A few days ago I was having dinner with a friend, and we were having a nice religious discussion. I’m Wiccan and she’s Catholic, and neither of us has a problem with the other’s religion. Well, we started talking about the evangelical aspect of several religions, particularly different sects of Christianity, and I said I had issues with fundies, evangelists, and Jehovah’s witnesses. Then she told me that a girl we both know is a JW, and that opened my eyes. This girl was in one of my classes last year, and while I don’t know her very well, she’s a very nice person, and I’ve never heard her talk about religion once. It really challenged my opinions of the religion as a whole vs. the people who practice it.
What about all of you? I know just about everyone is guilty of holding some type of religious prejudice, but has that prejudice ever come around and kicked you in the bum? What about people who hold prejudices about your own religion?
Oh, and if you’re a fundie, evangelist, or JW, I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I don’t have a problem with the people of certain religions (unless they give me a reason to), I just have issues with proselytizing.
I don’t have problems with anyone practicing a particular religion, or choosing to practice no religion at all, etc. The only thing I have a problem with are people who aggressively telling me that their religion is right, and mine is wrong. As for the girl you know who’s a JW, you may have never heard her mention religion, and I’m sure she’s every bit as nice as you say she is, but her church would not approve of her lack of proseletyzing. In other words, I don’t have a problem with the practitioners of the religion, just the church’s stance on certain things; she is required, by the church, to proseletyze. When churches have “rules” and laws designed to help people be better people, I think that’s all well and good. When a church has laws whose sole purpose is to indoctrinate that person deeper into that church, I have a problem with that. However, if the members of that church don’t mind, it’s OK with me. I guess what it boils down to, is your right to practice your religion ends where my right to practice mine begins. I do remember a time when I had two JWs at my door, I was getting ready to have a slumber party for my daughter, was very busy, and the JUST WOULD NOT LEAVE!! I tried asking politely as many ways as I could, and finally had to (politely and quietly) threaten to call the police if they didn’t leave my property. Buy I wouldn’t judge every member of that faith based on the over-zealousness of two of it’s members.
before someone else points out that I sound hypocritical here, let me clarify myself. When I say “I have a problem with that”, what I really mean is, this is the kind of issue that would keep me, personally, from ever considering membership in this church, and would also cause me to caution my children strongly against it. I have these same issues with a few other churches. But again, I state, just because these things would prevent me from belonging to these churches, it doesn’t mean others are wrong for belonging.
Many years ago I used to work at a restauraunt that was managed by a JW. He wouldn’t let those of us in the kitchen listen to radio stations which he considered offensive or wear T-shirts to work with heavy-metal bands on them. (this was the 80’s) He also hated long hair and goatees on guys (I had both) because the JW’s are supposed to have short hair and be clean shaven. He was a dick in other ways too.
A few years later, I played in a metal band with a guy that was also a JW. He was a pretty nice guy, if a little bit flaky, and he didn’t try to proselytize us or anything (that was a lost cause anyway, believe me) but we were not exactly kind to him about his religious beliefs, especially when he had to skip a rehearsal to go to a meeting. Eventually he left the JW’s, not because of our harassment but because they were pressuring him to quit playing guitar. (music is considered “frivolous” or something) After leaving the church, he became just like us, a pot smoking, cynical, anti-social thug. We congratulated him for “wising up.” Looking back now, I feel sort of guilty that we gave him so much crap when he was in the JW’s. It wasn’t really necessary, he really didn’t throw it in our faces or anything, and he even took our insults with pretty good humor. I know that, on my part, I was sort of taking out some aggression on him as payback for the grief I had to take from a JW asshole of a boss. At the time, I thought the guy I used to work for was a dick BECAUSE he was JW. Now I know he was just a dick anyway, regardless of his religion.
Fast forward a few more years, I was an AmeriCorps volunteer helping to run a free summer day camp for inner city kids. We had three little girls (sisters) in the program who were JW. I once caught some other kids teasing them about it, and I gave them a lecture about tolerance and acceptance.
It felt much better to defend a religion than it did to attack one, even though I’m still a total atheist.
Why should you have an issue with proselytizing in general? I can see having issues with certain tactics, but for someone to be up front about their intent is generally considered being honest.
I have to admit that I’ve grown cynical in my mid-age and, while I hate it, a flag definitely goes up when I learn somebody is a churchgoer. I know Christians and members of other religions who are good people, but almost invariably I think the goodness is more them and less the religion.
I would never discriminate against a person for being religious, but it is a prejudice I wish I could shake. I almost instantly think less of their intellect and I have to go in and manually correct this shortcoming. I particularly get irritated when I hear a member of a particular religion bashing another religion or sect because, to me as a nonbeliever, Catholicism is no more loony than Presbyterianism than Mormonism than Islam.
In my defense I will add that I am not an evangelical atheist and that they annoy me as much as any other fanatics.
(The other prejudice that I wish I could shake and that is as real as racial or religious prejudice is against spoiled kids from rich families, but I won’t hijack this into that.)
I have issues with proselytizing in general. Well, I suppose you could say I only have problems with certain tactics, but that includes all tactics that disturb or inconvenience me, such as ringing my doorbell ( since I don’t know who’s there until I walk to the door, I have to answer it), leaving tracts on my front steps (which I’ll have to clean up), coworkers trying to convert me while disparaging my religion, people using amplifiers to preach on the street outside my office (which I will hear through the closed windows). About the only tactics I’ve seen that don’t annoy me are people giving tracts to passers-by (because I can easily keep walking) and tracts left in public places (which probably does annoy the people who clean those places).
I consider myself prejudiced against all religions, not necessarily their practitioners.
And I actually feel sorry for children who are JW, it isn’t their fault that their parents are complete fruitloops. Any religion that keeps reassesing its “end of the world” date every time nothing happens on the day they predict just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Unfortunately proselytizing is part of the package if you are a Christian, something about a moral duty to save the souls of others. In practice its more like preying on the weak.
I also have a prejudice towards Christians on the cafeteria plan, even though there are several people I love to whom this applies. I appreciate that these people want the “God is love” moral code of Christianity, but they essentially castrate the religion until in some ways I have more respect for the views of fundamentalists- you can’t totally take away the vitriol of Paul and the Old Testament and the promises of hell for non-believers without irrevocably altering the religion, because it is there in the “holy” writ.
I object to proselytisation because it strikes me as being fundamentally disrespectful: it is predicated on the idea that I, or the other “unbelievers” about, am not capable of making the best choices for myself, but instead need to be wheedled, bullied or convinced of the superiority of a product I’ve seen before and didn’t buy the last time the ads came around.
Sampiro, perhaps you would be better off considering fundamentalist Christianity and liberal Christianity to be different faiths entirely. Personally, I don’t find that the liberal Christians of my acquaintance have “altered” anything, nor, for that matter, have the fundie sorts; they are practicing their actual religion, and emphasising the parts of the text that they believe are most important. The idea that “‘holy’ writ” is the be-all and end-all of faith, or, for that matter, to be swallowed whole or not at all, is not actually a tenet of all religious practices, even the ones that include a book.
