geo@watarts.UUCP (07/30/83)
Avi Gross (avi@pegasus) recently posted the text of a questionnaire he received unsolicited in the mail. The questionnaire was ostensibly directed towards single people. Avi found the religious bias suspicious, speculated that perhaps the questionnaire was a ploy on the part of some evangelical group, and asked if anyone had ever come across anything similar. (Hope I haven't misrepresented you Avi.) Well I came across something similar. There was a chapter of the "Maranathas" on campus a year or two ago. They used to pull this stunt in pairs. They would approach you in a lounge or common room, explain they were students, and ask you if you would mind helping them out by answering some questions for them. They would have about a dozen mimeographed questionnaires under their arms with their school books. I don't recall their exact line of patter, but they clearly implied that the questionnaire was associated with their academic work. The first question or two were innocuous. I had answered about half a dozen before I realized that this was not a legitimate exercise intended to measure my attitude, but rather a ploy to embroil me in a religious discussion. Clearly I am still angry about it. I am extremely distrustful of this group. Does anyone know anything more about them? I understand that Rios Montt, the current dictator of Guatemala is a member. The local chapter seemed to be supported by an incredible amount of money. According to the records they filed with the student federation they had on the order of two dozen members. Somehow they managed to rent a storefront, print glossy pamphlets, and every two or three weeks plaster the campus with posters for events they were hosting. The events would either be a visit from a young, clean-cut looking evangelist, and his wife, or a movie about Christian life. There seemed to be intense pressure on the members of this group to enter student politics. Geo Swan, Integrated Studies, University of Waterloo (ihnp4 || allegra || linus || decvax) !watmath!watarts!geo
tim@unc.UUCP (08/01/83)
The ever-cordial Geo Swan has posted some misgivings about the
Maranatha organization. As it happens, they were here at UNC a little
while ago. They are very kind, very polite people who want to run the
country themselves and drive out all the non-Christians who are
dragging it down. They also lose their politeness when they preach,
doing the usual you-are-evil-and-going-to-hell bit.
This sort of group frightens me, not because they are horrible
ogres, but because they are normal, nice people who back one of the
most oppressive platforms of social reforms you can imagine. Remember
that the Nazi party was composed mostly of good German citizens, not
monsters. Pam (if you've been hiding for a while, she's my lady)
talked with some Maranathas on the street and tried to pin one down
about exactly what it was that he meant when he talked about making
America a Christian nation, and what would happen to those who didn't
convert. He wouldn't (or couldn't) answer the first in any sort of
direct or otherwise informative fashion, and his only answer to the
second was that he didn't care, that it would be doing them a favor to
make them convert. That sounds pleasant for those, like me, who would
only profess Christianity at gunpoint, or after involuntary brain
surgery to keep my "head knowledge" from blocking out the Lord.
I would like to supply some quotes from their newsletter, which
consists mostly of pseudo-scholarly articles about how freedom of
religion was put in the Constitution only to keep Christian sects from
attacking each other and other pap. Unfortunately, I damaged the
paper throwing it down in disgust, and I haven't seen it in a few weeks.
______________________________________
The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney
duke!unc!tim (USENET)
tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill