I read some comments by Baptist church attendees. They have a coded language. I have noticed this before*. I was trying to find something on internet search engines, and the results were few that got to the point. First in this regard, i find Baptist, fundamentalist, evangelical, non-denominational as all equivalent terms. Using the words: lingo, jargon, vocabulary, language was fruitless.
The general community understands religious terms when they are used as the dictionary describes. Catholicism is quite fecund, and defined. It uses standard language with particular terminology that may be unfamiliar to some. But in very conservative American Protestantism, the dictionary is not helpful. It is inside group speak, somewhat like corporate business jargon. Now, Mormonism does this too, but a lot of theirs is the invented mythology of the group.
Also, this baptistverse has been successful in taking Christian as their synonym. It is not. Finally i found a person who started a thread on reddit that spoke on this. Here is an example he used: I have been praying for you (unprompted) – You are doing something bad that I don’t approve of, or not doing something you should be doing, like attending church, and I am going to be extremely passive aggressive about it.
- And another he used: Being Intentional Don’t waste your time making small talk with the grocery store clerk or the gas station attendant; Be Intentional by making everything you say to everyone somehow circle back to your Jesus thing.
- Someone else wrote: "They're a believer" A believer in what? Just another way to say "they're one of us."
- Another winner: Witness: "We're going to go witness to folks at the county fair" Translation: we're going to go annoy the general public telling random people how sinful and damned to hell they are.
- Another someone: "Evangelicals bait and switch." A social interaction becomes an ambush.
- This insight: this stuff doesn't appear anywhere in the New Testament.
The phrases in bold type are the ones i want to discuss. Baptists proselytise, that word they do not use. Their goal is to gain converts, or evangelise as they put it. They will use any hook, any gimmick, any trick, any verbal subterfuge to get you. They are intentional about this, everything else is fluff to them. They proclaim they are the bible believing, the true and only christians. In this they act like cultists.
Now, to a Christian that is not of this type, this is extremely off putting. To someone else this must be more confusing, and maybe worse. Now in retrospect, i understand some of the language, and am not pleased. Now, where i first encountered a heavy dose of this was in college. I was extremely unnerved, when "Navigators" surrounded me while i was sitting in a dorm; an immediate hard sell, the intentional thing. Complete strangers demanding to know my private beliefs, and wanting me to join them. (They were worse than the porch hopping Jehovah Witnesses, which are similar.) I got up and left.
Another encounter with the baptistverse in college was with a 'confrontational evangelist', the infamous Jed Smock. Mentioned him in a post in 2013, went to check the almighty wiki, he died in 2022. The New Yorker had an obituary column about him. Apparently, he began using props after my time in college. He was verbally vicious. He haunted college campuses. He would find a crossroad spot where paths intersect en route to many classroom buildings, and assault passerbys with vulgar insults. He was a mean spirited bully.
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* [click] People of certain religious persuasions have their own
parallel language. It is not terminology of specifics that do not exist
elsewhere. No, it is the same words with different meanings. ... they are using internal code
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