When I was an undergraduate in Sri Lanka, I was a member of a student Christian group and as part of our activities we did various kinds of charitable work such as helping in anti-TB campaigns and the like. We did not talk about religion when we visited the homes of poor people in the slums to dispense supplies to help them control their illness.
But some of our members were medical students (medical school is an undergraduate program there) and also evangelicals and I recall getting into a heated discussion with some of them because they would use their professional interactions with patients to also preach to them, which I argued was unethical since the sick were dependent on them and could not rebuff their proselytizing.
For the same reason, I was concerned about this news report of Christian evangelicals visiting nursing homes where there were very elderly people in the last stages of life, and preaching to them.
Rhonda Rowe and her team gathered around a diagram of the nursing home’s floor plan and determined how to split up to avoid praying with anyone twice.
Rowe made her way to a room where a 93-year-old woman lay in her bed while her 87-year-old roommate sat in a wheelchair. Rowe knelt between them and went through her “Nursing Home Gospel Soul-Winning Script.”
“Fill me with your Holy Spirit and fire of God,” the 93-year-old repeated. “I’m on my way to heaven. I have Jesus in my heart.”
Rowe was soon off to the next room, but before she left, acknowledged that she might never see them again on earth. “I’ll see you girls in heaven!” she chirped.
Welcome to the world of nursing home evangelism, where teams of lay evangelists target senior citizens for one last chance in this life for glory in the next.
One could argue that there is no real harm done. So what if these people tell someone on the verge of death some fairy tale that gets them to repeats some words about god and Jesus thinking it will get them into heaven?
On the other hand, it makes me uneasy to see people target old, lonely, and vulnerable people for what is essentially drive-by preaching in order to rack up the score for your church’s soul-winning statistics. It seems exploitative.
It is exploitative, no doubt about that. Though I always feel creeped out when I hear someone saying “I’ll pray for your soul” (though this one goes a little bit beyond that in the fictional landscape with Holy Spirit, Jesus and God being the disco DJ ), if that’s what it took to receive the real material benefit of modern medicine, I would listen to the bullshit and nod my head too. In the end, the people who you labeled as vulnerable may have had the last laugh (as in “suckers, hehe”).
I don’t have a link handy, but there’s a great video where Christopher Hitchens discusses this point. He asks to think of the opposite. Imagine if he and Sam Harris went thru a hospital to talk with the dying, and said that you don’t have to die as a slave. Hitch said it would be unethical to deconvert people like that, and we all see that. But we overlook it when it’s Christian conversion.
what do you mean, “seems”?
On the other hand, it makes me uneasy to see people target old, lonely, and vulnerable people for what is essentially drive-by preaching in order to rack up the score for your church’s soul-winning statistics. It seems exploitative.
They’re also after donations. A lot of money is left to churches in wills…
This is why deathbeds should have trapdoors installed next to them.
at #4: Bingo! And although many of the proselytizers are just delusional, some of them could be truly mentally ill and therefore dangerous if crossed. It does seem to me that the nursing homes which allow this practice are opening themselves up to serious liability suits.
I agree about the discomfort it causes and that it is distasteful. On the other hand, it doesn’t always work.
Some years ago a ninety-year-old lady I knew was in hospital. A Sierra Leonean muslim nurse was worried about the fate of my atheist friend’s soul and set to work to bring her to god The nurse is now an atheist.
sc @#7,
That was a good story!
…how to split up to avoid praying with anyone twice.
Overdosing can have serious consequences even for normal people, but do they consider the risks of exposure for the prayer-allergic?
Perfectly true, Mano. I’ve met the nurse.
The lady will be 100 soon. As a lifelong Marxist she has asked not to receive royal acknowledgment.
On the other hand, not many people can be as effectively argumentative when ill and old.