What would cause someone from a normal background to become a religious zealot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely mental illness.

Sadly I think this may be the case. The time frame would track with the onset of major mental illness and there's also been a significant change in appearance, which I think often accompanies mental illnes. Geez! Now I feel bad.

But the wife, too simultaneously AND after both had been no religious for years?

Sometimes two mentally ill people, get together, but you are right. Here the wife seems less extreme like her posts aren't so OTT, so maybe it's a case of the wife trying to appease the husband who was drawn into extremism? I don't know.

Birthing five kids is a lot of appeasement.

[Anonymous]

This thread and the evangelical guy are both cringy. Get a grip, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely mental illness.

Sadly I think this may be the case. The time frame would track with the onset of major mental illness and there's also been a significant change in appearance, which I think often accompanies mental illnes. Geez! Now I feel bad.

But the wife, too simultaneously AND after both had been no religious for years?

Sometimes two mentally ill people, get together, but you are right. Here the wife seems less extreme like her posts aren't so OTT, so maybe it's a case of the wife trying to appease the husband who was drawn into extremism? I don't know.

Birthing five kids is a lot of appeasement.

Why are you appeasing OP, who is clearly a whackadoodle?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To answer the general question (I agree that this guy doesn't sound like a zealot to me, but that conversation isn't going anywhere):

It's very common for people who convert to a religion to be pretty zealous about it. Something had to overcome to inertia of previous beliefs and make them want to embrace something new. That's usually something pretty major and the often results in more intense forms of faith than in people raised in a religion. Catholic converts, for instance, are in my experience much more likely to be mantilla wearing Latin Mass goers than people raised Catholic. Sometimes it's a major life struggle, sometimes it's an experience that they perceive as being from God. There's plenty of secular parallels to this, too. Think of someone who embraces veganism or being sober; that's often a big part of their identity and more important to them than people who just don't drink.

Good point. I know lots of people raised vegetarian as Hindus or Buddhists. None of them try to convert anyone to vegetarianism and they rarely talk about it at all.

[Anonymous]

I went back to read the first post and saw, as I remembered, that OP asked "How does this happen?

So he was just asking a simple question.

People can make drastic changes in their lives and it seems quite normal to be curious about them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went back to read the first post and saw, as I remembered, that OP asked "How does this happen?

So he was just asking a simple question.

People can make drastic changes in their lives and it seems quite normal to be curious about them.

OP is a pot-stirring busybody. Keep reading, OP hasn’t talked to this guy in years, trashes all Christians at one point, speculates about his wife, tries to manage who gets to post here, and does a wild, furious telepathy fail on another poster. Weird stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went back to read the first post and saw, as I remembered, that OP asked "How does this happen?

So he was just asking a simple question.

People can make drastic changes in their lives and it seems quite normal to be curious about them.

OP is a pot-stirring busybody. Keep reading, OP hasn’t talked to this guy in years, trashes all Christians at one point, speculates about his wife, tries to manage who gets to post here, and does a wild, furious telepathy fail on another poster. Weird stuff.

I have never trashed all Christians. You have issues. A simple question should not cause you to spew such vitriol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP's question is a good one and there are people who study it. Think Jihadi John. IIRC, he grew up in a fairly normal family in Britain and ended up in videos on YouTube beheading people. What's the path people follow from normal dude in high school to terrorist or religious extremist or even just the highly highly devout of the Duggar variety (which sounds more like OP's friend).

The guy in OP’s post isn’t beheading anyone. In fact it seems like OP barely knows him so who can say, but there’s no apparent need to go there.

Not yet. There's a lot of steps between normal to beheading or turning quiverfull how does the switch get flipped?

[Anonymous]

Near death experience for someone I knew in high school, who prior to that was a huge fast and loose partier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend from college and her husband are like this. Educated people who grew up in normal, suburban families. They were becoming more religious in the early 10’s but the 2016 race accelerated it. Her DH began carrying a gun to church “to protect when Muslims try to attack good Christians”. Never mind that there’s been zero attacks on white Christian houses of worship.

They were becoming mild preppers, all the while delving deeper into bible studies and more evangelical church. Based on her FB feed, they are by now full-in on aprocyphal Christianity, the Patriot movement, the whole nine yards. I don’t know exactly how, but it was incremental over fifteen years. It’s heartbreaking and has torn their family apart.

This is extremist. Not what busybody OP is describing.

Quiverfull is extremism and no matter how much name-calling you do it won't change that.

DP. Did the guy actually say he was quiverfull? Not everyone who has lots of kids are religious. Some atheists or non-religious people I know have 4 or 5 kids and they’re not “extremist”. They just made different choices than you did. Some people want a large family. What’s wrong with that? This is America. You want us to go back to when China limited the number of children a family could have?

The phrases that you see on his Facebook feed are pretty standard for evangelical Christians. They’re just phrases or memes posted on Facebook. I get it can be cringey to post things like #boymom or put a sign in your kitchen that says “live, laugh, love”, but how are these Facebook posts any different from the tons of other stupid things people post like what they ate for lunch or a photo of their pumpkin spiced latte? Extremist to me means they’re harming someone else or posting offensive, racist, or hateful language. Your examples are none of that. Arguably cringey, but that’s par for the course on Facebook. You’re making a lot of assumptions on someone you haven’t seen in a long time based on his social media. Why do you care so much?

His statements are from quiverfull. I consider the quiverfull movement harmful same movement Duggars involved in. I also consider homophobic beliefs to be harmful and extremist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Near death experience for someone I knew in high school, who prior to that was a huge fast and loose partier.

That makes sense to me in some level.

[Anonymous]

Raised to be an authoritarian. Maybe rebelled in high school or college, but went into straight "I can't think for myself and have to be controlled by religion 24/ 7."

I am Christian, but a thinking Christian, and I have seen my southern baptist raised friends go this route. Eventually being southern baptist is not conservative or religious enough for them and they go full evangelical / quiverfull.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went back to read the first post and saw, as I remembered, that OP asked "How does this happen?

So he was just asking a simple question.

People can make drastic changes in their lives and it seems quite normal to be curious about them.

OP is a pot-stirring busybody. Keep reading, OP hasn’t talked to this guy in years, trashes all Christians at one point, speculates about his wife, tries to manage who gets to post here, and does a wild, furious telepathy fail on another poster. Weird stuff.

I have never trashed all Christians. You have issues. A simple question should not cause you to spew such vitriol.

Go back and read your posts. That’s some weird sh**.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP's question is a good one and there are people who study it. Think Jihadi John. IIRC, he grew up in a fairly normal family in Britain and ended up in videos on YouTube beheading people. What's the path people follow from normal dude in high school to terrorist or religious extremist or even just the highly highly devout of the Duggar variety (which sounds more like OP's friend).

The guy in OP’s post isn’t beheading anyone. In fact it seems like OP barely knows him so who can say, but there’s no apparent need to go there.

Not yet. There's a lot of steps between normal to beheading or turning quiverfull how does the switch get flipped?

Seriously? Now this guy you haven’t talked to in years is on the path to becoming the evangelical version of Jihadi John.

Your mistake is that you think “normal” is going to church a few times a year. It doesn’t make me happy to say this, but evangelicals are actually a significant share of the population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend from college and her husband are like this. Educated people who grew up in normal, suburban families. They were becoming more religious in the early 10’s but the 2016 race accelerated it. Her DH began carrying a gun to church “to protect when Muslims try to attack good Christians”. Never mind that there’s been zero attacks on white Christian houses of worship.

They were becoming mild preppers, all the while delving deeper into bible studies and more evangelical church. Based on her FB feed, they are by now full-in on aprocyphal Christianity, the Patriot movement, the whole nine yards. I don’t know exactly how, but it was incremental over fifteen years. It’s heartbreaking and has torn their family apart.

This is extremist. Not what busybody OP is describing.

Quiverfull is extremism and no matter how much name-calling you do it won't change that.

DP. Did the guy actually say he was quiverfull? Not everyone who has lots of kids are religious. Some atheists or non-religious people I know have 4 or 5 kids and they’re not “extremist”. They just made different choices than you did. Some people want a large family. What’s wrong with that? This is America. You want us to go back to when China limited the number of children a family could have?

The phrases that you see on his Facebook feed are pretty standard for evangelical Christians. They’re just phrases or memes posted on Facebook. I get it can be cringey to post things like #boymom or put a sign in your kitchen that says “live, laugh, love”, but how are these Facebook posts any different from the tons of other stupid things people post like what they ate for lunch or a photo of their pumpkin spiced latte? Extremist to me means they’re harming someone else or posting offensive, racist, or hateful language. Your examples are none of that. Arguably cringey, but that’s par for the course on Facebook. You’re making a lot of assumptions on someone you haven’t seen in a long time based on his social media. Why do you care so much?

His statements are from quiverfull. I consider the quiverfull movement harmful same movement Duggars involved in. I also consider homophobic beliefs to be harmful and extremist.

I’m with you on condemning the homophobia, which is common to many evangelicals. But given the weirdness in your other posts, it seems like you’re latching onto the quiverfull thing because your first posts didn’t resonate.