What You Tried to Say, What They Heard
An object lesson on doing what you can to not make things worse when attempting to evangelize.
In my Twitter feed this morning was this article from Crown Heights News, “Missionaries Again Litter Crown Heights with Pamphlets.” Crown Heights is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY, with a significant orthodox Jewish community. Here’s how members of that community view the missionary efforts of whatever nearby Christian congregation was attempting to evangelize via pamphlet-distribution:
A group of missionaries out on a “mission” have again targeted the Crown Heights Jewish community, littering doorsteps with Shmad pamphlets.
The materials being dropped off at Crown Heights homes include the eye-catching phrase, “Are You Good Enough”, and include a photo of what appears to be the Luchos.
CrownHeights.info reminds everyone of the dangers that these pamphlets pose to our children and community. They should be disposed of immediately.
Some vocabulary to help you grasp how poorly this initiative was received:
Shmad is conversion away from Judaism. I’m not positive it’s the exact same word (“beginner” doesn’t fully capture just how little Hebrew I know), but at the very least it is a near-homophone with the Biblical word shmad meaning to consume or annihilate.
Luchos are the tablets of the Ten Commandment. This is naturally and rightly extremely sacred in Judaism.
How does it feel when someone uses an image of the Holy Eucharist, or of a crucifix, in an anti-Catholic tract? How does it feel when a TV show mocks the Catholic faith via false characterizations of what we believe and practice?
We can reasonably infer that the received message of these tracts was, for many recipients, “We are here to destroy your community through a bait-and-switch in which we use images of the sacred to draw in unwitting friends and family members, including perhaps your young and impressionable children who have learned from you to revere and take great interest in the study of the faith.”
Is that the missionaries’ intention? Almost certainly not. But no matter how pure and kind the missionaries intended to be in sharing the Good News, the reality is that their method of evangelizing has made their neighbors defensive and wary. Not so good.
I’d like to be clear about two things.
First: There will always be tension among serious religious believers of conflicting faiths. The nature of objective truth is that at least some of us are wrong. The nature of religious fervor is that we want to remain faithful to the religion that we have, and we do not appreciate people attempting to undermine that.
So there will always be something of an impasse among the authentically-devout of various religions, no matter how determined we all are to be at peace with each other as fellow persons of goodwill.
Second: The solution to this impasse is not indifferentism. To act with integrity is to act on what you firmly believe to be true. There are differences in how Judaism and Christianity approach the question of converts, but I’d expect that if a friend of mine truly thought I was committing idolatry and following a false religion, that friend would make some effort to rescue me from those perceived errors.
So in drawing your attention to this snippet of news from Crown Heights, I’m not saying “Don’t Evangelize.”
What I’m saying is: Try to get to know people personally. Listen to them. Learn from them. Try to see things from their point of view. Try to show some sensitivity and respect.
Of course you are going to mess this up. Sometimes you’ll fail to speak exactly when someone was hoping you would. Sometimes you will be trying earnestly to speak respectfully and appropriately, but it still blows up into a giant disaster.
But work on it. Seek the third way. How could you be true to yourself as a Catholic, true to Jesus Christ who has commanded you to speak the Good News, and respect the genuine concerns and fears of your neighbors who likely have very good reasons to doubt that the Catholic faith has anything good to offer?
Artwork: St. Geneviève brings supplies to the people of Paris, painting by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (public domain). It’s our illustration for today’s topic because if you’re Catholic you might have reservations about the Panthéon in Paris, intended to be a church to honor St. Geneviève, and instead it’s . . . not. But, good news, for what remains of her relics visit the extraordinarily underrated Saint-Étienne-du-Mont right next door, which remains my favorite parish church in the world, though I haven’t completed an exhaustive comparison yet.