You know as well as I that some Christians think that way. I've met them. That is not nearly all Christians by any means. But they do exist. I don't think that all Christians think this way, but I believe that someone within the interviews or the observations of the reporter said it, even if only in jest. Regardless of the wording, the implication is to be among the non-converted, non-Christians, etc so as to bring them to Christ. It's not for the benefit of the converted, but to convert others.

But even evangelical doesn't have to mean ramming something down someone's throat. For me, I know the value of a Christian youth group that encourages inviting friends. If I hadn't received such an invite, quite frankly, I would never have bothered to seek out my faith on my own and quite probably would be dead right now. But the most important part of that invitation was the way in which it was done: by someone who was interested in me personally, who cared about me, and who I knew would drop the issue and continue loving me if I said no. Evangelical can be such a dirty word, but for me I share my faith with sisters because I love them and want them to experience the life-changing effects my faith has had on my life. That doesn't mean I have a checklist of non-Christian Thetas and feel the need to convert my whole chapter by the time I graduate or I'm a failure. Evangelical can be positive IF it's done right (which I'll admit is difficult).

While part of me agrees, as a no-longer-Christian, I really can't see any way in which someone 'sharing how Christ/faith/etc has affected their lives' is really going to matter to me. Hey it's nice it works for you, but really I mostly want to be left alone about my religion unless I ASK for advice, input or discussion.

From one perspective evangelism is necessary, needed, a moral requirement, but from the other's perspective even the 'best' kind can be a huge annoyance when it is added up with the other cultural pressures involved. I don't know that it's reconcilable, really. But if people do take hints - from those uninterested, or from those who do want to hear more- then yes it's negative effects are minimized and positive effects are maximized.

And people are interpreting statements and actions. You don't actually have to say "non-Christians are sinners" for your statements and actions to translate to "non-Christians are sinners."

As a Christian, I would never pretend to be able to predict what other Christians think or what they would or would not say.

Of course they do, but we're not talking about any random Christians, we're talking about a specific organization with specific goals. As someone very familiar with this organization, I am confident that this wording does not fit the doctrine of its members. I don't think the wording is irrelevant for that reason, and because its offensive.

Yes, we are. The Christians in this organization are no different than any other Christians. They certainly aren't more Christian than those who are not in this organization.

We don't know what they are thinking and what they would or would not say, just as we don't know what other Christians are thinking and what they would or would not say.

Yet even when the literal words of the members, and the paraphrased words of the members interviewed match that sentiment you're certain it's wrong? You know all the members? You're sure that there's no one there who thinks that and said it to a reporter?

Particularly as they are featuring a link to this article on their homesite, and on their facebook page with ZERO complaints about the way they were featured, I'm suspecting they're happy with the coverage.

I'm saying nothing about the quality of their faith, I'm saying that they are a specific group of Christians who agreed to certain statements before becoming leaders in the organization. I have extreme doubts that they would use these words knowing what those statements are.

Again, the bolded doesn't truly distinguish them from other Christians.

Your extreme doubts are based on your hopes and assumptions.** Your doubts are probably incorrect. As Drolefille noted, these particular Christians seem proud over how the NY Times portrayed them so that speaks volumes.

**We aren't saying that we absolutely know that they said those things. We are saying that it isn't a huge leap.

Actually, I don't think the rest of the article matched this sentiment. No, I don't know all of the members, but I highly doubt that someone said this particular quote in the same way I would highly doubt that someone who has taught at my school would call my students stupid-- I'm familiar with what the org looks for and requires.

Just to clarify, I was talking specifically about that quote, not the general way they were portrayed.

Your school has how many teachers? And this organization has how many members? And you know them equally as well as you know the teachers at your school? The current existing membership/leadership who attended the conference, that is, not past members/leaders, but present ones.

No one thinks every member thinks this way, but your insistence that no one in that organization would dare to utter, nay even think such words, is not really grounded in anything.

Your stance even on this has shifted from certainty that this was something people say about Christians, and not something Christians would say, to not something these Christians would say, to something you doubt they'd say.

Sorry if the analogy was whack. My point was that my feelings aren't about knowing these individuals, but about knowing what the organization requires.

Actually I said I'd bet they didn't, I'm confident that they didn't, and I highly doubt that they did. The only statement I made about Christians in general was that people often assume we think that way, which is not contradictory to anything else I said.

It would make more sense if your contention was that a member wouldn't publicly express that sentiment if they knew that it was counter to the organization's purpose and requirements. That would be different than claiming that no member actually feels that way.

So you've moved from confidence to doubt?

Ultimately you are saying that you have 'faith' in the organization's leaders. Which kind of makes the whole conversation ironic, in that annoying 'not really sure if it's irony' way.

My point is, that based on the entire tone of the article - one of evangelizing to fraternities and sororities which is, AFAICT the entire purpose of IV and Greek IV - that statement is not out of left field. It fits in pretty well with the sentiment of being a missionary among one's GLO, confronting other Christians who aren't living up to one's own standard and so on. You said you saw NO pressure in this article, and put all the responsibility on the people who felt pressured. Funny thing is, if you're the one evangelizing - and I'm going to assume you've been a member of this group and thus have participated - your opinion about whether you're pressuring someone else or not doesn't actually matter. If they tell you you're pressuring them, you are. I can state for me that whether when I was Christian or now, such things would have been annoying, and if persistent, most certainly pressuring. People have tried to 'save' me before, and that was while I was Christian. It's pressuring, particularly when those people are not people you can just ignore because you live with them, or they're the financial chair, or whatever. It's not just about 'declining' something you're not interested in.

That's not even getting into the idea of evangelizing to/around gay brothers and sisters and the intolerance that can entail even in a college environment. I don't know what IV's attitude towards homosexuality is, but I can guess.

Maybe on your campus, maybe in your experience things weren't that bad, but these things do exist and the statements made in this article are reflective of THAT attitude. "Rubbing shoulders with sinners" is merely an extension of that attitude, and whether the words themselves are literal, or were said in a joke, or reflected the overall feeling of the conference, they're not some sort of ridiculous extreme past what was already represented in the article.

On a note entirely separate from the discussion, upon discovering that InterVarsity supports "Ex-gay" treatment, and sells books through IVPress including "A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality" the author of which suggests that gay people only get so angry at his book because they have a developmental disorder, not because they find him to be a bigoted fuckwit, they can kiss my ass.


For fucks sake.

Thanks, IV, you made me donate to It Get's Better's project to get its book in EVERY school library.

Well, my claim was that I highly doubt they said those words. I'm sure everyone feels holier-than-thou sometimes, but it seems to me very likely that the Times heard them talk about hanging out with non-Christians and came up with the phrase "rubbing shoulders with sinners," and very unlikely that IV leaders actually go around calling people that.

Nope, confident they didn't- doubt they did.

To address what you said about me, the form of evangelism that I participated in didn't involve anything other than holding events and inviting people to them. My campus was hostile to religion, yet I never heard a complaint about pressure. Evangelism with tact and respect and without unwanted discussions is very possible.

My point is, regardless of what some Christians do, all these students are talking about doing is starting conversations and having bible studies. I don't see how this causes more pressure than starting conversations or holding events supporting any kind of cause. We disagree on what makes pressure- I think of pressuring someone as compelling them in a way that purposefully causes discomfort if they don't go along.

Welcome to the oblivion of the majority to the minority. If you're the one being evangelized to (by the majority religion in the country particularly) you're the one who gets to decide when enough is enough. You missed the point that it wasn't about how awesome you were about evangelizing nicely, but that "your" opinion as the evangelizer doesn't matter

Being told you're going to hell if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Personal Savior (once happened to me at a New Year's Eve Concert. Yes it was at a church, but no it wasn't advertised as a religious event) is pressuring. But so is someone repeatedly trying to 'start a conversation about Christ' with you because they're genuinely worried about your soul. As sisters, you generally feel some sort of obligation to each other, and as housemates you might not have the ability to escape it. Consider particularly if there are only a few non-Christians in the chapter, how quickly a bible study goes from 'optional side event' to 'essentially mandatory.'
You might not have been 'that person', but your assumption that none of these people are 'that person' is probably wrong. Just as 'those people' exist among the general population, so 'those people' probably exist within the smaller selected population. .

And frankly, the more I read, on their own site, of the organization the less I can support any of them. I'm sure some of them are nice people, but I'll be judging the hell out of them. You know, loving the sinner and hating the sin. I'm sure they understand that.

I don't think I missed the point, I just don't agree with your definition of pressuring. However, even if I did agree, we aren't talking about a situation in which people have expressed that they feel pressured- you're assuming that if students are evangelizing, others must feel pressured, and I don't think that assumption is correct. The students who wanted to propose bible studies said that they feared ridicule and rejection, which doesn't sound like the majorities of their chapters studied the bible whether they considered themselves Christian or not.

Telling people they're going to hell is pressure, as would be making a bible study mandatory or repeatedly trying to start a conversation with the same person, but none of these things are in the article. The student who said he was hoping to start a conversation went on to discuss how the conversations began with others asking him about his temperament. I'm not assuming those things don't happen and haven't once stated that they don't. I'm saying there is no evidence from the article that it does, so to say that it does is an assumption.

That's because far too many Christians say things and act in ways that indicate they do think that about others, including other Christians who do not think just like they do. I've been on the receiving end of the latter.

And for the record, the NYTimes does not imply that these particular Christians think non-Christians are sinners. This is the sentence in question:

Quote:

The leaders urged members to stay in the thick of Greek social life, rubbing shoulders with the sinners.

In the context of the article, the implication is that Greeks are sinners. After all, just a little earlier, we had:

Quote:

“Our goal is to help students lead a Christian life inside the Greek system, as contradictory as that may sound,” said Eric Holmer, the communications director for Greek InterVarsity.

As for the Times' wording vs. direct quotes, this is what caught my eye:

Quote:

Kurt Skaggs, a junior at Indiana University, sees himself as something of a missionary. “Some people go to Africa or South America,” he said, explaining his decision to join Sigma Phi Epsilon. “I can go to my frat house, where my single goal is to glorify God and share the Gospel.”

As a Christian, statements like this really make me wince and groan. This statement has pressure (with a little arrogance thrown in for good measure) written all over it, I'm afraid.

It's not about assumptions, it's about people in HERE saying that they see it in the article. Or that they would face it in certain circumstances.

Because when you say this:
You're apparently the only one who doesn't see it, so I encourage you to examine the lens through which you see the world. Every other poster on here has said this article was problematic at best, offensive at worst, and you just keep on white knighting them.

Also, funny that you keep ignoring the pretty horrid things that the organization believes/supports about homosexuality.

I know I'm late to this party, but I had to chime in:

It is not solely the New York Times that made Greek IV sound bad (unless they misquoted everyone and no one had a problem with it).

Quote:

Originally Posted by laylo (Post 2036964) I don't think it would be different- as I said, I've been invited to many things I don't believe in. The word "missionary" means different things to different people. Preaching without invitation, taking away people's choice in whether or not to listen to you, or expressing judgments on their activities is pressure. Saying, "I'm going to have bible study in my room, you're welcome to join," is not pressure in my eyes.

Clearly you can see from the quotes above, and from this one here:

Quote:

Joe Grotheer, a member of Phi Gamma Delta at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., said some Jewish brothers had objected to Bible study in the common area, so he and others moved the sessions to a bedroom.

… they’re not just inviting people to events and having bible study in their rooms. I know that I would also feel awkward if I walked into a common area of my sorority house and there was a bible study going on. It’s not even so much “pressuring” people as much as it is making others uncomfortable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by laylo (Post 2036987) I'd bet my entire salary that no one in this interview called non-Christians "sinners." This is the way people often assume Christians think about others.

So it’s ok for you to say that non-Christians are judgmental, but it’s not ok for non-Christians to say that Christians are?

Quote:

Originally Posted by laylo (Post 2036995) but we're not talking about any random Christians, we're talking about a specific organization with specific goals. As someone very familiar with this organization, I am confident that this wording does not fit the doctrine of its members.

Oh, so as long as Christians have goals, they don’t believe that non-Christians are sinners. Yea, I get it now..

Quote:

Originally Posted by laylo (Post 2036999) I'm saying that they are a specific group of Christians who agreed to certain statements before becoming leaders in the organization. I have extreme doubts that they would use these words knowing what those statements are.

Quote:

Originally Posted by laylo (Post 2037002) No, I don't know all of the members, but I highly doubt that someone said this particular quote…

Just as I wouldn’t assume that every member of this group is a “missionary” who has been sent from God to “save the sinners,” you shouldn’t assume that not one member of this entire organization does think that way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by laylo (Post 2037008) Sorry if the analogy was whack. My point was that my feelings aren't about knowing these individuals, but about knowing what the organization requires.

To make sweeping generalizations about all members of any group cannot be done with absolute certainty. Organizations can require one thing, but people are still free to do as they please. Just look at our fraternities and sororities – all of our members say our creeds, believe in our mottos and perform our rituals, yet I'm willing to bet that every GLO has had at least one member who hasn’t lived up to those creeds, mottos and rituals at all times. Most, if not all GLOs have a GPA requirement.. not everyone reaches it all the time. Many GLOs have required meetings that everyone must attend.. I’m sure at least a few people have missed a meeting with no legitimate excuse. And don’t even get me started about what other people think… I couldn’t tell you, because I don’t know every member of my sorority, and I don’t pretend to know them. We are all individuals who are free to say, think, and do as we please, regardless of what organization we are a part of.

I'm taking this out of context because it made me laugh.

I am really annoyed by Christians who think they're "better Christians" than other Christians. That goes for anyone who thinks they are "better" than others who share their faith-base.

That member of Sigma Phi Epsilon said he goes to the frat house for the "single goal" of spreading the Word. I don't even want to be around people whose "single goal" is spreading the Word. I want to be able to talk about things and do things without the response to everything being "God."

On that note, the reality is that 99% of people are more awesome in their own minds than they are in real life. How people describe themselves is more based on self-identity and how they want others to perceive them rather than how they really are. It may be the case that this member of Sigma Phi Epsilon isn't doing what he claims to be doing. Or, his actions are a lot more balanced than they seem in that article.

The article made every group look bad.

Of course it is the New York Times, they do have an agenda (selling papers, by interviewing and posting enough quotes to scare those folks that believe the Christian right is ready to wipe us out, and the Christian right that is believing these are good folks fighting the the good fight of faith.)

Anybody who is taking a stance defending this article for any particular reason is wearing rose colored glasses for their particular belief system.

I would also like to point out that inviting people to events "they can say no to" can still be pressure. There was a girl in my sorority who constantly made pro-life events & invited me to them, even though she knew I was pro-choice. I asked her repeatedly to stop, but she didn't. Sure, it's easy for me to click "reject," but it's still pressure to continually invite me to Bible studies, Bible verse of the day, pro-choice, etc events if you know that I'm not interested.

I'm actually gonna play just for fun the other side of this. I don't believe inviting somebody to something that you can say no to is pressure. I think it was more disrespectful because you came to this person and they still kept inviting you.

Its a slippery slope sometimes and is more so case to case. I've seen both sides where somebody was not invited because the inviter assumed it would be offensive to the person only to still offend because the person wanted to at least be told about the event so they could decide whether or not they would want to go and whether or not it was offensive. Of course it wasn't so overt like pro-choice rally or I'm gonna save your soul come to Jesus meeting, but if I invite you to play Bingo at my church (I'll provide the denture creme LOL) and you say no, I shouldn't be thinking "Oh no, I hope she didn't think I was pressuring her to become a christian?"

Some things (not this article not exactly the best of examples) should not be filtered through our biases and should still be approached by actually developing a relationship and a bond. If we are truly bonded with our chapter brothers and sisters, it should never be an issue of whether or not a bible study is being held, or the Islamic members have a special place to pray to the east set aside, or the atheist do what they do. We should be bonded enough that if you invite me to your bible study and I politely decline, we still gonna work the work of our org.

Of course I'm talking as somebody from a small diverse chapter, so maybe I'm assuming too much.

And I think that's the problem, one invite is cool*, repeated invites or invites to events the person knows the other person would be opposed to like the pro-life/pro-choice rally, unless specifically approached as "I know you believe X, but would you want to come to Y to see the other side?" and even then that should be in very specific scenarios.

*Some people will be upset at one invite, whether that's them being 'sensitive' or the fact that they face more persistent pressure from others and yours was the 3rd 'come to Jesus' comment that week, well, YMMV.

I think the line is whether there's going to be an attempt to convert. The friends who invited me to the NYE concert that ended with the "pray this prayer to be saved. Any who wish to be saved come forward' were super apologetic about it, because that wasn't what they asked me to come for. Bingo, even with a prayer before hand, probably no big deal.

I agree.
No, I think as long as people have the ultimate goal of serving the organization, rather than saving the heathens** you're right.


**To avoid further complaint, no, most Christians don't say things like 'saving the heathens' with any sense of seriousness.

SO what. People are entitled to do whatever they wish for their religions. The article was poorly written but nonetheless I get the just of it.

So...suicide bombing in the name of God = OK?

I think everyone agrees that people should be able to do what they wish individually. There's a disconnect re: bringing it to the chapter.

QFP