(Noun) A model of evangelism based on walking up to or visiting random persons to engage in a lengthy and unwanted exposition with them regarding your faith, and why it should be theirs.
Often accompanied by emotional manipulation in the form of implicit offers of friendship or hospitality.
- (Verb) Spamgelise
Contraction of Spam Evangelism
Examples
- Ray Comfort and The Way of the Master. Other than accosting random strangers, and telling them they are scum of the earth this series include Highlights include: That guy who was in those bloody awful left behind movies. Christian Homework. Ouch. Many weeks of videos
- 2 Ways to Live
- Julian Bachelor’s Black Book, easily one of the worse offenders. (âGnosticism for Dummiesâ)
See also:
Comments
Couldn’t such implicit offers be interpreted as simply sharing the love of Christ through friendship or hospitality? Why do the spamgelist’s motives have to be second guessed? — Greg
Because our church had sermons on the topic of “How to talk to people in such a way as to make them think you care about them, in order to evangelise them”. â mattw
I see. Still, for an individual spamgelist, its innocent until proven guilty as far as I’m concerned. — Greg
Possibly. I still have no time for the “tell strangers about jesus” mindset. It’s kinda like, “why don’t you actually do something? Something worthwhile, even? Go help at the city mission or something.” â mattw
Well from the spamgelists perspective, what they’re doing is worthwhile- seeing as they believe their target (victim?) is going to hell otherwise, and there are plenty of examples of spamgelism-fueled conversions, however ineffective such carry-on might prove when directed at you or I. So, coming from their perspective, what they’re doing is the most worthwhile thing they could be. And while my gut instinct is probably with yours, I do have a lot of respect for the ones that are truly passionate about what they’re doing. — greg
Islamofascists are truly passionate about what they’re doing… — nato
Aha, I was waiting for that. The difference is, most of your fundy christians (the ones who I admire anyway) are passionate about changing the lives of others for the better, whereas islamofascists are passionate about blowing people up so they can get more virgins in paradise. — greg
Ah, but what about those christian fundys who think they are right to beat Arabs (regardless of religion because we all know all Arabs are muslim), gays, blacks, …
The difference is we don’t hear about as persecution against non-christian groups as traditionally we are a christian society, so persecution against christians and white people is news (it doesn’t happen here), while persecution against non-christians isn’t… — Ollie
Yeah but I’m not talking about those fundies; I don’t think they- or the islamofascists- are acting out of a genuine desire to help others. — greg
You aren’t likely to encounter Muslim evangelists in NZ or any other western country as they would probably (and probably correctly) be afraid of being labelled extremist — note that we call fundamentalist christians fundies, fundamentalists, etc, but fundamentalist Muslims are called extremists — and extremism is tied inextricably with terrorism now. Any Muslim doing the door to door evangelism done by the various christian churchs (i honestly have no idea where Mormons and JWs fit in to christianity) could easily result in people complaining to news papers seriously and/or them being beaten up (possibly for destroying the trade towers…) — Ollie
Yes, but that is an earned reputation isn’t it? The most destructive fundy christians have been involved in (at least recently) is maybe vandalising the odd abortion clinic. — greg
Or, you know, the crusades ;). I think there are some muslim fundies who genuinely believe that God has called them to wipe out the infidel, just like their are christian fundies who genuinely believe that God has called them to “wipe out” the hommaseckshuls and the muslims. It’s just that western culture kinda “frowns” on murder and violence, so other avenues of attack are necessary. âmattw
The “vandalising” of abortion clinics has included arson, fire bombing, actual bombing and shootings. The KKK was a christian terrorist organisation, in fact so are most modern white supremacist groups have christian origins (largely due to the large influence of the KKK). Once again because they don’t target “us” they don’t get as much press (and of course the KKK no (really) longer exists as an organisation because of large amounts of resources the US government poured into irradicating it.
A reasonable numbers of the bombings that have happened in Ireland over the last 50 years have been targetted at Protestants by Catholics and vice versa — compare to the Sunni/Shiite problems in Iraq now.
Obviously christians must have “earned” a reputation for terrorism as well by now.
Then you have eco-terrorists like the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation, and Sea Shepeards. Then there’s the Jewish defense league, the Unabomber (who was a mathematician technophobe), the oklamoha city bombing (right wing militia — in fact most terrorist attacks in the US have been from right wing christian groups).
There are numerous christian nationalist movements in the theme of those in palenstine, they exist in a number of countries (eg. the lord’s resistance army in uganda).
Of course there are a couple of big factors you have ignored. Civilian casualties in a “war” don’t count as terrorism. In the Israeli invasion of lebanon which killed 1100 civilians, as Israel bombed cities. Estimates for the Iraq war range from 60000 to 655000 civilians, most of which are from aerial bombing of cities.
So we must also consider that terrorist acts by muslim groups are not necessarily religiously motivated — religion is just used as an excuse now.
Anyhoo, this is just a response to the idea that a small group of people can represent a religion of 1.4 billion. I statistically better argument is that all white people are racist muderers.
Also note that i haven’t touched at all upon the huge wars that lasted 100’s of years between Catholics and Protestants in europe. Nor the fact the the first use of the word “holocaust” described a british action against the jews.
This argument now has nothing to do with my original point, which was that I think fundamentalist christians who have devoted themselves to helping others come into a relationship with God are worthy of at least some respect, and not the complete derision they receive around here. (Also- btw, the conflict in Northern Ireland has nothing to do with religion.) — Greg
The conflict it N.I. originated with desire for independence — however that does not remove the existence of violence between protestant and catholic groups. “The Troubles” is a reference to actions by both the IRA (nationalists) and Protestant paramilitary groups. Anyhoo my previous post was driven entirely by your statement “Yes, but that is an earned reputation isn’t it?”, which i will admit puts it significantly off topic :( — Ollie
I am able to respect their sincerity, but not their conduct. I think they are still wrong, in both their goals and their means. â mattw
Who? the IRA, the Muslim extremists, or the Christian extremists? — or are we back on topic and talking about spamgelisers? — Ollie
Yes. (Spamgelisers in particular.) â mattw
Ditto. Though happily i live in a “closed” community — fences + gates seem to be effective at keeping door knockers away :D — Ollie
If truth be told, I’m mostly with Matt- and funnily enough we seem to be on a similar wavelength again (although neither of us seems to keen to admit it!) Also, Ollie- I didn’t mean to blame you for leading us off topic- apologies if my post came across that way. — Greg
