of anger and rudeness.

It's much easier to be kind.

My technique is even briefer than the OP: "Not interested" is all you have to say. Engaging them in any way only encourages them.

Here they tell me they're going to pray for me and come back constantly to try to save me. I don't need saving and I only got rid of them by calling the cops and filing harassment charges against them. The missionary evangelicals here are worse than the Mormons or Witnesses ever were.

I think they think they're in imminent danger of seeing Evangelical Protestantism die entirely in New England...and they're not wrong. Their faith is nearly dead here...it's all agnostics, atheists, UUs, mainline Protestants (Episcopalians and Presbyterians mostly), handfuls of Quakers and a lot of Catholics and Jews here in metro Hartford. There are even more Mormons than Baptists...the Mormons are kind of cool here; neighborly. Bring you cookies when someone dies and ask if you want someone to talk to, bring food to the needy and/or sick, do a lot of Habitat for Humanity (and similar) projects...I wasn't aware they were so community and service oriented until they built the largest Mormon (church? temple? meeting house? I don't know what it is.) in New England out in Farmington.

...but the evangelists, you pretty much have to threaten to micturate on their pant-legs and shoes to just be left the F alone.

I've lived in Georgia and Tennessee all my life, where evangelicals are mainstream, not a fringe. Being anything but firm and courteous only strengthens their resolve down here. Apparently up there, too. If you've had to call the cops to get rid of them and I haven't, whose method works better?

Your diatribe portrays political canvassers as well with a spot-on accuracy.

by the Great Lord Satan that my neighbor across the street loves to talk to these folks. That takes a lot of the heat off my me and my wife.

Even the Jehovah's Witnesses are Minnesota Nice up here.

I have a fog machine too, but it takes time to warm up.

I like when missionaries come by.

That's harmless. How do we keep them away from our government?

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Seems to work.

In my experience they always go away, no matter how friendly I am.

Some of them probably make notes not to visit me again, ever, for fear they will be corrupted.

I grew up in a family of religious strife; sometimes violent religious strife. My European ancestors were a bunch of religious heretics, dissidents... the sort frequently hunted by the authorities for contributing to various troubles, mainly of the Catholic vs. Protestant sort. So Christmas wasn't really Christmas in my childhood until people were yelling and throwing things at one another, crying, or leaving in anger, the tires of their cars squealing down the driveway, scoring extra points if they ran over the mailbox.

Merry fucking Christmas to you too.

Everyone knows Christmas is a pagan Northern European Holiday, the last big party before people start dropping dead left and right, their bodies stacking up in the wood sheds like cordwood, waiting for the spring thaw to receive proper "Christian" burial in the cold mud.

Oh bloody hell, burn 'em all! A huge funeral pyre always cheers everyone up! Throw creepy cousin Gorn's old boat on the fire along with his corpse, the joyous cackling and dancing of his long suffering wife like music to the ears of everyone who knew the self righteous prick.

We'll see you in hell, dude!

(Cousin Gorn was the guy who smacked you because of the Darwin Fish you stuck on your little cart; he always noticed when you showed up at Mass a little hungover and disheveled, and everyone knew he was fucking fifteen and sixteen year olds in the ass whenever he had business in the City...)

Yep, that's my experience with Christianity, even though I'm one of the pacifist sorts, because I have to be.

I have some really funny stories about going to church with my mom. My mom is the sort who will say what she's thinking to anyone, people in authority, doesn't matter. We got kicked out of quite a few churches, sometimes to the point where big men were stationed at the doors to keep her out.

That was one of my great worries the night before my Big Catholic Wedding, that someone would irritate my mom, or worse, her mom, my crazy berserker grandma, and it would be something our family could never recover from.

By some blessed miracle they behaved themselves.