Converting noughts to crosses.

[corrvin]

I've seen a few folks lately complaining about the "highly offensive" practice of forcibly proselytizing to the unwilling. Now, of course, "proselytizing" is the faith-neutral term, but I can't spell it three times in a row reliably, so please forgive me for using the Christian word "evangelizing" instead. (It's from the Greek for "good news," if you're curious.)

The question I'd like to consider here is: What ought to be one's response when confronted by an evangelist? Of course, there are contributing factors-- if one comes to your house and interrupts what you're doing, or stops you in a public restroom when you really just wanted to pee, then obviously you're entitled to treat that rudeness just the same as you would anyone else who did the same thing for another reason.

However, let's assume that you're just standing on the sidewalk or in a public park, or at the laundromat (that's where they always seem to find me), and someone walks up and strikes up a conversation, and after a moment you get the sinking feeling that they're not picking you up, they're trying to tell you about their faith.

I submit, as a bare minimum, that if you feel it's wrong for someone to talk to you in a way that makes you uncomfortable, it's also wrong for you to respond in a way that makes them uncomfortable.

Why is it that people who are okay with hearing "Goddammit" are sometimes terribly offended by "God has blessed," to the point that they'll shun anyone who says it, and then excuse themselves by writing the offender off as "one of those evangelists, don't you know." Why is it "funny" to swear at people who are, in their own belief, trying to help you? Why is it okay to shout at them or threaten them with violence?

I'm not going to quote details here because I'd rather not embarrass this person (who, by her own account, had some reasoning for getting quite testy with the evangelists), but the most recently shocking example I've seen was the response "Why don't you open your Bible to Matthew chapter 4 verse 13, where Jesus said 'shut the fuck up'." (For the record, that's not what the actual Bible verse says.)

And finally, are you absolutely sure that the last person you saw being pushed away for being uncomfortably religious was actually evangelizing, or were they just expressing their religious faith with an intensity you're not used to? (I know I've had people complain to me that I was evangelizing, merely for responding to a statement about something in their faith by saying that I was a Christian and we did it another way in my faith.)

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This whole piece started when I was reading through a post by the dear soldiergrrrl about feeling called to cover her head for religious reasons, and reading through a lot of the stuff available on the web about modest dressing and head covering, including a lot of stories where women said that people treated them differently, accusing them of "preaching" simply by what they chose to wear, even if they were silent about it. A lot of the people you see who wear attire that's obviously religious in nature chose to do so, and chose it despite their own fear of what would happen, because it was more important for them to please the Divine than to let other people stop them. Is this the kind of thing we should try to quash?