How Evangelicals Use Digital Surveillance to Target the Unconverted
newrepublic.com
The hot new thing in proselytizing is an app that allows Christian conservatives to collect data on whole neighborhoods of potential converts.

It puts a lot of features at the fingertips of the faithful, including the ability to filter whole neighborhoods by religion, ethnicity, “Hispanic country of origin,” “assimilation,” and whether there are children living in the household.

Its core function is to produce neighborhood maps and detailed tables of data about people from non-Anglo-European backgrounds, drawn from commercial sources typically used by marketing and data-harvesting firms.

training videos produced by users show the extent to which evangelical groups are using sophisticated ways to target non-Christian communities, with questionable safeguards around security and privacy.

In one instance, he points to the sharable note-taking function and suggests leaving information for each household, such as “Daughter left for college” and “Mother is in the hospital.”

increasingly popular among Christian supremacist groups, prayerwalking calls on believers to wage “violent prayer” (persistently and aggressively channeling emotions of hatred and anger against Satan), engage in “spiritual mapping” (identifying areas where evil is at work, such as the darkness ruling over an abortion clinic, or the “spirit of greed” ruling over Las Vegas), and conduct prayerwalking (roaming the streets in groups, “praying on-site with insight”).

newly arrived refugees might well find a knock on the door from strangers with knowledge of their personal circumstances distressing—and that’s before these surprise visitors even begin to attempt to convert them.

placing people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds on easy-to-access databases is a dangerous road to go down

  • Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    You seem to be putting words in my mouth. People I know that talk to me about these sorts of things know that this isn’t how I think at all.

    I never claim to have all the answers, and there’s a lot I don’t know about the Bible. In fact, if you talk to me about the biblical stance of abortion in particular, I’ll say that I don’t know at what point someone becomes a person, and the Bible doesn’t give a clear answer - if anything, it implies that you’re a person before you’re even conceived, which could mean that not having kids is murder, but that’s ridiculous and obviously wrong.

    I also never push for controlling others. As I said in another thread here, it has to be a choice, otherwise God might as well control us all directly. And I definitely never try to use the law as a tool to make others moral. If the law were capable of making people moral, there would be no need for Jesus.

    By the way, there are people out there who think Christians are evil for believing others should think the same way they do even if they agree it’s optional. I’ve met them. I’m not lumping you in with them, just contradicting your claim that nobody cares.

    EDIT: By the way, you didn’t define evangelical. If it’s not too much trouble, I would like to know how you define it.

    • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      Regardless of your personal actions or beliefs, you are being lumped in with extremists. If that confuses you because you personally feel innocent, there is an expression that goes something like

      “If there are 9 people at a table and a Nazi sits and eats with them, there are 10 Nazis as the table.”

      Tolerating or being indifferent to abhorrent behaviour is the same as rewarding/endorsing abhorrent behaviour.

      As for the definition of evangelicals, there’s the literal definition

      “Evangelicalism (/ˌiːvænˈdʒɛlɪkəlɪzəm, ˌɛvæn-, -ən-/), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that emphasizes the centrality of sharing the “good news” of Christianity, being “born again” in which an individual experiences personal conversion, as authoritatively guided by the Bible, God’s revelation to humanity.[1][2][3][4][5] The word evangelical comes from the Greek word for “good news” (euangelion).[6]”

      And then there is the applied practice of evangelicals who spend considerable wealth influencing politics to turn America (and the world) into a theocratic state with the goal of converting everyone and doing away with anyone who resists their goals.

      They are uncompromising because they believe they act on God’s will giving them unquestionable holy authority to act as they see fit as long as it pushes their narrative and goals.

      It’s not my job to educate you on your own religion, if you’re lost as to why anyone would despise evangelicals even though “they’re not all like that” that is up to you to reconcile.

      There might be a subtle difference between a front lines Nazi and Hitler on the ‘innocence scale’ if you want to split hairs, but to everyone outside that group, a Nazi is a Nazi (who were all essentially evangelicals as well, surprise surprises)

      if you don’t believe me, here’s something to read since you like proof/evidence so much, but I doubt you’ll ever challenge your own beliefs.

      • Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        So what I’m seeing here is that I’m being accused of fascism because some people I never met who claim to share my religion are fascists. But apparently that’s a justified accusation because apparently I have no issues with them.

        It wasn’t okay to lump Muslims in with Al-Qaeda. Why is this okay? Because the people you’re lumping me in with are in power?

    • FreakinSteve@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      I have NEVER heard of ANY christian group speaking out against evangelical attempts to control others. NEVER.

      I have NEVER heard of ANY christian organization standing up to government officials to say NO WE DO NOT WANT TO FORCE OUR GOD OR IDEOLOGY ON OTHERS THROUGH GOVERNMENT FORCE. Which is weird because government force is proof that there is no god and/or he has no power of his own.

      • Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        Try asking your nearest pastor. It’s hard for real Christian statements to get around. Where are you going to hear it?

        The news? They won’t share it because it’s not really news. They don’t share much besides events, and news networks are biased towards negative events and crimes, which would generally be perpetrated by fake Christians (like christofascists.)

        Social media? Christian statements don’t trend because there are too many Christian-haters that downvote and argue. The closest you get is “look at these evil christofascists” kind of stuff like this.

        Word of mouth and one-on-one conversations is by far the best way.

        • FreakinSteve@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          But see that’s the part you dont get: there is NO REASON for christian statements to get around. Yours is the only religion that demands that you be a fucking pest to everyone else. You dont know to stop once someone is saved; you switch immediately to cult grooming. It’s a religion of evil, not good; a cult of death, not peace. The long term goals are the same as they have always been: scour the earth of infidels.

          • Sotuanduso@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            8 months ago

            Not gonna lie, this sounds like:

            “I’ve never heard of any Christian saying anything against being evil in this way.”
            “That’s because you don’t hear from Christians. Try asking one.”
            “There’s no reason to hear from Christians, they’re evil in that way.”

            Frankly, this sounds like it’s going to be a long and tiring conversation. If you militantly believe that something so simple as telling a friend that Jesus loves them is an act of fascism, I don’t think this is going to be productive or enjoyable for either of us.