Evangelizing other Denominations
Another weekend in buckle of the Bible Belt, another episode of one of the local Evangelical Warehouse Clubs installing realtor-style yard signs around my RC employer's property that read: "REPENT Turn to GOD Thru His SON Jesus." I'm not sure how to start -- with he ignorance, or the arrogance.
Comments
As for your RC employer...time to crank up the religious saint statuary! I have a lovely St. Francis (of Assisi) garden statute in my garden.
If someone believes, really believes they have the way to salvation then they want others to be saved.
I agree the signs you pointed out are not nice and I would not want them up. That said the attitude of some on the RC church is as bad
Yes, there are knobheads in all organisations.
More on-topic - there's nothing anti-RC about those signs, as described. Maybe add a pic of our Lord on the cross below the message, or (better) one of those Faustina-divine-mercy pictures.
Or add signs that read "Stop in and asks us how!"
As Lutherans, we've found we get it from the idiots of both sides. The RC side jumps on us for Luther, generally--also for having married pastors. The everyone-else-mostly-Tin-Lanh-protestants jump on us for being RC (they think so because of the clerical collar and the liturgy).
We can't win.
Mostly we just smirk...
I've never come across RCs who consider Protestants as not 'proper' Christians but don't doubt you've experienced some shit from hardliners for changing address.
My brother has recently tentatively started attending his local RC church, less than 200 yards from where he lives. He's been estranged from any kind of church for some considerable time and whilst he's wary of certain RC emphases he's impressed by what he's seen so far.
Something he's picked up on though is how much crap and venom the priest and other parishioners have received from hard-line evangelicals over the years. The priest has been confronted in the street on many occasions by swivel-eyed fundamentalists telling him he's not 'saved' or that RCs eat babies for breakfast or ...
Sadly, my own Church has more than it's fair share of anti-ecumenists and whackoes who seem to think they are doing God a tremendous service by going round criticising everyone else.
On the hyper-Calvinist side of things, and no, I'm not levying this observation at the mainstream Reformed, it is almost seen as a badge of virtue to be as unpleasant as possible to 'Arminians', charismatics, RCs and anyone else who isn't a Five-Point TULIP sniffer.
I can think of Orthodox equivalents.
The fundamentalist mindset isn't restricted to any one expression of Christianity.
It's often said within Orthodoxy that the greatest Saints tend to be those who aren't aware that they are Saints in the first place.
Yes, yes, I know, this doesn't 'work' so well in traditions that only go in for small s rather than Big S Saints but you can see what I'm getting at.
I have had long positive relations with many priests I have worked with since becoming ordained. Mrs Gramps is an oblate of a Benedictine order in the area. All your side has to do, @LC, is accept the Joint Statement on the Doctrine of Justification and then you will be in like Flynn.
I try to steer clear of jurisdictional spats within my own orbit.
Coming back to the OP, surely this thread should be entitled 'Proselytising other denominations' rather than 'evangelising' them.
Some RCs and Orthodox would repudiate the use of the term 'denomination' in relation to themselves, of course. 'We are not a denomination, we are a Church' - or the Church.
But I think the distinction between proselytisation and evangelism still applies, even if the perpetrators think that they are evangelising rather than trying to brow-beat or poach other Christians.
I often think that the people we should really be evangelising are ourselves.
A number of you are doing your best to be magnanimous, but this is almost certainly the same American-style right-wing evangelical big box 'church' doing this, because in a lot of the deep south, a d definitely around here, the idea that Catholics aren't Christians persists. It's inflammatory, and it causes distress and harm to some wonderful people that I know well and care about, even if I don't believe anything close to what they do.
Yes, @Gamma Gamaliel, the thread should use "Proselytizing," instead of "Evangelizing," and yes, the people doing this can go pound salt, suck rocks, and eat poo.
That said, and with no disrespect intended, I suspect that this sort of thing is more likely to happen in certain US fundamentalist circles in a way that it no longer does in the circles evangelicals here aboard Ship move in.
That said, there was a distinctly anti-RC vibe when I was growing up in South Wales and not just from dyed in the wool 'chapel' types. Even moderate Anglicans would spread rumours that RC priests were fiddling raffle tickets and so on, simply because someone had allegedly seen the stubs alongside their dustbin (garbage can).
Over here the different ends of the candle will work with each other. My Baptist church in my home town worked with other Evangelical churches from CofE, RC, Methodists etc.
I come from middle-class north London and there was something of an anti-RC bias there too, based on social class and ethnicity (Irish) rather than religion per se.
Your phrase reminded me of the term 'sheep stealers', which I might have picked up somewhere within Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead' (which I love).
I felt a bit guilty after bringing up the Very Reformed students I knew in the 80s, perhaps due to @Nick Tamen's presence on this thread. So I offer up the notably reformed (and excellent) Robinson for balance :-)
The evangelical assholes I encountered most recently were the seven bigots with a megaphone at the Pride Parade this past Sunday. They were hitting the classics -- "turn or burn" -- and spewing some really disgusting hate. One guy seemed particularly interested in the mechanics of gay sex. My friends and I drew the obvious conclusions.
Or, as I think @KarlLB introduced to us: "why does the body of Christ need so many arseholes?"
The unvarnished reality is that bad theology gives people license for unreligious/unchristian behavior.
Perhaps because so many of its members seem to do little but generate hot air and gas.