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.
I disagree with the word “most” here. Most Christians I know are conservatives, and most of them are definitely not narcissists. Most roll their eyes at all the “culture war” nonsense going on.
If you truly believe that most are narcissists, I urge you to go out and befriend some Christian conservatives, you’ll probably be surprised at how not-narcissistic they are.
“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…
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.
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.
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.
Anything more violates common decency.
You would surprised how much control a fearmongering narcissist can have over you. And I’d argue, most christian conservative are narcissists.
I disagree with the word “most” here. Most Christians I know are conservatives, and most of them are definitely not narcissists. Most roll their eyes at all the “culture war” nonsense going on.
If you truly believe that most are narcissists, I urge you to go out and befriend some Christian conservatives, you’ll probably be surprised at how not-narcissistic they are.
I agree. If you create a welcoming environment people will stick around
The “try to convert” thing sounds like the marketing & sales division of the church. People can’t join your church if they don’t even know about it.
And both being annoying, of course.
“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 love Sikhs for this.
Yeah, I work with a Sihk and he’s awesome and super humble. Not sure if that’s a stereotype that holds up, but I’m a fan.
That’s cool :) I’m not sure either. All I see about them in the media is that they keep feeding hungry people.
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.
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.