This article and its associated Metafilter thread make interesting reading, and are germane to the roots of my rant yesterday, perhaps. Really, though, I was just havin’ a bit of fun.
You know that feeling you get when a telemarketer interrupts your dinner? I get that feeling sometime when my Pentecostal/Charismatic friends are trying to persuade me into their camp. It’s not that I don’t know they are good, decent, law-abiding people who like me. I just want them to quit treating me as a target or a project and start treating me as a person who is free to be myself and different from them.
Category:
People Say Stuff Sometimes
Liked the Spencer article quite a bit; it’s nice to see some honesty within the evangelical camp.
I tried to be an evangelical Catholic (oxymoronic, but true) for a while a couple of years ago. I handed out gospel tracts at subway stations to those would accept them. Why did I do it? Because I wanted to love God and help people, particularly those who had no hope, and I thought that through DOING, I would GET a better spiritual experience. N.B. Not all evangelicals are quite as grabby.
I didn’t accompany the handouts with any type of sales pitch, largely because I really had very little conviction of my own. A few people would yell at me or deride me, but most either declined the tracts politely, accepted them (then threw them in the trash), or actually made a positive comment. The key was not to make people feel wrong or stupid, although I’m sure that some people did feel that way anyway. I’m responsible for what I say, not for how you hear it, etc. I got into some good conversations with people, too, and I hope that I exhibited a caring, not condescending, presence.
I’ve since moved on fairly thoroughly from my lukewarm attempts at evangelical Christianity. I’m more of an animist these days, although the lack of conviction about anything I can’t see continues to dog me. My bad.
So, anyway, why are evangelical Christians hated so much? A few MORE reasons below:
In the end, though, an evangelical with a loving spirit will reach a surprising number of people, not necessarily to convert them but to get them to think.
I found the thread and the article fascinating as well. Largely, I think, because I grew up in an evangelical christian home and a culture (small-town rural midwest America) that was conservative and evangelical to the core. So there’s a degree of personal reflection involved in my interest of this particular issue. A lot of bitterness and some uncertainty as well. It’s always rather fascinating to see outsiders discussing the finer details of your ‘roots’ (in a civilized manner even), even if you’re not really part of that culture anymore.