this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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I don't at all understand churches advertising.. Maybe because of my European ass? To my knowledge churches are not about profit? I get that you want to announce your service times and such, but put that in a small column in a newspaper for the ones interested or something lol
The church in the ad is particularly harmful. I had to fight to get out of it, and only after they took 10% of my income for years and trafficked me. They want money, power, and control, not increased numbers at their services.
There's a serious "wait, what?!?" here. The church sells slaves?
I was threatened by local leaders and family if I didn't go on a 2 year mission in another country, then when I got there, they:
I didn't want to call it trafficking for a long time. I figured maybe God just had a weird way of doing things. But my spouse works at a recovery center for survivors of violence (including trafficking) and helped me realize that's what it was.
A pretty big misconception is that trafficking has to look like selling slaves, and I agree that's an egregious thing, but it can be a lot more broad than that.
There are a lot of resources at https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en if you're curious. My mission experience checked just about every box for labor trafficking, and I've heard very similar stories from a lot of other people who have been missionaries.
Yep, sounds like slavery. Taking your passport away would already be enough.
Were you mormon? Or is this more widespread than I thought?
If you are talking about the mormon church, and if what I've heard is correct, you missed an added point that makes it look all the worse. That you had to pay for the right to let them do that to you. Normally in a labour trafficking situation you'd at least be expecting some sort of compensation, even if it's grossly inadequate and ends up largely back in the hands of the traffickers as they charge for accommodation and transport. But from what I've heard, mormons do the labour entirely for free, and pay a large amount for the "honour".
I was mormon. Thankfully my parents paid to traffic me, so I could afford to go to college and cut them off relatively soon after I got home.