Christianity, Transactional Evangelism, and Shopping Baskets
(This post contains opinions about organised religion and their recruiting methods. I try not to be offensive, because that would undermine my point. But I may use emotive language and hyperbole to get my point across, because that's how I roll. Oh, and it's 1500 words long.)
The other day, I went to put up a poster (for http://www.facebook.com/events/598574103502922/ , since you asked) in my JCR, and I ran into a problem: there was no space. This was because the majority of space was taken up by three or four identical copies of a large poster which read "BORN LOVED." And nothing else.
I was vaguely aware that BORN LOVED was a Christian Thing, because apparently they make hoodies and I'd spotted some of my Christian friends wearing them around over the past week, but hadn't asked about them. Anyway, I moved some old posters around and found a space for mine which didn't cover any of them, and left it at that.
Move forwards to yesterday afternoon, where I bumped into a friend in Tesco. It was his birthday, and he'd invited everyone to a free céilidh at his church which conveniently happened to be that evening. He was with some of his flatmates, and we started talking. It turned out that the céilidh was affiliated with this BORN LOVED thing, which it turns out (not that you'd be able to tell from the content-free posters currently plastering the city) is the catchy name for the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union's yearly recruitment drive.
This is where the opinion stuff comes in. I'm a philosophy student. I've spent the past three years coming to grips exploring the fact that we basically don't know anything about anything. We don't have a consistent, agreed-upon conception of what a person is. What an event is. What an object is. What time is. Whether there's an external world at all. What a proposition is. What "truth" actually consists in. How adverbs work. Whether there are objective moral facts or principles. And a thousand other things.
You can probably guess that I'm also agnostic. My mind is open to breakthroughs in any of these fields, just as it's open to breakthroughs in theology. Of course, given that we've been at it for a very, very long time, I'm not that hopeful for either. However, I don't see how you can do philosophy if your mind is already concluded. This is why I was surprised to see so many devout Christians studying PPE with me. But these last two paragraphs are probably the topic for another post.
Anyway, what I took issue with regarding this BORN LOVED thing is what I've spontaneously decided to call Transactional Evangelism, because I'm a philosopher and we like coming up with -isms. I respect that almost all religions, and many religious people, feel they have a duty to evangelise. After all, they think they're right and that what their religion has to offer is of immeasurable value to anyone they can convert. And I'm fine with people engaging me in debate, if we both understand these terms up front. I have no intention of changing my mind, and I'm not so militantly agnostic as to go to extreme lengths to convince them of my stance. From each of our positions, of course, the position of the other seems wholly foolish. Thus, if we can improve our understandings of each other's position, the debate will be worth it.
It's slightly petty, but the whole BORN LOVED thing seems, from my perspective, painfully arrogant. I know they're trying to say, “Isn't it great that we're all born loved? You should totally embrace this love and be a Christian.” But from my perspective, it looks like they're saying “Check it out, we're great because we're born loved. Are YOU? Well, you'd better want to be. Heathens.” Especially as their marketing campaign is based around providing as little information as possible. And it is a marketing campaign. As an organisation, they're using the same techniques used by companies to sell Christianity as a good. And this is where Transactional Evangelism comes in.
You know that thing where a shop will give you free stuff, or the promise of redeemable points, if you willingly surrender your personal details and submit yourself to periodic advertising? I always found those creepy. We accept them because giving out our email addresses costs us nothing, and gets us something nice. Like a 2.5% discount. But, of course, the companies do it because it's profitable for them, because increasing their advertising potential and creating a sense of duty to shop there again is worth more to them than the paltry discount if it ensures more sales. Transactional Evangelism is creepy in the same way, and I've seen it take a number of forms in the activities of Christian Unions here in Oxford.
The Christian Union in my college runs Transactional Evangelism campaigns all the time. They offer to do your laundry for you (and tell you a bit about God while you're waiting). They offer “Facebook a pancake / cookie / muffin”, where you send them a question about God or Jesus or Christianity, and they bring you a delicious treat (and also, as a side effect, an answer). Nobody on the receiving end of these things does them because they want to know about God. They do them because the bribe of goods and services is worth more to them than the irritating voice talking in their ear, which they wholly intend to ignore – just like when they accept discounts in shops in exchange for being sent advertising. Obviously, this céilidh turned out to be another of these honeypot traps – come along, have fun, and we'll talk at you for half an hour in the middle.
If you want to hear about God, ask a Christian about God. If you want to tell people about God, look for people who want to hear about God. I know it's important to you, but I'm a big believer in “negative liberty”: I think you're almost certainly wrong, but as long as you don't interfere with my life, I don't care what you think. And, when it comes to Christianity, I actually agree with a lot of what you think – I don't think there's anything close to the God you think is out there, but a lot of the practical ethics you believe he dictates can lead to a lot of good in the world.
What you shouldn't do is trick people into hearing about God. “I did something nice for you, now you owe it to me to listen to me.” That's no way to begin a religious discussion, even if you succeed in converting the listener. You're turning your faith into a commodity, and it cheapens what you say. I've never partaken of any of these services, because I would feel like I was cheating and exploiting the poor Christian who washed my pants or brought me chocolate.
These are the views I expressed when talking with my friend's flatmate, and it would be the end of the story. However, when I when to pay for my shopping, I found the following in my basket, written in pencil on the back of a literal envelope:
Hello!
Please excuse this message in your shopping! I couldn't help overhearing you talking with your friend about her “crazy church.” In spite of its many faults, I would encourage you to go there with her – it is a place where people are set free to be joyous in a wonderful family!
Best wishes!
...which I think qualifies as intrusive Christianity, and doesn't really improve my opinion. At any rate, I actually agree with the note's point, to an extent. Churches (i.e. organised religion) do have a lot of faults (and that's a topic for another post). And I see that people go to churches (especially these trendy student churches) for a sense of belonging, and to have fun, and so on. And, indeed, in lots of places such churches are the only place available for people to do this, and provide a valuable service. But that's what it is – a service. For the most part, what is of practical value, and what brings people in, is the camaraderie, not the theology.
I already have a wonderful family with whom I am free to be joyous. It's called the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society. The purpose of the group is musical comedy, but we're also very close friends. At New Year's, we even have a céilidh with our counterparts from Cambridge and Sheffield! And we get to enjoy all this without being told what to think about God, our souls, or people from thousands of years ago.
I didn't go to the céilidh at the church. But I did meet up with my friend and our friends from OULES afterwards.
Tl;dr: Christians often feel a need to be charitable and helpful, and they also feel a need to spread the good word. But when you offer people the former in exchange for the latter, you undermine the purpose of both.
