Time's story on evangelicalism

The TIME article begins with some incendiary comments by a missionary "Barbara" (pseudonym): "Jesus arose from the dead and is alive. Muhammad (pbuh) is dead.. Dos and don'ts: do listen to their (Muslims) story. Don't argue about Israel. Islam is the terrorist. Muslims are the victims. We pray that the weapon of mass destruction, Islam, be torn down." The piece includes a statement of US Attorney General John Ashcroft: "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. (This statement is inaccurate; later the Ashcroft said that he was referring to terrorists). Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you." It is disturbing that "Barbara" is going back to a Muslim country to proselytise.

The article lists some facts: The number of missionaries to Islamic countries nearly doubled between 1982 and 2001, from over 15,000 to over 27,000. According to TIME's estimate, Bangladesh has between 500 and 1500 missionaries, roughly the same number as much bigger Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Mali and Morocco. Indonesia and Nigeria, along with much bigger India is home to between 4000 and 10,000 missionaries. One out of two missionaries is American, and one out of three is Evangelical. The article states that "Evangelical missionaries (entered) Afghanistan and Iraq on the heels of American troops...The new arrivals mean well: in addition to the Christian Gospel, which they consider their most precious gift, they have channeled millions of dollars in aid. Muslim critics accuse missionaries of lying about their identities and their faith to achieve their goals. Missionaries love Muslims, but despise Islam."

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It is true that most missionaries "over time settled for a most modest agenda that obeyed local anti-proselytizing laws and focused on building educational and charitable institutions and providing humanitarian aid. Such groups still constitute fruitful and respectful, if circumscribed relationships with local regimes and populations." The benign missionaries in Bangladesh fit that category. There are "others, (who) from a distance, flood whole populations with Christian TV and radio, tracts by tens of thousands and offers of correspondence courses, hoping that a few seeds will take root. In the dozens of Muslim countries that deny "religious worker" visas, ever more Evangelicals take secular jobs to enter less obtrusively." "Visa bans turn many Evangelicals, usually straightforward to a fault, into truth stretchers, if only at the customs desk. They use encrypted e-mail and code words or smuggle Bibles. Some seem to have been inspired by the book of James (Bond), verse 007." The magazine quotes from a class at Columbia International University in South Carolina as an "unnerving example of ethical elasticity: 'Did Jesus ever lie?' asks a lecturer. His class replies: 'No!' But did Jesus raise his hands and say, 'I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?' Again, 20 voices call out, 'No!' Clearly, for some missionaries, lying for the sake of spreading Christ's gospel is acceptable.

Then there is the 24-year missionary "Josh" in an Arab country: "Each morning he is reminded why he is there. The muezzin's first call to prayer rings out at 4 P.M. And pray Josh does. "I pray for the people responding. I pray that as they go to the mosque, Jesus would somehow be revealed to them. I pray against that call -- that it would not affect their souls." Puffed up with staggering arrogance and religious pomposity, Mr. Josh obviously believes that he has the monopoly on religious truths and God's ears.

The article continues: "In the past century, as mainline Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church in the US adopted a social gospel that stressed aiding the poor over preaching to the unenlightened, evangelising in its purest form fell to the Evangelicals. A young family of four who went to Egypt to proselytise articulated what motivates them: "When you believe at your core that the love of Jesus Christ is the best gift to humankind, you want to find ways and places for people to hear that for themselves. Sometimes it drives us to places that can be awkward and uncomfortable." Those who read Matthew literally believe when every nation is reached, the long-awaited end times can commence. Sometimes missionaries camouflage their faith as a kind of Islam, pretend to be Sufis and invite prospective converts to "Jesus mosques." "Other experts say that local leaders will often tolerate informal preaching as a price for Western expertise in other field." Says a missionary: "We're creative in finding where the government itches, so we can scratch it. And depending on the ideological purity of the government agency, we have a certain freedom to be open about our faith." Things change when missionaries become assertive: In August 2001, Afghanistan's Taliban arrested Heather Mercer, 24, and Dayna Curry, 29, who had traveled from a Texas church to work for a group called Shelter Germany in Kabul. During their three-month incarceration, subsequent rescue and visit with President Bush in the Rose Garden, the press referred to them as "Christian aid workers," implying that they were engaged solely in humanitarian ministry and that their jailor's claim that they were proselytising was "false." Yet proselytising is exactly what they were doing. In their own book, "Prisoners of Hope," "Mercer and Curry wrote of initiating Christian prayers with Muslims, urging them to listen to evangelical broadcasts (in one case providing a radio) and showing at least two families a film on Jesus." According to secularists and fellow evangelicals, "They (Mercer and Curry) broke every rule in the book."

The current fervour among the evangelicals can be traced back to 1989, "when Argentine-born evangelist Luis Bush pointed out that 97 per cent of the unevangelised lived in a "window" between the 10th and 40th latitude (which includes all the Muslim-majority countries except Indonesia, including Bangladesh). This immense global slice, he explained, was disproportionately poor; the majority of the inhabitants "enslaved by Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and ultimately Satan. Put on the full armour of God and fight with weapons of spiritual warfare." The evangelicals tend to ignore and scorn the indigenous churches (and indigenous Christians) as compromised.

Robert, proselytising in Iraq after the US victory is an example: "Diplomacy does not work with Satan. If Satan's armour is pierced, that fissure will be violently contested. When Christ is proclaimed in Iraq, there would be "riots." But after all, his mandate is to turn the world upside down." Says Rich Haynie of International Bible Society and Discipling a Whole Nation, of the evangelical beachhead in Iraq: "Allied bombardment induced Muslims to question their God, we could say that the war was a ripeness moment." Says Azzam Tamini of Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London: "Under normal circumstances, the missionaries would not be a big deal, but now people find it very difficult to believe this is not a crusade against Islam on the part of the Bush Administration." TIME adds: "Yet there should be no question that while most evangelical missionaries love Muslims, they hope to replace Islam. Most would subscribe to Luis Bush's generalisation about Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism: Satan wants to keep people as miserable as possible for as long as possible." "A senior Administration official told TIME that given the President's close ties to the Christian right and his support for faith-based charity work, there was little chance that the White House would discourage Christian aid organisations from going to Iraq."

I once asked a class: "How can a religion be destroyed?" The consensus was, "from within." Christians cannot destroy Islam by invading Muslim countries and proselytising, nor can Muslims destroy Christianity by immigrating to the West. The evangelicals would do better to resacrilise their own flock before venturing out to "save" Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. A letter published in TIME on July 21 captures the essence of how the average Christian American feels about the proselytisers: "I cannot change the mind of those who are determined to proselytise and lecture. I can only pray that the recipient of this condescending treatment do not base their opinion of all Christians on this misguided minority."