Mar 16 2008
What does it mean to be an evangelist?
PZ Myers recently touched on this question in his response to John Gray:
The critics of atheism seem, without exception, to be lacking in imagination. Over and over again, what we hear from them is desperate attempts to pigeonhole atheism as just another religion; they squat uncomprehendingly in their hovels built of faith and peer quizzically at the godless, seeking correspondence with their familiar theological nonsense, and crow in triumph when they find something that they can sort of line up with their experiences. “They want more people to think rationally — why, that’s evangelism!” Never mind that you could, with the same legitimacy, argue that when one person mentions to another that it is raining, they are attempting to evangelize their precipitational worldview.
Denotation, denotation, denotation…
In the broadest sense, practically every statement or opinion we make is evangelist in that sense. “Don’t you oppress me with your belief that this pasta tastes great! I’ll make up my own mind, dammit!”
At the opposite end of the spectrum — and this is according to the relevant Wikipedia page — evangelism is not even the same as proselytism in Christianity. It’s not enough to just attempt to convince someone of the truth of your statements; there’s something more to it, though the particular differences are rather obscure and I don’t feel confident teasing them apart. Evangelical religion seems to prefer “personal experience” over other means of proselytism, but this may not be completely accurate. (Maybe Rob can shed some light on this?)
In technology, some companies have advocates and some have evangelists. I’m not sure what the difference is here, but intuitively I would say that evangelists attempt to push a lifestyle whereas advocates push a technology. In the end they are both intended to sell more products.
Connotation, connotation, connotation
I think most uses of ‘evangelism’ are not meant in the strict religious sense, but with the understanding that evangelising is inherently bad. If you disagree with what someone says you can say that they are evangelising rather than advocating — or the more plain-speaking arguing.
If you’re from an evangelical religious community then obviously evangelism isn’t a dirty word. So it probably doesn’t get used as an attack in such cases. But everyone else — who would think of Billy Graham or Pat Robertson on hearing the word — feels a bit uneasy with that kind of religion. And yet by itself it shouldn’t have these connotations when applied generally — it’s only because people like Pat Robertson have such an odious reputation that the word means more than just “bringing good news”.
Wikipedia has the difficult task of trying to define these things when the different denominations / communities probably all think about them differently anyway. I can only talk of my own experience which is that of an Evangelical Christian (note: this is directly related to being an evangelising Christian).
From my perspective then we would just never use the term proselytism. I think at the time I would have said it was a secular word for evangelism. I’m not sure I would have made a much greater distinction except to perhaps add that only Christians can truly evangelise because of what evangelism means. As the Wikipedia entry notes evangelism comes from Evangelion which meant good news, so (I would have thought) evangelism should properly be thought of as communicating the good news (about Jesus), or “gospeling”.
It’s unfortunate that so many people think of someone like Pat Robertson (is it fair to include Billy Graham next to him [it may be, I know little about him]) when they hear the word evangelism (as you seem to), as most Christians are not like that at all. Most Christians (at least in the UK) are very nice people, even the Evangelicals (who I would say are usually very very nice and kind). Few of them want to knock on doors, even fewer stand on street corners and shout that people are going to hell. Most either do nothing, try to “share their faith” just by living a morally good life (and hoping that people will somehow magically convert or ask them about it), while others just ask their close friends if they would like to know more about the faith that they have (my Cambridge friends are in the last two categories).
I found the discussion about the legitimacy of evangelism interesting. As an Evangelical Christian I would have said that we (Christians) have a duty to tell the lost the gospel message, but if they do not want to hear it it is not our place to push it on them (of course other Evangelicals may disagree, I don’t know). After all Jesus never forced his message on people, and when people were uninterested in what he had to say he never pursued them. So I think that I (back then) like many of my Evangelical friends now, would think that evangelism is important but would never be aggressive in the manner you probably think of Christians being.
So in a sense perhaps there is a big difference, evangelism (to me back then) was not about converting people at all, for who can change a man’s hear except God alone? It was about communicating the message, and then letting the person make their own mind up (or letting the Holy Spirit do his stuff depending on what your views on all of that are). Whereas proselytism is about changing someone’s mind.
A subtle but important distinction.
P.S. I have sent this link to several Christian friends, so they may wish to add something (hopefully).
P.P.S. I’m not completely sure what you mean by “Evangelical religion”. Evangelicalism is a particular type of Christian belief, it is not something general that refers to other religions (indeed the name Evangel… gives it away)
Okay… that’s a long reply Rob :-)
Thanks for passing this on. It’s always useful to get inside perspectives on this kind of thing. Although strictly speaking I was approaching this from the point of view of, “when someone says you’re evangelising, what do they mean over and above arguing your point?”.
Taking things in a random order — I used the term “evangelical religion” because I thought I had used the term “evangelical Christianity” too much, though in retrospect that may have been edited out! I specifically don’t know the minutiae of what sects call themselves evangelical or what this means about their beliefs but it seemed reasonable that being too specific would mean I would get it wrong. “Religion” about covers it for me. :-) By the same token I don’t specifically know what Billy Graham was all about, but I was referring to popular imagery and ideas, which I think would put evangelism, televangelism, charismatic, whatever-other-term in a big melting pot. (Checking WP, it says “Billy Graham, is an evangelist and an Evangelical Christian”.)
So having insider knowledge of what, specifically, being an evangelical Christian meant to you, what do you think people mean when referring to Dawkins, Harris et al as “evangelical atheists”?
I feel I should point out that when I say I don’t like evangelists, what I really mean is people who use turns of phase along the lines of:
It’s shit.
rather than:
I think it’s shit.
When explaining their opinions and such. It has to do with confusing them with facts and then forcing them down peoples throats with a pig headed insistence that they must be correct and anyone who disagrees is clearly confused or much less intelligent than them*. You first quote is, in my opinion, a good example of this. So is most of the God delusion.
Nick out.
*that was not a very good sentence, but I think you get the gist.
Christians (or ex Christians) have referred to me (with some delight) as an evangelical atheist. What they mean by that (apart from it being an amusing thing to say) is that I try to convert people to my way of thinking.
I’m not really sure I do do that - at least not to the extent that I used to. I just angrily write about the things I think are terrible about religion now and then. I don’t actually think it would be good for (all of) my friends to wake up and smell the coffee, so to speak.
With respect to Dawkins et al, the reason they refer to them as evangelical or as fundamentalists is partly because their thinking is so warped that they can only see atheists through the same lens which tends to lead them to go on to say things like atheism is just another religion (which worships man, would usually be added), or if they’re a bit smarter they start talking about worldviews because they know atheism isn’t a religion, but they want to put them on the same shelf, and that’s a slightly more honest way to do it.
@Nick:
I understand your point now, though I don’t understand what it has to do with evangelism. Confusing fact for opinion is something else entirely, and something I rather dislike. It probably has a good name too, though I don’t know it. But now I understand your beef with The God Delusion I might be able to come up with a more relevant response.
Before I finish here, I would like to take issue with the implied relativism in your statement “anyone who disagrees is clearly confused or much less intelligent”. Well, that seems to be a reasonable reflection of the opinions the world over, unless you believe people hold views which they simultaneously believe to be wrong? As far as I’m concerned, if I believe something to be wrong, that’s the point where it stops being my opinion. The only thing I can infer from that is you believe that everyone’s contradictory views can all be right — that “truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference” (in WP’s words). Is this your view?
@Dougal
I forget where the quote actually came from, but it goes like this:
There are no holy wars among Hindus, Sikhs or Buddhists, because statements about reality are no presumed to be reality itself.
I think I probably hold with viewpoint, at least when we’re talking about things which aren’t provable (or disprovable if you want to take the scientific viewpoint). I suppose that might make me a relativist… but then I see some things in startlingly back and white terms (if you don’t recycle I think you’re a bad person).
The apple dictionary gives this definition for evangelist:
evangelist |iˈvanjəlist| noun 1 a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, esp. by public preaching. • a layperson engaged in Christian missionary work. • a zealous advocate of something : he is an evangelist of junk bonds. 2 the writer of one of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John) : St. John the Evangelist
Which I think backs up my previous statements reasonably well, although there is a clear differentiation. I would say that if I believe something to be wrong then it’s still my opinion, but if I KNOW it’s wrong then it ceases to be so.
Ignoring the historical aspect of the statement, I’m not sure that means anything. We know the map is not the territory and that restaurant reviews don’t have nutritional value. But that doesn’t mean that abstractions and models have no use, or that it is impossible to make predictions of the real world from these models.
Well in that case I formally accuse you of the relativist fallacy. slaps with glove ;-)
I think you might be mistaking my meaning slightly. (Only now do I see that my statement could be mistaken. Let me try again.) I don’t mean it in the sense of “in my opinion, belief in the flying spaghetti monster is wrong” but in the sense of simultaneously thinking “the flying spaghetti monster is our loving creator” and at the same time thinking “there is no such thing, and nor has there ever been, as the flying spaghetti monster”. I cannot both think something to be true and think it to be false. One will override the other, and I will either stop my infidel ways and devote my life to his noodly glory or admit that the flying spaghetti monster has nothing to do with the creation of the universe.
And yet your statement suggests that a person can believe X, but thinks people who don’t believe X are not wrong. If I believe in the flying spaghetti monster and you don’t, in what sense can I think me right and you right? If you think people who don’t recycle are wrong, can you also think people who don’t recycle are right? Or if someone convinced you that your B&W categorisation doesn’t always hold, could you still believe it anyway?