A few times a year we will have Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door, and less frequently (maybe three times in twenty years) LDS missionaries.
We are in a very heavily Catholic area (Irish-, Italian- and Portuguese-American are still the dominant ethnicities). So people sort of assume everyone is Catholic. That’s not so much proselytizing as just assuming that Catholicism is the default. Church attendance has fallen off a LOT though in the 20 years we’ve been here. The fact that our parish priest was caught abusing kids ten years ago didn’t help, I’m sure. But I’m pretty sure if you asked everyone in our neighborhood if they were Catholic, 90%+ would say yes.
In my family it’s rather worse. No one expects me or my wife to go to church, but there has been a lot of pressure on us to raise our kid as a Catholic. From my parents, my aunts, my cousins. In many cases it’s couched as not so much a religious belief as cultural cohesion. To mollify my parents we did get her baptized, but she hasn’t been into a Church since then except for weddings, funerals and the odd Christmas concert or Nativity play in which her little friends were performing. Now as teenagers, nominal Catholicism is a non-factor in their lives.
At work we had a group of people who would proselytize at work, open meetings with prayers and quote bible verses as business wisdom. But once our ostentatiously religious CEO was ousted after taking too close a personal interest in the development of some female subordinates, this has died down almost completely. This was some kind of generic Bible Christianity.
When my daughter was born, my sister asked when she was going to be baptized. I laughed. She knows my view of religion. But she would make Pascal happy. “Why not do it, just in case?”
Very rarely, and then only mild attempts while I was in college.
I grew up Catholic in a mostly Catholic small town. By high school my group of friends were mostly Mormons, but none of them ever even hinted at trying to convert me. Despite the reputation that Mormons have for proselytizing, there were no invitations to attend the Mormon church services, Bible study, etc. The only time I was ever invited for anything at all church related was on July 4th and New Year’s Eve. The Mormon church was outside of the city limits, so we were invited to go shoot fireworks in the church parking lot. There was no religious stuff going on at the time, all we did was have some fun with fireworks. I went to Baylor for college, and as expected there were many Baptists. I got invited to attend a couple of their Bible studies, and that was it. By my sophomore year I’d given up and Catholicism and become a deist. Since then I haven’t had anyone attempt to convert me.
The last time I saw a Jehovah’s Witness at my door was probably ten years ago. I can’t think of any other significant ‘cold contact’ attempts to convert me although I had a friend in college (~30 years ago) who joined a church and wanted me to follow along.
I guess once a year or so I get a letter with a chintzy religious medallion taped to it and a hand-written plea to accept Jesus into my heart. I’m not sure how she knows which people haven’t done so yet. Heretic mailing list? Anyway, I guess that technically counts though it’s not as intrusive as someone at your door.
I don’t get any god-botherers except in my own family, and I think they’ve finally given me up as a lost cause. They still try to sway my kids, though.
I don’t have kids myself, and though my whole extended family is Catholic (at least nominal), none of them ever tried to proselytize me, but going for my kids would piss me off even more.
It’s done very slick. I had a death in my family, and my born-again cousin is being really nice, but always with this religious caveat. ALL the credit goes to that. I kept asking her to please drop the religion - she’s known I have never been religious. Actually anti-religious, but I don’t have the energy to even talk about it. But I did end this particular phone call at 4am, after she said,
“But it’s (religion? god?) beautiful”
And I ended it with “Some think sex is beautiful” (“oooooooooooooooh!” she shrieked before laughing). I would never say this, but after what has happened, my filter is a little looser.
As @Just_Asking_Questions noted above, Arizona is noted for door-to-door LDS proselytizers, but I haven’t had one darken my door for many years. I always found the absolute best way of dealing with them was to open the door, note the white shirt, and say “Not interested, thank you, have a nice day,” and close the door before they could get a word in edgewise.
In high school (Silver Spring, MD - probably the most liberal and diverse population on the planet) I used to run into Jews for Jesus and other hard-core students who could get kind of pushy. I suspect it’s an age thing - they had finally found something important in their lives and wanted to share it with everyone (are you of the Body?). It was annoying, but not a significant irritation.
Despite living in the bible belt, it’s very rare. Excluding the fundie branch of my family and mailouts from local churches, it’s essentially zero. I have had to endure questions about my religion/church from a few managers at work, but those are in the same class as any other none-of-your-fucking-business inquiry, and I can easily supply whatever tale serves me best and move on. But actually trying to convert me? Hasn’t happened in decades.
I don’t answer the door for strangers - period. So some of those random people at my door might be trying to sell me a god instead of a new roof – but I have no idea since I ignore them. My doorbell’s disconnected, and I’m rarely aware of them unless I see it on the security cams.
I was brought up Jewish, and becoming an atheist was not at all traumatic. I was never taught that hell was a thing (and I went through five years of Hebrew School and to a lot of services) and was never taught that those who were not Jewish were less loved by God than we were.
They are probably JWs, doing the “cart ministry.” Prince had converted to JW later in life, and was said to have been seen doing this (and people left him alone).
Forty or fifty years ago, I remember quite a few visits from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, without any success on their part. Also unsuccessful were the Scientologists in Oxford Street - nothing appealing about that lot.
More recently we had some JW next-door neighbours, who never proselytized us at all - probably didn’t want to cause bother on their own doorstep. We’ve also got some distant relatives who are Mormons - we rarely see them except at weddings and funerals, but they are very nice, and never discuss their faith. We even have a friend who is a Church of England vicar - she never tries to convert us either. The CoE is pretty much live-and-let-live nowadays.
Perhaps the most interesting attempt at conversion was from the Raelians. Hitch-hiking in France, we were picked up by a 2CV covered in curious hand-written slogans and badly-drawn cosmic images. My French wasn’t good enough to argue very well with this young chap, and he wasn’t much better at English - so we failed to have a particularly cogent debate about the extraterrestrial origins of humanity (more’s the pity). I later found out that the Raelians appear to be something of a sex cult, so we probably dodged a bullet there.
Once in my youth, some Lubavitchers tried to hustle me into their van in Manhattan. Luckily I was able to resist; otherwise I might not have emerged until years later, chanting obscure verses and sporting a strange new hair and beard style.
One time when I lived in Texas, a couple of LDS managed to get through the Labrador Early Warning System and knocked on our door. When Bessie heard them she let out an outraged vocalization that we dubbed the Mormon Howl.
Other than that, proselytizing has been sparse. These days it’s confined to “clever” sayings on roadside signs outside churches, or small Jesus pamphlets someone thinks will be effective when left atop urinals in public restrooms.
One day, when I was home for Yom Kippur, a pair of Mormons came knocking and wanted to tell me about the good word. I invited them in and we chatted for a while. Their pitch was aimed at Christians – kinda, “you have a new testament, don’t you want a newer one?” No one was converted, but I was entertained, they were polite, and no one was injured.
It’s been a very long time since anyone has done anything beyond push a tract at me. Once while we were out in the yard a JW tried to start up a conversation with one of my kids, who was pre-teen at the time. I lit into them for approaching one of my children without talking to me first. I let them know I wouldn’t have been upset if they had approached me, but they were way out of bounds approaching a child.
