Recent Threads

[Douglas Laycock]

  I think it's true that proselytize has a negative connotation to
some people and is a perfectly neutral word for other people.  To
some people it means intrusive, oppressive, badgering attempts to
persuade, and to others, it simply means to spread the word. But I
think a substantial subset of the first group view almost any attempt
to spread the word about religion as intrusive, oppressive, and
badgering -- certainly any face-to-face attempt -- because they know
what they think about religion, they have heard all the arguments
before (or think they have), and they reject as illegitimate any
renewed attempts to persuade them to change their religion.

  Quoting Will Linden <wlinden at panix.com>:

>    I can only say curiouser and curiotser. I have never heard anyone
say
> such a thing, any more than  saying "*I* belong to a cult". Nor
have I
> heard any self-styled-mainline Christians use "proselytizing"  as
anything
> other than something reprehensible.
>
>    The most nearly neutral reference I ever heard was
"Swedenborgians don't
> proselytize".... again, something only They do. (And don't you DARE
call me
> "mainline"!)
>
>
>
> At 12:16 PM 9/6/07 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> Curious.  I've had many a christian tell me it is their obligation
to
>> proselytize -- using that very word.
>>
>> I don't see anything pejorative in it at all.  It is quite
accurate.
>>
>> On 9/6/07, Will Linden
<<mailto:wlinden at panix.com>wlinden at panix.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, Douglas Laycock wrote:
>>>
>>> > Some Christians proselytize; some don't.  Same with atheists.
>>>
>>> "Proseleytize" is one of those funny words, like "cult" and
>>> "superstition", which can only be applied to Somebody Else BY
DEFINITION.
>>> We share, you preach, They proseleytize.  Consequently, I have
dropped it
>>> from my vocabulary.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Will Linden  <mailto:wlinden at panix.com>wlinden at panix.com
>>> <http://www.ecben.net/>http://www.ecben.net/[1]
>>> Magic Code: MAS/GD S++ W++ N+ PWM++ Ds/r+ A-> a++ C+ G- QO++ 666
Y
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Prof. Steven Jamar
>> Howard University School of Law
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>
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>
>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713

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