they knew the toasters were cheap and useless…
-The Shadowed One-
I found a way to deal with the fuddies at concerts. All the good ones that I went to always had a contigent outside passing out flyers and condeming us for listening to the “Devil’s” music. As I was waiting to get into the concert hall one of the fuddies approched me and offered flyers, just as the paper touched my hand, I jumped up and screamed “It burns, it burns”. You should have seen how white this guy turned. This plan works everywhere. At another concert, one of my friends, who had a beer or 12, vomited on the flyers handed to him. I think it was the beer wanting to visit. The fuddies were not amused, even when he tried to give them back.
As far as giving the door to door types paperwork about other religons, my brother-in-law had one come to his door passing out pamphlets, he told him that if he didn’t take his Muslum flyers my brother would not take the fuddie’s.
Not to many stop by his place.
I think this thread has more one-hit wonders than any other thread on the boards… Well, okay, I have no way of backing that up, but I find it amusing that there’re a dozen or so usernames with only one or two posts.
Satan, people are flocking to you by the carloads! And who says this world is going to hell?
Interesting tale… today I bought pizza. Picked it up for the rest of the family (I’m Mr. Oddjob Guy). Anyway, as soon as I pull up, there’s a woman, apparently having just bought her pizza. There’s a couple of cheap little tables right outside the pizza joint… she puts the pizza down on one of 'em, opens it up, looks at the pizza for a sec, then closes the lid, places her hand on top of it like she was blessing a baby or something, and mumbles “Praise Jesus.”
I think, “Odd.” But, hey, some people pray over their food. But that’s not the end of it.
Her husband (I’m assuming) comes out of the chicken grill right next to the pizza place (a bunch of small stores all built into the same corner complex). He’s holding a small cardboard container of chicken. She does the same thing; checks the chicken, splays her hand on top of the carton, and mumbles “Praise Jesus.”
I paused for just a minute, just to see if a bunch of other people will come running out of the liquor store down the way, and she’ll bless some beer… or if some kids will come out of the card shop with Poke’mon cards, and she’ll invoke the name of God on a Charizard. She doesn’t, but as the two of them walk back to their car (a Honda Civic, I note with disgust :D), she’s holding the pizza and chicken out in front of her like she was carrying the baby Jesus himself (y’know, her elbows forming perfect 90 degree angles, slightly away from her torso…).
Needless to say, I couldn’t help but chuckle as I picked up my pizza… and, no, I didn’t ask for any divine intervention on my food, thank you very much (although I should have shouted, “May the Force be with you!” to the couple…)
This is my first post in this BBS but I have followed many discussions here with a great deal of interest.
First off, I live in Bangalore, India. India is a hotbed of so called fundies. After reading the posts on essentially christian fundies, I must say that you guys are really lucky in many respects. Here religious fundamentalism has very violent repercussions. Inter-religious community take place very often with massive toll on human lives and huge damages to the economy.
Its one thing to practice ones religion and completely another to proselytize so aggressively violence becomes commonplace.
Earlier the clashes used to be Hindus vs Muslims, now its Hindus vs Christians and Christians vs Muslims too. Its getting increasingly crazy!!! I wish people would just keep their religion to themselves and shut up!!!
Instances of intrusions of fundies in ones personal life are so many and so freaky that I’ll keep that for another post
I had some Mormons knock on my door a few months ago, wanting to spread their word. I told them “no thank you, I am a Wiccan.” They looked at me and said “What?” “I’m a witch,” I replied. “Oh, okay. Have a nice day!” they said, and they left. It worked just as quickly on the Baptists who came to the door (I swear I am not making this up)* 20 minutes later*, trying to get people to come to a church fundraiser.
When I spot the Mormons I always drop down to my boxer shorts, open a beer and light a cigarette, then answer the door that way. They usually just turn around…
We had some JW come a-knocking about 5 years ago, and my dad answered the door. After they started talking, he interrupted them saying, “We’re Unitarians… Athiests… EVIL!!” Havn’t had anyone else come to the door in a while.
If history has taught us ONE thing, it is to confuse the hell out of people!