quote:I do feel okay about asking point-blank, " Oh, are you a missionary?" or "Oh, are you prosletyzing?"
Is the word "proselytize" generally viewed as carrying a negative connotation? Years ago I was talking with a missionary, and said something to the effect of "so when you're out in the field proselytizing...". She was flustered by this, and said that she didn't proselytize, she just "spread the word" (I think that was her phrasing; it was a long time ago). I was puzzled by this, but just went with it. Later my then-girlfriend said that she'd been startled to hear me use that word to a missionary's face, telling me that the word was loaded with negative connotations. I'd never heard that, and couldn't find any support for it, but since then I've tended to avoid the word around people who...you know...proselytize.
So was my then-girlfriend right about the word? I suspect that she wasn't, but I'd never thought to ask about it here until I read CT's post.
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posted
Proselytize is a $2.00 word that means "getting folks to join my church." It can scare off people who don't like big words.
Worse, it is exactly the correct and direct word for what the people are doing, and many of those people don't want to be that direct.
Its like that phone call you get during dinner that starts, "We're not selling you anything, but we are just taking a survey..." They then go on to find out what brand of x you are using, mention benefits of brand y, and try to convince you to get some of brand y from them, in exchange for cash or credit, but its not selling.
Finally, its been branded by that word of ultimate power--"only". In other words, too many would be converts just look and say, "he's only proseltyzing. We don't have to listen to them." Those who do proseltyze believe there is no "only" to it. It is the most important work, news, thing, in life. Those who are listening, however, are quick to turn it off as something of limited use because they've heard too often that those people are "only" proseltyzing.
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posted
It sounds weird to me because I always said proselyting, instead of proselytizing.
I think it can have negative connotations depending on how it is said, but it doesn't have to. I think when someone is being negative, they choose that word as the verb, which does unfortunate things for the nuetral use of the verb.
However, I would not have been offended if someone asked me that. We called the missionary wear pross clothes, after all. As in, "Should we wear pross on our day off?"
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posted
ON my mission I never felt a negative connotation with "proselyting." I was LDS.
I was taught that proselyting was the most ineffective way to spend our valuable time. We were encouraged to get referrals from members and other investigators (people we were currently teaching).
We also would teach English once a week for free. It was held at church and most attendees were aware we were missionaries who would foster an environment where they would be receptive to our idea of the spirit. It seemed like a fair exchange. No one seemed offended. English classes are expensive and we made it fun and it was free.
We had a lot of converts from English class. Sometimes I wondered if people in Asia used Mormons just to learn English and make it America. My wife is Japanese and was introduced to Mormonism from an English class. She came to America. (I did not go to Japan on a mission.
However, I know her testimony is pure. She really believes it. Even tho I left she still goes and gets something from church.
We also did service projects. That is the one part of my mission I truly miss. I was in an area for 6 months. We served at a children's hospital for terminal patients. It was very sad but very beautiful. We never even contemplated proselyting on service projects. We just brought a smile to kids faces and played with them so they could forget about the pain.
I think our mission president wanted us to just serve the people with no strings attached. I am not sure how other missions handled service projects.
Proselyting, whether it was door knocking or talking to people on the street, was only encouraged as a time filler. We were also encouraged to proselyte as we traveled.
Bad? No. Negative connotation? Not that I ever felt. Effective? Not really.
*since the church was small in my area and since missionaries had a bad rep with the members. For you members out there, there was a time when over a third of the mission were "Gadianton Missionaries."
They worked in bars, had secrete signs, had sex in mission houses, et cetera. The mission president before mine was called by the prophet to clean the mission. In his first few months as president I heard he sent over 200 missionaries home. Our mission got decimated to just 87 full time missionaries. My trainer had just turned in his companion for sneaking out to go to a brothel the week before I got there. He was the last known Gadianton Missionary.
I came in with the new president. Our goal in my first area was to get the members to talk to us at church and not just turn their backs on us.
My point is that since we had a hard time getting referrals, we spent about 8 hours a day proselyting. Ineffective but not negative.
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posted
I wonder if it would be better to ask "Are you approaching me as a member of a church?"
I'm still going to ask, but I don't want to make it any more offensive than is absolutely necessary to get an answer I can understand.
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lem: I'm sorry about the Gadianton missionaries - that's awful. I feel so bad for the missionaries who wasted their mission, for the members in the mission, for everyone. That's just terrible. Detroit was like that two presidents before I got there. The president before did the widespread cleaning out and sending home you talked about. The mission got so obedient that my president could be the kind of president he wanted to be - trusting and squishy and understanding.
I don't think it is an offensive question to ask if someone is coming as a member of a church. There's little point in pretending it is about something else.
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Well, yes, I am a Sith. So if you want to become one just get really mad and we can talk about it.
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It is semantics. Regardless of what you want to call it, such as spreading the word, missionary work or calling sinners to repentance, it is all the act of attempting to convert person to a specific creed or belief. The mere definition of Proselytize contains no negativity. In fact the word doesn't even have to be assoiated with religion.
In my opinion the negative connotation only comes from the very agressive people who are willing to do things that people consider negative when prosletyzing. You know, the damning to hells, the pious implications of a superiority which imply you can be saved if you join the chosen and other such trapping not undeservedly associated with religious stereotypes.
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posted
I've never heard the word "proselyting" except from Mormons, and it kind of weirds me out. So I still say "proselytizing." And ignore the "corrections" I get in Sunday School and Relief Society. (According to all the definitions on onelook, "proselytizing" means what I always thought it did, to try to convert another, while "proselyting" means, to most people, that you are someone in the process of yourself converting, or a neophyte to the religion. But I don't press the issue.)
In any case, I have never felt a negative connotation from it, and I don't think it would be inappropriate to ask.
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quote:I know her testimony is pure. She really believes it.
I have one question about terminology, lem, if it's not too offensive. You're an unbeliever, IIRC. In that case, you don't think your wife has actually received a "testimony" of any kind. Are you using "her testimony is pure" as a synonym for "her belief is deep and sincere," even though I'd consider there to be a major distinction between the two?
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In either case, I get "corrected" for using a correct word all the time, and it drives me nuts sometimes!
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To me, it's like use and utilize. They mean (roughly) the same thing, so the extra syllable on utilize seems weird.
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Yeah, but even if it sounds weird, do you correct everyone who says utilize? (Which I do say, but only in very specific situations.)
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I refrain from correcting other people in general, especially over such things as their manner of speaking.
Hmm...to the original topic, this line was from the wikipedia article on proselytism.
quote:Today, the connotations of the word proselytism are often negative but this article will use the word neutrally to refer to any attempts to convert a person or people to another faith.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: To me, it's like use and utilize. They mean (roughly) the same thing, so the extra syllable on utilize seems weird.
Not to get even farther off topic, but is it the same with sate, satiate, and satisfy? Don't they all mean pretty much the same thing?
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sate and satiate, yes. Satisfy has a different enough meaning that it needs to be a seperate word.
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quote: I refrain from correcting other people in general, especially over such things as their manner of speaking.
And I thank you for that. (Except when it's False Doctrine Day in Sunday School or Relief Society. )
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quote: Proselytize is a $2.00 word that means "getting folks to join my church."
Dan, I'm going to slightly nit-pick here and say it doesn't necessarily mean you are trying to get someone to join a particular church (it may for some people, but that is not always the case). Basically, as Wikipedia says it, it is an effort to convert someone to another opinion (usually associated with religious beliefs).
For instance, as a Christian, I do "spread the word" as opportunity presents itself, about my belief and about what Jesus' life means. However, they don't have to come to MY church to be a believer. In fact, a couple different people I have been sharing with (in answer to their questions to me) are not even in my area, so it would not be logistically possible for them to be in my particular church. I do, however, hope they find a group of Christians in their area who are supportive and mentoring.
posted
Another possible difference between the use/utilize proselyte/ proselytize distinction: "Use" and "utilize" are in common usage. I'm a pretty avid reader & have been very involved in church & discussing the church, but I've never heard the term "proselyte" before this thread...only proselytize. Is it possible that "proselyte" is an LDS "in-group" term?
i'm not trying to use "in group" in any kind of negative way. People who share beliefs often share the same language about those beliefs.
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By that rubric, proselytize is more common, but proselyte is definitely used (utilized). However, that does not make the distinction between proselyte as a noun and proselyte as a verb.
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Re proselytize: I wouldn't be offended by that word at all, but I tend to take connotation-laden words and using them completely neutrally, both when listening and speaking.
I use that word (or a synonomous word) in non-religious situations too. For example, a few years ago there was a lot of Firefly/Serenity proselyting/evangelizing here on Hatrack.
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I had never heard the phrase "Gadianton Missionaries" before this thread, but to someone familiar with the Gadianton Robbers, the meaning is clear.
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As I grew up, proselytize was almost exclusively used to mean "trying to convince someone who attends Church X to switch and attend your Church." It was usually a very negative term, because that's just not considered cool.
Then again, I grew up in the Bible belt, where pretty much everyone attended church (usually of some Protestant flavor) so if you wanted to grow your numbers you usually had to do so by "stealing" members from a different church. It wasn't considered good form, but everyone knew it happened.
That's why I've always associated a negative connotation to the term. I remember my grandmother once telling me that talking to non-believers about coming to your church was evangelizing, trying to convince believers to join your church was proselytizing.
I know those aren't the actual definitions, but that's the distinction she used when describing why evangelism was good but proselytizing was not so much.
And the only time I've ever seen the word "proselyte" is here, mentioned by LDS members.
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I read the Wikipedia entry. I get the idea and it's certainly not flattering. I just thought that it was some kind of ongoing problem that was given a name at some time.
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I've never heard "proselyte" as a verb except in LDS circles, either, and most of the google hits I get off it are LDS or ex-LDS, too. So I would definitely characterize it as one of those peculiar LDS things. (I was amazed to read about "testimonies" being "borne" in a 1973 National Geographic book about Mountain People that I picked up, in the section about religion in the Appalachians and Ozarks. I knew it used to be a word in common usage in some churches, but had never heard it referenced anywhere but ours. When I read it several times in one chapter, it was rather thrilling. "See, someone else knows what it means!" I had never heard "testimony" used in that context before I started investigating the Church, and while I think my Southern Baptist aunt would know what it means if I used it, her sons might not immediately, because I know they don't use that term much any more in her church, at least. Not that anything's wrong with it, it's just fallen out of use in favor of other terms. I wonder if there are still little churches somewhere who "bear testimonies" instead of "bearing witness" or "speaking the Word", the two phrases I hear most often from my Southern Baptist family members.)
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Primal: It's an ongoing problem is the sense that humans behaving badly in general is an ongoing problem. I hadn't heard the term before lem used it, but I knew exactly what he meant when he said it.
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I've heard "testimony" used a lot in evangelical Christian circles. People "share their testimony" with others, and it usually means sharing their conversion experience. In at least some circles, believers prepare a short talk (maybe 1-5 minutes?) to share. I don't know how or if this corresponds to the LDS meaning of testimony.
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Liz, that's kind of close to the LDS meaning. In LDS circles, "bearing your testimony" is done during once-a-month fast and testimony meeting, or at the end of a talk or lesson you give, or other places as the Spirit moves and the opportunity arises. It means sharing your beliefs, basically, sometimes including conversion stories, sometimes just things that you believe and want to share. Often includes the words "I know that", and touches on prophets, the validity of the doctrine of the church, Christ's sacrifice, or the love of God. Many people add "I'm grateful for" and some of them turn it into a long list, which is not exactly what we're "supposed" to do, but they don't get criticized for it. We are also told we may share "faith-promoting stories" of things that have happened to us.
My aunt's Southern Baptist church does have time sometimes for the same kind of sharing, but they don't call it "bearing testimony" (at least not at this point.) I have heard it referred to as "bearing witness", though.
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I had never heard the phrase "Gadianton Missionaries" before this thread, but to someone familiar with the Gadianton Robbers, the meaning is clear.
I had the same reaction.
Wicked missionaries is one topic that always leaves me feeling sad. My own grandfather on the first day of his mission in Germany walked into the apartment to find his new companion having sex with some woman in the bedroom.
Though I can see how a missionary goes down that road. I found on my own mission that being honest and coming to the mission president because a mistake was made was responded to with IMO undue harshness and retribution. With such an atmosphere it can be pretty easy to just ignore your mistakes and in fact go on to worse things as you are no longer accountable to your mission president.
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Sharing testimony has been a common thing in the churches I've been to, though generally it's used as a conversion tool rather than something that's shared with the church. I always hated it when the youth group leaders made us write down testimonies and share them with friends because I never had anything to say.
Growing up, the words I heard used more often was "evangelizing" and "witnessing." I was familiar with "proselytizing" but I wasn't aware of "proselyting" until I came to Hatrack.
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CT, if you asked me "are you approaching me as a member of a church" I would be confused. I know what you mean by it, but I had to think a second, and if you'd asked me that cold, without my knowing the context of this discussion, my first reaction would proably be to say "yes" because I am a member of a church even if in that interaction I was not aproaching you on behalf of the church, but really was interested in where you purchased your charming wool socks or which coffee shop in town you find to have the best crumpets.
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quote: In that case, you don't think your wife has actually received a "testimony" of any kind. Are you using "her testimony is pure" as a synonym for "her belief is deep and sincere," even though I'd consider there to be a major distinction between the two?
Yes, I mean it to mean deep and sincere. More specifically, I used the term pure to signify that her testimony is untainted by her desire to learn English or come to America. Many missionaries in the area I served thought our English language class converts converted because they wanted to learn English and practice on Americans. When they got what they wanted, they often just quit.
My wife didn't. More and more she is not having good experiences at church. A lot of it is probably because members treat her different now that I don't go. I think she would be happier outside of the church, but that is not my call. She gets to work out her own happiness. I can only give my input when we are having intimate conversations (instead of the more snidish tone I take on Hatrack).
quote:Interesting. The phrase "Gadianton Missionaries" doesn't get any results in Google. However, Gadianton Robbers do. Is this one of those sweep-under-the-carpet things?
"Gadianton Missionaries" is not a term or a thing that is swept under the rug. It is, to the extent of my knowledge, unique to my mission. Apparently a group of missionaries thought it would be fun to call themselves that because the Gadianton Robbers in the Book of Mormon are a secretive gang that seeks to overthrow the governement/church.
These missionaries invented their own signs. My trainer was responsible for helping to root them out. According to his first hand experience you could only join by having sex in a missionary house. The mission became known as a party mission. I guess once missionaries got compromised and got a taste of the carnal side of life on the other side of the world, it evolved.
quote: lem: [Frown] I'm sorry about the Gadianton missionaries - that's awful. I feel so bad for the missionaries who wasted their mission, for the members in the mission, for everyone. That's just terrible.
It was terrible. If you don't believe in something you shouldn't join it. At the very least it is extremely rude to the people who sacrificed for that organization.
I am all for voicing opposition and telling those I care about why I left, but that is in the open. Life is a level playing field of ideas. To be insincere and do something that could close down the mission is just wrong and icky. The mission almost did close.
Oh well, they got rooted out.
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quote:Apparently a group of missionaries thought it would be fun to call themselves that
They chose that name themselves? And didn't realize that what they were doing was wrong, or didn't care? Yikes!
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: CT, if you asked me "are you approaching me as a member of a church" I would be confused. I know what you mean by it, but I had to think a second, and if you'd asked me that cold, without my knowing the context of this discussion,
*grin
Yeah, it would be in context. I'm less snippish about this than I sound online. I don't give everyone who steps near me the skank-eye.
I generally have pretty reliable feelers about people. When something seems off, I'll ask, but I usually am quite comfortable with making small talk in public places. I also try to be actively alert for any signs that my chattiness might make someone uncomfortable.
quote:my first reaction would proably be to say "yes" because I am a member of a church even if in that interaction I was not aproaching you on behalf of the church, but really was interested in where you purchased your charming wool socks or which coffee shop in town you find to have the best crumpets.
Hmmm. I don't think there is a perfect answer, and I'll probably stick to "missionary or proselytizing." I can always explain what I mean if the language I use isn't clear.
I think part of what makes it offensive is the fundamental decision (that I've made) to lump a bunch of different people into one category and treat them equally. I imagine that might feel quite dismissive and/or disrespectful of the prosetylizer's uniqueness and importance of their own personal message. Nonetheless, it is what I have chosen to do, and I might as well be up front about it.
I promise to be as courteous and polite about these situations as I can be, otherwise.
---
Mind you, when I have an established relationship with someone as a friend, listening to and sharing stories of life experiences and how we make sense of ourselves and our worlds doesn't trouble me. I like it. It feels like more of a shared thing then, though, and it fits into what I expect of an interaction in a totally different way.
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I'm sorry about the Gadianton missionaries - that's awful. I feel so bad for the missionaries who wasted their mission, for the members in the mission, for everyone. That's just terrible. Detroit was like that two presidents before I got there. The president before did the widespread cleaning out and sending home you talked about. The mission got so obedient that my president could be the kind of president he wanted to be - trusting and squishy and understanding. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
(According to all the definitions on onelook, "proselytizing" means what I always thought it did, to try to convert another, while "proselyting" means, to most people, that you are someone in the process of yourself converting, or a neophyte to the religion. But I don't press the issue.)![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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They chose that name themselves? And didn't realize that what they were doing was wrong, or didn't care? Yikes!
