I wrote a very detailed post on another thread here last night explaining that I am not a Protestant and giving some of the reasons why. I don't like being proselytized more than anybody else (especially when you're supposed to have a sudden moment of spirit position with electricity running up and down your back and then get condemned because it didn't happen!). However, as unpleasant as proselyitzation is, it is not fatal. I am simply blown away by the hostility any sort of proselytization causes so many people.
I've been proselytized by Fundamentalist and Pentecostal Protestants of various kinds. No one put a gun to my head. I lived through it. I've even had the ever-lovin' menel worried out of me by the JP's, but I've never melted because one handed me a copy of Awake or Watchtower. A reading of the "new testament" clearly shows a rabidly proselytary earch church, yet all the ancient churches who boast so loudly of their "unchanging" nature have evolved into ingrown ethnic clubs who wouldn't want a redneck to join because then they'd no longer feel "superior" to him. I thought Calvinists were anti-missionary; at least they don't run around squawking about how bigoted, stupid, or "fascist" Arminians are!
Pardon my language, but sh*t!
Okay. So people don't like being proselytized by someone whose only spiel consists of "ye better git saved!!!" and quotes from the Bible, including from the Hebrew Bible taken completely out of context. And many Protestants seem to have the bizarre idea that they're the only people on earth who have figured out that everyone sins. But of all the evils and threats that plague the world, the fury poured out on Fundamentalist Protestant missionaries is simply out of all proportion to the "threat" they represent. And while we're at it, how can people allegedly so "stupid" that they can't pass gas without instructions be so fiendishly clever that a single tract or "ye better git saved!!!" is all that is needed to project an almost trancelike state onto the "victim," pulling him out of much more ancient and superior religions? Come on, people! Protestant missionaries are dumber than rocks but if we don't silence them they'll convert the entire human race???
Maybe they're not so dumb after all!!!
And I am deadly serious about the danger of the outlawing of missionary activity. Most religions don't engage in it, so it would be very easy to bring everyone together based on nothing but a distaste for the backwoods yahoos and their notion that there is such a thing as an objective religious Truth that binds all people?
Listen to the rhetoric or read the literature of the "respectable" religions. There is not the slightest hint that any of them believe anything other than the most extreme relativism ("everyone is beautiful except for those benighted swamp dwellers who don't believe that everyone is beautiful"). Well I'm sorry, but "everybody" has to mean everybody or else it's nothing but hot air. In effect, since all the other religions refuse to admit Fundamentalist Protestants (even anti-missionary Calvinists, so far as I know) to the "everyone is beautiful" club, then they're all a bunch of flaming hypcrites.
And while we're on the subject of leaving Fundamentalist Protestants out of the loop, how come all the anti-proselytizers have no objection to Fundamentalist Protestant children (future chr*stians, should they manage to "git saved!!!") being proselytized by evolutionists in public school classrooms. In fact, they think it's unreasonable for Fundamentalist Protestants to complain when their religious beliefs are contradicted by the Federal and State governments. So not only are Fundamentalist Protestants excluded from the "everyone is beautiful" club, they are also the one people who are supposed to keep their mouths shut when they are proselytized!!! I'm sorry, but that makes me absolutely furious.
At any rate, there are already rumors of a "United Religions Initiative" or something at the UN that will outlaw proselytization and recognize only non-proselytary religions as legitimate. Now I don't object to the outlawing of false religions if it's done in the name of the "true religion;" but I do object to it when hypocritically done in the name of "the legitimacy of all faith traditions."
And again, I note that ancient and highly ritualized religions seem to be squishy soft (or at least silent) on the historicity of the Biblical events. This has led me to wonder for some time if they don't regard the Bible as merely the text of a ritual pantomime, devoid of any and all facticity (indeed, some members of ancient religions seem to regard facticity itself as a modern creation unknown to the ancient religious authorities).
Well, maybe you at least will understand where I'm coming from. No one else seems to.
Will my invocation of "yuh better git saved!!!" now open me up to charges of anti-Protestant bigotry? Somehow I doubt it. American Protestants learned a long time ago that they don't get to play the "bigotry" card.
I prefer "Have yew accepted Jaysusuh Chrahst intew yore lahfe as yew're personal Lord and Savior?"
Look -- I don't have such a big problem with those people. I have, like you, wondered why people act as if these missionaries are committing attempted murder by handing them a tract and asking the above question. The biggest problem with them is that once they get started it can be very difficult to get them to shut up.
But we all get tarred with the same brush.
My church, the Roman Catholic Church is anything but squishy in our beliefs, and our core beliefs have changed very little, as I'm sure you know. We have different problems. Some people don't like what we stand for. Some people condemn us all for the actions of a few. Some people don't like our traditional practices. Some flat out don't like some of the ethnic groups of which we are comprised.
We've always been targets, and we're targeted time and time again right here on this forum with always the same kind of insults, the same tired old libels and attacks that have been promulgated upon us for centuries. As a Jew you should certainly understand what that's like. The minute you've finished addressing a particular libel someone else comes along and introduces it again as if you never refuted it and here we go again. So maybe it's not protestant bashing on our part, maybe we get tired of going over the same ground. We could close all our threads, but I think we like the discussion but get sick of the attacks.