K
KarenNC
Guest
I have never heard of “Operation Save America”. And what in the world is a “Hellhouse”, some kind of Halloween haunted house thingie?
They used to be called Operation Rescue (if you are familiar with Randall Terry or Flip Benham). They are very fond of screaming abuse outside schools and lots of other “fun” shock tactics in efforts to convince people of their views. If you want to learn more about them, they are easily findable on the web (though I would recommend looking up newspaper reports of the actions they reference on their website, to get another perspective as well). Frankly, I wouldn’t bother unless you have a very strong stomach.
I actually agree with * some* of their positions–to an extent–, though it makes me shudder to think that anyone might believe I have the remotest thing in common with this group. They’ve recently set up a base of operations in our area, unfortunately, so we get to see lots of them.
As for Hellhouses, yes, they crop up here (at least a couple of them) every Halloween. religioustolerance.org/hallo_he.htm will give a description. I knew about them before I ever encountered one (my extended family is primarily very literalist, Charismatic Evangelical Protestant in religious orientation and think these are a great idea–they are also think very highly of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson), so I have thankfully never actually set foot in one.
How can one talk to a Neopagan? Frankly I have no idea.
Well, you’re making a start now
. You might find the thread “Neopagan Apologetics” under the Apologetics forum useful as a starting point. It began with a point by point response to the article “Anti-Neopagan Apologetics” that recently was in This Rock. Be warned that it’s a long thread–263 posts–and kind of buried by now on the forum as the last post was Dec 30. Once you get past the calls for exorcism, etc on the first couple of pages there is some good information there about the perspective of at least some Neopagans and where the article missed the boat.
Having said all that, it is also important to recall that we are all human. We all make mistakes. We all have pet peeves and little things that annoy one person mightily and another not at all. An sometimes we ( - I - ) don’t even follow our ( - my - ) own advice. Thank you, KarenNC, for your graciousness. My apologies as well.
Accepted and appreciated. It would probably have been more helpful for me to post my personal experiences much earlier in the conversation so that we both knew where the other was coming from. I knew things were a bit different outside of the South in this respect, but did not realize exactly how different they could be.
I have to admit it was similar to an experience we had in Quebec a number of years ago. I had been told that Quebec was bilingual, so we figured our high school French would be adequate to any situations that didn’t already have English available. We were staying in the mountains outside of Montreal.
Our experience was that outside of a very few areas of Montreal, English was nowhere to be found (on street signs, in businesses, on radio/tv, in newspapers), and very few folks were able (or possibly in some cases, willing) to use English even after hearing our broken attempts at French (it was better once they knew we were American rather than Canadian, I have to admit). In the midst of this, we found the single English language paper, which we clutched onto like unto a drowning man
. There was an article in it on how threatened French was in Quebec by the overuse of English–our first thought was “How???”
They used to be called Operation Rescue (if you are familiar with Randall Terry or Flip Benham). They are very fond of screaming abuse outside schools and lots of other “fun” shock tactics in efforts to convince people of their views. If you want to learn more about them, they are easily findable on the web (though I would recommend looking up newspaper reports of the actions they reference on their website, to get another perspective as well). Frankly, I wouldn’t bother unless you have a very strong stomach.
I actually agree with * some* of their positions–to an extent–, though it makes me shudder to think that anyone might believe I have the remotest thing in common with this group. They’ve recently set up a base of operations in our area, unfortunately, so we get to see lots of them.
As for Hellhouses, yes, they crop up here (at least a couple of them) every Halloween. religioustolerance.org/hallo_he.htm will give a description. I knew about them before I ever encountered one (my extended family is primarily very literalist, Charismatic Evangelical Protestant in religious orientation and think these are a great idea–they are also think very highly of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson), so I have thankfully never actually set foot in one.
How can one talk to a Neopagan? Frankly I have no idea.
Well, you’re making a start now
. You might find the thread “Neopagan Apologetics” under the Apologetics forum useful as a starting point. It began with a point by point response to the article “Anti-Neopagan Apologetics” that recently was in This Rock. Be warned that it’s a long thread–263 posts–and kind of buried by now on the forum as the last post was Dec 30. Once you get past the calls for exorcism, etc on the first couple of pages there is some good information there about the perspective of at least some Neopagans and where the article missed the boat.Having said all that, it is also important to recall that we are all human. We all make mistakes. We all have pet peeves and little things that annoy one person mightily and another not at all. An sometimes we ( - I - ) don’t even follow our ( - my - ) own advice. Thank you, KarenNC, for your graciousness. My apologies as well.
Accepted and appreciated. It would probably have been more helpful for me to post my personal experiences much earlier in the conversation so that we both knew where the other was coming from. I knew things were a bit different outside of the South in this respect, but did not realize exactly how different they could be.
I have to admit it was similar to an experience we had in Quebec a number of years ago. I had been told that Quebec was bilingual, so we figured our high school French would be adequate to any situations that didn’t already have English available. We were staying in the mountains outside of Montreal.
Our experience was that outside of a very few areas of Montreal, English was nowhere to be found (on street signs, in businesses, on radio/tv, in newspapers), and very few folks were able (or possibly in some cases, willing) to use English even after hearing our broken attempts at French (it was better once they knew we were American rather than Canadian, I have to admit). In the midst of this, we found the single English language paper, which we clutched onto like unto a drowning man
. There was an article in it on how threatened French was in Quebec by the overuse of English–our first thought was “How???”
.