Explain "witnessing" to me?

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#1

I must have read it a thousand times in the intro to Great Debates: “this is the place for witnessing, if you must”. I cheerfully ignored it until recently when I queried somebody for posting a list of beliefs in GD and somebody else (quite correctly, I presume) pulled me up on this.

Anyway, I assume it is something to do with “bearing witness” in the Christian sense, but people use the word around here (I’ve started to notice it now) in a casual sort of way, as if it was something that happened every day on the way to the supermarket. Is this an American thing? I’d never heard the term before, and no-one has ever approached me and “witnessed”, (as far as I can tell).

My dictionary isn’t much help, just gives conventional definitions.

Thanks

#2

Recently asked, and answered, here.

(Useful hint for those not already familiar with it: Changing the settings at the foot of the forum display lists to a range of, e.g, from the last 30 days, will show you a lot more threads, which may have answers to your questions. If that fails, try searching using the “Search” button at upper left and a couple of keywords – it goes faster if you delimit the search to the most likely forum and a shorter time range, e.g., the last year.)

#3

Thanks, and apologies for repeat thread