'Oh the Blood of Jesus ...'
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
'Oh the blood of Jesus,
Oh the blood of Jesus
Oh the blood of Je-e-sus
It washes white as snow.'
So runs the chorus sung in many revivalist and evangelical congregations back in my evangelical days. It may still be sung yet as far as I know or been given a makeover.
I hope I haven't transgressed copyright by citing it.
Today (1st January) is marked by the commemoration of the Circumcision of Christ in some Churches including the Orthodox and the Lutherans.
Among other things, it was the first occasion on which Christ's blood was shed.
There are plenty of scriptural references to the redemptive or salvific significance of Christ's blood of course. The Epistle to the Hebrews is a veritable treatise on how Christ fulfils the OT sacrificial system etc.
I'm happy for this discussion to become more Kerygmatic with those more adept at deploying chapter and verse than I am.
Let's see what direction it takes.
But how do we understand the significance of blood and bloodletting in our respective Christian traditions?
I was struck by @Alan29's observation, echoed by @Sojourner that there was little or no emphasis on blood or debt in their formative experiences of Roman Catholicism, for instance.
I was surprised.
That might be because of former evangelical lenses in my specs or because I've seen plenty of medieval RC altar-pieces with blood gushing everywhere.
I think I am right in saying that there can be a somewhat grotesque and almost 'magical thinking' approach in some circles, whether revivalist or sacramental.
'Plead the blood, brother!'
But regardless of extremes, there are plenty of scriptural references to its significance.
How are we to understand these?
Oh the blood of Jesus
Oh the blood of Je-e-sus
It washes white as snow.'
So runs the chorus sung in many revivalist and evangelical congregations back in my evangelical days. It may still be sung yet as far as I know or been given a makeover.
I hope I haven't transgressed copyright by citing it.
Today (1st January) is marked by the commemoration of the Circumcision of Christ in some Churches including the Orthodox and the Lutherans.
Among other things, it was the first occasion on which Christ's blood was shed.
There are plenty of scriptural references to the redemptive or salvific significance of Christ's blood of course. The Epistle to the Hebrews is a veritable treatise on how Christ fulfils the OT sacrificial system etc.
I'm happy for this discussion to become more Kerygmatic with those more adept at deploying chapter and verse than I am.
Let's see what direction it takes.
But how do we understand the significance of blood and bloodletting in our respective Christian traditions?
I was struck by @Alan29's observation, echoed by @Sojourner that there was little or no emphasis on blood or debt in their formative experiences of Roman Catholicism, for instance.
I was surprised.
That might be because of former evangelical lenses in my specs or because I've seen plenty of medieval RC altar-pieces with blood gushing everywhere.
I think I am right in saying that there can be a somewhat grotesque and almost 'magical thinking' approach in some circles, whether revivalist or sacramental.
'Plead the blood, brother!'
But regardless of extremes, there are plenty of scriptural references to its significance.
How are we to understand these?
Comments
I'm not suggesting that your primary emphasis is wrong, but interested to know why you focused on that in particular - although clearly Christ fulfilling the Law and being himself our 'great High Priest' is a central NT concept.
As in Hebrews 9:11-14 where Christ's own blood replaces or supersedes/fulfils the blood of goats and calves and the ashes of a heifer.
I'm sure you will have addressed all that.
Am I right in assuming that Christ's obedience and submission, being 'under the Law' is the key issue for you with the shedding of blood flowing from that, as it were, the corollary of it?
I think that is fairly modern, just Google Precious Blood of Jesus and you will come across things such as this from EWTN this litany and they even dedicate the whole of July to it.
Given the very early devotion to the passion of Our Lord (it was going by the time the Gospels were written) it is hardly likely that any tradition is free from devotion to things connected with that. It will have a different tone but it will still be there.
I once jokingly remarked to a friend, 'I like my Gospel as I like my steak. Rare!'
For all that and for all that I'm Orthodox and therefore closer to RC sacramentalism in many ways than my former evangelical Protestant self, I also find the kind of popular RC piety in the links @Jengie Jon so helpfully provided very alien.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Or to The Blood of Jesus.
And so on.
But as Jengie Jonnalao observes things like this will emerge in different forms across the whole Christian spectrum.
We Orthodox will have our own equivalents, some of them equally puzzling or alienating to other Christians.
I can’t say the blood of Jesus, per se, gets much special attention in my particular tradition. If it comes up in a reading being preached on or in a passage being studied, then it’ll be talked about (and I think it generally boils down to “blood=life”). But otherwise, not too much special attention.
I think the blood of Jesus probably gets the most attention in a Eucharistic context.
That was the first thing came to my mind. There are a number of YouTube videos which seem to feature the original voice.
+The sign of the new covenant
+The means of forgiveness
+The fulfillment of biblical sacrificial imagery
+A gift given to the believer in Communion
But the focus is always on grace, not on appeasing an angry God.
When it comes to atonement, Lutherans are spread over a wide perspective. I prefer what is called The Happy Exchange. It is classic Luther. I believe Christ takes on what is ours (sin and death) while we receive what is his (righteousness and life).
Okay, the first and easiest answer to that comes in Galatians 4, this bit:
This falls in our lectionary on Dec. 28 this year, so just three days ago. I could be fairly certain most of my readers had heard it in church. And as you say, the theme of the Law and how Christians relate to it (because of how Christ related/relates to it!) is a principle theme of the New Testament.l Add to that the historic fascination of Lutheranism with the Law and Jesus' gracious salvation, and it's really a no-brainer for me to pick this subject.
That said, I just went back and looked at exactly what I wrote, and it appears I somehow managed to pick up not just the law issue (specifically, incorporation into God's people), but touched on pain, blood, and the parallel with baptism. I have no idea how I managed this in 250 words. I do remember what a pain it was to write, trying to say something meaningful in such a tiny space.
And as I mentioned, this challenge comes up every year.
The problem is that blood is a major theme of both testaments, so you could go on for months studying the subject and keep coming across something new. I don't think the blood was the point of the circumcision, really--but you can't expect the poets and those poetically minded to miss the fact that this is the first shedding of his blood. And some people will build a great deal on that.
I think the real significance of circumcision lies in the fact that it's God's sign (his symbol of ownership, if you will) on the very organ considered to give life, to produce the next generation. No Jewish man is going to be able to go a day without this visual and tactile reminder of God's claim on his life. And so it becomes a permanent reminder of the fact that one belongs to God's people and comes under his protection and care lifelong.
From a quick Google search earlier I get the impression that Luther himself had a multidimensional 'take' on the atonement that doesn't map easily onto what we might consider more 'reductionist' models - if can say that without offending anyone.
@Nick Tamen- yes, I'd see that as a pretty 'standard' Reformed understanding and one that extends into small r reformed circles too. Yet there are sections within evangelicalism and Pentecostalism where an emphasis on the 'blood of Jesus' comes very firmly into the foreground.
Phrases like 'washed in the blood' and hymnody such as the chorus cited in the OP and the Cowper hymn can accompany all that.
We even heard tales of groups where they would 'plead the blood' by repeating 'the bloodthebloodtheblood ...' until visitors assumed they were 'speaking in tongues'!
I'm sure there was an element of urban myth about some of those tales, but there were odd and quirky groups who made a big thing out of blood imagery.
@TurquoiseTastic makes an interesting point. What are we to make of the story of Zipporah?
Thanks! I'm impressed you managed to condense that into 250 words!
I'd expect the Lutheran tradition to place a strong emphasis on the Law and grace, of course. I'd suggest to @Gramps49 though that those who place a strong emphasis on PSA would claim that their 'take' isn't at all incompatible with grace but rather is the ultimate outworking of that.
Whether we agree with them or not that's how they'd see it.
For context, God has already appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and given him the mission of going to Pharaoh, confronting him, and ultimately leading Israel out of Egypt. Moses is now on the road, taking his wife and sons back to Egypt with him.
What follows is what I THINK is going on. Yes, there's a lot of filling-in-the-blanks from what little we know of Moses' history. But if I were going to fictionalize it, this is how I'd make sense of it.
First of all, we don't know precisely how God "met him and sought to put him to death." Whatever it was, it was slow-moving--because Moses isn't dead. Zipporah has time to carry out the circumcision and save his life. Personally I incline to imagining some sort of life-threatening attack (in the sense of an asthmatic or heart attack), something that is dangerous but also provides time for Zipporah to take evasive action. So God's not actually intending his death here--if he had, a simple stroke would have taken care of that matter!
But God is intending to, uh, put the fear of God into Moses, and possibly his wife as well.
And what's the problem then? Moses has neglected to circumcise at least one of his sons. That covenant goes back to Abraham, and he should not have neglected it--all the more as he's about to become God's spokesman and deliverer. If he gets to Egypt and hasn't carried out this very basic requirement, what will the Israelites think? So God deals with the situation while they're still on the road.
Which leads me to wonder just why Moses hasn't circumcised the kid. Given Zipporah's bitter remark, I suspect she had something to do with it. She is the daughter of a priest of Midian, after all. It may be that in their marriage, she (or her father, who knows?) had put pressure on Moses NOT to circumcise the children as a kind of religious compromise. And now the only way to save her husband's life is to go through with it. No wonder she sounds bitter!
We do indeed use a great many different models of the atonement. My (English) congregation is fortunate enough to have a seminary professor attending, who took one session to go over as many of the models as he could. We came up with twenty or thirty ways the Bible describes what Jesus did for us. I'm sure we missed some.
1 John 1:7 (KJV):
"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin".
Hebrews 9:22 (KJV):
"Without shedding of blood is no remission" (forgiveness).
Without getting too Kerygmaniac, I don’t think there are any real translation issues. The KJV translations are mirrored in the later ones.
But I don’t think the intention of either scripture was to turn blood into some kind of sacred slogan. In particular, the emphasis in Hebrews is about Christ’s death being the final sacrifice, fulfilling once for all the Leviticus laws.
There is something quite weird in the idea of being “washed” in the blood. Literally, if anyone is washed in blood they need to get washed again in soap and water. At best, it’s an uncomfortable metaphor.
Yeah, it's like something you'd see a vampire doing in a Victorian gothic horror-story.
At uni, I took a class about literature inspired by the bible, and one day the prof, commenting on the BoR, said in quiet reverence, almost to himself, something like "Say what you want about Revelation, it's just an absolutely amazing piece of writing."
A few years later, I read Harold Bloom's opinion on the book, which amounted to "It's a useless piece of crap which should never have seen the light of day."
Personally, I think I tend toward my prof's view, though it's hard to disentangle my appreciation of Revelation from its plethora of popular appropriations. I think I was aware of that 1970s Hal Linsdey movie before I ever actually tried to read Revelation myself, and then in junior-high it was the whole Iron Maiden thing, not to mention The Omen on ABC NIGHT AT THE MOVIES, then The Second Coming in university poetry class etc.
C.S. Lewis talks about "thick" and "clear" religious beliefs in one of his essays--"clear" meaning the more philosophical, ethical, etc. religions, and "thick" meaning the religions focused on sacrifice, ritual orgies, and so on. In his view, Christianity is both, and a converted pagan whose experiences have been shaped by the "thick" religious notions has to learn a more universal "clear" ethic, while "it takes a twentieth-century academic prig like me and tells me to go fasting to a mystery, to drink the blood of the Lord. The savage convert has to be clear: I have to be thick. That is how one knows one has come to the real religion.” ("Christian Apologetics," God in the Dock.)
As well, in Till We Have Faces:
By and large I think the Lutheran, Reformed, RC and Orthodox traditions are mercifully immune to the Lindsey-esque eschatological speculations popular in certain strands of evangelicalism. Or they were ...
That said, someone (was it here?) recently observed that they'd seen a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth on sale in a monastery bookshop in Greece.
Is Outrage!
I've also heard that there are forms of 'futurist' RC interpretations out there. Scott Hahn, a Protestant convert to Roman Catholicism links it all to the Mass of course - which is something we Orthodox also do in relation to our Liturgy. That might be fuel for another thread ...
But back to the OP.
Thanks @Lamb Chopped for your thoughts on the Zipporah incident. I admire your facility for concision and getting to the nub of things.
Your comments jogged my memory in that I once read an article by the wife of a prominent British 'restorationist' leader - a rare Kerygmatic contribution from a woman in the magazine in which it appeared. From memory she took similar line to yours only without imaginatively speculating as to what the threat to Moses's life might have entailed.
@Barnabas62 - yes, and I'm very much in agreement here. What is exercising me, I think, are somewhat 'magical' approaches to an understanding of 'the blood' which we can encounter both in various forms of revivalism and popular sacramental piety.
Someone's reminded me of Catherine of Siena's rather striking 'engagement ring' in relation to the Circumcision for instance.
No offence to our RC friends intended but things like Devotion to The Precious Blood of Jesus would send me heading for the hills.
Likewise some aspects of popular piety within my own adopted Orthodox Tradition.
@Gamma Gamaliel said
And Anglican/Episcopalian, thank goodness. Not that we don't have our own problems.
That said, at least some of this is culturally determined, and he'd probably find me a cold fish.
Hey, maybe it would help me relate to those devotions better. There are various things I have trouble emotionally connecting to in the faith (Mary, for example), which I consider to be a defect in myself, to ultimately be healed in Heaven or the New Creation. I'll go look him up...
Oh, me neither. But the various blow-by-blow-future-history camps of interpretation add a lot to the book's mystique, even now that I've stopped believing in any of them.
Unlike eg. the Sermon On The Mount, which we were taught about in religion class before ever seeing any popular adaptation, Revelation is kinda hard to come to with innocent eyes, so to speak. Maybe for some people, the Nativity might be something like that as well, if they're mostly interpreting it through holiday TV specials, displays at the mall etc.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before here, some of the more out-there Marian groups have been promoting Revelation-based end-tines eschatology, often tied into Fatima, since at least the early 1980s. I think there's a tie-in with the Charismatic movement, though I'm not sure.
Overall, it's kinda off-brand for a church as institutional and hierarchical as the RCC to predict the cataclysmic abolition of all earthly powers within the next few years and everyone just floating to stand before God for judgement as a single individual.
Yeah, that was on the Ship. A couple of months ago, maybe. I could forgive such incongruities at a bible-bookstore in a suburban strip-mall somewhere, but I'd be curious to know the monks' rationale for stocking Hal Lindsey.
Thanks. I'll look into Scott Hahn. Not that reading about weirdo apocalyptic cults is any sorta guilty pleasure of mine. No sirree, strictly for legitimate insight into contemporary theological discourse, y'understand.
That said, my late, great Anglican mother-in-law was a big one for eschatological speculation and Israel and the End-Times stuff. I always found that rather odd coming from a rather poshly spoken suburban Anglican. But the late, great Ken of blessed memory once observed how the Pentecostals he'd come across on the south coast were somewhat eccentric ladies of a certain age who kept eschatological charts in their flats (apartments).
There was a posh and even upper-crust element within early UK Pentecostalism before it became a predominantly working class movement.
My mother-in-law was an 'early adopter' of the charismatic scene within the CofE (around 1964) and used to 'go to the Penties for a top-up.'
@stetson - yes. Thanks. Scott Hahn is an RC apologist from a Reformed (or perhaps more accurately a neo-Calvinist) background. He brings some of the reasoning and exegetical/rhetorical style we might associate with that tradition to his RC writings. Which is to say that he sounds very 'Protestant' to me in his new found Catholic incarnation.
The book I am referring to is The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth.
There's nothing 'new' in it, as he acknowledges himself, but his style is more exegetical than writings I've come across from RC authors . I'm no expert and there may be more RC exegesis out there written in styles in which Protestants or former Protestants might be accustomed.
Hahn briefly alludes to RC 'futurists' and Fatima so I wonder if he has the folk you are referring to in mind? He's certainly not coming at it from that direction but neither does he dismiss a 'futurist' dimension entirely.
As for the rationale of the Greek monks in stocking Lindsey, I doubt they had one. I suspect they were being daft or lazy or both.
That said, there are Athonite monks and hermits here and there who've been predicting WW111 or the end of the world for a while and some have gained traction in Orthodox circles.
No Christian tradition seems immune to this sort of thing.
The Mass itself was often presented as an outpouring of the Precious Blood all contained within the Communion wafer (Body,Blood,Soul and Divinity of Christ) which gave us strength to continue with life. Nowadays the emphasis is on the family meal which brings us together and 'gives us strength to continue with life'.
Often when we criticise other Christian communities we pick out certain doctrines which we may personally disagree with,but forget that for anyone brought up in a certain Christian community there will be a whole body of beliefs which will have been absorbed in some way and which will play a part in that person's earthly life,whether they jettison these beliefs or not.
I had a long and deep conversation with a Muslim friend recently. He is originally a Kurdish Sunni Muslim from Iraq.Since he came to the UK he told me he has investigated various forms of religion but has decided that the Sunni Muslims are really the best. I said that was understandable because that was no doubt the one which he understood best and the one which would have been bound up with all his childhood memories.
The RC devotion to the Sacred Heart has little to do with the Precious Blood of Jesus but more to do with the heart 'burning with love for mankind' But that is another story from amongst the many RC devotions which come and go in popularity.
The English verb 'to bless' is connected with the word 'blood' and refers to the blood sacrifices such as the the Blood of the Lamb at the Passover of the Israelites.
[ETA Accidentally inserted text removed - I trust that looks OK]
I have heard interpretations that make note of the placement of the command to circumcise in the narrative of Genesis. We have making of the covenant with Abram (Ch. 15), which is immediately followed by the story of Hagar and Ishmael (Ch. 16), which in turn is immediately* followed by Abram receiving the name Abraham and circumcision being commanded as the sign of the covenant.
According to the interpretation I’ve heard, we should pay attention to how the command to circumcise is linked both to God’s promise that Abraham and Sarah would be the parents of a vast nation, and Abraham and Sarah’s decision to take matters into their own hands, resulting in the exploitation of Hagar. So, “a covenant sealed on the organ of generation,” as Robert Alter refers to it, is a reminder not only of God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants, but also a reminder of Abraham’s failure to trust God’s promise.
* “Immediately” in terms of the text. According to the narrative, 13 years had passed between what we have as chapters 16 and 17.
Are we seeing a gradual 'Protestantisation' of RC understandings of the Mass?
An emphasis on the communal, shared 'family' meal is thoroughly right and proper of course. But what makes that specifically 'Roman Catholic'?
Baptists would see the Lord's Supper in the same way.
Not that Baptists would be 'wrong' to do that, of course.
Whatever the case, I was struck by your comment on how particular forms of devotion come and go. I've tended to see the RCC as less 'faddish' than some forms of contemporary Protestantism.
But it seems from what you are saying things go in and out of fashion. That's only to be expected of course and it happens with us Orthodox too would we but admit it.
Tangent over.
Interesting reflections on circumcision @Lamb Chopped and @Nick Tamen.
Whilst I wouldn't call them 'fads' popular devotions are not always the same over the 'Catholic world' . British Roman Catholicism is much influenced by popular devotional forms having their origin in /France.
St Margaret Mary who claimed to have visions of the Sacred Heart said that she was told to say that those who received Communion on the first Friday of nine successive months could be guaranteed that in the end they would make it to Heaven. This led to a popular devotion of the 9 First Fridays. One doesn't really hear of that nowadays although it is not unknown.
St Catherine Labouré, a Parisian nun, had in the 1830s a vision of the Virgin Mary, who told her that she would protect those who wore a special medal which the Virgin described.
Around it one reads the words 'O Marie,concu sans péché, priez pour nous qui avons recours á vous' It is amazing how many people ,if you look closely, will still wear that medal.,popularly called the 'Miraculous Medal.
(I always have one with me)
There are lots of other devotions,some which come (like divine Mercy promoted by JP2)
and others which go (like the Holy House of Loreto).
Some of them are promoted, others tolerated and yet others not allowed. None of them are articles of faith and can be safely ignored or even made fun of by other practicing Catholics.
Other Christian groups will also have their own devotional aids which those outside of the household of Faith will be mainly unaware of.
(PSA to me meant Prostate Specific Antigen)
Even as someone who believes 'matter matters' I found this very odd.
I can't get my head around Marian apparitions where people are told to write things on an amulet or are guaranteed salvation if they do X, Y or Z.
Hans Kung once observed that whilst more fundamentalist Protestants tended to get hung up on idiosyncratic interpretations of particular Bible verses, often relating to eschatology, RCs sometimes get hung up on particular artefacts, objects and practices as though these are the be all and end all.
'Magickal' thinking isn't that far away.
Hence some understandings of the significance of blood in the scriptures can veer into almost talismanic or totemic territory.
It is relatively easy for some Evangelicals just to say 'Jesus is Lord' and to feel then that they are guaranteed salvation. How do we know that they really mean it any more than the person who piously goes to Communion on nine successive First Fridays ?
RC church music discussion groups are crammed with people hurling bits of Vatican documents that are aligned with their basic modern or conservative outlook on everything.
Well yes. I once heard of some Baptists who believed that Anglicans were 'insincere' because they read prayers out of a book rather than extemporising them.
I wondered what made them so convinced of the sincerity of their own unwritten prayers to cast aspersions about the sincerity of other people's written ones.
I hasten to add that not all Baptists think that way just as not all evangelicals think it's sufficient simply to pray the 'sinner's prayer' without seeking to 'grow in grace'.
And not all RCs have pictures of the Pope in every room in the house ...
Our Orthodox parish is very multicultural and that's great, but it never ceases to bemuse me how many people seem to think a localised practice particular to whatever jurisdiction or ethnic group they come from is 'up there' with the Nicene Creed in terms of significance.
We can be having an indepth Bible study on John's Gospel when someone will pipe up how they light candles in such and such a way in Fr Arsenios's parish ...
But that's a tangent.
There are odd things in popular devotion, such as the phial of what purports to be Christ's blood which apparently liquefies in that Italian church.
Or the Holy Fire in Jerusalem to pick an Orthodox and 'unbloody' example.
I also remember him singing “There is a fountain filled with blood” with great enthusiasm while driving home from church.
Some of my childhood was a little odd.
While looking up something on youtube I came across on the feed some videos posted by an Australian who had left the Catholic Church and joined a 'seekers' biblical church. He later fell out with this one and had possibly started his own.
His descriptions of Catholic doctrine and teaching were reasonably accurate even if not everyone would agree with his conclusions.
However he had posted something at the time of the death of Pope Francis which really shocked me and I cannot believe that this is standard evangelical teaching.
He said that Pope Francis was undoubtedly in Hell and gave three reasons for this.
One was that he claimed to be the successor of St Peter and had led many people away from the true gospel message. That is fairly standard but not the other two reasons he gave.
He showed a video of pope Francis answering a question from a young boy about whether his atheist father who had died could be in Heaven. The pope said that as the father had been good to his son he,the son, should believe that the Lord would welcome him into Heaven.
The evangelist pointed out that as the father had not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord he could not go to Heaven and that the pope had led the boy astray.
The other video was a short clip of Francis speaking to representatives of other faiths.
He told them that all religions had really the same goal in mind namely to lead others to perfection and eventually to Heaven. He compared them all to people speaking different languages. Sometimes we understand what people are saying in other languages, sometimes we don't but ultimately they are all saying the same thing.
Again the evangelist said that this was not stressing that only those who accept the teachings of Jesus can go to Heaven and so the pope himself deserved Hell for saying this.
Sorry to go on about this but I felt physically sick after hearing this.
Not surprised you felt physically sick. My sympathies.
It's not just evangelicals.
From the Athanasian Creed:
"Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly."
I like to look upon that as being binding on Christians who believe in the Trinity.
Yes, in my evangelical days we would have put great emphasis on 'accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour' and did deploy 'the sinner's prayer' at evangelistic rallies and in one-to-one counselling with those 'seeking salvation.'
We wouldn't have been so prescriptive though as to regard Christians from traditions who didn't use such language or formularies as being 'unsaved' as it were. We were generally more than happy to accept that devout RCs or Anglo-Catholics etc were our brothers and sisters in Christ even though we thought they were misguided to some extent.
The mileage varied.
We would have considered nominal or 'cultural' RCs, Anglicans, Orthodox or Methodists, say, as 'unsaved' but felt that faithful or practising/observant people in those traditions probably were as they gave 'proof' of it by their deeds and devotion - 'by their fruits' etc.
We were highly suspicious of liberal Protestants though and would have considered most of them beyond the pale.
I can't speak for @KarlLB but that's how it was with us, although there were individuals who'd take a harder line. Some of our 'evangelists' were first class pains in the butt, to be honest. Like this Australian evangelist you describe.
I often wondered whether the predominant qualification required for recognition as an 'evangelist' was to be a pushy, insensitive and aggressively proselytising bastard.