Commenting on Tavella
Jan. 14th, 2005 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyelessgameI started to write a response to Tavella's journal and it got too long for a response. So here it is, after the cut...
It's a really hard worldview problem because many, maybe most, Christians don't see it as "preying". They really honestly don't. They have no idea that this is something that some reasonable people would see as wrong.
My grandparents' careers were as Salvation Army ministers -- my grandfather was a fairly well-known SA preacher. I saw firsthand that they did good for people. I didn't much care for the proselytizing, even back when I was a good Catholic boy, but I figured then -- and figure now -- that at least with adults, if you pay your audience to attend you can pretty much tell them whatever you want to say.
What squicks me isn't the idea that Christians are running orphanages there, or even that they're raising orphans with their religion -- if they pay for the orphanage, the world works this way, they get to raise them with the values of the financiers of the orphanage. No, what bothers me (and I figure what bothers you) is the fact that this message reveals that to at least some Christians, the proselytizing appears to be as important as, or more important than, the disaster relief. It's the emphasis... the seeing of an opportunity in the disaster. Echoes of 9/11 in a big way, actually.
Christians do things like adopt unwanted children from China all the time. (It's horrible that social conditions have produced unwanted children. It's wonderful that they're being adopted. It does squick some non-Christians, a bit, that these children are being chosen at least partly because otherwise they'll grow up non-Christian, but these children are getting a far better life than they would have. Good is being done in the world... unless you have the worldview that lack of religion is more important than freedom and prosperity, which I suppose a few people might think.)
Imagine, for a moment, a militantly atheistic group going into a Christian region hit by a similar disaster and announcing "We're happy to have the opportunity to run an orphanage for these children and teach them that religion is nonsense. We figure we can deprogram them, so hopefully they'll grow up free from mind control and can help take down the Christian groups in their communities when they're adults." Or a Shi'ite group doing an analogous thing. The tolerant/honest atheist and the tolerant/honest Christian should be equally squicked by both, or at least should realize that one squicks the other as the other squicks them.
I truly respect the groups that put their bodies where their money is and go into disaster or danger or disease or distress, and help the people there. And if they do it because they're Christian, more power to them -- and the same goes if they do it because they're Republican, or Communist, or Shi'ite, or Objectivist (granted the last one is fairly unlikely).
But I don't particularly care for healthy, wealthy, free, well-fed Christians who go out to disease-ridden, poor, oppressed, malnourished Buddhists and say "Hi, we're here to cure you of your Buddhism!"
There's also, I think, a context here. Among many thoughtful watchers of the world today (both religious and nonreligious), there is an increasing fear that current events are plunging us into a worldwide religious war. Little things like this are chipping away at the edifices of sanity and tolerance, and spreading the spiritual warfare just a bit further, and further... and some of us worry that the already-leaking dam is splintering.
(later edit):
One can also argue that the right thing happened here. Like with Tipper Gore (for some reason she comes to mind). Someone tried to do something dumb, which they saw as a good thing, because they were blind to the sensitivities and human rights of the people affected. People responded with outrage and blowback happened. Understanding the offense they'd caused, they then dropped their plan and apologized (according to the latter link).
People make mistakes and say, and do, dumb things. They had a tin ear to how their fundraising would sound to people who don't think like them. This has happened before. Yes, there's a mindset we disagree with -- and we can and should oppose -- but we knew going in that Christians want there to be more Christians, and they know very well they have to get 'em while they're young.
I'm incensed by a lot of other things fundiethumpers do -- running orphanages is not really at the top of the list.
It's a really hard worldview problem because many, maybe most, Christians don't see it as "preying". They really honestly don't. They have no idea that this is something that some reasonable people would see as wrong.
My grandparents' careers were as Salvation Army ministers -- my grandfather was a fairly well-known SA preacher. I saw firsthand that they did good for people. I didn't much care for the proselytizing, even back when I was a good Catholic boy, but I figured then -- and figure now -- that at least with adults, if you pay your audience to attend you can pretty much tell them whatever you want to say.
What squicks me isn't the idea that Christians are running orphanages there, or even that they're raising orphans with their religion -- if they pay for the orphanage, the world works this way, they get to raise them with the values of the financiers of the orphanage. No, what bothers me (and I figure what bothers you) is the fact that this message reveals that to at least some Christians, the proselytizing appears to be as important as, or more important than, the disaster relief. It's the emphasis... the seeing of an opportunity in the disaster. Echoes of 9/11 in a big way, actually.
Christians do things like adopt unwanted children from China all the time. (It's horrible that social conditions have produced unwanted children. It's wonderful that they're being adopted. It does squick some non-Christians, a bit, that these children are being chosen at least partly because otherwise they'll grow up non-Christian, but these children are getting a far better life than they would have. Good is being done in the world... unless you have the worldview that lack of religion is more important than freedom and prosperity, which I suppose a few people might think.)
Imagine, for a moment, a militantly atheistic group going into a Christian region hit by a similar disaster and announcing "We're happy to have the opportunity to run an orphanage for these children and teach them that religion is nonsense. We figure we can deprogram them, so hopefully they'll grow up free from mind control and can help take down the Christian groups in their communities when they're adults." Or a Shi'ite group doing an analogous thing. The tolerant/honest atheist and the tolerant/honest Christian should be equally squicked by both, or at least should realize that one squicks the other as the other squicks them.
I truly respect the groups that put their bodies where their money is and go into disaster or danger or disease or distress, and help the people there. And if they do it because they're Christian, more power to them -- and the same goes if they do it because they're Republican, or Communist, or Shi'ite, or Objectivist (granted the last one is fairly unlikely).
But I don't particularly care for healthy, wealthy, free, well-fed Christians who go out to disease-ridden, poor, oppressed, malnourished Buddhists and say "Hi, we're here to cure you of your Buddhism!"
There's also, I think, a context here. Among many thoughtful watchers of the world today (both religious and nonreligious), there is an increasing fear that current events are plunging us into a worldwide religious war. Little things like this are chipping away at the edifices of sanity and tolerance, and spreading the spiritual warfare just a bit further, and further... and some of us worry that the already-leaking dam is splintering.
(later edit):
One can also argue that the right thing happened here. Like with Tipper Gore (for some reason she comes to mind). Someone tried to do something dumb, which they saw as a good thing, because they were blind to the sensitivities and human rights of the people affected. People responded with outrage and blowback happened. Understanding the offense they'd caused, they then dropped their plan and apologized (according to the latter link).
People make mistakes and say, and do, dumb things. They had a tin ear to how their fundraising would sound to people who don't think like them. This has happened before. Yes, there's a mindset we disagree with -- and we can and should oppose -- but we knew going in that Christians want there to be more Christians, and they know very well they have to get 'em while they're young.
I'm incensed by a lot of other things fundiethumpers do -- running orphanages is not really at the top of the list.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-14 07:18 pm (UTC)There are days when it annoys me that people raise their children to explicitly be part of their religion, rather than educate them about religion and hope the children will reach the same conclusions - indoctrination is far more common than education.
But there are things about how the world works that you can change, and those you can either accept or whine about, and this is the latter. You can't tell people how to raise their kids, to a large degree. (The exceptions are physical and sexual violence, and even those still have plenty of people who think it's nobody else's business, alas.) It's a battle you'll never, ever win - the only saving grace being, they don't have any right to tell you not to raise your children as atheists if you want to.
I'm a little more worried about the sense of persecution that American fundamentalist Christians have adopted. They're not completely wrong - there is a backlash against them (and for good reason.) But I am entirely sure they're utter hypocrites about it - they're treated poorly because they're so damnably insensitive to anyone else's beliefs, and then they complain that people are insensitive to their beliefs. And it's such a trap, because it's hard to ask them to be more sensitive without opening up to a counter that you're the one being insensitive to them. A circular little bit of pseudo-logic. And it ends up being that nobody can talk to them who isn't one of them, which is bad.
But, despite the fact that the language they're using is this kind of anti-intellectual thuggery - running orphanages is a good thing. And sometimes kids don't grow up into being their parents.