Talk:Evangelism
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I changed the word "preaching" to proclaiming because proclaiming is more general. The word preaching is only one form of evangelism in a verbal form.
Isn't "proclaiming" a value-loaded word? It assumes you have something to "proclaim". In a multi-ethnic and multi-religious world, this comes across as condescending. It isn't quite a NPOV (neutral point of view). What you're doing is just preaching IMHO.
- Kinda interesting...I usually view "preaching" as being the more loaded term. While "preaching at people" isn't proper usage, it is still a common insulting phrase in the U.S. - suggesting that someone is being too condescending. Proclaiming, on the other hand, simply implies that you have a message to tell - it doesn't imply that the message is good or bad, true or false, just that you have a message. I do agree with you, however, that preaching is the better term for the first paragraph - not because of any NPOV reason, but because it (paired with proselytizing) is the more accurate usage. --Tim4christ17 talk 06:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
I think this article could be expanded by referring to some Germans crediting Bach as being the "Fifth Evangelist" due to the power and beauty of his religious music. I don't know where it would fit in, but the fact is stated in the 'Professional Life' section of the article on Bach. --Ninjawailer 03:20, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Too Protestant
The later versions of this article are too Protestant, and too Evangelical. It wasn't a lot more NPOV before, but it is locked in, now, to Protestant, Evangelical view of what Evangelism is. Mkmcconn (Talk) 03:35, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
evangelization is the spread of christianity
[edit] needs another point of view
[edit] Evanglist List
I don't think the list of evanglists is in alphabetical order, since the Apostle Paul is followed by John Paul II. However, since I don't know who the majority of the evanglists are on that, I cannot correct it. Additionally, whether or not someone is a "well-known" evangelist is highly subjective. Perhaps the list should be removed entirely? ----Miked84 01:50, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] What about the other side of the coin?
There is nothing represented about the other side of the coin here.There are plenty of people from other cultures and religions who feel threatened by evangelism and the christian aggression to put down their faith and heritage. Evangelists, nowadays, use any means possible and with huge sums of money from the western world are bent upon converting Asia to christianity. I do not know what is more demeaning: buying the spirit of a man and getting him to "know Christ" for five dollars or trying to come up with marketing campaing to sell Christ like soaps. Some of the tactics include: trying to convert people suffering the loss of loved ones to tsunami, saying the name of the local God and giving the wrong medicine, then taking the name of Christ and giving the right medicine, etc. The aggression in particlar is a defensive tactic that comes out when not everyone wants to accept their points of view. This aggression comes up in the form of a condescending attitude, insulting and disparaging remarks about the local faith and culture. The Evangelists are dealing with people's faith and just as the Evangelists shall never agree to with prophet Mohammad or worship the Hindu Gods, there will be people who choose to believe in another God other than Christ. Further, the Evangelists abuse the religious tolerance and economic weakness of countries like India. They deliver iconoclastic, disparaging and insulting talks about the local faith that leads to violence and riots. It would be interesting to see the reaction in the western world if someone were to make disparaging comments against Jesus Christ. The western christian world, while reluctant to help out with life and death issues in third world countries, instead pour their resources into missionaries and evangelists. We have to live in a world of religious tolerance. Trampling on other people's faith and culture is violence in it's own way. The fact is that you cannot argue with faith. There is not much og logic or scientific procedures that one can use to weigh the points of view. Just as the evangelists and christians expect others to respect their faith, christians and the western world would continue to be seen as bullies with deep pockets in other parts of the world unless they learn to see other faiths with respect and learn to respect the differences in the ways man tries to make God out of the mundane.
- Undoubtedly evangelism "tramples other peoples' faith" if that means labeling "another faith" a sort of unbelief; and naturally, this is seen as aggression, and portrayed as violence of a sort by the people so threatened, who sometimes react with criticisms of their own (some founded and others not), hostility and even violence. But when Christians cease to do this kind of evangelism, and begin to think that God is something men make, they cease to share the faith of the Apostles.
- However, the section Evangelism#Evangelism as Christian aggression is written as hearsay and doesn't explain anything. It needs to be completely re-written or deleted. — Mark (Mkmcconn) ** 14:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
I definitely agree. Even if you put up something showing the other side of the coin, the Evengelists that visit Wikipedia will try to find something wrong with it and use it as an excuse to take it off the article. LCS 21:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Neutrality should be evolved
Evangelism is an act that does lead to friction in many parts of the world. While, everyone is entitled to believe his/her own faith, as religion is very far from science, the attempts by Christians to evangelize and convert people of other faiths has lead to the destruction of native culture and religious practices. The point to be noted is that we are dealing with faith here: while the idea of someone not agreeing completely with Bible/Jesus Christ might be blasphemous to a Christian, the fact that Christian evangelists attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity will be equally blasphemous to people of other faiths. While, the view points of the Evangelists have been represented very clearly in this article, the negative effects, the sensitive nature of the act is not properly given space.
[edit] Great article
In visiting roman catholic services I have never heard of an evangelist outside of scripture readings that is regarded as such by roman catholics. Therefore I believe that this article is not too protestant. This article is fair and shows no bias.
[Catholics use the term "evangelization," instead of "evangelism." People who do evangelization, or who evangelize, are sometimes referred to as "evangelizers," but not usually "evangelists." So, I agree that the article is not biased, but there needs to be another one on evangelization.] SnapC :) 22:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] About Neutrality
Certainly it is biased.
[edit] Biased
That the article only talks briefly about evangelism and spends a good many paragraphs talking about Christian aggression strikes me as biased. The Christian aggression article isn't even framed as "Some opponents say this," but calls it their "quest" and "over-assertive" etc.
Next, there are numerous extraneous sentences whose only purpose is to put evangelism in a negative light: "certain evangelists are convinced of their cause." No, duh.
And lastly, there is no citation for the bribery claims (which, from what I have read, aren't typical) - clearly bias.
I'm not an evangelist or even a Christian, but this article is generally a disgrace to wikipedia.
[edit] Crusade
Somebody should include a section of the Vocabulary used by modern Evangelists. Why do modern Evangelists use the term "Crusade" when ever they put on shows to convert others to their faith.
This word is so similar to the word Jihad (in the holy war context)and given that the historical Crusades were particullary bloody and abusive. Is this just a hold over from and earlier vocublary or do they mean to include to bloody connation?
[edit] NPOV/Cleanup
This article is in serious need of repair. It doesn't clearly differenciate between the Christian duty of "Evangelism" which is spreading the faith and serving others, from the evangelical movement which is an entire sect within Christianity that have their own practices and doctrines.
I see there is also an "evangelicalism" article that gets into that, making this article all the more confusing.
Also that dig at the end about it being considered "hostile" is completely POV, it seems like whoever the author is, was talking mostly about evangelicals but hinted at all evangelism everywhere.
I recommend we keep this article for "evangelism" only, making a passing mention to link others to the evangelical movement, and if we're planning on keeping that absurd tirade about hostility at all, it needs to be cleaned up and moved to the evangelicalism thread.
This present article is utterly ridiculous.
[edit] Evangelism as Christian Aggression
I edited out the following:
"The evangelists in their quest to spread the gospel and propagate their faith sometimes step on the toes of local culture, faith, and heritage. For instance, certain over-assertive churches use strategies such as distributing leaflets containing derogatory remarks about biblically unwarranted holy festivals of other faiths. While the evangelists claim that Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, there are other faiths equally convinced in their tenets, some of which do not agree with Christianity. This inevitably causes tension. However, many evangelists are convinced of their cause.
Evangelists can come off as condescending fanatics whose every action has the ulterior motive of conversion if their usually persuasive and uncompromising message is not tempered with humilty, grace, and respect for all cultures. The latter, they would assert, is not to be confused with "respect for all behavior and lifestyle choices", some of which are clearly denounced in the Bible as sins against God. -- unsourced -->
Orthodox Christians and Evangelists view Christ as the only way to salvation and claim people adhering to other faiths as lost. Evangelists claiming sincere and honest motives want to share their faith with everyone. However, many people, proud of their own culture and religion, see the attempt to evangelize as pedantic in terms of telling non Christians how to realize God. They would assert that the Evangelists' extensive attempts throughout history to convert people adhering to other faiths to Christianity through persuasive preaching or dishonorable means based on the Christian faith that Jesus Christ is the sole path to salvation can be viewed as Christian aggression.-- unsourced -->"
There is no source for any of this and it touches on points about evangelist beliefs, Orthodox beliefs and matters of pure opinion. If we're going to have this at all in the article there needs to be at least some source associated with it.--24.52.111.139 16:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
LMAO. You must be a Christian. Much of it is true. Are you saying there are no sources that oppose the pro-Evengelist views so you have the right to remove information? The information is definitely not false, because I came across a document that supports the text you deleted. (Although it was before I found Wikipedia.) LCS 00:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
To all you ignorant Christians, please stop deleting parts of the Talk page. We have the right to keep our comments here. If you do not like what we are saying, or if it scares you, please do not continue reading. You can't refute the paragraph above on Christian aggression. LCS 22:47, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
The above comments are just idiotic Christian bashing, take a look at the logical fallacy article - specifically "ad hominem attacks." The editor's religious beliefs are not at issue. The original article was junk and the original poster was right most of it was unsubstantiated garbage. The general tone of "Evangelists are mean" is a good starting point for a criticism section, however that should only be a section of the article not the whole thing, and it should be more substance and less literature.--CurtissWarhawk 19:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Social Modelling
That part of the article was too conspiratorial and POV. Whoever the author was made assumptions about how Joshua is used that wasn't substantiated by the evidence. Also it's more relevant to the evangelicalism article.--141.195.143.107 15:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Suggest merge of Christian evangelism into Evangelism
Suggest merge of new article Christian evangelism into Evangelism for housekeeping reasons. Comments? --John Nagle 04:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
Let's merge, drop or move the stuff about evangelicalism to its more appropriate topic then assuming everything looks good take off the tags.
I'm with John Nagle on this one. I think merger of the two articles makes for better practice and better keeping of an encyclopedia, and it will eliminate or reduce a lot of the "bias" and "non-NPOV" that people keep bringing up. Gatherton 04:14, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
- I have not read the Evangelism article, but I did glance at it to see which way it tilted. I came upon the Christian evangelism article while researching something else. Let's not merge them unless we place somewhere near the top the Christian evangelism article's words:
These words are balanced and respectful of the perhaps 'less forceful' evangelicals we don't hear much about. --CliffC 18:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)It is widely accepted in the Christian community that Christian evangelism is not to be a harsh, in-your-face process. Nor is it to duplicate what many view as the errors of political leaders like Charlemagne who embraced a 'convert or die' type of evangelism. Rather, most Christians would say that while Christian evangelism should be active and intentional, it should be done peacefully, in love, with kindness,and respectfully, even with a sense of urgency.
- It may be balanced and respectful, but it seems like it cries out for a citation. "It is widely accepted"? Depends on which Christian community you're referring to. Certainly those multitudes who distribute those 'convert or die' Jack Chick comic books would disagree.
- I do agree with the merge if Christian Evangelism is kept in a separate section and evangelism is written about in a general sense. At the moment I think this article has a christian-centric bias; aren't there Muslim evangelists too, or are they called something else? -Amatulic 20:12, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree with John Nagle. The two articles are essentially about the same thing (although one or other may be better written). The single article should be titled 'Evangelism' as the prefix 'Christian' is unnecessary - all evangelism is Christian (although other faith groups may have their own words for a similar activity). Specifically it is Protestant Christian Proselytizing. As noted elsewhere, there may need to be a seperate article for 'Evangelization' - the Catholic term for an essentially similar process.Ray Ellis 21:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] The destruction of an article.
If you look back over past versions of this article, people have systematically been deleting large sections of text. This "article" has been reduced by 2/3rds of its original size and frankly now hardly qualifies as an article at all.
Currently this page is nothing more than a dictionary definition of the word followed by a series of links to known evangelists. That is far from enough to make this article encyclopedic.
The whole page needs a re-write and about double the amount of text including a mention of the criticism to which evangelism has been subject to over the years. I would take the project on myself but quite frankly I simply don’t have the patience to deal with the religious zealots who are evidently going to come out of the woodwork and attempt to censor anyone who writes anything even remotely critical of their faith – even where such comment merely represents historical record.
There has been a massive amount of criticism made of evangelists and evangelism both in the past and present. Like it or not, evangelism has been a huge force for change in world history – change which has at times been both good and bad. None of this is even mentioned in the article. The one attempt to do so was swiftly deleted and generated calls of NPOV editing.
While the one previous attempt was admittedly not particularly well done, the inclusion of these facts in this article is not POV but merely the inclusion of fact – something which is necessary for a fact based article to be factual.
So… does anyone have the time to weather repeated attacks by the fanatics?--62.173.76.218 15:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Look, you're never going to find a consensus on this article it's too controversial. On the one hand you'll get our suspicious friend who keeps comming along and editing large swaths of the article away (and I have a feeling who at least one of them is), and on the other you'll get the above yahoos whining about the "ignorant Christians." I think you're right and we need to start this article again from scratch, and i'd be happy to do it but (and admittedly i'm one of those aforementioned bloodsucking ignorant "Christian" types) there are a few things i'd like to get clear before I start in on the article. First are we talking about evangelism the practice, or evangelicalism the movement. Second are we stepping on any other article's toes? Third, (and most importantly) when we start in on the criticism section how do we protect the article from pointless attacks? The previous edits at least stand on some valid points, but clearly there will be issues with people who just swoop in and edit the bejesus out of this based on nothing. Is there like a protection we could put on this or will it have to be guarded like a hawk?
That's all i've got. I'll present a new article in a day or two.--CurtissWarhawk 19:45, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
- Refering to my experience trying to keep the page Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a reasonable and encylopedic article, I would say that the current article is a good starting point, and that the npov tag should be removed and development of other sections started. The current article is as the anon user says, a dictionary definition and a few bare comments. This article is clearly based on an encyclopedic subject, people who say that Evangelism is not a subject like this are likely just to be WP:TROLLs. I am removing the npov tag as it is not currently disputed in the state it is in and the appearance of the tag for no reason just baits trolls. Ansell 01:48, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
I think a lot more could and should be said about the history of evangelism as well as different styles of evangelism for this to be a valid article. As someone said somewhere above, it hardly qualifies as an article.--Niceguy2all 04:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
- I agree:"a dictionary definition and a few bare comments". There are four years of history to look through to find the missing two-thirds. I sampled a few but haven't found a better article yet. Can you point to a date when you think the article was more encyclopedic? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 10:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
