Missionaries, Evangelism, Christianity, et al. (An Introspective)

[Jara's Song]

Great post Melon! I agree with alot of what you say. Many missionaries would rather preach the gospel of American materialism than the gospel of "love your neighbor as you love yourself."

I recommend that you read "Bruchko" by Bruce Olsen. a very interesting man and one who became a true misionary!

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Jara sang his song a WEAPON!

Granted I have not read all of these replies yet and I apologize if someone else already said this but I have a question for melon. You said in one of your posts that Calvinist Protestants are big on evangelism. That's not true, Calvinists believe in predestination and therefore do not see any purpose to evangelism because everyone is already destined to be saved or damned no matter what they do on the planet. It might be splitting hairs but I just thought I would point that out. Hope that didn't bother anyone.

[melon]

I use "Calvinist Protestantism" to describe the very large umbrella of offshoots, which vary from Presbyterianism to Baptists, and do cover all "non-denominational" fundamentalists as well, as, whether they know it or not, they share a lot of Calvin's biblical attitudes.

Calvinism, like any religion, has changed somewhat, with their most notable change being staying away from predestination, which was popularized into the American subconsciousness with the Calvinist offshoot, Puritanism. Modern Calvinist Protestantism is highly influenced by the Baptist religion, which does--correct me if I'm wrong--put a big emphasis on evangelism. It's a mess, but I didn't invent the term "Calvinist Protestantism"; I got a lot of this from an old religion book of mine from high school.

Melon

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«Confused by thoughts, we experience duality in life. Unencumbered by ideas, the enlightened see the one reality.» - Hui-neng (638-713)

[]{arao]{e]

Originally posted by melon:

I, of all people, probably have as much of a reason, if not more of a reason, to shut off as well. Honestly, it's hard being intellectually-inclined, while still being religious. One cannot be blind to the obvious conflictions between the Bible and science,

I think you're confusing science with theory. Science fully supports the bible. The bible reported that the earth was round (Job) and that the earth revolved around the sun way before it was generally accepted.
Anthropology and biology both confirm that man inherits imperfection from his parents and that everything just appeared on earth one day a looooooong time ago.