The Crescat
… If you live in or around Charlotte the Mormons are providing area North Carolinians with free entertainment, and you don’t even have to join. I think.
They have over 400 Nativity scenes from all over the world on display and nightly musical performances. Sounds nice. Hopefully it doesn’t have a hidden agenda.
I’ve always been afraid of things like this. Call me religiously intolerant or whatever the phobia name is for people who dislike people from differing religions, but I’ve always had really really bad experiences when I visit churches not my own.
One Christmas I was lured by the live camels and all the twinkling lights to a local Baptist church’s Christmas festival. An hour later I found myself herded into an auditorium where we were locked in and forced to endure altars calls and “healin’s”. I’m freakishly obsessive about being touched and personal space so you can imagine how well I handled a room full of strangers “laying hands” and praying over me. Plainly, I absolutely lost my shit.
Then there was that one summer I took advantage of the community church’s free movies on the lawn Friday evenings. We did have fun but I don’t know how they got my mailing address and phone number. I was hounded relentlessly for two years. TWO years. YEARS. They must train their staff at a Jehovah Witness Center for recruitment. It was unbelievable really.
Then there was the now infamous incident at my cousin’s church where I was chased around the lobby by an elderly woman passing out oyster crackers and calling it “communion”. When I declined explaining to her I was Catholic she held the oyster cracker up in my face and said, in all seriousness, “Oh. Well. Body of Christ, then.”
And finally, and most tragically, I let myself be bested by my own curiosity and visit a church in Cullman Alabama called, I swear, Holiest Tongues of Fire Snake Throwing Church For Christ.
But Mormons don’t snake handle or drink strychnine so I should be ok. Right?
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