Dearly Beloved Pastor…

I just got this religious spam email that was so hilariously inappropriate, I had to share.

Dearly Beloved Pastor ,

Greetings from India! We are so glad to meet you through this mail. I happened to visit your website just now and so happy after reading the contents. First of all, I would like to introduce myself and my ministry: I am pastor Ravi, serving the Lord full-time for the last over 8 years. I am married and have a daughter & son. My wife Christina also works full-time in the ministry. We would like to fellowship and connect with your ministry. Would you please let us know your heart for our nation so that I can share more about my vision and burden of the Ministry. Thank you. !

In Christ,
Pastor Ravi (last name, city, phone number deleted), India

Okay. Let’s take this one step at a time.

Spam
Clue Number One that this is spam: “Dearly Beloved Pastor.”

Clue Number Two that this is spam: “I happened to visit your website just now and so happy after reading the contents.”

Really.

Which part of my site made you happiest, Pastor? Was it Why Religion Is Like Fanfic? If not that, was it perhaps A Self-Referential Game of Twister: What Religion Looks Like From the Outside? Or was that beloved classic, Atheists and Anger?

Or maybe Christian Spanking Porn?

Clue Number Three that this is not only spam, but a scam spam, the opening gambit in what will almost certainly turn out to be a version of the Nigerian scam:

“…so that I can share more about my vision and burden of the Ministry.”

Money1
In other words: Let me tell you about my burdens, so I can then hit you up for money.

I’m almost tempted to reply. If I had time and energy, I would. But I’m not sure if I’d go the “stringing him along and pretending to be a real pastor while gradually becoming more and more outlandish” route, or the more direct “Do tell, which part of my atheist porn blog did you like the best?” route. It’s a tough call.

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Dearly Beloved Pastor…
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4 thoughts on “Dearly Beloved Pastor…

  1. 1

    Greta — if you reply to a spammer from an email address that you use and care about (e.g. [email protected]), you’ve just told the spammer that this address belongs to a real live person.
    If you want to contact this spammer, use a free Yahoo or Gmail account that you don’t really care about. Actually, I wouldn’t really bother with contacting the spammer.
    But I would ensure that my email software’s junk filter is now trained to reject this spam address.

  2. 2

    On the condition that you use a garbage email address, I think it would be hilarious to send, “Do tell, which part of my atheist porn blog did you like the best?

  3. 4

    Why are you being so cynical, Greta Christina? It’s well known among Christians that Atheism IS a religion. Maybe you could share the burdens of your ministry with him.

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