Now I know that I’m stretching this post a wee considering this event took place in Downtown so please bear with me. No matter where you live, there is no shortage of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and other religious advocates preaching the word of their savior. I have no objections with their views or criticize their religion in any negative way. We all have the right to worship who ever we want without being burned at the stake. I just don’t appreciate it when they choose to take that love out of their homes and feel like sharing it with others, whether we like it or not.
This particular man was just standing there holding his signs not saying anything. Jehovah’s witnesses and mormons are a different story. For anyone that lives on the eastside or any ethnic community, you have know the awkwardness that is having to talk to them and politely saying no thank you to eternal salvation. It’s not that I don’t want it, it’s just that when they knock on my door at eight a.m. on a Sunday, I’m not in the most chatty of moods.Â
I have pretended to not be home and kept quite until they leave turning off the t.v. and closing the curtains. I have politely listened to what they have to say and thanked them politely for waking me up early in the morning. I have even tried to ignore them at times because I wasn’t in the most friendliest of moods. Having had enough of their early morning wake up calls, I decided to fight back, in a non-violent fashion.Â
My parents had 4 feet speakers because they come from the kind of thinking that bigger is better. So whenever religious advocates came by the house I scrambled to the radio as fast as I could to turn it on. I would set up Slayers “Raining Blood” album and blast the song “Jesus Saves” as loud as possible. Everyone in my family would crack up because it was just so funny to see the reaction of the advocates looking at each other wondering what the hell is going on through the curtains. One time they got the joke too and got a good laugh out of it. Even neighbors got a kick out of it too because they would talk to me later on and tell me, “damn dude, that shit was funny in the morning blasting ‘Jesus Saves’ when the mormons knocked on your door.” After a while they all seemed to get the hint and stopped coming to our house altogether. Now every time I see them walking around or trying to talk to someone that song pops into my head. Wish I could do something to the other people that are on street corners with reading passages with a megaphone. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of listening to the slayer song I mentioned, here’s a youtube video. (raises devil horns in the air)
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Back in my L.A. Cacophony days, I set up a street event called “Dueling Preachers” where I dressed up in red long johns with a tail and “Cuernos” on my head and I stood near one of these corner street preachers as I read from the Satanic Bible through a megaphone. I was retorting everything the preacher would say with some silly “Satanic” preachings I was making up and really getting on his nerves. That event soon deteriorated in a real “Desmadre” with the threat of “Chingazos” being thrown and a visit from the “Jura”, so we only did it that one time.
Aaaaahhh, good times…
hahahah it’s always a good time messing with religious advocates. Also i got a bit mixed up and confused the songs. “Raining Blood” was the actual song I used to scare away people from knocking on my house door.
They are scary especially the ones that post up on Broadway they are more like cults to me.
it is a pretty uncomfortable feeling. I studied the bible with a Jehovah’s witness once. It wasnt too bad till they almost dragged me to their church. They put too much pressure on u, it makes u wonder if they dont have enough followers.
I remember that my mom got rid of the solicitors by placing a Catholic sticker that read something to the effect that “our home was a Catholic home and no propaganda from other religion would be appreciated.”
hahahahahahah i remember that we will just stand on the door and laugh a shit load till they left hahahahah then went back to sleep….
Instead of pretending to not be home, I take the other approach, and usually answer the door quickly telling them to stop being a nuisance because nobody wants to hear their stupidities. That throws them for a loop. “But have you read the bible?” Yeah, and it’s boring and badly written. “Pero es la palabra de dios.” Por favor, no hay tal guey. “Entonces, quien creo la tierra y los animales?” Yo.
At that point they give up.
BTW, don’t worry about doing posts about places outside of the Eastside, the tagline “life beyond the river” works both ways!
“And always remember what Catholic missionaries did to the world?”
Try to convert the natives by robbing them of their culture and killing them if they didn’t comply?
When I usta live in Pico-Union on Hartford, I had the front room of the flophouse on the ground floor. All sorts of religious recruiters visited–but not for long after I moved in. I would answer the door nude and smiling. The other tenants, even the ones that did not like me, witnessed it once or twice and got a laugh. I would imagine to those taking in the full frontal version found it as scary as I imagine it now. (I would probably refrain from doing such a thing now, too.)
Al mentioned how the Cacophony Society featured Dueling Preachers, which I recall and later employed for a photo shoot two years ago one Sunday morning on 7th and Brodway (two block from the photo at top, which is on the west side of Broadway facing south at 5th Street. I got hold of a leather-bound book and went out “preaching” to the sheep and then over to the bottom of Angels Flight to witness to pigeons. Great fun! Only got guff from one olde guy (and an altercation that provided some fine photos in front of Clifton’s when we took our quarrel across the street) but no-one else seemed to want to get near some crazy white guy yelling about how “Jesus saves 9.9%” and “Your god has abandoned you for a younger planet.”