Objectification and Evangelization (Book Notes: Rapture Culture)

Proselytization is central to the religious faith of many evangelical Christians - they will "share" their beliefs with anyone they come across if they are given half a chance. They believe they are doing a good deed, but from the other side it often doesn't appear very positive.

In Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America, Amy Johnson Frykholm writes:

[F]or many of the people I interviewed, witnessing is an essential part of their Christian faith. In order to understand that faith. I had to be willing persist in listening even when my salvation, beliefs, and life became the uncomfortable object of the conversation. I am using the word object here deliberately because, in many ways, I found witnessing to be an objectifying experience. No matter in what way I articulated or failed to articulate a reasonable position for myself, my lack of belief turned me into an object. In Martin Buber’s language, I often felt at these moments that I turned from a “Thou” in the conversation into an “It.”

Few evangelicals understand how they come off to those they are attempting to evangelize; fewer still appear to care. This would appear to be a contradictory attitude: they act like they evangelize because they care, but if they really cared then they would not want to appear to be treating others like objects.

The apparent contradiction is thought to be resolved because evangelical Christians imagine themselves to be superior to others in the sense of having access to privileged information. They adopt an attitude like that of parents: their actions may be perceived in a negative fashion, but because they know so much better than others this is a price wroth paying in order to rescue people from their own sinfulness.

This, however, is no better than treating a person like an object in the first place. An attitude of self-righteous superiority is no way to show to others that one does know something important and helpful. Evangelical Christians may be sincere in their faith, but they are not sincere in their respect for others so long as they continue to objectify people as part of the process of evangelization.

 

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