Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

[Malflick]

Before Nightingale came out of the Broom Closet (cheering for the Hollyhead Harpies at the time, probably) most of my experience with neo-Pagans came from a few friends who dabbled in it in high school and gave it up, and one girl in college who.... My God. I mean, where do I start?

She almost burned down a dorm building at our college trying to do a ritual, and then ran around the building outside trying to blame other people for it. She would yell at professors, yell at students, ignore any one's dissenting opinion, and if you disagreed with her on anything (anything. No matter how polite or well reasoned you were) she would claim religious intolerance. She also stalked several people I knew, for good measure, and did a whole bunch of smaller annoying things. Mainly she was just one of the most arrogant insufferable people I've ever met. I tried to be nice to her for the longest time as at first I felt bad she was so disliked.... But that was also only met with disdain and cruelty from her.

Needless to say, I got off on the wrong foot, and there were many things I said about Paganism in front of Nightingale that I felt I needed to apologize for later, but which all stemmed largely from this one example of a completely hellishly annoying human being.

So I thought it would be interesting to start a thread to hear stories about one individual who muddied your view of a religion before someone else changed it. If you still hate that religion, well, not quite what I'm talking about here.

So, has anyone ever given you such a bad view of a religion that you made a judgement about it before learning it could be different? How so?

[Ektor]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

My father. He is a Neo-Pentenchostal Christian, but he was always accompanied of a multitude of disgustingly corrupt people, full of ignorance and bigotry. I grew up half with my mother's neo-pagan stuff, and half with my father's militant christian view. When I was younger I used to be a really extremist Christian, and I got filled with so much hatred I eventually collapsed and changed 100% from what I was, I'm much happier now.

I'm simply stating that most Christian people I know that are really into it tend to be ignorant and prejudicial, bigoted, sexist, homophobic and violent. I know there are many good Christians out there, as evidenced by my sister and a teacher of mine in University who are very good people and their Christian faith is not used as a weapon by them, still, about 70% of my experience with Christians is negative.

[Malflick]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

My father. He is a Neo-Pentenchostal Christian, but he was always accompanied of a multitude of disgustingly corrupt people, full of ignorance and bigotry. I grew up half with my mother's neo-pagan stuff, and half with my father's militant christian view. When I was younger I used to be a really extremist Christian, and I got filled with so much hatred I eventually collapsed and changed 100% from what I was, I'm much happier now.

I'm simply stating that most Christian people I know that are really into it tend to be ignorant and prejudicial, bigoted, sexist, homophobic and violent. I know there are many good Christians out there, as evidenced by my sister and a teacher of mine in University who are very good people and their Christian faith is not used as a weapon by them, still, about 70% of my experience with Christians is negative.

Its cool. I figured this being Pagan Forum most stories here would be about Christianity. I'm sorry your father has given you such a negative view of my religion, and indeed that anyone has, truly.

I'm glad the path you have found is one on which you've found happiness!

[Yorin]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

Honestly the entire family on my mothers side. When my mom got diagnosed with cancer when I was 8 they constantly told her and myself that we needed to pray to God. That this was all in Gods plan, and she could beat it. That if I was good, and acted right, God would make sure she lived to be with me. After my mom died....I honestly had a day where I was fed up, looked at the sky, and said "What kind of God would purposely put an 8-11 year old child through this hell and turn around and say but I love you". That was honestly the day I stopped believing in the christian god. Well....believing is definitely the wrong word.....stopped having faith in him is probably the better phrase.

When I started to get a little older and started researching other religions (partially for school, partially for myself) my mom's side of the family somehow found out and threw an absolute hissy fit. Like full blown sit downs that included telling me that I was going to burn in hell for eternity if I didn't accept Jesus into my heart. What happened to me, I used to love Jesus when I was little. Don't you wanna go to heaven? We don't want to see you suffer for all eternity.............and I sit and think to myself if this is what it means to be a christian, I honestly wanted no part of it.

I've had a few other isolated experiences, one including someone driving next to me telling me I'm "going to burn in hell you F***ing baby killer" because I had a bumper sticker saying "Get a taste of religion-lick a witch" and a few others, and then the other experiences I'm really not comfortable talking about, but let's just say the term "devil's whore" was thrown around.

I've learned not to immediately hate all Christians, and get to know the person first before their religion, but I have had a few incidences where the first thing they say about them is "I'm a hard core Christian" and my mind does an immediate "okaaaay, take about 50 slow steps back aaaaaand RUN" just because those people and I never seem to see eye to eye no matter what I do except hide who I actually am, and that's not me. It's also kinda hard to do when you've got a giant pentacle permanently inked into your back.

[Malflick]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

Yorin- Gah, that really would be an awful experience. I'm very sorry they acted as such.

A tattoo like that would make that a big difficult, yeah.

Being that I always wear a cross of some sort, I guess I've never found the need to say that, but I still can't imagine it being the absolute first thing I'd mention... That sounds an awful lot like showing off that YOU TOTALLY ARE A CHRISTIAN than anything else.

[anunitu]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

I tend not to be bothered by other religions,BUT when someone begins to become very judgmental and prejudiced about any thought or belief that does not reflect their personal view of life,that gets under my skin.

[Gleb]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

Well, it was about Islam with me.
As you probably know, Israel is being attacked from sector Gaza. Its citizens and the Hamas organization claim to do the attacks for the Islam. In the beginning, I considered this religion to be violent.
Until I saw a muslim user in facebook who wrote in her account data:
Religion: "Islam - religion of peace". Then I wrote her a pm and explained the situation in a nice manner and did my best in order to not offend her.
I had asked her to explain the case. Israel is being attacked by so called muslims and she says it's a peaceful relogopn.

The answer came to my message box a month later. She wrote that those who attack Israel think they follow the path, but they don't, actually. She also said that her community is told to honor everybody, no matter what their religion, sex and origin is. She is from South Africa, by the way.
I was shocked by the answer (in the good way).

Since then, I came to the conclusion, that in every community there are good and bad people and we just need to find the good ones.

[Malflick]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

Well, it was about Islam with me.
As you probably know, Israel is being attacked from sector Gaza. Its citizens and the Hamas organization claim to do the attacks for the Islam. In the beginning, I considered this religion to be violent.
Until I saw a muslim user in facebook who wrote in her account data:
Religion: "Islam - religion of peace". Then I wrote her a pm and explained the situation in a nice manner and did my best in order to not offend her.
I had asked her to explain the case. Israel is being attacked by so called muslims and she says it's a peaceful relogopn.

The answer came to my message box a month later. She wrote that those who attack Israel think they follow the path, but they don't, actually. She also said that her community is told to honor everybody, no matter what their religion, sex and origin is. She is from South Africa, by the way.
I was shocked by the answer (in the good way).

Since then, I came to the conclusion, that in every community there are good and bad people and we just need to find the good ones.

Thank you for sharing that tale Gleb. I think that's a very important thing to remember. I have yet to run into a group of sufficient size that didn't have good and bad people in it. Seeing any group only through a pidgin hole leaves out seeing any of their nuances.

[thalassa]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

At my first Pagan gathering after joining the military, with the hubby (before he was the hubby) and some friends from the Navy (for several years, we hosted one of the more popular camps), I was cornered by a couple of folks and harassed for being a "baby killer" and told some other rather obnoxious things.

Its not entirely an uncommon thing--as many military Pagans as there are and as indignant as some Pagans can get over the idea that "the man" is somehow oppressing Pagans in uniform as if it is some vast conspiracy (often the same ones that go around calling military members "baby killers" in the first place), there have been some well known Pagans that have promulgated the idea that you can't *really* be Pagan and be in the military (Isaac Bonewits, for one...and in at least some writings Starhawk).

Its an attitude that is out there, even among the people that push for pentacles on VA headstones and Pagan chaplains--those folks don't care that Pagans in the service get equal recognition, they're just fulfilling some Burning Times 2.0 fantasy.

I'm still Pagan, but people like that give us a bad name.

[monsno_leedra]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

Have to fully concur with Thalassa perspective on this one. As a career military pagan I got so tired of the assumption of being Wiccan, following a so called three fold law and how it conflicts with the military life style. A lot of us got to the point we claimed to be Nordic in our practices or influenced by that pantheon / mindset. If not Nordic then a more militaristic Roman / Hellenic perspective.

[Ektor]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

I have a problem with militaries myself, but it's from a sociopolitical point of view and the putrid history the military has in Brazil. I'd guess a pagan would suffer major prejudice in it since it's a very violent organization. It's not really a religious thing, I'd say.

[monsno_leedra]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

Ektor, in some places I can understand the reputation the military has as a social / political force. What really gets me though is all the so called pagans who harp about it then you ask who their gods / goddesses are and you discover how they have re-created them. Yet their historical and mythological histories no longer even resemble what they have made them into. Figure Artemis for instance she's gone from being a vengeful and bloody goddess to this oh she's my sister / mother figure and defends all women.

To much of the "make Love not War" hippy influence that came into power in the early 60's that still finds it way along with so much of the feminist movement that carried a lot of the same bull before it surrendered somewhat to the ecco and new age movements.

[Nightingale]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

For me, it was definitely more than one person. It was an entire church full of people, actually. The Baptist church in my hometown was incredibly bigoted and homophobic, and they liked to force their views on everyone else they knew. One of my best friends in High School attended said church and.... well, I'll just say she reinforced my bad opinion of them. Honestly I don't even know why we were friends. There was another "friend" of mine who also went there, and who refused to talk to me if I did not identify myself as a Christian. Her brother went even further than that: he would refuse to talk to me unless I went to church every Sunday, prayed every night and before every meal, and ended each prayer with "In Jesus' name we pray, amen." I didn't do that, but I told him I did so he'd acknowledge me as a person. And there were others who would ask which church I went to before deciding if I was worth their time.

My mom raised me Protestant, but that's about the only denominational distinction I can give. We bounced around to lots of different churches very frequently. I was never quite able to tell the difference between them: all Protestant churches seemed the same to me: they all talked about Jesus and Hell a lot, and none of them seemed very friendly towards me. I always felt out of place there. Eventually I got to the point where I just lumped all Protestant churches together in one enormous religious group, and since the Baptist Church was by far the loudest of them, I thought they were all like that. I thought I had to hide everything about myself from anyone who went to church, or else they would condemn me to burn in Hell.

My parents do not like Catholicism. They raised me to believe that Catholicism was far worse than Protestantism. So when I developed this opinion that all the Protestants in my town were all alike and not in a good way, I developed the opinion that Catholics must be even worse. (sorry Malflick.... I'm still ashamed of thinking this...) Most of the Catholics in my town sent their children to private schools, so I didn't know any of them personally, and all I had to go on was my parents' stories of what Catholics were like. Well, that and my history books, which, as you can imagine, did not paint a very pretty picture... *mumbles angrily about the Crusades and witch burnings*

I reached the point where I just didn't like religion ("religion" to me at this point just meant "Christianity." It didn't occur to me that there were others.) I automatically distrusted anyone who went to church- ANY church. I knew at that point that I could never be one of them. I dabbled in Hellenistic Paganism for a while in High School. I didn't tell a single person about it, but my mom noticed that I was "obsessed with Greek mythology," and, on a few occasions, she tried to hold an intervention about that. Since then, I have fully converted to Paganism. I use the blanket term because to explain fully what it is that I believe would take a while. It's an eclectic blend of lots of things. Anyway, as Malflick pointed out, I am out of the Broom Closet now (and yes, I do cheer for the Holyhead Harpies lol. all-female Welsh Quidditch team FTW!) When I came out of the broom closet to my mom, she was confused, she asked me to explain what I meant, and she has said many intolerant things to me over the years since. These include "you can't have a trinity, that's a Christian thing," "you do know that your gods are fictional, right?" "you don't ACTUALLY worship Thor, do you?" and calling me Wiccan when I am not.

*sigh*

I think, long story short, it was the Baptist Church in my town that drove me away from Christianity and caused me to have a rather bad opinion of Christianity as a whole, it was my history textbook that caused me to have a bad opinion of Catholics in particular, and it was my mother who convinced me to stay away once I was gone.

[Medusa]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

My brother is a Baptist minister. But when our father died, he was just getting out of seminary school and becoming a deacon. At the cemetery, about two week after the burial, we went back and sat at his gravesite. He told me God has all his people who were dead in the ground. They would stay there until Judgement day. And that did I want to receive Jesus into my heart right then and there. I said no. I was horrified at the thought of my father rotting in the coffin waiting for Jesus to come back. I was 11.


I've been an atheist ever since.

I have always stated I probably would have been an excellent Christian if it weren't for the Christians in my presence and their behavior.

Probably not the story you wanted to hear. But it's the truth.

[anunitu]

Re: Isolated People Who Gave You a Bad View of a Religon

I have no anger with the Christians I grew up with,but I did see their broken humanity while they spoke of love and light,but hid their darkness behind smiles and quoting verses. I think I may not be atheist completely,otherwise I would not still seek to understand why people do the things they do. Just call me a dreamer, for a dream where people are always full of truth,even the truth of their own weakness.