“Packed out church tonight as I got to reveal our brand new mission project,” the pastor’s caption on Instagram said.
“@livetsord will start using military drones, three meters wide, to drop thousands of electronic Bibles over closed areas in the Middle East. Let’s pray the message of God’s love in Christ will conquer that of darkness and hate!”
The apparent logic of the Swedish church Livets Ord, or “Word of Life,” is that by using a tactic that simulates the airstrikes that have traumatized a region, they will bring light and love and maybe convert some Muslims to Christianity.
“We start our project in a few weeks and hope to drop thousands of Bibles,” the church’s website says. The Bibles are “pillbox”-size and will supposedly be dropped from high altitude by a contractor hired by the church.
Faced with scorn from the media, Christian Akerhielm, the church’s missions director, has emphasized that the drone campaign adds to their good work in the region, which involves distributing aid at refugee camps.
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The evangelical church was founded in 1983, and its founders have since left it and converted to Catholicism. It is a massive entity in the city of Uppsala, an hour’s drive north of the Swedish capital, Stockholm. It is run by the charismatic preacher Joakim Lundqvist, who introduced the drone mission to church attendees.
[…]
The Bibles are electronic but don’t need to be plugged in to work. One assumes they have been translated into Arabic, but that isn’t indicated in any of the publicity around the mission.
Leave it to Christians to be such utterly oblivious, insensitive assholes. Once again, they demonstrate that shining on light on their supposed good works is the most important consideration, much like Stuart with his constant refrain of Look what I can do!
Via Washington Post.
So they’re going to air drop what is functionally hail over refugee camps and this will win people to their cause.
Okay then.
That, and needlessly terrorizing people who are already suffering deep trauma. Then there’s the money -- how much did this little stunt cost? All that money could have gone to actually doing something good for people, but no.
So, what they are saying is that they used to use proselytize while providing aid, but now they’ve figured out how to do the proselytizing without that difficult and annoying “aid” part. Yeah, that makes it sound better…
They’ll raise a few million bucks by filming drones on location on a US ranch out west somewhere. Write a few soppy conversion stories and there’s your meal ticket.
If they used standard-sized bibles, the recipients could used them as toilet paper.
I find the claim of intending to use both implausible and alarming (both of the below are, I admit, in conspiracy “theory” territory):
Implausible — Assuming they mean the type being used by Obama to blow up weddings, those drones-of-death are rather large machines controlled from half-a-world away. Presumably not available to civilians, and presumably quite expensive even if there are civilian versions.
Alarming — They could mean actually using the military’s drones-of-doom, presumably in the aftermath of a murder mission. Blow up a hospital, and then drop propaganda pamphlets saying “If you were xians this crusade wouldn’t be necessary.”
Returning to plausibility on this specific point, if there is any reality to this idiocy at all, they probably mean hobbyist- or professional-type drones. Some of those might be built- or designed-by the military’s contractors, or based-on presumably(? hopefully?) non-lethal military equipment, but to call them “military” is probably(? hopefully?) a stretch.
Plus, it occurs to me, how many civilian drones are designed to airdrop any sort of a payload?
Livets ord is allegedly a prosperity gospel church. The pop/schlager/gospel singer Carola Häggkvist (a big name in Sweden) used to be a member, but now she’s (since 1995 according to the Pfft.) back in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden.
It’s hard to find anything good about this drone bombing campaign.
“look at the flying table-saw I just launched into the audience!”
2000 rpm propellors, no guards. I’ve had a DJI phantom (looks like the pro 4k model like mine) lose GPS and location lock and go crazy. Someone could get hurt really badly.
Why not drop, you know, money?
Just another way to pollute the earth in the name of god. Yay.
No doubt ISIS will react by a low-tech on-cam beheading of more Christians -- w/ or w/out connection to miniature e-bibles from the sky.