The Prayer Mafia

In response to Alon's article on the "pseudo-charity" being practiced by the Salvation Army below, a commenter by the name of Chris asks the question:

[link] Is there any evidence that any church-sponsored shelters "require" prayer from their clients? Or do they merely gather people around the table and say "let us pray" and their clients just go along with it?

Well, oddly enough, I have direct experience with church-sponsored shelters and their use of coercion, guilt, and outright physical force to get me to pray a Christian prayer - before being allowed to eat and sleep.

More below the flip...

The year was 1990. I was 25 years old and only a year out of active-duty Navy. Three years left on my inactive reserve service, but at that point in time, the first Iraq war was still just a build-up, and we seemed to have unlimited active duty folks who were willing and able to walk over there and kick some ass.

I was an aircraft mechanic in the Navy. Specifically a hydraulicsman, but cross-trained into aircraft structural repair and maintenance. This would serve me well after my honorable discharge in 1989 because aircraft structural mechanics are never out of work.

Well, never out of work as long as they are willing to become modern-day gypsies and travel anywhere in the world on an hour's notice, that is.

I was still learning this hard lesson about my chosen career path. I had a young family - a wife and three kids, and we were renting a small house in Mesa, Arizona. A job became available in Clearwater Florida. It was paying aircraft structural mechanics almost double per hour than what my current job was paying. My wife and I talked it over and we decided that I should travel out to Clearwater and work my ass off as long as the contract held out. She would stay home with the kids, and I would send most of my paychecks home so that she could take care of the bills and the groceries and the rent. It made sense. I could make very nearly a year's worth of wages in only 10 or 12 weeks, if I was lucky and the overtime held out.

We took our meager savings and I purchased an old, beat-up 1980 Dodge Omni because it was cheap. 1980 was the first year they ever put a "brain box" in that car. I couldn't know, but his would prove to be an issue later.

I packed my tools and some clothes in the little Omni, kissed my wife and my kids, and headed to Florida.

Well, I got as far as Sonora, Texas. The brain box in that little Dodge died quietly, and permanently, about 8 miles out of Sonora on I-10. It was 3:00 am, I was blasting along at 80 miles an hour, making good time, and at the top of a small hill the car died. Completely. Every light went out, the engine quit, and I was coasting down the hill in complete silence and darkness.

Very weird.

At the bottom of the hill I pulled way off the side of the road onto the shoulder, and slept until morning. I caught a ride into the nearest town, Sonora, and spent nearly a week and all of my travel money there trying to fix that little car. Finally, I gave up, signed over the title of the Omni to the mechanic, took $280 out of my last $285 and bought a one-way Greyhound Bus ticket to Clearwater. I packed my tools into the cargo area of the bus (not a lot of fun, because they are really, extremely heavy), and climbed aboard for the 36 hour trip.

Needless to say, I stayed awake the entire time. Couldn't sleep a wink. There's something about a bus ride, and the weirdos and wackos who seem to ride them, that just gives me insomnia.

During the trip, at one of the stops, I called my Dad and asked to borrow some money until my first paycheck. Instead of loaning me any money, he called a local Pastor in Miami, Florida, and asked him to help me out.

Pastor Mark was a Nazarene Pastor. At the time, my Dad and Mom were members of the Nazarene Church in Arizona. After calling Pastor Mark, my destination changed and I was to get off the bus in Miami, instead of riding it all the way to Clearwater, so that I could stay at Pastor Mark's house in his guest bedroom for a night. Then, he was supposed to give me a ride out to Clearwater with my tools where I could report in for work on Monday morning.

The best-laid plans of mice and men, and all that.

I got off the bus in Miami, and I had directions to Pastor Mark's house. I found a kindly Super-Shuttle driver who allowed me to load my tools and seabag in the back of his van, and only charged me five bucks for a ride to Pastor Mark's house, as long as I didn't mind waiting until he dropped off all his other fares first. I didn't mind, because it was literally my last five bucks.

The Super Shuttle dropped me off at Pastor Mark's house, which also happened to be adjacent to his church building, and I waited for him to finish whatever he was doing before he deigned to meet with me.

I introduced myself, and thanked him for offering to put me up for the night. He looked a little strange at me, then handed me $140 that he said was collected from the Nazarene church members during the week to help me out.

I was properly thankful. I thought that was pretty cool of him to go through asking for money from his congregation to help out the un-churched, but in-need son of a fellow Nazarene. He seemed like a nice guy. I asked him where I could sleep, because I was dead-tired and about to pass out. Remember, I had not slept at all for more than 40 hours at this point. My clothing was travel-stained, my hair was long, and I had two-days-worth of scraggly beard. In short, I looked like a bum.

Pastor Mark looked real uncomfortable, and said that I wouldn't actually be staying at his house. Instead, he was going to drop me off at one of the church shelters for the night.

Shelter? As in Homeless shelter? I was terrified. I had never even been inside of a homeless shelter in my life, let alone needed to be in one. I had worked a full-time job since I was 16, been out on my own since I was 17, and had never, ever accepted charity from anyone until Pastor Mark "offered" to help. The only reason I took it because I had to get to Clearwater by Monday morning and start work or I really would be stranded, broke, and homeless in Florida, with no money to send back home to support my family. I fully intended to pay back his congregation for the loan out of my first paycheck.

Pastor Mark drove me to the Miami Rescue Mission Men's Center and dropped me outside - then very nearly peeled out, leaving me there. Weary beyond all belief, I rolled my tools and my seabag full of clothing and personal items inside. Seeing no one to "sign up" or "check in" with, I noticed a large room with indoor-outdoor carpeting and little "camps" (for lack of a better word) set up in various locations in the room. The room was devoid of any furniture, just men lying on sleeping bags or blankets, their belonging spread around them in an effort to lay claim to as much floor space as possible. I rolled my tools and seabag into the room, picked an empty spot of floor, and began to unroll my sleeping bag that I had retrieved from my seabag. All I wanted to do was to sleep. I laid down and was immediately dozing off with one hand wrapped around the handle of my toolbox and my $140 stuck into my underwear.

Suddenly, a demon appeared at the doorway to the "camp room" in a cloud of brimstone and started shouting at us to get up and come to prayer service. She was black, about 360 pounds, and made up like a televangelist's wife.

She was a scary, forceful lady, but I was tired. So I continued to lay there.

The men all shuffled despondently out the door and I heard and felt the thunder of her ponderous bulk stalking across the room to where I lay on my sleeping bag.

"Get up. We're going to pray." she said in a menacing, deep fat-lady voice.

I cracked one eye open. "Ma'am," I said politely, "I have been on the road and awake for more than forty hours. I appreciate the floor space, but I am not a Christian, and I will not pray with you."

She kicked me.

Yup. Hauled off and swung one of her tree-trunk legs and kicked me right in the foot.

"Get up."

I sat up, mad, and said again, "Ma'am. I am not a Christian. I am not a member of your religion. Do you only accept Christians here? I need to sleep, and I am NOT leaving my toolbox here unattended."

Needless to say, 10 minutes later, and with the assistance of two large, male orderlies, I was sitting in prayer service with the rest of the homeless guys.

It was a mandatory requirement, blackmail if you will, in return for a bit of floor under a roof, and a meal of bologna sandwiches and orange juice.

I call it religious extortion. They prey on the homeless, the hungry, the down-and-out, and force them to kowtow to an invisible magic man in the sky before they will help them.

Disgusting and immoral. And frankly, insane.

I woke up at my normal time the next morning, 5:00 am, packed up my things, and went outside the shelter and flagged down a taxi. I spent that $140 and had him drive me to Clearwater where I checked in and began work. The contracting company had a deal set up with a local motel to house their workers, so I was able to get my own place without any cash. A small loan from my brother got me enough Ramen noodles to survive until my first paycheck came through.

It all worked out, but I have been seriously skeptical and critical of church-sponsored homeless shelters or charities ever since.

The kicker is that, unknown to me, Pastor Mark called my Dad up that night and ran him though the ringer for sending a dirty, scruffy non-christian to him. Did my Dad think that Pastor Mark would even consider allowing an obviously dangerous miscreant like me to sleep in his house? With his family?

Then he demanded his money back. Yup. From my Dad. Turns out he never did collect any money from his congregation. It was his own money, and he gave it to me to get me the hell out of his house and his car - and his life.

So much for Christian charity.

My Dad wired the money to him, and after I calmed down when he told me about it two weeks later after my first paycheck, I wired it back to him.

Dad and Mom weren't members of the Nazarenes for too much longer after that.

I came about *that close* to going back out to Miami and confronting the two-faced, lying son of a bitch. But, work was busy, and I needed to support my family.

But sometimes I wish I had.