“The app boasts influential supporters, including the former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jim Henry, and controversial Christian data-harvesting firm Gloo. It puts a lot of features at the fingertips of the faithful, including the ability to filter whole neighborhoods by religion, ethnicity, “Hispanic country of origin,” “assimilation,” and whether there are children living in the household.”
Oh please let them come, I’ll gladly tell them all about how “Jehovah, or JHVH-1 as WE know him, is no true god but an evil space monster from some corporate sin galaxy sent here to take our SLACK! He’s been fooling them! But J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, High Epopt of The Church of The SubGenius, knows the truth, and he has a plan to save all his followers from certain death come X-Day. We’ll all be Ruptured up into the PleasureSaucers for orgies with the alien sex goddesses and the MWOWM machine will make our every possible desires true. You want that lost comic collection back? Want revenge on that one priest? Well “Bob” will give it to ya, young evangelist, here, take this pamphlet to get you started…”
These lunatics have a disturbing amount of control in the US government.
Laughing at them might be fun, and I was doing it until recently, but they’re not joking. The worse our climate disasters become – and they will very soon – the more scared people will become, and the more these groups will take advantage of that fear. We’ll see more climate refugees, more desperation, and more fear. These groups prey on fear, and they’ll amplify it on purpose.
True fascism thrives on fear, which is why these people amplify it like they do. When climate disasters accelerate, these groups will harness the social upheaval to take control. I don’t know what we can do to stop it, but we should all be thinking about and sharing ways to head it off, because they’ve got plans in place already.
I know I sound paranoid, but I’ve been watching them and these aren’t my ideas, but theirs. They talk about this a lot, and if we aren’t prepared, their plans could actually work. I don’t want to live in the fascist future they’re planning. If we don’t combat it, we’ll be living in the Handmaid’s Tale before most of us realise.
Can we appreciate how incredibility messed up it is to have Christians trying to tell other religions are not valid? It is terribly messed up to try to convert Muslims to Christianity.
With that being said it is important to note that this is a small group of people in Christianity. They are ruining the reputation for all denominations and creating Christian hate which will hurt Christians everywhere in the long run. I wonder how they would react if there was Jewish protest in front of there Church
I think the “try to convert” part makes no sense. Conversion is a very personal thing, and you can’t force someone to do it. You can invite, but that’s about it.
Someone on lemmy commented that the purpose of those conversion drives is not to garner new members (though it’s a nice benefit if it works), but to help reinforce the “us” versus “them” division in the people out knocking on doors. It really makes a lot of sense to me.
I agree with that. I think the point of Mormons being forced to go door-to-door and engage with the outside world in a way that is guaranteed to create discomfort and hostility... is that they'll learn the the outside world equals discomfort and hostility. I can't imagine that it has any nonzero effect in terms of converting people to Mormonism at all.
I think how it works for Christians probably depends on the nonuniform details of how exactly they do the proselytizing, but I'm imagine it works mostly the same in most cases.
Picking them out in particular is interesting, because I have a good friend that’s Mormon, and we used to hang out a lot. They really have their own community, I was definitely an outsider (but not obviously so, as I don’t have facial hair, etc.). We briefly dated, but that didn’t go anywhere for obvious reasons, and later I realized that in her world I’m probably the “bad boy” (few others would consider me that, but everything is relative).
They were nice people, but overall they just were …boring. I don’t even remember most of the ones I met, and I doubt I could pick even some of her closer friends out of a lineup. I don’t mean to be nasty, but few of them had any sort of interesting life experiences, which is weird, considering many of them traveled abroad for mission trips.
At one point the Mormon single women in the area created a video to convince more single Mormon men to move there. There was a serious shortage. Even in that situation they still felt like they had to stay in the Mormon community.
On the flip side, a few years ago, friends of ours moved to a new neighborhood and had a housewarming party, and one of the families that joined them were neighbors that were Mormons (who preferred the term Latter Day Saints). But the wife had rainbow rings on and I think one of the daughters had purple hair…so, they seemed unlike other Mormons I’ve met, but I didn’t get the chance to ask about it.
Mormons aren’t forced to go door-to-door, it’s absolutely a choice. In fact, Mormon missionaries pay their own way (less so in poorer countries, but still).
Perhaps you’re thinking of Jehova’s Witnesses? I don’t know much about their proselytizing, but I have invited them in before and they don’t seem particularly interested in following up, especially if you don’t buy their stuff.
“Trying to convert” has biblical basis, and most religions have some kind of evangelism component to it. But there’s a lot of ways to go about that. One is the aggressive approach (i.e. high pressure salesman; join or you’ll burn in hell!), and the other is the example Jesus and other scriptural people set (i.e. serving others and getting them to want to ask the questions). Many religious people to the latter, and it’s the obnoxious people who do the former that give religion a bad rap.
So my recommendation is if you want people to join your church, instruct your members to go out and do good in the community. Be a good friend, offer to do service for them from time to time, and engage with service opportunities in your community. Eventually people will ask, and they’ll care a lot more about what you have to say than if you’re telling them to go to church or they’ll burn in hell…
I don't think the app is designed to try to convert people. Filtering by immigration status is the giveaway.
Oftentimes, American-style authoritarian organized religion equips you with a very particular type of doublethink which makes it possible to promote an app like this and wholeheartedly believe that it will be used for good things because you and all the people around you are the best type of people that exist, while being aware and planning for it to maybe be used (and making sure it's useful) for something totally different.
This is real bad. I’m a christian (albeit a very unorthodox one), and this goes against everything Christians are supposed to follow according to the bible. This can only be construed as church authoritarianism. Maybe this is why I’m looked down upon by most “Christians” out there, but I could not care less. If a christian says or does anything that does not align with LOVE EVERYONE,that’s not a christian, but a “faith merchant”. Their “privacy policy” is tailored to make it seem like they are doing God’s work, when reading it with the intent to understand clearly displays the intention to gather data on you and everyone around you. And I’m sorry, but anyone that does this is guilty of wanting data to sell until proven otherwise, no exceptions.
- Who Has Access to Your Data
“Your password is not accessible by or shared with anybody. Not even we can access it. It is stored in an inaccessible encrypted format.”
So, ONLY the password is encrypted, everything else is stored as clearly as a traffic sign. Noted.
“None of the information entered by you is shared with anybody unless you specifically give us permission to do so by opting in to affiliate your Light role with one or more of our partner organizations; by opting in to have your contact information available to other Light roles in your neighborhood; or by creating an administrator role in a partner organization.”
Where have we seen this before? Ah, right, in EVERY parivacy policy on every single company known to sell our data for profit without caring about anyone or anything except getting more money.
Funny thing is, there’s no mention anywhere on how they are getting the data on what they call the “blessees”. Care to take a wild guess on how that’s done?
I am genuinely sorry that this is happening, and blown away by how disgusting this is. No wonder most people don’t want anything to do with us, Christianity has become everything Jesus spoke against.
Thanks for the comment man. I apologized because it bothers me to no end, and for vetter or for worse, calling mysrlf a christian puts me in the crosshairs of people that are understandibly upset at that behavior, and I’m not narcissistic enough to just pass by and not try to make it a bit better if possible. Unfortunately, because of their radical religious way of thinking and blatant inability to exercise critical thinking, they won’t listen to anyone but their “church leaders”, whom, for the most part, only have their own interests at heart.
You and people who hold beliefs like yours should just pick a new name for yourselves, I’ve tried to convince family members of this for years. Let the jerks have the name they tainted, pick a better name for your beliefs, and get out of the way for people to condemn the institution of Christianity for it’s actions.
You shouldn’t feel responsible for them. You should just let them suffer the consequences of their actions and get outta the way.
Most of us would, for sure, if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re called Christians because we follow Christ. However, from my very personal perspective, the name is irrelevant. So much so that our own bible does not mention “christians” anywhere. Having said that, I am a die hard follower of Jesus, people can call me Jesuit, Jesus freak (yes, been called that plenty of times, I find it funny), or whatever. But first and foremost, I’m a human, full of flaws, an expert at finding out what doesn’t work (I guess Normie’s call those “making mistakes” 🤣🤣), with lost of situations in my life, and a firm believer that, should everyone decide to respect others, love them with their flaws, and be willing to help EVERYONE else as long as it’s not detrimental to themselves, their environment or others (in thayvsame order), we would have so much peace in this world that it’ll probably get boring haha. Anyway, switching gears real quick: Does anyone here have experience with Arch based Linux distros? Preferably EndeavourOS? I live what I’m seeing, but I can’t find a reason why none of my flatpak installations are showing in my apps. I really want to try Arch to find out why die hard Arch users are so proud of that, but so far it seems like a distros made exclusively for people that like to be in pain. What gives? If you can pint me in the right direction to a community where I can vent and maybe find solutions, I would really appreciate it. Oh, and God forgive me, but FUCK MICROSOFT!
I’m not a Christian but sometimes I hear Christians talking the way you just have and it’s the most compelling thing about it and draws me towards it. Love and forgiveness all the way. I use Debian so I can’t help with your arch question. I do think that Jesus would use Linux though.
I mean they don’t need sensitive data, they already know which house is religious, because the people signed up for it. So by default every other home gets added. That is all very puplic information.
It says in the article they employed a commercial data set that is not composed of widely available public data in creating this app. Also, it lists a lot more information about people than whether or not they are christians.
I’ve received letters twice from the same individual who belongs to a JW church. The first was when they moved into the area, and the second was when I moved to another place.
Your property ownership records (if you’re American) are public records, and if you grab it within like, 3 years (where I live), you can even find the closing price and more detailed information on the sale.
I do that all the time. I don’t care if you’re a christian, Muslim, Jehovah’s witness or whatever else, if you come to my house uninvited to tell me why I should follow any religion, be ready for a heated debate on why that’s not your place, I dont care what your leaders have made you believe. Its one thing to talk about Christ to tell anyone about Him, and then drop it and move on to a civil interaction, its an entirely different thing to splat your believes on people’s faces and telling people they will go to hell if they don’tdo what you tell them. We have friends of all religions and lack of religion, and we have never attempted to change them. They know what we believe in, we know what they believe in, and none of that makes any difference. I’m glad I dont live in the US, nothing more disgusting than mixing faith with politics.
Maybe not the best idea. According to the article, using this app they can leave notes about you for other members to see. Talking about satanism would probably flag you for even more harassment.
This is terrifying. Thank fuck I’m not in the US. I already get anxious when some random knocks on my door. If they started spouting off about praying for me and my family I’d be weirded right the fuck out.
Granted, I love my physical privacy. I generally don’t answer the door to plain cloths unless I’m expecting someone. My 5 year goal is to move outside of my current town and have no neighbours. Preferably with a nice long driveway that I may install a gate on at the road.
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