I live in the northeast. I get the occasional Mormon or JW at my door, and see people with pamphlets on the streets, but no, acquaintances don’t try to convert me. I find the opposite, Christian friends don’t invite me to Christian-themed events they organize (i learned recently that some fairly close friends organize a live nativity scene every year, with farm animals and stuff) and studiously avoid wishing me a Merry Christmas.
I did get invited to what turned out to be a women’s prayer group that attempted to recruit people when i was a college student. Yeah, maybe the targets are young people.
At least once a week at work when I’m running a cash register I get some variety of proselytizer thrusting a pamphlet or “invitation” at me. They view us as a captive audience I think.
I usually say “no thank you”. If they drop it on the belt and say “take it anyway” I toss it in the trash. It’s annoying, but not the worst I have to put up with.
Once had what I thought was a good friend at work, but who one day started saying dubious things about me to my face. I asked him “You seem to think I am a person of bad moral character, what’s going on?” “Well, from things you’ve said, you’re gay, right?” Come to find out he was born again, more or less by proxy from marrying a born-again girl and suffering a good talking-to from her brothers. So other than thinking that being gay = being immoral (probably just unrepentently sinful as far as he was concerned) he didn’t push it and we stayed friendly.
Once in college, an intelligent girl I had known in high school came over to me in a lunchroom and asked me if I wanted to join their discussion group. Turned out to be a bible discussion group, the highlight of which was her saying “I know I am a wretch!” (like in Amazing Grace). Didn’t go back, never saw her again.
The worst is my sister. We used to be pretty close once we got to be adults, having survived our upbringing by our parents made us feel comradely. At some point in middle age she “had a vision” and instantly became born again. In order for us to continue to have a relationship we had to establish some ground rules. She doesn’t try to proselytize me (and she knows I’m very touchy about that)) and I don’t try to persuade her that she is a nut. She is allowed to talk about her feelings about her religion as long as they don’t involve me, because without that all I got were remarks about the weather. But in reality, the relationship is pretty much over. I don’t think she has any idea what my real opinions are, nor any ability to understand them. I tried to explain to her once why (religion aside) I would not want to belong to a church (like hers) that “accepts” the attendance of gay people in spite of what they are, and she took that as my interest in joining some other church. When our father was dying, she took some chance remark he made to the nurse to mean that maybe he was having a deathbed conversion. It all makes me tired. And sad.
Growing up, we had a Italian-American Catholic family who lived across the street from us. They invited us over every Christmas Eve to help decorate their tree and eat snacks and stuff. (We never had a tree of our own) It is one of the few really nice Christmas memories I have.
Don’t Knock on the Door Don’t ring the Bell Don’t make it Weird
“No Soliciting, No Proselytizing, No Canvassing. No Exceptions.”
At the bottom is a note explaining kids from the neighborhood and of course my neighbors are excepted. I have not had anyone wanting to convert me for a while now.
Pre-Covid I’d get JWs from time to time. One woman arrived with a little girl in tow, no doubt so she wouldn’t get yelled at. I politely demolished creationism for her (I’ve heard all the arguments) and she seemed a bit disturbed at losing the argument. The last JW who came couldn’t speak English well enough to be worth talking to.
I got a pair of Baptists once, and I just said I was Jewish to avoid a discussion. They started in on my needing to be saved, and I gave them my patented 2,000 years of Christian oppression rant and they skedaddled. Never been back.
I bought my house from Mormons and so I must be on a do not call list. There are tons of Mormons around here, so maybe they don’t bother with door to door now. I used to see kids in white shirts on bicycles 20 years ago, though.
Twice in my life. Both times in the last 33 years at my current house. First time was fun. Me and several friends were sitting in my front yard under a shade tree on a hot summer day. We had beer and pizza. Two young men (Jehovas Witnesses I think). I brought up immediately that I was an athiest. They each had a piece of pizza and we had a deep philosophical discussion. They walked away without any converts.
I get a knock at my door from a couple nicely dressed people a few times a year. I politely tell them I’m not interested and they go away for a few months. A bit less often I have a different group come to my door, and when I tell them I’m not interested they want to argue with me, and make me the rude one for shutting my door in their face.
At work I have people come around and collect donations for various churches, I’m not sure if that counts as conversion attempts, but they can be quite pushy. “C’mon, can’t you give just a dollar!?”
I used to be open on Christmas eve, and I would always hear the door slam and come up front to find a box of donuts on my desk from a local church, inviting me to their services. Nice gesture, but the donuts were cheap and made a mess all over my desk.
I’m regularly invited to services by clients after they ask what church I go to, and I tell them I don’t, this happens probably once every other week. I called today to get scheduled to get my backflow checked, and the message told me that he hopes that god grants his blessings on me.
So, it depends on what exactly is meant by “try to convert” in that not everyone has set out with that as their mission, and not everyone is trying too hard, but I certainly have religion waved in my face on a more or less daily basis.
And that’s just strangers. If we include family, then it is every single time I see them.
(And of course there are those who aren’t necessarily trying to convert me to their religion, but they are trying to impose their religious beliefs on me.)
A few times a year, mostly from my relatives or local acquaintances who are quite calvinist. Lots of invites to attend their church services, get involved in the church activities, etc. Otherwise it’s fairly benign if repetitive. Sometimes there’s a bit of “is Jesus really in your heart?” sort of thing, but that’s less often.
We’ve had my wife’s siblings do that to us a few times too. But they knocked it off in recent years.
My guess is it is rare, aside from the rantings of a “soapbox preacher” (there was one on the UW campus in the 70’s… but come to think of it, he had no interest in making his religion at all attractive. He was just condemning all of us passers-by to Hell).
So, and I say this as a Christian, hopefully most everyone is fortunate…
… and people like me will just accept you as you are and let you believe whatever you want (shy of death cult stuff).
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eta: My family is everywhere on the political and religious spectrum, but everyone has the good taste not to bring it up. I feel sorry for those who are getting any pressure.
Over my lifetime, I’m guessing maybe a few dozen times. I think it’s been years since I’ve actually spoken with a door-to-door proselytizer. More frequently I receive mass mailings with invitations to church services. I don’t know if those count.
Despite living less than an hour away from the temple at Nauvoo and having several smaller LDS churches in the area, I rarely see any of the young Mormons doing their 2 years of missionary service, and none of them have ever come to my house. (I toured the temple just after it was built, prior to it being consecrated/ordained.)
I do get JW visitors, but usually ask them if they know my aunt and uncle who are longstanding and apparently fairly wellknown JWs locally (and super nice people). This tends to derail the missionaries off topic and into friendly chatting about how they moved to Iowa to be nearer to some of their kids.
Once, when I was fresh out of college, I had an experience with a JW missionary that I found amusing. I still had a lot of info in my brain from a class where we semi-critically examined the Bible as a literary work. When I answered the door, the missionary started off with a bang, asking “Have you heard of Armageddon?” I let him know right off that he was pronouncing it wrong, it’s Har Meggido. Har means mountain, and Har Megiddo means the mountain on the plains of Megiddo. I started explaining the history of the Book of Revelation and he wandered away glassy-eyed.
Early in my radio career, I worked for two station managers who were “born again” types. Both in the South. Both backstabbing scoundrels. However, neither tried to convert me.
Much later, I worked for a Christian broadcaster for a time. They had prayer meetings every morning. There were several of us heathens who did not attend, but there were never any overt repercussions about it. I watched my language, kept a smile on my face and did my job.
I’ve also worked with several other people who had found Jesus and who were known for proselytizing when they had the chance, but again, I was never approached by them and got on quite well with them professionally.
Not that I’m complaining, but I must exude some kind of “no proselytizing” vibe, and people simply don’t approach me in that way.
Oh yeah, those are Chabadniks. If you say yes, they’ll try to get you to put on tefillin or give you some Chanukah candles or whatever, and then invite you to their synagogue. But if you’re not Jewish, they have no interest in you whatsoever.
That would especially make sense if a JW had that sign up, because they do not vote or otherwise participate in politics.
I’ve had JWs at my door a few times over the decades (the last one I recall wanted to leave a sign-language Bible with me - see footnote - because she heard a deaf person lived in our building; I declined) and Mormons a few times too. The last contact I remember was a rainbow leaflet on my windshield that said “PRIDE” on it in big letters. Yeah, it was from the JWs. They also wrote letters to random people during the COVID shutdown, and know a few people who got them.
As a mainstream Protestant, I get very little flack about it or efforts to convert me. I had some Mormon friends years ago who would say, “If you ever decide to switch churches, you are welcome at ours” and I would reply in kind. (I’m not attending a brick and mortar church right now; I do attend a “Church Without Walls” on YouTube on Saturday evenings.)
Footnote: I thought deaf people read the same alphabet as us, so why a sign-language Bible would be needed baffles me.
p.s. I occasionally saw the young Mormon men at the library where I volunteer, pre-COVID anyway, in there to use the computers. Never saw them surf anything other than LDS.org, which I understand has a portal for them to communicate with HQ and their families.
Several street corners in my town occasionally have men standing at them with a cross and a sign that says “FREE BIBLES”. I haven’t seen anyone stop, but they will wave back if you wave at them.
There were some cultists at shopping center one time, but I sensed they really just wanted some money. My wife was nice one time to the Jehovah Witlesses who would knock on our door at the crack of 9AM so after telling them politely that we weren’t interested I had to yell at them a couple of times before they stopped coming around. That’s it. I’ve heard people talk about their religion, but they were doing a terrible job if they thought that would convince me to take up their beliefs.
If I met a girl who seemed to want to get closer to me, I would go to her church and meet her parents,
Then a week of so later I would ask her out to the drive-in movie.Drive in-s didn’t even start until the sun went down, 10pm in the summer, so you have a valid reason for keeping the preacher’s daughter out until 2am.
Man, those were the days. You know what you call a preacher’s daughter who wants to get out of her parent’s house? I don’t know, but your kids are going to call her Mom.
Living in Tennessee, even if it is liberal Nashville, means that on a semi-regular basis I have people asking me what church I go to and when I explain that I don’t go to church, I get the big “Oh, you should come to ours! It’s so opening and welcoming!” Yeah, that would be great if I weren’t agnostic. One lady caught me outside of early voting. She was a member of the church that our kids got first communion at and wanted us to “come back”. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that part of why my very Catholic husband didn’t want to come back is because of this specific church’s views on homosexuality, transgenderism and anything else that isn’t straight white cis Catholic. Yep, I’m happy being my own little heathen.
Though, to be fair, I have also met several people (primarily at the old Parent’s Day Out my kids went to and then I taught at) who are just curious about my personal belief system. These are the ones I don’t mind telling that I’m agnostic, bi and poly. Because these are the ones that I know would never judge. It’s just not how their hearts and their faith works.
