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by ImaCatholic2 on May 26th, 2008
Proselytism is the use of unfair and coercive methods, --that is to say, those which apply pressure--to convince a person to leave his/her religion and join another.
Evangelization, on the other hand, is giving witness to God as revealed through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit in a simple and direct manner. It includes the renewing of humanity, witness, explicit proclamation, adherence with the heart, entry into the community, acceptance of signs, and apostolic initiative. It means to carry the good news to all areas of human life and through its influence transform from within and renew humanity itself, but without pressure.
Most Christian Churches including Catholicism practice evangelization not proselytism.
With love in Christ.
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Comments
Ok, here are definitions from six different dictionaries (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/proselytize). Where in any of them does it saying anything about coercion being connected with proselytizing? From looking at the dictionaries, it appears that the only real difference in meaning between evangelize and proselytize is that evangelize applies specifically to Christianity whereas proselytize is a more general term for trying to convert someone to your way of think whether it be religiously, philosophically, or politically.
by Glenn Blaylock on May 26th, 2008
Here is the description of proselytism from the Joint Working Group between the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches (who together represent about 3/4 of all Christians in the world): http://www.providence.edu/las/proselyt.htm
by ImaCatholic2 on May 26th, 2008
Actually I would question whether this group really represents 3/4 of all Christians in the world (at least in this matter). In order for them to truly make that claim, then those three quarters of all Christians would have had to read that report and agreed with how they used the word "proselytize" and its derivatives. How many of them do you really think have actually done that? I would think that the number of people who have actually read that report is rather small even among the clergy, let alone the general populations of those churches. I would think that the vast majority of Christians would tern to a dictionary to determine the meaning of the word.
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Please don't get me wrong here. I am not trying to pick on you. It's just that I get rather annoyed when people take perfectly good words and change their meanings on me as seems to be the case here. I realize that languages change over time, but that does not mean that i have to like it. ;-)
by Glenn Blaylock on May 26th, 2008