Watching The Family on Netflix.
Holy s***! Mark Siljander is the dude we worked with in North Carolina. Doug Coe is a guy I know of very well.
Really not sure how to take this. I had many many conversations with Mark. I obviously disagree with his Christian views, but he seemed genuinely concerned about promoting peace and understanding. He also hated Trump and most of the conservatives, who called him a traitor for reaching out to Muslims. He also came to support LGBT because his daughter is a lesbian, and he realized that he was operating on hate while preaching on love.
But, at the same time, I was skeptical of certain things. He said he disliked conversion, and would always quote "There is no compulsion in religion" from the Qu'ran. He is also an expert on the Qu'ran and believed that its description of Jesus being the spirit of god rather than the son of god is more accurate, as Arabic translates easier from Aramaic than Greek does. Still, the dude would go around the world and talk to people about Jesus. He might use the soft sell, but it sounded to me like he was still trying to convert people.
I also know several people who were good friends with Doug Coe. They aren't remotely religious, but thought he was a very decent guy. However, some things didn't add up for me.
It does make me wonder...the project seemed like a very good one. Use evangelicals and former evangelicals to convince other evangelicals to reach out to Muslims, and accept them as brothers and sisters. I wonder if they signed up for more nefarious reasons. Perhaps not, since funding was so damn difficult to come by. I just don't f***ing know, but am a little depressed to think I may have had a small part in this s***. I looked into Mark's story quite a bit before going, and just thought it was a tale of redemption from someone who ignorantly hated Muslims to learning Arabic, and becoming something of a scholar on the Qu'ran before dedicating his life to handing out the olive branch to them. But who the f*** knows?
