@futurebird oh geez

Apologies from Utah lol

@risottobias

They are always wandering around in the South Bronx like white tourists used to when this place was burned out. But, I haven't seen those kinds of tourists for 20 years and the Mormons keep coming.

@futurebird

A few years back I was on their door-knocking list, until I engaged them with questions about atheism. I never heard from them again after that.

@bruce

They can't really door-knock in the Bronx as the doormen and supers would never let them in the halls.

So they wander around and try to talk to you coming out of the subway.

But this happened 4 times this week and that's more than ever before.

Worse they don't speak Spanish and are in the SB which is so low effort. But maybe it's for the best. Just means they come at me more since I'm not audacious enough to pretend I can't understand them. (which lots of people do)

@futurebird I don't have the link handy, but I've read that most of the point of proselytization drives is ingroup solidarity rather than recruitment: send your folks out to make a giant nuisance of themselves in public, wait for the public to respond appropriately coldly, regroup back at base with a message about how "the world" just doesn't understand you like your siblings in the Lord.

I don't know what the numbers for Mormons are, but when I was an Evangelical youth they told us that something like 75% of church-going teens stopped attending after high school; keeping in mind that "Elder So-and-so" is usually about 18, sounds an awful lot like a membership retention intervention at a key age.

@bruceiv

I mean this is kind of obviously true. Just stopping people on the streets is a boneheaded way to get people to come to your church.

I would sincerely love it if they went to some NYC churches as I think it might make their heads spin a little. They could go to Abyssinian in Harlem or All Souls on the Upper East, or even right to Trinity.

They are acting like they are visiting the got damn moon.