Athiesm for Fun and Profit
Now here's something you don't see every day: an athiest, knowing that he lives in an evangelism-crazed society - offering to go to church for the highest ebay bidder. Thanks to a handy cash warchest of about $500 and the prudent use of eSnipe, a program designed to "steal" ebay auctions at the last minute, Jim Henderson, founder of off-the-map.org, has won the contest!
In the freewheeling spirit of the pomo/emergent movement, Henderson has now made the 22 year-old athiest Hemant Mehta a member of the staff of off-the-map for purposes of completing several surveys that relate to the perception of Christians by non-Christians.
Mehta, who had originally planned to make $10 off of the auction and go to a movie, will now donate the proceeds to the Secular Student Alliance in Chicago.
Everyone, it seems, will win (sort-of). Mehta will get $500 to donate to his favorite cause, SSA will get some cash to help stage their next protest against whatever Christian political activist groups are doing on campus in Chicago, off-the-map gets a lot of publicity, plus a chance to collect a lot of data about non-Christians, PayPal gets its 5% (or whatever) of the collection on the $500, and bloggers of all faiths and non-faiths get to have lots of fun by creating news-of-the-weird posts.
Does it get any weirder than this?
Technorati Tags: off-the-map.org, Hemant Mehta, Jim Henderson, athiesm, really weird stuff, ebay
In the freewheeling spirit of the pomo/emergent movement, Henderson has now made the 22 year-old athiest Hemant Mehta a member of the staff of off-the-map for purposes of completing several surveys that relate to the perception of Christians by non-Christians.
Mehta, who had originally planned to make $10 off of the auction and go to a movie, will now donate the proceeds to the Secular Student Alliance in Chicago.
Everyone, it seems, will win (sort-of). Mehta will get $500 to donate to his favorite cause, SSA will get some cash to help stage their next protest against whatever Christian political activist groups are doing on campus in Chicago, off-the-map gets a lot of publicity, plus a chance to collect a lot of data about non-Christians, PayPal gets its 5% (or whatever) of the collection on the $500, and bloggers of all faiths and non-faiths get to have lots of fun by creating news-of-the-weird posts.
Does it get any weirder than this?
Technorati Tags: off-the-map.org, Hemant Mehta, Jim Henderson, athiesm, really weird stuff, ebay
posted by Matt at Tuesday, February 07, 2006
2 Comments:
I just spent some time looking at the original auction, Hemant's blog, and some of the comments there. What a great way to find out what people really think about Christianity. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.
Thurm-
Yes! Like you, what I really love about this story - besides the fact that its just so bizarre - is how the folks at off-the-map aren't trying to beat Hemant over the head with their bibles. Instead, they're inviting him into dialog, listening to him, respecting him, even having some "fun" with him about the whole situation. It is - to me - a great model for how "evangelism" (I hate that word, but its all I can come up with right now) ought to work in our changing culture.
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