Having spent four years in Tennessee and another four years in Ohio, I was accustomed to running into proselytizers — members of a church or congregation attempting to introduce people to their religion. It has typically been Mormon elders who, in all fairness, were friendly, kind, and often in public spaces.

I confess, my response to proselytization in a public space has evolved from the shock-inducing “I’m gay and Muslim” to the more reasonable “Thank you, but I am not looking for a church.”

I spent years studying religion and spirituality and came to accept the different ways that people seek out connectedness. Sometimes that looks like going up and down the street talking to strangers. Other times it’s standing on a milk crate shouting out profanities — I’ve always found street preachers to be amusing at best and annoying at worst.

Of course, harassing passersby is unacceptable, but for the most part, my inclination is to let people say what they want to say in public. I suppose it has to do with the fact that I came from Syria, so the concept of saying whatever you want in a public arena was foreign to me and enticing.

I am drawing the line at my trips to Target.

I had a bit of a hectic weekend, the type of weekend when one feels the need to go to Target two days in a row. On both days, I was stopped by two different young men trying to speak with me about their religion and inviting me to their church in Springfield. I found myself getting increasingly frustrated, especially after they continued to talk to me about their church after I said that I was “pretty busy.”

In the Midwest, that is the nicest way to say “please leave,” and the fact that they continued to talk to me afterward was just obnoxious.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these interactions are symptoms of a broader omnipresence of Christianity and its hold on society, also known as Christian privilege. Whenever I talk about Christian privilege, the examples people draw from are things like the academic calendar being built around Christian holidays or the ubiquitous presence of Christian insignia and artifacts in our lives.

But Christian privilege runs much deeper than that. Despite the diversity of religions in this country, the only religious group that has the audacity to spread their religion in a public space, let alone a Target, is Christians.

I can’t recall the last time I saw a Muslim man walking around with Qurans and handing them out to teach people about Islam or talking to them about the greatness of Allah. He would have been escorted quickly out of Target and probably ended up on conservative news outlets as an example of “the Muslims taking over.” Let’s face it, the freedom of religious expression often seems to mean the expression of Christianity.

Don’t get me wrong, I talk about religion and spirituality all the time. It’s been terrible for my first to second date yield, but still a joy of mine. I study religion in higher education. I talk to young people about what they believe in and why. I think about spirituality and value its role in our lives. But the interactions from this weekend bothered even me.

It doesn’t matter that the Target proselytizers were kind and soft-spoken. In the spirit of empathy and perspective-taking, I reckon they believe that they are doing the right thing, that they are doing me and the community a service. Yet, I find the approach of inserting ourselves into people’s lives in a place that was not intended for that purpose crude, counterproductive, and reckless.

These approaches to religious proselytization perpetuate the perceptions of what it means to be part of a religious community in general and Christianity in particular. They turn people away from spirituality rather than drawing them into the joys of a spiritual connection and a community of believers.

In conclusion, to the young men who were proselytizing at Target: please stop. Let us overspend on scented candles in peace.

Musbah Shaheen lives in Northampton.