Why is it that many Protestant religions, most notably the Mormons and the Jehovahs Witnesses, try so hard to convert people? I mean, It’s great they have a religion, but people coming to your door to convert you gets very annoying.
If a person’s belief is that God has provided only a single way to salvation–the one that that person has been fortunate enough to have received–and that person wants to share the blessings of salvation with other people, then letting those other people know about The Truth is the only logical course of action. In addition, Jesus is on record as having said “Go and teach all nations” so prosyletizing can be seen as carrying out a direct order from God.
As I understand it (and my understanding may not be complete), part of their religion’s belief system is that they must go out and spread the word.
I find it quite annoying, myself. I’ve got my own faith system, chosen by myself as an adult, and I’m quite happy with it thank you very much [sub]you sanctimonious proselytizing bastards[/sub].
Think about it logically. If you honestly believe that anyone not going to your church is going to spend eternity in hell, isn’t it your duty as a caring human being to try to save them from such a horrible fate?
Just makes sense to me. It’s not MY thing because I don’t believe in hell, but if I did I’d do everything I could to keep you from ending up there.
I can’t give a source for this, but I’m sure I read somewhere that the window-cleaning profession has an above average number of Jehovah’s Witnesses within its ranks.
Make of that what you will.
Evangelical Christians proselytize becaue they believe God has commanded them to do so. In Matthew 28:19, the resurrected Jesus is described as saying “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; this passage is often described as “the Great Commission”.
Christianity has historically been both universal and exclusionary. Universal, in that it has taught that all people, regardless of race or language or nationality, can and should be united in the true religion. Exclusionary, in that historically many Christians have believed that Christianity is the one true religion, and salvation can only be found through Christianity (or can only be found in Christianity under all but extraordinary circumstances). Thus, you have Galatians 3:28 (“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”) or Colossians 3:11 (“Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all”)–universal–and John 14:6, “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”–exclusionary. Finally, Christianity has traditionally taught that all people are sinners and are in need of salvation, and are in peril of eternal damnation if they do not receive that salvation (“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” – Matthew 25:41). Thus, evangelical Christians quite sincerely see themselves as trying to save others from hellfire.
By the way, both Jehovah’s Witnesses and especially Mormons have serious doctrinal differences with other Christians, and neither denomination can properly said to be Protestant.
I always ask missionaries why they think that they were so lucky to have been born into the right religion at the right time to have receieved such wisdom. They never seem to understand.
Well I can clear that one up a bit.
Around here a lot of the commercial cleaners (ie those who clean offices etc. after hours) are Jehovahs Witnesses. This stems from their desire to spread the word of God during normal hours, and working after hours allow them to do this. A greater than average percentage of carpet cleaners are also JWs. I assume this simply stems from the fact that you quite often require carpet machines to become to perform office cleans. You’ve got the equipment, you need extra money so you do a few jobs for private houses and suddenly you’ve got a full fledged business. I’m willing to bet that the window cleaning thing stems from much the same reasons.
MEBUckner, if protestant is any Christian denomination not RC, then surely the JWs are as properly protestant as the Anglicans. Or am I missing something?
A genuinely mature Christian who’s walking properly with God will probably see people converted just by the look on his face as he walks down the road. I’ve seen this happen. Not to me, or not much. But it’s possible.
But that’s a truth which requires a certain surrender to mysticism. I have never been too hot on proselytizing - until I found the internet! woo-hoo! no consequenc… (sniiiip)- as the tracts, sketches, etc, always seemed a little contrived to my prideful artsy-fartsy mindset. I’ve always hoped just to witness by living my life in a strikingly different way from those around me. You don’t have to try, it just happens if you follow Christ. And if you do it properly, it really does happen. People come up to you in the street and ask about Him.
The real problem comes when people decide to proselytize without a mandate from God. You just can’t systematise the Holy Spirit. If I want people to be influenced by my walk with Christ, with Love, then I’d do better to ask His advice on it than follow church procedure alone. I do not attack church, of course - but without God it’s worse than nothing. I imagine those who get the witnessing church its bad name are those who think they can bring his Kingdom to earth without showing up for meetings with Him. Prayer is far, far more important than witnessing: but it’s a lot harder to get a handle on, much easier to do something physically tangible. And as soon as people meet ONE of the guys who prefers collecting souls to seeking His face, they tar the rest of us with the same brush. Witnessing, or proselytising, is genuinely encouraged by all three of the big monotheistic religions. But it’s always assumed you have something personal to witness about. If you’re reading it from a workbook you’re not ready: it’s about describing your love affair, not selling insurance door-to-door!!! Would you go round telling people about your wonderful new spouse instead of actually spending time with them? Heck no… not unless you were running away from something. You’d spend all the time you could with them, and when people glimpsed you in between times they’d KNOW it was for real.
I kind of appreciate your frustration. I used to let Jehovah’s Witnesses come in, hoping for a decent debate, but of course we all know how impossible that can be. That’s one problem I have with the door-to-door thing: the evangelist should be prepared to go in with a reasonable, open mind, and should be able constantly to hear the Holy Spirit’s voice. He should strike you as visibly, tangibly Good. If he can’t, he has no place there. Seriously: he’s not mature enough. Go home and pray, dude. See you in a couple of years ;). On the other hand he may be doing it all right and it may be OUR problem, but perish the thought.
(wanders off quietly dreading God’s response to such a high-handed answer)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Gaspode *
**
Jehovah’s Witnesses consider themselves Christians, despite the fact that they don’t believe Jesus actually is God. The rest of Christendom consider that a thunderously major departure from doctrinal truth, and thus do not consider JWs to be Christians. That probably explains why they don’t often get considered Protestant either.
[sub]I think.
"I always ask missionaries why they think that they were so lucky to have been born into the right religion at the right time to have receieved such wisdom. "
Book idea: it turns out that some little known sect, say the Amanites or the Shoemakerites, or better yet the Moonies, have been right all along, and the whole rest of us is Hellbound. I mean, that’s what they must believe, right? And then comedy ensues…
Ah - are we still allowed in General Questions?
Well, “any Christian denomination not RC” (to which you would really have to add “or not Eastern Orthodox”, and let’s not even get into the Monophysites and the Nestorians and so on) is a fairly loose definition of Protestant. The first wave of Protestants included Lutherans, Calvinists (Continental Reformed churches, Presbyterians, and later Congregationalists), and Anglicans (called Episcopalians in the U.S.–I have occassionally seen attempts to make Anglicanism a separate branch of Christianity, along with and sort of intermediate between Catholicism and Protestantism. Other Anglicans have been quite firmly Protestant though, and I don’t know how seriously this notion is taken by anybody outside of Anglicanism). Anabaptists sprung up pretty early, and the Baptists have roots that go pretty far back. (There are certain “Landmark” Baptist churches who deny they are Protestant at all, maintaining that they are descendants of the real Christians, who were hiding in catacombs through all those centuries of Roman Catholic persecution, or some such, but we won’t get into that.) Then there are “second wave” Protestant movements, like Methodism. Out of the Methodist tradition, IIRC, you get “Holiness” churches, and from there, Pentecostalism. There’s also a whole mess of “non-denominational” and ecumenical movements–Christian Churches and Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ and what all. Also, some mainstream Protestant churches, like the United Churches of Christ, are the result of mergers from several Protestant traditions.
Anyway, certain groups, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and especially the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), have fairly radically different views on the nature of God and Jesus Christ and the Trinity, so that it doesn’t seem quite proper to shoe-horn them in with general Protestants, who disagree about an amazing variety of things (the ins and outs of salvation, the use of the sacraments, church organization), but who mostly tend to agree on the basics of the Trinity and the relation of Jesus Christ to God (as found in the Nicene Creed, and on which there is broad general agreement among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox). Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, on the other hand, disagree about the basic stuff like the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Some of the Pentecostal groups have also wandered a bit far afield from the theology of Martin Luther or John Calvin or John Wesley. (There are “Oneness” Pentecostals who are anti-Trinitarian.) And then there are the liberal mainstream Protestant churches, which fundamentalists would probably accuse of all sorts of shocking heresies, as in the Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop Spong in the U.S. The Unitarian Universalists arose from a couple of liberal Protestant reform movements, but who are now a non-Christian, post-dogmatic, super-ecumenical church which includes everyone from liberal Christians to pantheists, pagans, and outright atheists.
Incidentally, although both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons do claim to be Christian, I don’t know that either group would necessarily even lay claim to being “Protestant”. They may have come out of the Protestant tradition, but Martin Luther came out of the Catholic tradition, and for that matter Christianity started out as a sect of Judaism.
And, just to drag this back a bit to the original topic, although evangelicalism and “witnessing” are nowadays mostly associated (at least in the United States) with Protestant evangelicals or “fundamentalists”, and various offshoots of evangelical Protestantism like the JW’s or Mormons, historically Catholic and Orthodox Christians have sent out plenty of missionaries to convert the heathens. At least outside of predominately Christian countries, I believe they still do. That gets into the whole question of exactly who is really saved and who still needs converting; if people are already saved where they are, it’s considered rude to go and “poach” from their congregations, but of course if the benighted Papists/heretical Protestant schismatics are in fact so far removed from the True Faith as to be doomed to hellfire, then they are fair game for conversion. Mostly, modern Orthodox, Catholic, and liberal or mainstream Protestants seem to take a dim view of intra-Christian proselytizing, but some evangelical Protestants see it differently.
Ahh so it’s a true Scotsman.
Even if they meet the dictionary definition of being both Christian and Protestant they’re still not real Christians or real Protestants.
Christianity, go figure.
I should point out the shamefully subbed “I think” in my earlier post. I simply do not know, I’m just going by what JWs have told me.
What does that have to do with Scotsmen? Is this some kind of kilt thing?
Well, by the dictionary definition of Christian (“Professing belief in Jesus as Christ or following the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.”), JW’s and Mormons would still qualify, and claims that they don’t are mainly intra-Christian denominational sniping. (Still, it’s not a totally illegitimate question. What does it mean to say Jesus is the Christ? What if someone says they believe Jesus is the Christ, and they then go on to add that their definition of “Christ” is “the seventh avatar of the Space Entity Wuluxungo, who was also manifested as Imhotep, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Quetzalcoatl, Annie Wood Besant, Sun Myung Moon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Xena, Warrior Princess”. Is this person still a “Christian” or not?)
The dictionary definition of Protestant is a bit more restrictive, though: “1. A member of a Western Christian church whose faith and practice are founded on the principles of the Reformation, especially in the acceptance of the Bible as the sole source of revelation, in justification by faith alone, and in the universal priesthood of all the believers. 2. A member of a Western Christian church adhering to the theologies of Luther, Calvin, or Zwingli.” That would seem to rule out the more seriously original theological innovations in post-Reformation Western Christendom.
Ross, the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is explained here.
This whole protestant thing has gotten way to complicated for me.
:raises eyebrow:
I see.
:lower eyebrow, slowly:
Speaking as a Scotsman I can assure one and all that while some people born in Scotland may occasionally apply heathen sassenach sugar to their porridge, indeed even buy the accursed Ready Brek from Wm Low, NO TRUE SCOTSMAN DOES IT and any who do have their bodies flung from the highest point of Stirling Castle to be dashed to pieces on the rocks below, then torn asunder by eight wild horses while their bowels and entrails are splattered the length and breadth of the land. Then curried. Then cut into very thin slices and played frisbee with. Then left in a corner to be pointedly ignored for 120 years. Then buried with full Christian funeral, but with the eulogy to be delivered in a sarcastic tone of voice.
What happens to websites who use small nations to practise analogies on is much the same. Only worse.
Oh, and as for the arguments presented, they all seem perfectly valid to me. You’re quite right and it’ll teach me not to consider my mum’s friend as a gospel (sorry) source on all JW antics. Go for it dudes. I have bigger fish to fry.
:flicking through phone book:
Connery P, connery R… ah, Connery S…
Well…“Christ” isn’t an arbitrary word whose meaning is anyone’s guess. christ (christos) is the greek for “messiah”, which is Hebrew and mean “chosen by god” or something to that effect. So, saying that Jesus is the Christ imply that you’re refering to the Hebraic tradition, and to YHWH, not to Wuluxungo.
Hmm. Interesting. I was raised Anglican, and have always felt more comfortable in Catholic masses than in Lutheran or other mainstream Protestand services. I think part of the reason that Anglicans tend to consider themselves an intermediate between Catholicism and Protestantism is that some of the dogma does seem to be intermediate (IIRC; it’s been a goodish while). I’ve also been told (not that I wouldn’t be willing to believe that this is wrong) that the Church of England predates Luther somewhat but wasn’t the official state religion until Henry VIII. Supposing that this is true, if it predates the Reformation, I suppose they have a reason to consider themselves somewhat intermediate.
And interestingly, I’ve often heard it called the Anglican Catholic Church, and in the ACC version of the Nicene creed, they refer to the Holy Catholic Church, so I suppose it probably does consider itself intermediate. Whether other denominations agree or not is beyond me. Why it matters is also, I have to confess, beyond me.