Enemy Territory

For my diversity class at American University we needed to somehow go out and expand our knowledge of diversity, a fairly vague assignment, and then present our experience to the class.  I figured that this was a great opportunity to try and get to know my students a bit better by experiencing a Christian religion (since over 90% of my students are some form of Christian).  Therefore, in the name of expanding my knowledge of diversity, on Sunday evening I entered a church to see a service for the first time in my life (I attended a baptism once when I was pretty young, and I entered churches in Europe when we were visiting but that has been about it).

Because I know absolutely nothing about Christianity (aside from what I learned from Jesus Christ Superstar –thanks Andrew Lloyd Webber!) I tried to look up a church that might be considered traditionally black.  I couldn’t find out whether the churches were specifically black churches, and due to a bit of laziness, I didn’t feel like calling specific churches to find out when their services were, so I only looked at churches that had websites that I could find.  The church I found I was hoping would be primarily African American (mainly just because my kids are 99% African American), but I failed miserably on that front – despite the SE location of the church, it turned out to be very white with a small number of Asians and a few black people. 

Now the funny part, that clearly highlights my ignorance of all things New Testament, is that I picked a Baptist church to visit.  Now I had no idea that Baptists were Evangelicals (a.k.a: the enemy), so I was thoroughly unprepared for what I encountered. I attended an evening ceremony (which I found out was ‘very different’ from the regular 3 hour affair that they have in the mornings).  It was very organized: the pastor would say a name of someone in the congregation and they would head to the front of the church to tell everyone about something they wanted the congregation to pray for.  The pastor already had the back-story so he often asked pointed questions to get them to say everything they wanted to and then the people would say what they wanted the congregation to pray for.  During this the pastor would also say a name of a congregant and say something like “Jonah, would you lead the prayer for Kate?” and they would be in charge at the end of saying the prayer.  During this time some people were avidly taking notes, filling entire pages w/their notes on what to pray for for everyone who presented.

Now it was during this time that I began to figure out that this was an Evangelical organization, and by figure out I mean that it was thrown in my face and then bludgeoned me to death.  Up until this point there had been a few songs (not very good, but not very crazy either, just a lot of Jesus is lord type stuff) and then a few community announcements, it all seemed very friendly and very normal.  Then the stories began…

The first story was about a family who had a newborn baby (3 months or something) and started out by asking the congregation to pray for their wisdom, strength, patience, their child, etc.  This seemed pretty normal to me (by super-religious standards of course).  But then they began talking about how they had just moved to a neighborhood where people were very nice and open and they had great ‘conversations.’  Then they began talking about one of the neighbors specifically who they had talked to a few times and they wanted everyone to pray for her to ‘open her heart.’  Now this sounds semi-benign, though clearly what was not said explicitly by this family was ‘open her heart to Jesus.’  Then other stories began and they basically got more and more extreme, with many people openly asking people to ‘pray for conversions.’ 

Some stories of note:

A British man was visiting and he talked about how god had stopped the evil British government from passing a law that would ‘restrict religious freedom under the guise of protecting aberrant lifestyles’ (a.k.a. homosexuality)

A man was at George Washington University to give a 5-6 minute presentation on their religion (amongst other Christian organizations) and he asked them (via email) to pray for ‘mass conversions’

A bunch of trips to Southeast Asia where they had to be ‘vague’ on the details of what cities and what exactly they were doing aside from handing out pamphlets

A man who had organized an ‘interfaith’ luncheon with a Muslim group where apparently the idea was to try and convert the Muslim groups (although it sort of seemed like he may have just meant to increase understanding and tolerance, which would be a good thing – though later it was interpreted very directly as converting them).

A man who has started an American football team in Southeast Asia with the intent of using that team to convert the children to the Baptist faith

Then after quite a while we finally get to the prayer part.  Everyone bowed their heads, closed their eyes, and the individuals who had been singled out would get the microphone and say a prayer about the story (meaning I basically had to listen to all the stories twice).

Now on the whole I was very calm and respectful, although I was texting a few friends in order to keep my sanity (my friend Joe accurately said it was good I went by myself, because if I had had a friend there we would’ve been laughing our asses off).  But there were 2 times where I lost my respectful demeanor.

The first time was when the woman sitting next to me (luckily there was a small pole between us so we were still a few feet apart) led one of the prayers (the one for the guy speaking at the GW campus).  She was one of the more ‘passionate’ prayer leaders to give a prayer that night, and she went off on how she prayed that the other ‘fake’ religions would not be heard, ‘hundreds of converts,’ and then she went off on something about the devil and students.  I basically erupted into silent laughter that I simply could not contain.  Luckily everyone had their eyes closed and heads bowed, so they didn’t notice (as was proven when she shook my hand at the end of the evening and asked where I was from, etc.).  Now the main reason I was laughing is that in some ways she was basically talking about me, or at least what she would think I was, and she was using a wide variety of religious adjectives.

The other prayer I silently laughed at was the one about converting the Muslim group over luncheon.  I mean how unrealistic can these people get?  Converting religious Muslims who regularly pray?  Yeah… very likely

In the end, over 80% of the stories/prayers had to do with converting people, and only a small number had to do with personal lives of the families (like sickness, jobs, troubling times, etc).  Now I consider myself to be (as Joe has instructed me to say) someone who has an ‘unlocked mind’ in the sense that I am willing to listen to people but will then use my own judgment to decide what to think (this is instead of an open mind where you blindly accept different things people say and think).  I’m generally OK with people believing in whatever religion they want to believe in, BUT I am absolutely not ok in ANY WAY with trying to convert other people.  And I’m not OK with religions that so clearly promote intolerance. 

My mom made an excellent point afterwards that it is very easy to see how these people and their beliefs so easily translate into the need for Evangelicalism.  They believe so fully in Jesus, and heaven (and the rules that get you there), and that these are good things, that it is an incredibly easy leap to needing to try and ‘spread the word’ and educate/convert people so that they too can experience these joys.  But the fact that Evangelicalism has long been used as a tool for the Right as a form of social control and power grabbing that I simply cannot accept the outlooks of these religions.  I have friends who are in far more liberal churches that do not try and convert everyone they see, who do not promote hate and intolerance as a matter of doctrine, that I think Evangelicalism has to go.  It is based in ignorance and blind faith, and this is not something that should be promoted to the world at large.  If I were remotely religious in any way I would pray that they fail at everything they attempt to do.  And since I’m not, all I can hope for is that as we improve the education system, we get people to question what these churches are telling them and help people open their eyes.

To make matters worse, I had my short presentation on all of this today and was very calm and collected and basically just said that I went and did this, but I left frustrated and disappointed.  The teacher then asked why I was disappointed and I said that I wasn't big on the fact that they were praying for conversions.  Then someone raised their hand and basically said (I kid you not a TEACHER said) "well what's wrong w/that? They mean it as a good thing"  Now I decided to hold my tongue, since this was a fight that clearly nobody was going to 'win' but then another teacher said "it's like being a teacher, you have something you want to teach people" and my brain was like... wait... it is SO NOT THE SAME.  There is a difference between preaching a religion and teaching history, I'm sorry.  And there is a big problem with people believing other people are going to hell and therefore need to be saved.  It is incredibly insulting.  Anyways I figure that the guy who said that comment was thinking that I was being flip or rude in my presentation, which I really wasn't trying to do at all, so he was probably being a bit reactionary.  At the same time he clearly believed what he was saying.

The moral of the story: I can't hang out with Evangelicals they scare the pants off of me...

P.S.

I also have the best dog in the world, he lets me know when he has to go and needs access to a proper place to do it, and he's only 3 months old! What a good dog. Now if we could only get him to stop waking up at 6:30 a.m....

On another note, I got an interview at one of the best public schools in D.C. It was very unexpected and very exciting and I will know yes or no by the end of next week *hopefully*. (They'll call me and inform me if yes, and if no they may or may not call me... so we shall see)

HOLY MOTHER OF ALL THINGS HOLY

Dark Knight is....... AMAZING.  So amazing it boggles the mind.  The end.  I saw it at midnight and it was well well well worth it.