I don't think it is right for people that are religious to come to places such as our camppus and give us the little Bible books since not many of us want them. Myself, I am not religious, and I am a Muslim. First of all, if I wanted to have a Bible, I would consider converting myself to christianity, and even if I didn't convert myself, I would just order one from other place besides some people I don't know on the street. The idea of having a stand and waiting for people to come by and take their own copy is more appealng to me thatn having walk through a group of radical religious people. I think that the disrtibution of such material should be organzed at other places than a such divredse campus.
I completely understand what you're saying and it sounds like the part about it you don't like is how forward and aggressive the people are about it. Growing up Christian and maintaining a lot of those beliefs I can say a lot of Christians find that sort of thing obnoxious and a lot of people are just so rearing to go and 'convert' people that they look at converting non Christians to Christians as doctors in a foreign country would go around giving vaccination shots - but it's not that simple and it's very intrusive and naive to think that handing someone a bible will change their lives that radically. All in all, everyone has the right to be as obnoxious as they want I guess through free speech.
Posted by: Josh at September 30, 2004 11:12 AMI agree with Josh, I don't think that giving people bibles is going to convert them into Christians, but I don't know if that was there intent. Maybe they just wanted people to be aware of Christianity, seeing that this University is very diverse and some people may not know much about it. A lot of people are not use to all this freedom of speech and religion since most of us come from public schools, which it isn't allowed. So I think that's why so many people saw it as "being shoved in their faces". For me, lets say that a gay/lesbian group wanted to give me information about them. I would know that they are not trying to convert me into being a lesbian, but just want me to know more about them. I don't have to become a lesbian, and just because I don't want to become one, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't give people flyers about their club. I don't know the true intent of the bible givers, but I'm sure it wasn't meant to say you MUST become a Christian! But I will say that it was unnecessary that their was so many of them, I think I got asked liked four times going down one street.
Posted by: Chelle19 at September 30, 2004 11:49 AMI agree with Chelle19....I think that they just feel the need to spread the word, and inform people of what they think is right. I am not saying that I support them, what I am saying is that I don't think people should get all hot about it. I think that they have the right to pass out bibles, just like any passer-by has the right to refuse one. Personally I was not 'forced' to take a bible, and no one tried to push one on to me, they just held them out and I politely refused to take one. At the same time, I don't see the need for so many of them (I mean they were only like 10 feet apart).
Posted by: Alia at October 2, 2004 06:28 PM