Wednesday 19 March 2008

Christian "Mercy" in practice

I've seen a few sites talk about this story, the collection of horror tales from women who went to "Mercy Ministry" for psychiatric help and got pointed to the bible instead.

That's bad enough, but I haven't seen anyone talk about the follow up story, which outlines that Mercy Ministries are set to open more places around Australia. There are a few government institutions that say there might be something bad going on that they'll investigate if they get more complaints, and the sponsors (Gloria Jean's Coffee) show no interest in doing anything other than giving them money, so this is just a bigger horror story waiting to happen.

And let's not have any delusions here. This is BAD. These people are promising psychiatric help, get women in with slick advertising, then practice cult tactics to cow the women into submission, all in the name of religion. Unquestioning accepting of religion tolerance allows this to flourish, and in my cynical view I can't see this stopping. (In fact, I won't be surprised if Mercy plays the "oh, we are now martyred with guilt" card and get more funding/applications out of this.)

How much longer must we suffer these dangerous inanities?

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