I'm sorry for her and for you and your ignorance in believing that humans need to go around proselyting to each other about a fictional horrid deity who cares less about human life than causing men to murder each other in the name of religious nut-jobbery.
I hope your family member never succeeds in this horrible exercise of human vanity and terror. Missionaries are equivalent to walking dog excrement and that's exactly how I perceive them. I hope this person gets very ill and never gets to complete their so-called mission - a mission of perversion if ever there was one.
so, first we need to know the patron saint of /checks notes/ making sure you hit all of your flight connections. Right. Any idea which this one is? Is there like a wiki or something?
The only person I know who considers themselves a missionary is actually someone who is a decent person- he’s a doctor, my wife’s cousin and my GP. Every year, he does a mission trip to Central America, but he mostly just does doctor stuff. It still sucks that he’s partially there to preach, but on the other hand, it’s Central America and they’re all Christians anyway.
I don’t know what denomination your uncle is, but to my Baptist relatives, Catholics are not Christian, or not the right kind of Christian. In fact, most of them were raised Catholic and converted to Baptist in adulthood, and that’s the point at which they say they became a Christian.
When I still considered myself Catholic, I used to do bible study with some of them and would get upset when they talked about “before I became a Christian.”
Now with the clarity of atheism I realize it’s such a dumb thing to be upset over. It’s like if I were a Marvel fan and they used to be too but they all switched to being DC fans.
Cousin. Or rather my wife’s cousin. And I know he grew up in an Assembly of God (evangelical) church and I’m pretty sure he’s still some kind of evangelical. But at least he’s legitimately helping people and not doing the “let’s convert the native heathens” thing.
Edit: He’s also a big advocate for universal healthcare and spent years working at a free clinic for drug addicts. He’s a really good person other than the Evangelical Christian thing. And to his credit, he has never once tried to convert me. I don’t know that he knows I’m an atheist, but he definitely knows I’m a Jew.
My condolences. It's such a stupid, dangerous, and exploitative practice.
In my former religion, it was 2 years in a foreign country. I'm lucky many of my family members came back alive, given the places they were sent. They "laugh" about stories of being assaulted, robbed, houses broken into, extorted and threatened, but it's a joke now because it's all part of "gods plan"
So disgusting.
(Edit: It's also a way to make sure that they face stress and doubt away from any resources that might help them out of the abuse. Instead they're at all times with another cult member tasked with keeping them on the straight and narrow. It's more a 2 year indoctrination session where the member gets exposed to anti-religious views through aggressive proselytizing, but then is forced to work through that alternate view in a directed and monitored way so that they reach the "right" conclusion. When they get back, they're so much more incredibly difficult to have a conversation with, because they've entrenched all the bullshit)
No, not exploitative of the recipients of the proselytizing any more than usual.
The base point is to separate the cultist from their support network and put them in an unfamiliar environment where they only that the cult to rely on, building and entrenching their psychological dependence on the cult. That's the exploitation.
well, any converts are also exploited. but mostly, its the missionary being exploited. Frequently the “good works” jobs are labor for companies assotiated with the group, or for “donations”. Then there’s the rejection by people who are annoyed at getting woken up at 7am on a weekend (or 10 am, because one works nights,) which generally drives people into further solidarity. (“the world is mean, don’t fuck our group up. OBEY.” is the message here)
as for how it’s exploitive of converts, tithes, and the general exploitation involved, yeah?
I vaguely remember asking my mom about this when I was younger. Mom was the religious leader of our family, and I considered her a good authority on the subject because she said she almost lost her faith in college and did her own research which led her back to God.
She told me the act of prayer itself was a form of praise, an exercise of humility and deference to God. It doesn’t mean that God will change his mind; it just shows you’re humbling yourself before him and submitting to his will.
It hardly makes sense to me now but I bought into it 100% at the time.
5 “Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward! 6 But whenever you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. 7 When you pray, do not babble repetitiously like the Gentiles, because they think that by their many words they will be heard. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
It’s a request in good faith. Why of all things would you take issues with this? Nor are you forced to abide by that, but surely posting it online, even with the names hidden, is sort of breaking a small social contract between you and them, thar you wouldn’t use their words against them.
“My relative is asking me to pray to Poseidon for calm seas while her daughter goes on a sea voyage to convert people into our cult of human sacrifice.”
can’t even do that. It’s intangible and not actually a contract at all.
you send a message to anybody, for any reason, unless they have a specific legal duty to keep it secret; it’s fair game. It might rude, but then, so is sending a group text to 18 people. (this might make sense if it was a prayer circle, which, frankly, it’s clearly not. )
Tempting. My husband and I have stood in silent exasperation many times while grace was said over holiday meals. These are Baptists, and one of my uncles is a pastor, so prayers are long and wordy.
I have some pretty crazy religious (by UK standards) relatives who love to pray loudly before eating. They do their best to make me join in at theirs (I generally just sit quietly with my hands in my lap and my eyes open instead of doing a big kumbaya hand holding circle) but I’ve made it pretty clear that’s not happening at mine.
Honestly I just feel like I want the ground to swallow me up sometimes, they do stuff like this “superman grace” with their kids which is an insane level of cringe:
My family likes to pray before meals. SiL started doing this thing with the kids where everyone has to go around and thank jeebus for something he almost certainly didn’t do.
the SiL takes five or ten minutes. mostly for shit like “and thank you for the every one having a job and thank you for so-and-so who did something or another that entertained my kids for five minutes” by which time the food has been on plates and cold.
Pretty sure Jesus would, like, admonish them for, you know, not eating. ‘hey look, you can do that later. just bless the food and dig in. its not hard. and that smells amazing… can I have some?’ (that last part is how you know she didn’t cook anything.)
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