I’ve been meaning to write about this for a couple months. There are some Bahá’í missionaries who come to our neighborhood every Monday night to convert all of us to the Bahá’í Faith (a religion I don’t know much about yet). Like many Christian outreach programs, these representatives of the Bahá’í religion are attempting to reach the parents through the children. They rally together the neighborhood children and using arts and crafts, games, and fun role-playing activities they teach the kids how to behave well and view the world. Things like: treat others as you would want them to treat you; respect your parents; accept others who are different from you; turn the other cheek; etc. For those of you who are familiar with Vacation Bible School, it’s kind of like that only without the Bible.
The crowd is growing. As more and more parents allow their children to be taught these virtues and values, the Bahá’í missionaries have multiplied in number. Now, as three or four missionaries relate to the kids, one or two missionaries will talk about the Bahá’í Faith with the parents on front porch steps and read from a book containing Bahá’í scripture. They even brought in a Spanish speaker to talk to Spanish-only parents. One of the missionaries followed up with my own family by visiting us on another day of the week to drop off a gift for our oldest son with a handwritten note to us the parents, inviting us to come to the next Monday event.
It is so weird to witness this happening. It’s like someone is holding up a mirror to me. I’m watching my self when we did activities for the kids and followed up with the parents. Only now I’m not the one going into someone else’s neighborhood. Others are coming to my neighborhood to evangelize me and my neighbors and convert us to their religion. As I listen to parents’ mixed reactions to the Bahá’í people’s evangelistic tactics, I’m getting a new perspective on how people probably felt when we have done that sort of thing ourselves. I don’t like having this mirror held up to me. It stirs up uneasy feelings in me.