Outsourcing gets religion

EVEN God has been outsourced to India. Well, not God exactly, but part of the bureaucracy that claims to act for Him.

The Catholic Church revealed that some “prayer intentions”.for a specific reason to be delivered at a Mass had been diverted from the US, Canada and Europe, where there is a shortage of priests, to clergy-richer India,

And it seems some other Christian ministries have now also got into outsourcing prayers, with mixed results.

An American Christian woman complained recently after calling the prayer line of a major TV ministry and requested prayer for her mother’s persistent ulcers. Her prayer representative, who called himself “Darren,” prayed in a strong Indian accent, while apparently reading from a script, that “all the gods would bless her mightily.”

The manager of the Indian outsouced prayers company, located in Mumbai, India, apologized for the incident and fired the Hindu employee who, he said, had not been properly trained. But dozens of similar incidents have rattled callers since major ministries began outsourcing their prayer lines to India. The ministries insist they are overwhelmed by the growing number of calls for prayer so have to pass on prayer requests to call centres in India.

One report said many of the Indian call centre “prayers” learned to recite  “Christian prayers” by watching US TV evangelists.

When that happens, it’s time to really pray.