Here’s something I hadn’t seen before. I probably could have predicted it if I’d thought about it, but I didn’t, so I didn’t. It’s a website called True Reason, set up to rally Christians to go to the Reason Rally in D.C. next month in order to pester it, because religion doesn’t get to pester us enough already without shoving itself into an event that is not all about religion.
It has a nice line in passive-aggressive pseudo-decency.
This is not a counter-demonstration. We are going there to share Christ person to person as opportunity arises. We will not raise our voices. We will talk with those who want to talk with us. We will offer gifts and materials to all, but we will not press ourselves on those who do not wish to converse.
Nonsense. They’re already pressing themselves on those who do not wish to converse by horning in on an event that they know perfectly well is about not doing the kind of thing they do. The Reason Rally for instance is about realizing that “sharing Christ” is a bit of empty jargon.
They admit they know this when they go on to say
We’ll provide you some advance training by way of Internet, so you will be prepared for interactions in this unique “Lion’s Den” environment.
They’re actually the ones who are importing the “Lions’ Den” by intruding on other people’s rally. The only sense in which the Rally will be a Lions’ Den is that the Christians weren’t invited and aren’t wanted (not as opponents and missionaries, that is).
They claim that they’re just as fond of reason as the people attending the Reason Rally.
A Reasonable Response to the Reason Rally
This website represents Christians from all over the country—even some from as far as Australia and New Zealand—who know that Christianity is both good and reasonable.
But you don’t know that. Christianity is not “reasonable” in the sense of being based on reason.
Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and other New Atheists are planning a “Reason Rally” in Washington, D.C. on March 24. They’re billing it as “the largest gathering of the secular movement in world history,” and they’re using it to trumpet their message that reasonable people reject belief in God.
We disagree.
Together, we represent Christians from the United States and around the world who believe that Christianity is a reasonable worldview.
Well you would, wouldn’t you, but nevertheless, it isn’t.
Our goal is to demonstrate a humble, loving and thoughtful response to the Reason Rally.
Not possible. The only humble, loving and thoughtful response would be to mind your own business. It would be to stay away and let other people do what they want to do. It would be to refrain from intruding. We don’t pile into your churches every Sunday; why the hell can’t you just extend us the same courtesy? [I speak broadly when I say “us”; I can’t afford to go to the Rally so I’m not part of that “us.”]
They want it all, don’t they. They want to throw their weight around and they also want to get credit for being humble and thoughtful. Not going to happen.