Reply to Fundamentalist "Believers" next door pressuring us

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Whoa OP.

You lost my sympathy at your last few posts.  You went from reasonable to horrific and judgemental in just a few taps on the keyboard.[/quote]

:roll: You still have my sympathy, OP, because I have been there and I know you are just frustrated and venting. Vent away, thats what anonymous forums are for.

I have a Christian fundamentalist family in my neighborhood and their kids have tried preaching to my children and to the children of a jewish family in the neighborhood too.

The Jewish family seemed a bit upset. I am not overly bothered because I know those kids mean well. Their christian fundamentalist faith asks them do that. We are a practicing Muslim family. When their son tried to preach to my son, he just said, "We are Muslim and we have different beliefs than you."

That ended it.

Just tell them you are not looking for any church right now. If they invite you to any church activity, simply decline. I would remain patient because they are your neighbor and they don't mean any harm.[/quote]

OP here, this is great and kind advice thank you!  I'm grateful for the useful resources I've learned about on this post.  PP re. your neighborhood; yes its similar!  Personally I would never bring up my religion off-holiday to anyone unless they were seeking information for themselves.  I might be able to understand if someone brought up their own religion once with the goal of seeing if someone might be interested in learning more (especially a child).  Constant uninvited conversations - not OK.  So thanks everyone for helping understand how to stop this.  But must remember not to judge them in turn - its easy to slip into and so negative and wrong.

I grew up with lots of Jewish and Christian kids of all denominations and we all had fun with one another's religions which sounds crazy today but we did.  We joked about one another's religions in fun, harmless-at-the-time ways but really were supportive.  I won't even relay any of the stories here b/c someone would undoubtedly be really offended!  Everyone was proud of his or her religious communities and quite involved but there was no prosyletizing from anyone.  I NEVER knew creepiness in the name of religion growing up.  Ever.

There's a gorgeous novel - Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres about end of Ottoman Empire and all the mixing of religions in communities and tragic illustrations of how tolerance and acceptance broke down as the territories got divided by up by world powers.  Box of tissues necessary......but you won't regret reading it!  [/quote]

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