It’s possible that this church has a stated policy about inducting minors, and that the person who handed this pamphlet over was acting outside the bounds of that policy. I’d love to get a reply from them, and see what they have to say about it.

I doubt there is a policy forbidding dissemination of literature to minors without getting parental permission. I equally doubt that there is a policy encouraging it. If that very likely scenario is the case, then the church views non-member minors exactly the same as non-member adults. The instruction then being, “Hand these out to whoever will take them,” and the subtext being, “Regardless of whether they are minors.”

It’s not active sneakiness. It’s passive sneakiness. It’s the kind of sneakiness that survives because those being snuck upon are so used to it that they don’t notice anymore. I just happened to notice, that’s all.

Do you think the church being purposely sneaky by preying on the child, or were they simply going about their normal business?

There’s a difference between what the church does and what individual members of the church do. Without evidence that the church’s leadership actually directs the pamphleteers to target children in such a fashion, I’d say the buck stops with the pamphleteer — especially since the person has the final say in whether he will target young kids or not.

Even so, however, it may not be deliberate sneakiness, or at least not done in a spirit of evil intent; from their perspective, the fundies are desperately trying to help people. The fact that they go about their acts of “good” in all sorts of evil ways (lying, for instance, being big on their list of tactics) just shows how bankrupt their philsophy really is when they try to put it into practice.

~David D.G

Yes. To many Christians – and certainly to the mainstream Mormons I grew up among – proselytizing to children is normal, natural, expected, and respected. They do not think of it as ’sneaky’. But it is nonetheless a ’sneaky’ strategy in the sense that children often have weaker defenses, and that they feel no compunction about approaching children when the children’s guardians are not present.

It’s a long-established evangelical technique to get Sunday school kids to invite their friends along to fun things like beach trips, picnics, sports days, summer camp and vacation bible school. (Entire organizations are devoted to this goal.) The idea is that the parents will be told it’s a social event, which it primarily is. But they’re usually not told that there’ll be witnessing and maybe even “do you know what happens after you die?” conversations later in the day – around the bonfire or over dessert.

The purpose of the entire event is to convert the kids and turn them into lifelong believers, as well as perhaps get their parents interested in religion, too. I agree that it’s sneaky because that underlying purpose is not disclosed when the events are advertised.

Going to church + believing in Jesus = getting candy and going to Heaven!

Not going to church + not believing in Jesus = no candy, and an eternity screaming in pain in the fires of hell!

Give me a break, I was seven! Candy was very important. At that time I still believed in just about everything adults told me, and their descriptions of Hell scared the piss out of me, and I wanted to do everything I could to avoid going there.

Re: Jack Chick tracts, my nonreligious father took one away from me once. I thought it was just another comic book, but he explained that sick people give those out to scare children.

This is the approach I hope to take with my future kids about controversial stuff like religion, drugs and sex (though hopefully that’s a few years off still!!).

5 is not too early to start discussing your family’s beliefs and the question of how to treat people who believe differently.