I wouldn’t say aggressive. But tying medical care and food to prosetylization is a bit coercive.
Objecting to proselytizing does not mean the person doesn’t want to hear different opinions or beliefs or “disagreeable” opinions. It can be as simple as not wanting a conga-line of “missionaries” from the local church banging on your door every Sunday morning when you’re trying to sleep because you work nights.
Yes, I agree that “pray or you don’t eat” would be noxious. Can you find any example of that actually happening, preferably in the past hundred years? If so, I will join you in denouncing that.
What actually happens, in every instance I’ve seen, is that there’s a roomful of people waiting to eat, and a minister of some sort leads a prayer, and then food is served. The attendees are welcome to pray along in their hearts, or to say “Amen” at the end, but if they don’t choose to do these things, it’s unlikely anyone else would even notice, much less care. That’s not “pray or you don’t eat”, that’s “show a tiny modicum of respect and sit quietly for about a minute or you don’t eat”. Pardon me if I fail to feel any outrage over that.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you. Spreading your religion is no different than spreading any other ideas. It’s not aggression unless you’re specifically combining the spreading of ideas with some kind of force or threat.
Saying Jesus is the only one who can save me from eternal damnation is only a strong argument if I believe in eternal damnation.
nitpick – I imagine they DO care, and hope that the hungry will join them in prayer. But I agree that asking someone to stand or sit quietly for a minute while you pray, before you give them free food, is not a serious imposition. It’s one that I have run into at the houses of friends, and I am happy to return to those houses, despite my being able to feed myself.
I think you missed his point. It is not that Islam proselytizes (here, anyhow) but that Christians consider things like calligraphy assignments copying Islamic holy passages as proselytizing. In other words, we’ll give money to our church to convert the heathen, but it is unacceptable for our kids to even hear about other religions.
JWs who come to my door aren’t very aggressive, perhaps because they are minorities. The Baptists who came once were.
Bricker, by “our mainstream culture” are you talking about the US? If that is the case I would agree with you, because a very large portion of American are crazy for religion.
The statement you quoted, however, says “in the West”. And a whole lot of the west are not happy with hearing from evangelical recruiters. I don’t know how many tomes I’ve heard Canadians, Australians and Brits say how annoying the find it when people bring up issues of religious faith in practically any context.
Mitt Romney was a missionary in France, for Og’s sake. I find the very idea of that offensive, and I bet my offense doesn’t hold a candle to the people of France who were subjected to it. I have personally been preached at by Jehovah’s Witnesses at my own doorstep, and I find it offensive.
Even in America, a great many people would find it offensive if someone from another religion that they don’t believe in comes to their door and starts yammering at them. This despite the fact that they would not object to missionaries proselytizing somewhere else, to somebody else.
And then the Moonies provided free hookers and blow and the last of the religious wars finally ended.
Did people think that was proselytizing? Fight my ignorance.
I’ve already said that it wasn’t proselytizing, but I wouldn’t want my kid to do it. Not because I think it would somehow make my kid a Muslim, but because I don’t like the idea of people casually and meaninglessly making proclamations of faith. I think proclamations of faith should be taken seriously, and only said by people who mean to say them.
Of course, I wouldn’t refuse to send my kids to school over something like that. The most I’d do is ask to teacher to use a more neutral text next year. And honestly, I’d probably not bother to do that, and just whine a little at the supper table. But I still think it was a poorly designed assignment.
They do indeed. Not only this - I’ve seen similar objections to any demonstration of non-Western religious activities.
And on the opposite side, some Christians around here objected to the cancellation of a school trip to see Santa. Kids not celebrating Christmas could just stay in school and be singled out.
So your ignorance is not the issue.
Exactly my thoughts on this.
Right, there are plenty of Arabic phrases they could use. And I’d save my objections to real proselytizing. I taught my kids critical thinking and logic so they were immune from this kind of stuff, which they were exposed to going to social activities run by churches. It worked quite well, far better than me trying to keep them from this kind of thing.
That’s a fair reaction.
In the story that Voyager is talking about, the school had to be shut down because of threats of violence against the faculty.
This old Doonesbury sums up how I think missionaries think of themselves:
I say believe what you want, I’ll believe what I want. I won’t try to convert you, you don’t try to convert me.
Shame that doesn’t apply to politics.
That’s actually the whole point of politics. I still think given enough time you’ll come over to the correct side.
There is this thing called the principle of charity that seems to evade you. One can proselytize in a way which is ugly and coercive. One can also share one’s belief (while serving humanity) in a way that is both sensitive and caring. To suggest that all such work should be characterized as “telling a child all of ‘those people’ will burn in hell forever” is ignorant and defamatory.
In a sense you model the very thing that you rail against: your proselytizing against religious work strikes me as both bigoted and malicious.
I dunno. “Coercive” could arguably be used to describe any action that limits another’s autonomy; and interfering with a person’s ability to make an informed decision (by knowingly feeding him misinformation) strikes me as inherently autonomy-limiting.
There is a fine line between coercive and manipulative. Depending on the gullibility of the listener, being told that “God wants it” can indeed be coercive.
Yet need not be. Therefore?
Seems to me that the difference is, if you are a believer you think you speak the truth and therefore how could that be coercive or aggressive? And if you are not a believer, having someone pushing their truth at you is coercive and aggressive.