2006-09-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

As a seminarian planning to enter vocational ministry, and especially as a Christian of the conservative fundamentalist (lowercase "f") evangleical Southern Baptist ilk, I find the subject of evangelism very important. While a religious studies student at the Univeristy of Oklahoma, I was introduced to an ever more popular notion that evangelism (almost exclusively called proselytyzing by its critics) is a reprehensible practice that promotes intolerance at best and is as culturally destructive as war or ethnicide at worst.
Here is a great starting point for this discussion, check this link: http://http://www.hvk.org/articles/1100/30.html

Thi is a particularly interesting article not only because f the presuppositions of Rajhiv Almohtra's worldview shpaing the discussion from the start, but because it truly reveals a growing sentiment among the shpaers of American and global society. Many see evangelism/proselytyzing as a danger to social harmony, as accomplished largely through hate speech and divisive rhetoric, and as an offense to the dignity of those who do not adhere to the Christian faith. On top of this, you will find that they consider evangelism to be a reactionary practice that is the result of a faltering evangelical movement in its final throes against the onslaught of modern, rational thought and current trends of pluralism and syncretism. Evangleism is biblical but unchristlike, since the bible, in their view, is a poor picture of who christ was (it is a polluted document with archaic ideology that is easily dismissed by enlightened man).

What do YOU think?

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