"come-to-Jesus meeting"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Make that "more than twenty and probably a generation."

It has come to this....

JL

Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
Subject: Re: "come-to-Jesus meeting"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 14:50:49 -0600, Mullins, Bill
wrote:

>ProQuest Hist Newspapers has a 12/2000 NYT example.
>
>Factiva has numerous examples, the earliest being:
>
>FATAL NEGLECT Terri Rahn / To keep her kids, she tries to end patterns
>of past
>Paul McEnroe;
>23 July 1989 p. 01A
>"Crossing her means facing her wrath in what she calls a "Come to Jesus"
>meeting. "

Nexis has it from 1983:

-----
Can Don Lennox Save Harvester?
Business Week, August 15, 1983, p. 80

Lennox insists that he pushes his subordinates to express opinions that
contradict his own. "There have been major disagreements on some issues
about what should be done," he says. "I encourage people to disagree and
discuss their viewpoints. On the other hand," he adds, "I'm not running a
come-to-Jesus meeting here."
-----

See also Wendalyn Nichols' discussion on "The Mavens' Word of the Day",
though she was unable to trace the expression back very far:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001218


--Ben Zimmer


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