On occasion we encounter morally good people who are sincerely interested in our spiritual welfare, so much so that they fear that we will be lost if we differ from the views they cherish, even if our views are not so very different from theirs. Julian Green in his Diary 1928-1957, entry of 10 April 1929, p. 6, said to André Gide:
With the best will in the world, they never see you without a lurking idea of proselytism. They are worried about our salvation. They visibly have it on their minds., even when you talk to them of quite different matters. . . . “Yes indeed!” cries Gide. “They will use every means to draw you to them. When you are with them you find yourself in the situation of a woman faced with a man who would harbor intentions!”
I’d guess the alacrity and enthusiasm of Gide’s response to Green had its origin in Gide’s relation to Paul Claudel, a committed Roman Catholic who never ceased trying to bring Gide around to the true faith. The Claudel-Gide correspondence 1899-1926 makes for fascinating reading.
What I find objectionable about the proselytic mentality is the cocksurety with which the proselytes hold their views. They dogmatically affirm this and they dogmatically deny that, and are not in the least troubled by the fact that people as intellectually and morally virtuous as they are disagree. They ‘know’ what salvation is and the way to it. The critical attitude is foreign to them. The fervor of their beliefs boils over into something they wrongly consider knowledge.
Their attitude is mostly harmless, but there are toxic forms of it, as history has taught us. The Founders of our great republic were well aware of the religious wars and of the blood shed by the dogmatists. These days it is the spikes of the Islamic trident that are a clear and present threat: conversion, dhimmitude, the sword. The ascension of a madman to the mayoralty in our greatest city is a troubling sign.