Back in the mid-1990’s I spent my first week in Japan training with several other Americans to be English teachers. We were out at the end of a day roaming downtown Nagoya when some guy walked up to Karen and asked in broken English if he could pray to Jesus for her. She agreed and the guy stood facing her with his hands pressed together while mumbling something we assumed was a Christian prayer in Japanese. He then turned to Andy and offered to do the same. Andy said, “Sure! You wanna steal my wallet while we’ve all got our eyes closed?” and turned around and bent over. Pointing your feet at someone is considered horribly rude in Japan; I could only imagine how offensive Andy was being because I was horribly offended by his representation of our group. I quickly stepped between Andy and our nameless Christian benefactor and apologized. He just shrugged and wandered away.
A few weeks after I was situated in the town where I was teaching, I happened to mention the incident to an American colleague. He said, “Yeah, one of those guys offered that to me when I was in training. I nodded and started to walk away, but he got in front of me and said I had to stay there while he prayed. I told him, ‘No, no. You pray, I’ve got dinner to find. Thank you for the effort.’ and I left.”
–G!
Pray in one hand, shit in the other.
Which hand will be heavier?
Even among the Evangelical crowd the behavior STR described is pretty over the top. That’s only a step above snake handlers IMO. I suggest yelling OWWWWWW! This person hurt me!!! Call the cops!!!
I’m a Christian. The two responses I can think of, things the OP can say to assholes are:
You are going to Hell.
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Saviour? **
Both re-direct the conversation: both challenge the other person at an emotional level that they find difficult to deal with: both are insulting to people who take their evangelical Christianity seriously.
Neither one is is always gonna work. They give you a good starting point by reversing the power relationship. In situations where some prick is embiggening themselves, that’s what you want.
**If you don’t know any social and cultural Christianity, you may have difficulty carrying the second suggestion at a level that is insulting. In which case, just stick to the first one.
In the first place, I am not an aggrieved atheist. It would be more accurate to call me a Christian agnostic. I don’t believe in anything supernatural, be at Faith healing, life after death, or the physical resuscitation of Jesus, but I do find much of Christian doctrine to be useful in the ordering of my life.
You are also assuming that my objection to prayers on my behalf is broader than it is. Someone saying that she or he will pray for me is one thing, so long as they just leave it there. It is quite another when someone repeatedly tells me that I will not be blind forever because God will surely heal me if only I give my life to Jesus in the manner prescribed by the church of that person’s choice. Those are the kinds of things that mildly annoy me, but the specific incident that set me off the other day was the asshole who tried to lay hands on me in the middle of Kroger. In fact, he did more than I indicated. When I ran into this person, I was in the company of one of the store’s managers so she could help me with my produce purchases. He cornered her first and insisted on laying his healing hands on her, which she excepted out of an unwillingness to offend a customer. I tolerated witnessing that, not commenting that he was delaying my own errand with his lengthy diatribe, but when he tried to put his hands on me to heal my eyes, I batted them away without the slightest hesitation. There is no rule of etiquette requiring me to submit to an invasion of my person. similarly, when somebody insists on witnessing to me (no matter his or her faith or lack of faith), I am completely free to simply walk away. If that person persists, I feel just as free to chastise him or her verbally.
If you think otherwise, it is because you are prioritizing the rights of a given faith over that of all others. Do you not see the problem with that?
They should know better than to touch you. That is just unacceptable, and would earn as firm “keep your hands off me” from me. (And I am not anti-religious or anything like that. You want to pray for me? That’s fine. Kinda cute. You want to touch me without my permission? Get the hell away from me. I don’t care how “nice” you think you are. That’s just not nice.)
Holy shit, that was rude of her. I think you did the right thing. Just refuse to put yourself in a position where you are tempted to lay hands on your mother because she is inappropriately controlling of her adult child.
If they were brief and polite, yes, probably. I am an atheist who is a member of a religious congregation (Reform Jew) and I’m generally okay with religion. If someone wants to pray for me, cool, Ill accept it.
That being said, what Skald describes is crazy rude and a little scary.
Real answer 1) I’d probably be too shocked to do anything constructive, honestly.
Real answer 2) Say “OUCH!!” and try to attract as much attention as possible. Continue yelling “ouch, let go of me” until the asshole backs off.
Snarky answer) “thank you for your blessings. I have been searching the world for a saint to heal me. Please stay with me and guide me until my sight returns.”
Well, Skald, I was going to suggest simply yelling, “Noo! Stop stealing my superpowers!” as loudly as you can when the layer-on-of-hands comes by. “I worked hard to be this way! Don’t you dare undo that, you greedy such-and-such!”
Yes, you should call him a such-and-such. Thrice, ideally.
