I grew up in a religious tradition, evangelicalism, that assigned the word Christian parsimoniously. I vividly recall, for example, the rainy summer afternoon that I finally mustered the courage to “witness” to Stanley, my next-door neighbor and playmate. Stanley and I shared a passion for baseball, and we regularly played catch in our postage-stamp backyards (where errant throws not infrequently shattered basement windows) or played baseball on South DeWitt Street in Bay City, Mich., whenever we could conjure a quorum of other kids from the neighborhood.
On that rainy afternoon, as we waited for the skies to clear, I seized the opportunity to convert Stanley to my family’s brand of evangelicalism. “Stanley,” I began, my voice quavering, “are you a Christian?” There. The opening gambit, I had been told, was the most difficult. After that initial query, “witnessing” would get easier.
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