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Almost all of us have had one. You race away from what you happen to be doing we the grand expectation of someone you know coming to pay you a visit for a coffee or whatever. But no, it isn’t like that at all. It is a stranger and their goal is to test your politeness and patience while they ramble on about trying to save your soul and getting to know Jebus and all that hullabaloo.
Another unhappy feature of this is that these proselytizers are usually so damned nice about the whole thing. So despite the fact you happen to be imagining opening one of your own veins and spraying them with your blood while commanding your high-lord Beelzebub to rain hell fire down them, instead one tends to smile back and politely nod and just wish that they would go away.
I find the door knocking proselytizers to be such a troublesome situation to deal with appropriately. Of course inappropriate responses cost more socially speaking, but seem to be a touch more satisfying.
I’ve always gone the polite route, but does anyone else have some slam dunk suggestions for dealing with situations like these? I’d like to increase the size of my bag of tricks, so to speak.
Sometimes the weasels win.
What I am talking about is this particularly disturbing occurrence that just passed through(not unlike stool) Winnipeg’s City Council.
The CBC reports: “A Christian group is hoping to build a multimillion-dollar, non-denominational recreation centre for youth in the heart of one of Winnipeg’s most hardscrabble areas.
Currently, Youth for Christ operates more than a dozen small rec centres in the city.
But on Wednesday, a handful of councillors on city hall’s executive policy committee gave the green light to contribute land at the corner of Higgins Avenue and Main Street toward the project, as well as approve a $2.5 million loan to the organization.”
More mana from heaven!
“Courtney said the federal government has agreed to provide $3 million of the project’s $11-million total cost. A fundraising campaign is also about to begin, he added.”
To understand how repugnant this is, a little historical context is in order. Here in Canada we have the shameful legacy of sponsoring via the church attempted cultural genocide of the peoples of the First Nations. The vehicle of choice was, along with institutional racism and discrimination, the Residential School System. I cannot adequately describe the level of injustice, or the suffering or the psychic trauma we inflicted upon Native Canadians in the name of bringing God and Civilization (which, unsurprisingly, also happened to coincide with kidnapping, segregation, indoctrination, torture and rape) to them, but when your PM apologizes in the House of Commons for our dark malfeasance, it speaks to the magnitude of the crime.
So what is going on over there in Winnipeg? Well apparently the proposal for this recreation centre magically appeared on the city councilors agenda, with scant details and none of the extensive research required for large publicly funded projects of this magnitude necessary to begin or even properly analyze.
“Gerbasi and fellow Coun. Dan Vandal have also expressed concern about the lack of information being provided on the project, which they believe is getting rushed through council.
“This money is all going into capital to build this massive new facility that has not been scrutinized,” Gerbasi said.
“There was a one page piece of paper with a motion on it that was walked onto an agenda [Wednesday] and the decision has to be made next week by council with virtually no information provide to members of council who have to make this decision.
“That’s not a way to run a city.” [apparently it is if you are ‘doing it for Christ’ TM]
Okay, so there is this huge push to get funding passed for this supposedly “needed” recreational center. It certainly has nothing to do with the people who will be privately running an publicly funded operation. It is not like the money could have been used elsewhere. Oh wait:
“Kemlin Nembhard executive director of the Daniel McIntyre-St. Matthews Community Association, is also angry about the deal being given Youth for Christ.
She runs youth programs in the community on a shoestring budget and was stunned when she heard the news.
“Given that we’re constantly told that the city has no money, [that] they’re constantly amalgamating and closing centers, and then they all of a sudden turn around and find $2.6 million to give to a group to run programming that won’t be available to a broad range of youth?”
So, how this spins out is that the public (on two different levels of government) has been duped into paying for a 
privately run institution whose goals include civilizing the natives proselytizing for Christ and creating future misanthropically deluded Christian leaders. From the Youth for Christ Website:
Our Mission
“Youth for Christ, Canada exists to impact every young person in Canada with the person, work and teachings of Jesus Christ and discipling them into the Church.”
Contrast this with what their spokesperson John Courtney has to say:
“Proselytizing is one of those words that’s attached to the radical side of religion,” Courtney told council on Wednesday.
“Do we think it’s a good thing for any young person to embrace the Christian faith? Of course we do. Do we reject any services from kids that don’t want to take that journey? Absolutely not.”
Did you hear the shlluuuuuurp? That was the sound your irony meter imploding as it just suffered a suppurating chest wound courtesy of John Courtney’s christian mendacity.
Huh. Its like our mission is to proselytize, but like, we won’t do it if you don’t want us to. Utter horsepucky.
It gets better! Our boy John Courtney simply dismisses the residential school connotation with this gem:
He [J.Courney] also called it unfair to put his agency in the same category as the church-run, government-funded residential schools that took native children from their homes to assimilate them into white society.
“You know what, what happened there wasn’t Christian. Christians did it but it wasn’t Christian,” he said. “And to compare that with who we are, with our track record of 60 years in this community, I think that’s an unfair shot.
Will the No True Scotsman representative please come to the front and take a bow.
Damn, it is unfair to think that you’re trying to target and assimilate at-risk Native Canadians into your church of holy bullshit. Unfair but true, you pusillanimous douche-nozzle. That publicly funded recreation facility will be an epicenter for your vilely delusuional coercion machine, your weasel words cannot hide that fact.
The Native Canadians know about your Damon Johnston speaks against christian duplicity:
“Damon Johnston, head of the Aboriginal Centre of Winnipeg, vowed the centre would be relentlessly picketed if it goes ahead.
“This is not 1876. You will not get away with this, let me assure you,” he said, eliciting applause”
There should be more public outcry about this, but I believe Damon Johnston’s words are prescient. In the 21st century we will not let religion off the hook for their past crimes, there will be no small mea culpla and then business as usual. This outrage will not stand.
Today started poorly.
After a woefully insufficient amount of sleep, I dragged my body out of bed, ate something for breakfast (I think it was yogurt) and drove off to face the day. Half an hour later, through the cold and bitter morning air, I trudged groggily across the six blocks from my parking space to school. Then, something blog-worthy happened.
Halfway to my destination I was greeted by two ladies, one offering me a publication. “Would you like to read a bit about discrimination and racism? It’s an awareness piece, something you can read in your free time.” Now, even in my barely conscious state, a red flag went off inside my head. This was suspiciously close to the M.O. of religion panderers. My sluggish mind did its best to make a quick assessment. The messengers? Not in white tops with name-tags, no backpacks, no religious symbols. The media? Booklet covered with the faces of people from varying racial backgrounds and the headline “Prejudice and Discrimination: Why? How Can You Cope?” Again, no religious symbols in sight.
With my suspicions abated and my interest in social justice piqued, I accepted the magazine, muttered a clumsy farewell, and continued my gloomy trek towards campus. It was not until this evening that I found out that I had been duped. I opened up the booklet to find that it was indeed religious propaganda, though it did not fully reveal itself as such until the fourth page. As I read those first four pages and the reality of the situation bore down on me, my initial disappointment was surprisingly short lived. Indeed, it was quickly replaced with mirth as I considered the implications of this ordeal.
Let’s break it down. We had two believers handing out pamphlets designed to keep other believers believing and to help non-believers to start believing. That’s an old story that’s been done billions of times over. What was novel, and the cause of my amusement, was the guile of it all. It used to be that ‘Bringers of The Word’ adorned attention grabbing robes, stood atop platforms, and called out their proclamation with fever. These messengers, on the other hand, wore non-descript, commonplace clothing, did not mention God or any religious affiliation, and quickly walked away once their media was distributed. The booklet itself was similarly shrouded. The cover lent itself to the assumption that the publication’s sole concern was the issue of prejudice. As I mentioned earlier, it took three pages of warming up before the religious slant fully made itself known.
This level of duplicity is reserved for actions we consider amoral, shameful, or just plain wrong. It was like a child who doesn’t lie, but artfully avoids telling the whole truth, then runs away while the adults are left to discover the facts of the matter. It brought me joy to see believers (not to mention their publications) displaying this kind of abashed behaviour. It means that somewhere, deep within their subconscious, the realization of wrongdoing is starting to take hold. Sure, they are very far from consciously being aware of and admitting their erroneous ways of delusion and misanthropy, but the point is that they have at least started down that path.
Sooner or later, they will ask themselves “If what I’m doing is good, then why must I be deceptive about it and why does it make me feel bad?” And suddenly they will understand. They will know that what they are doing can’t be good. They will see that “It says so in the Bible ->Why believe the Bible?->It’s the word of god->How do you know?->It says so in the Bible” is circular and cannot support any belief system. They will recognize that their previous distinctions of ‘saved vs damned’, ‘righteous vs blasphemous’, ‘believers vs heathens’, ‘saints vs infidels’, and ‘chosen vs forsaken’ were all false. They will drop their delusions and the world will enter an era of rationality and prosperity. And when that happens, they will truly be ready and mentally equipped to fight social injustices like discrimination.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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