Any Du'ers have a close relative in a "Evangelical Cult"?

[timber84]

I do and would love to hear your experiences in how you deal with it. I can't get past the anger part yet myself. Just found out my sibling believes I'm going to hell.....

[cynatnite]

1. My RW fundie mom still has 'hope' I'll come around...

I grew up southern baptist. They're a big chunk of the repuke's base. My mother luvs bush. She thinks gawd made bush president. :eyes:

She said Kerry was supported by the devil.

There are times she very reasonable and agrees with me on some things, but when it comes to the bible and bush, there is no reasoning with her.

[movie_girl99]

2. my idiot brother

he told me that liberalism is a disease. he also told me that he prays for me daily.

[timber84]

11. yep get that too...n/t

[Schema Thing]

3. If it makes you feel any better, my Jehovah's Witness relatives...

think your evangelical sibling is going to be destroyed by God at Armageddon.





Of course, they believe that God is going to kill me and you and pretty much everyone (except Jehovah's Witnesses) simply for not believing Jehovah's Witnesses have "the Truth(tm)".

[cynatnite]

4. Well, my baptist mother says your Jehovah's Witness relatives

are in a cult.

:P

[Schema Thing]

34. And she's 100% correct. I used to be in it myself.

[yorkiemommie1]

10. my jehovah's witness friends

have no use for * and his war. My JW neighbor and I have had many a *bashing session!

[Schema Thing]

33. naughty naughty Witnesses then. They are supposed to be completely

neutral on matters politics.

Impossible of course, but most won't get into discussions about politics with "worldly" people about politics, except perhaps to "witness" to them.

In any case, their solution to all the worlds problems is for Jehovah to kill everyone who doesn't accept the Witness theology. You included. Remember that next time you talk to them :D

ps... it's coming any day now!

[yorkiemommie1]

37. she always brings * up

and how much she hates him. i always avoided politics, but she just despises him. she watches the news and knows when they 'disappear' certain anti-Bush memes. that's what surprises me!

[Schema Thing]

38. Yeah, that's a little odd

By focusing on a person, instead of political parties etc, she probably rationalizes it as not taking a political stand. But it's definitely against the rules.

[yorkiemommie1]

40. i guess she can't take it any more

and her two daughters are both union members , one of whom is getting screwed by the airline she works for.

the other daughter always has union stickers on her car.

plus she's a minority working for a dental office that serves the poor.

edited to add: she's a senior, divorced and works all but 6 days a month so she sees what's happening.

[Philosoraptor]

5. me me!

it requires the patience of Job I'm afraid. that was the worst part of it for me, them thinking that they'd go to heaven and not have me there. what an exclusive club they have.

[timber84]

13. that's exactly what his email said, just exactly how do they have

this ability to judge. I thought the good book said "Judge lest ye be judged?

[yorkiemommie1]

6. yes

but we have no contact since he/wife have proven themselves to be unethical. they used to pray over my soul too. i told them i don't want to go to heaven; i want to go to hell with all my friends!

[mike_c]

7. my whole family...

...most of whom I haven't spoken to in decades. My mother has lightened up a bit, but only to the extent of changing churches. It's a topic that we simply don't discuss, and as I said, I don't discuss ANYTHING with the rest of my family.

[timber84]

15. sorry for that Mike. I have a rather large family and most are still

reasonable and fun. I think I'd be in bad shape if most of them weren't still sane.

[NRaleighLiberal]

8. My brother is a newly minted fundie.

Sad - grew up kind of moderate (but very cautious, risk averse, malleable/impressionable). Had a bad first marriage (he had an affair). Was "rescued" by a fundie - now he consumed the kool aid, and the family has real issues communicating with him. One of our daughters has a real psycholical problem (probably genetic) - his explanation is that she is possessed by the devil.

The answer is...I don't know HOW to reach him. None of us do. He has created his own, new belief system in which the truth no longer matters.

[timber84]

16. I love the pattern of alienation that follows their recent conversions

You and I probably have and are having many of the same experiences.

[NRaleighLiberal]

19. Well, sadly, it is causing an unbridgeble gap in our family.

We are a very small family, and I am sure it hurts my mom and dad - though they always considered him a bit of a lost sheep, and are happy that he at least believes in something (though I actually think that belief to this danger level is NOT a good thing). He is a smart kid, and should know better than to fall hook, line and sinker for the spin.

[timber84]

21. same here, he's been going deeper and deeper for six years

now. the situation has escalated due to his announcement that he's marrying a woman from this "church". My mother, a practicing catholic, was of the same opinion, well at least he's doing something religious, but now he's attacking her beliefs and she's not a happy camper right now.

[AtomicKitten]

9. yep

My sister is an ordained minister in the Foursquare Evangelical Church.

[rhiannon55]

12. My mother cries sometimes

as she tells me that it breaks her heart that I (as an unbeliever) "won't be in heaven with her."

Her tears used to make me feel guilty, but after several years of this, now they just piss me off.

Last time she brought this up, I told her that if people like me, whom she knows to be kind-hearted, caring people, can't go to heaven simply because we don't believe in the Jesus crap, then, so be it; I wouldn't want to spend eternity in such a judgmental, unfriendly place.

I guess I'm a bad daughter...but sheesh! Enough already.:banghead:

[DUgosh]

14. My sisters were brainwashed by John Hagee

[cmd]

17. My brother

Younger brother is a musician who lives to play for someone. He was enticed into playing his guitar at a church, played a few times and got reborn. I'm sure he believes I'm headed to hell. Another sibling died last year without being reborn. He believes he has been condemned to hell. I've just told him matter of factly that I prefer to believe that God loving and forgiving and that if you do your best he will take care of you.

[bobbieinok]

23. you might find it interesting to check out Carlton Pearson

He was a MAJOR charismatic/pentecostal preacher here in Tulsa with a gigantic church (Higher Dimensions) and on the board of Oral Roberts University (Richard Roberts, Oral's son, called him 'my black brother').

He had a change of heart and now believes God is inclusive, NOT just for Christians. He has been ostracized by his former friends and colleagues and has lost his church.

There was a recent segment on Dateline about him; he was also a speaker at a Harvard Divinity School series about the future of the Black Pentecostals (I found a video from this online).

See,for example,

http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2006/02/carlton_pearson.html

....

God is Not a Christian! is Bishop Pearson's position paper on the doctrine of inclusion (now being expanded into a book which will bear the same title). There are powerful teachings here. For example:

"When you make religion your God, you lose the God and often the good of the religion. Many Christians have made the religion itself pre-eminent to Christ. They defend the religion, while ignoring or perhaps never experiencing the relationship...

My desire is to know God totally rather than selectively. I'm even willing to suspend what I think I already know about God, in order to know Him in a way I have never imagined."

Replace the sentence about Christians with one about Jews ("Many Jews have made the religion itself pre-eminent to the God with whom it is meant to allow us to relate") and that could have been written by one of my teachers. Of course, there are also portions of Bishop Pearson's text which may be uncomfortable for Jewish readers. Like these paragraphs, which made me laugh but which also reminded me of where his theology and mine necessarily differ:

"In a practical sense, would God send His son to buy our salvation and then make it contingent on whether or not the missionary could hear and obey the call, raise enough support to get a ticket to the foreign land in time to reach the lost heathen dying of some dread disease?

Why would Jesus pay the awful and awesome price to save the world and then trust its reality or its realization exclusively to a group of western Evangelicals, who for the most part can't even agree on the simple subject of water baptism or how and when to take communion, let alone with whom to take it?"

....

[cmd]

26. Thanks

I want to read more about him. I've always believed in the inclusive God. That's the problem I have committing to one religion. There are too many good people in the world to shut out some because they believe in different stories.

[bobbieinok]

35. this was a BIG story here in Tulsa

When this broke, Pearson was just cut off by all his former colleagues -- his name NEVER mentioned at ORU (where he had been this super alum who started the gospel choir Souls Afire when he was an undergrad, etc).

I think it was in the Dateline show on him that he talked about being invited to an SF church. This was one that has many gays. He said something to the effect that he had never before understood how totally shut out and forsaken by the 'church' they had felt until he became shut out himself.

In the video at the Harvard Divinity School series he talked about having grown up in a box and just believing everything he was told. When he started to think 'outside the box', he was dumped by everyone who had been his great friend. He said something on the order of he had been radically changed and that this change was ongoing.

[Javaman]

30. Is he a believer because he believes or is he a believer because

he has a regular gig now? something to ponder

[corkhead]

18. My Grandmother had a personal relationship with Pat Robertson

She was going to donate some property to his "church", and they even flew someone out to look at it, but they didn't want it, it wasn't liquid enough. She was told to sell it and they would be happy to accept the proceeds. I was bequeathed the personally autographed leather bound copies of all of his books when she passed on. I wonder how much they cost her...

[hpot]

20. My girlfriend is turning into a fundie

Logic seems to go out the window whenever religion is brought up (I'm partially atheist). I doubt we will last much longer.

[ChrisCat]

22. Most of my extended family members are fundies.

Thankfully, my parents are not. I have a cousin who is the most hate-filled, self-righteous fundie I have ever met. We were raised a few miles apart and were as close as sisters, but I avoid her most of the time now. She doesn't feel that she can "associate" with me, except to try to save my soul. She wouldn't even come to my wedding because we served alcohol. And though she has never called my son a bastard, she has pointed out many to me. My aunt recently cornered me and begged me to call my cousin because "I" was hurting her so bad by not having anything to do with her!!!

[annabanana]

24. Welcome to DU, ChrisCat.

Your Aunt should speak to her about her judgmental behavior. You will save yourself a lot of grief by limiting contact with someone who has so willingly discarded her ability to think critically. I'm sorry that the fundie-cult has split up your family.

[ChrisCat]

27. Thanks for the welcome!

I have limited contact, I just felt mean and hateful every time I was around her! My aunt has spoken to her, but she is too far gone. I was a fundie for many years too, but I finally had enough and left the church altogether. So you know where they think I'm going!

[ChrisCat]

25. Two quotes from the fundie cousin

After telling her that my husband prays with the kids before meals she says, "Why would prayer be important to someone like your husband, he doesn't even go to church?"

And, after telling her I was voting for Kerry, she says, "I would like to know how you can call yourself a Christian and vote for a Democrat."

[enuffs_enuffs]

28. As an devout athiest...

Nothing currently will serve to close the rift.

I hate to say it, but the older my fam gets the more insane they become. May be they were insane before but dementia has just encouraged them to share their wealth of hate.

I told them flat out... "If you want me to cuss you out, piss on the crosses around your necks, perform hideous rites in your living room... try and save me one more time." Also stated I don't feel comfortable in their home, I don't feel part of the fam, I'm ostracized to the very people they warn me about... all due to their bullshit.

I love to hate them but I also miss them terribly. It's a very sad situation. And it's not going to be solved overnight. May be when lots of citizens get rendered... but, I doubt it.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

29. My family's experience is recounted here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x88699

My advice:

Don't push them out of your life no matter how much they anger you. (We learned the hard way that "I'm glad I'm going to hell as long as YOU won't be there," while very satisfying to say, is a bad response to their provocation.)

If they try to shut you out of their lives, stay in touch with emails and letters - phone calls if they'll take them, or leave messages if only the machine picks up. Just share normal stuff like you always have - personal news, funny links, stuff like that. Don't let the cult have them.

Remind them that you love them, you have always loved them, and you will never stop loving them.

My brother came back to us. I hope your sib comes back round to your family. :hug:

[timber84]

31. Thanks for the encouragment!

[rainbow4321]

32. One relative watchs some crazy TV preacher guy on Sundays...

I don't know the preacher's name but one of the things he has said in the past is that parents should NOT send their children to college...says that the colleges turns good Christian kids into sinful liberals (gasp!) by the time that they graduate. The preacher also has a history of trashing wives and glorifying husbands during his sermons.
If for some reason this relative's (much more normal) wife tries to not go to church on any particular Sunday, their kids have to either watch this TV preacher or have really, really, really long bible sessions led by their father. Needless to say, it's much less painful for the wife to just agree to go to church and get it over with.
This is also the same guy/relative that has defended Timothy McVeigh's actions. They live in Oklahoma; the wife has said she would never, ever suggest that they go see the OKC memorial in fear of the husband making offensive comments in front of any victims/victims' families.

[nemo137]

36. My father and I have a standing agreement to not talk about religion.

Granted, it came after 12 years of screaming fights about it, but it came. I know that sounds pessimistic, but they do still love you, and hopefully it will work out all right in the end.

[Matariki]

39. I had a boyfriend in a 'satanic' cult - does that count?

as close as i come to your question i'm afraid. it was pretty annoying though - and reading through these posts makes me realize that a cult is a cult is a cult, whether 'christian' or 'satanic' or whatever.