Sunday, May 23, 2021

Christian proselytizing is essentially magic incantation

Everybody knows about Christian street proselytizers, who speak or, at a very minimum, will carry some kind of placards containing short Christian messages. The intrusiveness and loudness of this street proselytizing depends on the individual. Some Christians also engage in other forms of "activism", such as for example going to random online forums and social media to "preach the Gospel", posting random Christian stuff about how to be "saved", in forums that have nothing to do with religion (or even science).

While there have probably never been any comprehensive studies about this kind of activism, the general experience (especially revealed by those who have later left the religion) is that such proselytizing extremely rarely, if ever, brings new converts to the congregation. The vast, vast majority of it is just noise that gets ignored (and, on the contrary, is often seen as annoying and intrusive, driving people even further away from even considering what's being said).

But why do they keep doing it, especially given its demonstrably poor track record? I'm not here referring to any underlying psychological phenomena that makes people do such thing, but what their own rationale and thinking is for doing it. Why go out there and pester people with the proselytizing?

The reason is that there are many Christians, especially those from certain churches of certain Christian denominations (usually the "charismatic Christianity" denominations), who strongly believe that the Word of God, the written and spoken word of the Gospels, have the power to influence people. That God acts through these words, through these messages, that through them God speaks to people in a manner that drives them towards God. They believe that if there's a person who still does not believe in God, merely by hearing or reading these words, the Gospel, the good message of salvation, will make God influence that person to convert, to be drawn to God, to become a believer.

In other words, these Christians essentially believe that the Gospel, these proselytizing messages, "the Word of God", are for all intents and purposes magical incantations that have the supernatural power to influence people. That these magical incantations have the power to enable God to act and supernaturally affect people.

In other words, in essence they believe that these words are a magical summoning spell, and incantation to call God to supernaturally affect people that hear the words. That merely hearing or reading these words people may be supernaturally affected and influenced by God.

This is highly ironic given that one of the core beliefs of Christianity (pretty much all denominations of it) is that sorcery, witchcraft, supernatural magic, incantations and summoning spells are evil and the work of Satan. Yet, this is essentially what they are trying to do when they proselytize.