Fundy, wacko host family surprises Polish exchange student.

[JohnyCanuck]

My Half-Year of Hell With Christian Fundamentalists

"When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, 'Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.' At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.

Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn't had sex for the last 17 years because -- so they told me -- they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.

snip

One day I was talking to my host parents about my mother, who is separated from my father. They were appalled -- my mother's heart was just as possessed by the devil as mine, they exclaimed. God wanted her to stay with her husband, they said.

"God's will"

Then, seeing as we were already on the topic of God's will, the religious zealots finally brought up a subject which had clearly been on their minds for a long time: They wanted me to help them set up a Fundamentalist Baptist church in my home country of Poland. It was God's will, they said. They tried to slip the topic casually into conversation, but it really shocked me -- I realized that was the only reason they had welcomed me into their family. They had already started construction work in Krakow -- I was to help them with translations and with spreading their faith via the media.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,448350,00.html

[hippiechick]

1. Yikes!

:scared: That's some seriously bothersome shit!!

[RedStateShame]

2. "No, really. Please. Forget about Poland."

[Horse with no Name]

3. What a horrible experience

Don't they screen these nuts before they send impressionable young people to live with them?

[MADem]

10. Clearly, they don't....that's frigging HORRIBLE, that poor kid! NT

[Greyhound]

16. Are you kidding? They are exactly what the screening process is looking

for. There is no such disqualifier as too religious, but I'll bet there are many thinly veiled 'not religious enough' disqualifiers.

[Pawel K]

4. I'm from poland, the second you try to take a Polak's beer away you crossed the line

what a bunch of fucking whackos to put it mildly.

[liberal N proud]

5. I would have thought there would have been better screening to match student to family

That is just not right, to stick someone in a family that is forcing their beliefs on others that way.
The idea of foreign exchange is to exchange culture, not convert people.

[Mist]

7. That's my take on it--the screening process needs to be seriously

beefed up.

[deepthought42]

6. freaking lunatics...

Taking advantage of a foreign exchange student to further their own selfish desires. Oh yeah, they're good Christians alright... :sarcasm:

[JoDog]

25. In their scrambled brains, it's OK

Many people in these movement think that whatever they do, so long as it is done for their religion, is OK. This includes all kinds of lying, stealing (see Ezlivin post downthread) taking advantage of vulnerable people and cheating. As long as they can rationalize it to the Lord or bringing souls to him, it's all good.

The scary thing is that such an attitude is a slippery slope. Today, it is stiffing someone on a tip or doing a full-court conversion press on a Polish teen. Tomorrow, it is torture or murder.

[Jackpine Radical]

8. Why do I have to share a country with people like these?

It's not fair, I tell ya. Maybe we could herd them all into some southern or lightly-populated, red western state--after resettling & reimbursing the sane people of said state--and quarantine them. If ever there was a case for eminent domain, this would be it. We could also store nuclear & toxic chemical waste there.

[valerief]

9. Just think if you were a caveman. You'd have to live with evil

dinosaurs. At least, that's what the fundies (faith-funded by the U.S. gummint) tell us.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. You mean I'm NOT living with evil dinosaurs?

Who ARE these creatures, then?

[valerief]

26. Some are evil DINOs and some are evil PNACers. nt

[Cleita]

11. Stories like this makes you wish the rapture was a done deal. n/t

[yodermon]

12. AUHG Dark SIdeD!11!!

*snrk*..*snork*

[sui generis]

13. oh in the name of jayzuss I cast you out of the dork sad!!!

(shrieks, spins head, projective vomits)

:rofl:

[Mythsaje]

14. Oh, the humanity...

Or lack thereof.

I can't believe these people don't see how wrong this sort of behavior is--they'd go apeshit if someone did something similar to THEIR kid and tried to convert him to another religion.

[RB TexLa]

15. I understand Baptists have differing beliefs than Catholicism and mainline

protestants but I still don't get how some of them make up their theology.

The consumption of alcohol has always be an accepted practice among Christians.

Sex is a gift from God.

There are justifiable reasons for divorce laid out in the scriptures.

The giving up of sex between a married couple to serve God is the kicker, the sacrament of Christian marriage promotes not only the spiritual union but also the physical union of a couple to become one with each other.

[Greyhound]

17. This poor kid. The initial face to face encounter with religious nut-bars

can be really scary to the sane. I can only imagine how terrible being forced to live with them would be.

[Ezlivin]

18. They operated EXACTLY as they were programmed to as fundamentalists

I used to be a minister in a fundamentalist church, graduated from a fundy seminary, etc. So I know whereof I speak.

These people would have pleased the hell out of their pastor or "spiritual leader." Fundies are supposed to turn every possible opportunity into an evangelism attempt. They are supposed to make "friends" with others with the sole purpose of "saving their souls." They put Xian fish symbols on their work trucks and hope that it allows them to "witness" to a "lost soul." They leave tracts (sometimes in lieu of money) for waitresses/waiters in the hope that they will be converted by the "facts" in the tiny pamphlet.

Until you've been there, you have no idea of the totality of the brainwashing to which fundies subject themselves and their families.

[Greyhound]

19. You should post some of the details of practices and beliefs in your

own thread on this topic. I think you may be the only bona fide fundy minister on the board and many here really don't know how crazy it is.

[Ezlivin]

21. Yeah, I could...

But I've spent the last several years putting together my brain. It works much better now that all the cruft has been cleared out.

Successful fundamentalism rests on the pillars of inculcation and isolation. First you are isolated from the rest of the population, then you are inculcated in the faith. For instance, the bible says to "hold every thought captive to Jesus." And to do this a follower is encouraged to immerse him/herself totally. Basically the follower willingly subjects him/herself to brainwashing "for Jesus' sake."

:wow:

[ComerPerro]

20. they are clearly terrible people, but I bet they get priase for taking in a student

[Lex]

22. When I was in high school, an exchange student in our town switched

host families, within our town, and got permission to do it and everything. The first host family turned out to be nuts or something. At least it worked out for the exchange student in the end and she really bonded with the 2nd family and was able to keep going to our same high school.

I'm sorry to hear what happened to this exchange student.

[warrens]

23. That's so typical

These pods are incapable of realizing that not everyone thinks the way they do. If they do, they're possessed by Satan. You can't argue rationally with them. Their underlying assumption is god directs their lives, and you're an enemy of god, so therefore ANYTHING you say is at best inaccurate, but probably a deliberate lie.

One strategy to beat them is to play their game. I had a fundie telling me how much she hates the war but she was voting for bush because he's a godly man. I asked her how she knew this, if she had ever even seen bush in a church when he wasn't there for a photo op with black people. Her husband, a more rational fundie, jumped all over her, saying , "see, didn't I tell you?"

On the whole, though, the best strategy is to turn them off voting, because they're just clueless. They are used to idolizing a preacher because he tells them to.

[Horse with no Name]

27. kick for a laugh for the nighttime crowd.

[Nikia]

28. Religion should be part of of the screening process

Families and students may have different relgions and different tolerances to different religions. These religious attitudes may make a big difference in whether the student and family are compatible or not.
For example, there was an older woman in our neighborhood who took in an exchange female student or two every year. Although she was not quite as bad as this family, she always insisted that the exchange students go to church (Methodist) with her and participate. The students varied in their enthusiasm of this varying from they really enjoyed going to church and participated in all church activities to tolerated it to requested that they be assigned a new family because they hated it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a friend's family had an exchange student from a Latin American country who was staunchly Catholic. Her parents paid for her to attend parachocial school while she was there (my friend's family attended public school). She insisted that her host family drive her to Catholic Church multiple times per week. She refused to attend any service with them (They were Methodist). She was constabtly telling them that Catholicism was better. She probably would have been happier with a Catholic family.