How Evangelicals Use Digital Surveillance to Target the Unconverted
newrepublic.comThe hot new thing in proselytizing is an app that allows Christian conservatives to collect data on whole neighborhoods of potential converts.
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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.
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.
Oh crap – you’re right, yes. I thought it was a requirement for Mormons but it’s not.
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.
You might be interested in this story and its insights
You would surprised how much control a fearmongering narcissist can have over you. And I’d argue, most christian conservative are narcissists.
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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.
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I love Sikhs for this.
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That’s cool :) I’m not sure either. All I see about them in the media is that they keep feeding hungry people.
I agree. If you create a welcoming environment people will stick around
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.