I wasn’t sure where to post this but I thought here would be best. If it should be somewhere else then perhaps it could be moved?
Although I’m a member of a congregation and believe in God I consider myself a seeker: I’m always interested in what other religious traditions have to offer and have always been open to changing my beliefs and affiliation in light of reason and evidence. My mind is always open and always will be but I will always be critical of claims and arguments designed to win me over and will approach these using both my intuition and reason.
I’d like to share my negative experience/involvement here with an unusual NRM (New Religious Movement) and would be interested to hear from people who have had similar negative experiences or involvements. I will not name the organisation I encountered. Here is the Wikipedia article about the concept of the NRM:
New religious movement - Wikipedia
I have a friend who has been entirely won over by a NRM. It is a major part of his life. I think he even gives 10% of his income to them. They have heavily coached him (and I mean HEAVILY) into being able to evangelize for them, using the bible. He can come over as being very persuasive. One day invited me to their church and I accepted. I was genuinely curious and approached it with an open mind. A mutual friend of hours had already converted; by being baptised in his own home by a mobile pastor.
When we got there, basically what happened was that they wanted me to undergo a rite of baptism, and become one of them. They put a lot of pressure on me to do this. This set alarm bells ringing. I didn’t want to do this; I had then and have now my own religious affiliation and saw no good reason to abandon these spiritual commitments in favour for what this NRM had to offer. So they sat me down in a little room all by myself and for over half an hour and they went to work on me, trying to demonstrate how the bible says their church is the one true church: they related bible passages to other bible passages from different parts of the bible to justify their belief that their church is mentioned in the bible. It all seemed very tenuous and convoluted but they obviously believed it all. They had a big book of “evidence” to support their interpretation of scripture. The whole thing didn't sit right with my instincts and they failed to successfully appeal to my reason.
I wasn’t having any of it. I made it perfectly clear I was not interested in joining them and declined their advances. For over half an hour they took it in turns trying to win me over, and were obviously going through every trick in their book and were desperately taking turns and trying to figure out different approaches and ways of appealing to me. I just sat there, politely declining as they tried to brow-beat me into having some water poured over my head. They’d obviously never had someone put up such a resistance before. I could tell from their faces. Eventually they gave up on me. I think what got them was that I strongly believed in God and somewhat in the historical Jesus and the validity of the bible as a holy text yet wasn't up for joining their church.
One thing in their favour though: they served up some nice food.
Anyone else experienced anything similar? Without naming names, of course.