Mill Avenue Resistance Reports: Friday, February 13th 2009

The Mill Avenue Resistance reports are written by Kyt Dotson as an extension of anthropological research on the population of Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona. Since the Resistance does their protests Friday and Saturday there are two reports a week. The supporting material not related to the Resistance reports can be found on the Under the Hills blog for Friday, February 13th 2009.

The cold air and red bricks greeted none of the Resistance in organized fashion tonight. However, two separate evangelical prostylizing groups did meet on the Ave: The True Vine Baptist Church from Glendale, and the Payson First Baptist Church “An Embassy of Heaven”. Ed Ware was out with the True Vine group, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him at all; Kazz and Spyral spent most of their time talking to the children in the group—mostly flashing funny phrases in sign language.

Between them they covered between four and five different corners, carrying small white plaque signs with large black lettering exemplaring quotes from the Bible—these signs did not seem constricted only to the True Vine group.

I collected quite a few tracts which have been given to Elaine Mercer, aka Carmina.

Kazz and Omni spent their time talking to one of the members of the Payson Baptist church. That encounter lasted about an hour where various aspects of the loss-of-miracles (i.e. why the contemporary world does not match mythical time of any mythology.) Heard some strange commentary which tried to use the Abraham Dilemma as a discussion of justice.

No recordings were made, but Omni did spend a lot of time talking and Kazz did get some changes to absorb some mirror speech.

Mill Avenue Resistance – February 2009

February 7, 2009
8:00 pm
February 14, 2009
8:00 pm
February 21, 2009
8:00 pm
February 28, 2009
8:00 pm

Last month was a crazy one. We had a preacher here from New York with his teenage son, one from South Africa, an American preacher who lives in Scotland, and even the infamous Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas, all here to tell us how horrible and worthless we are and how we need their god to save us (which he may or may not decide to do, even if we want it).

Last Saturday though, it was back down to the local preachers again, and they went back to what they had been doing recently, which is apparently trying to bore us to death. At some point they did start preaching, but once we came down to where they were it was short lived. At least we managed to get some conversation out of them off the mic, which is rare with most of them, and that provided some interesting insights into their thinking.

We also ran into a Muslim who pretended to be a Catholic, but when he didn’t know about transubstantiation (the idea that the bread and wine actually turn into the body and blood of Jesus in your mouth), his cover was blown and he eventually admitted he was a Muslim. Fortunately he was talking to a SFTS member who used to be a Muslim and is well versed in their religion. We some other interesting conversations, and we are looking for ways to make sure that we have even more of them in the future.

I’m not sure yet exactly what this month will be like, but even if it is slow we’re doing something important, and I believe that we are still having an overall positive effect, so I hope we continue to get good turnouts on our side.