Over the past month, a great deal of chatter has occurred in Germany over Covid-19 ban rules, and the suggestion of conspiracy or fake news.
Via SWR (regional SW public news)....the regional Evangelical Church of Baden-Württemberg has decided to get into the middle of this.
What the Church intends to do....provide guidance to members on how to handle friends, associates or relatives who are 'brain-washed' (my term) or susceptible to conspiracy chatter or fake news.
The suggestion is that ordinary people need counter-arguments to bring these poor people (the anti-Coronavirus folks) back to reality.
Generally, I would suggest religious 'instruments' are the least likely to influence people, and likely to draw harsh criticism in return conversation.
If someone did want to influence the conspiracy crowd....you'd generally go with three basic concepts:
1. In-depth conversations have to involve asking for facts, and how the facts assemble under light. But in relation to this....keeping to a tactic of only quoting public-run TV news is probably not a great tactic.
2. Grasping the impact upon people....not just mentally, but in terms of financial pains. Some people haven't seen a regular paycheck since March (short-term workers), and those are the same people who realize this will continue through all of 2020, and probably all of 2021. Simply telling someone they've been brainwashed.....doesn't terminate the pains being inflected.
3. Finally, let's be realistic....in the end, the only thing you might gain is a situation where two argumentative individuals come to agree that things are disagreeable and out-of-balance, and that you will only agree to disagree, without massive violence or dynamic government reshuffling.
The one obvious thing that comes out of this church chatter that they want to be in the middle of the discussion....is that there have never been as many non-members or non-paying members of the two major German religions, as of right now.
So if they did something really stupid, it's possible they'd chase off even more people in the end. I'm not sure that this is really helpful.
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