Posted on 12/31/2002 12:53:44 AM PST by twntaipan
As evangelical Christian emissaries have spread throughout the Muslim world, their presence has increasingly proved to be a lightning rod for anti-American sentiment while provoking the anger of native Christian sects and Islamic clerics.
The murder of three American missionaries yesterday at the hospital where they worked in Yemen, and the killing of another American missionary in southern Lebanon in November, underscored the dangers of working at the intersection of religion and politics.
The negative reaction is not limited to Muslim countries, but has been seen in Hindu-dominated nations like India, where a Christian missionary family was burned to death in an attack three years ago.
"With the rise of religious politics, missionaries come into the cross hairs of Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists," said Bernard Haykel, an assistant professor of Middle Eastern studies and history at New York University. "Certainly as the Arab and Muslim world has become more radicalized Islamically, people have become more aware of missionaries and more irritated by them."
Christian missionaries have been active across much of the Muslim Middle East for hundreds of years, at least as far back as the Crusades.
But successive generations of missionaries found that proselytizing to Muslims was a dangerous business. Under Muslim law, conversion from Islam is punishable by death.
Rather than enrage local authorities and risk their own deaths or expulsions, missionaries aimed for softer targets. American Protestant missionaries in the 19th century, for example, built universities and hospitals and tried to convert Coptic Christians in Egypt and Greek Orthodox Christians in Lebanon.
The Orthodox and Coptic churches, which have lived among Muslims for centuries, know how to cultivate their own flocks without threatening the political territory of Muslim rulers and clerics. The newly arrived evangelical Christian groups, in the view of these older indigenous churches, trample the unwritten rules.
In Lebanon, the Roman Catholic diocese and Muslim groups have accused the evangelical Christians of trying to convert Muslims. One bishop said Bonnie Penner Witherall, the missionary killed by a gunman last month, combined preaching about Christianity with the distribution of toys and food to Muslim children.
When the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan arrested eight Western evangelical Christian aid workers in 2001, they made similar accusations, saying the workers had been distributing Christian literature and should be killed. The eight were freed during the American attack on the Taliban, and later one acknowledged that they had shown Afghans a film about Jesus.
Proselytizing sects like the Southern Baptist Convention, which owns the hospital in Jibla, Yemen, where the missionaries were killed, have said they do not actively seek to convert people if prohibited by government authorities.
Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board, which runs the missionary activities of the Southern Baptists, asserted that the missionaries in Jibla promoted Christianity by example.
"Our people naturally do respect the religious beliefs of others," said Mr. Rankin, "and they try to relate to people in a loving way through friendships and relationships."
Still, the hospital has not avoided entanglement in Yemen's religious politics. In 1995 it was accused by Islah, an opposition political party, of defaming Islam and proselytizing among Yemen's Muslims.
Although a court dismissed the charges, the incendiary message of the lawsuit was not lost on some of its local backers. The State Department, in its reports on human rights in Yemen, said Muslim hospital employees continued to be harassed by Islah members for several years.
More recently the number of volunteer missionaries has exploded, with some 7,000 college and high school students signing up for short-term evangelical missions overseas.
The Mission Board's Web site also boasts of a record number of baptisms — 395,773 so far this year — as a result of its foreign missionary work. "There is discussion on strategy changes, to become less institutional and to work primarily in church-planting and face-to-face evangelism," said Jack Graham, a Texas pastor and current president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "When you're up close and personal with someone hopefully they will believe in you."
In accordance with that strategy, Pastor Graham said, the Baptists have already decided to turn over their hospital in Yemen to a local Muslim group and shift resources to mobile clinics that would bring missionaries into contact with more Yemenis.
The missionaries who have died are martyrs, the pastor said. "This is not a conflict between religions but a conflict between God and Satan, between good and evil," he said. "We want to be sensitive to the political climate. We certainly want to work with governments where our missions have been placed and we don't want to create a political/religious crisis. But as far as the Southern Baptists are concerned, we will continue to express our love for God."
I could not agree more. That is why I belong to the Orthodox church, which encourages members to develop a personal relationship with God, is not legalistic or concerned about rules and authority, and with humility provides a liturgy filled with Holy Scripture for those who are interested in worshipping and knowing God.
"In the Bible, in and through the words of men, one finds the self-revelation of God and can come to a true and genuine knowledge of Him and His will and purpose for man and the world. In and through the Bible, human persons can enter into communion with God."
From The Orthodox Church and the Bible
And yet martyrdom is the highest ideal we could ever offer to God in the Christian faith.
While everyone else here is feeling sad about these missionaries, I am thinking they are certainly bound for Glory as the rest of us can only hope for.
Likewise for those whom God has asked to be Orthodox in the lands of muslim killers and torturers. They are no doubt honored to have been provided with such an opportunity to serve and rely on God. Of such opportunities are saints made. This life is transient, the next is the more important one.
Martha Myers: a life dedicated to caring for the Yemeni people Note: I wonder if the Slimes hitpiece writer has ever thought of giving away all her savings so that another person could have a life-saving surgery. Dr. Martha did just that recently.
William Koehn 'gave his life ... helping people and serving God'Note: I wonder if the Slimes editors have ever personally helped an indigent person. "Just last week he was giving away basic food -- flour, sugar, things like that -- to some indigent people,"
Kathleen Gariety was committed as a friend & neighbor in YemenNote: I wonder if the Slimes writers and editors have ever thought of anyone other than their selfish arrogant selves. The [Milwaukee]Journal Sentinel reported Dec. 30 that Gariety opted to live in a small apartment among the people of Yemen instead of housing provided on the hospital compound because she wanted to be more of a friend than a foreigner.
I understand why Catholics are critical of Christians. Christians follow Christ and His teachings. These are foreign to you. Using extremes to justify your unBiblical postion is the saddest commentary here. These folks risked their lives to save others, literally and figuratively. They are also not JW's. When it comes to JV's, I remind them also that their doctrine doesn't square with the Bible and I can also explain why. LIke you, they aren't interested in the why, become overly polite and move on. I have found dealing with Catholics to be absuive and insulting.
Most of my church is exCatholic. With the encouragement of other CHristians, they read the Bible and opened their eyes. No one can force someone to do something they don't want to do. I dare say that according to you the deciples would be considered intrusive zealots. Read your Bible and see how they conduct thmeselves. They weren't ashamed of the good news of eternal life. If you are familiar with the Bible you'd also see that evangelizing is exactly what the deciples and Christ did.
It's too bad that being "born again" appears idiotic to you. All I can say is that the more you express yourself just makes me wonder why you'd even want to be labeled a Christian. It appears to repulse you.
John.3
[3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
[7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
1Pet.1
[23] Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
Read the entire passage and consider becoming a Christian.
Happy New Year too!
Written by a self- (and no doubt, an Israel-) hating Jewess, no less.
Many churches do not tell their congregations about the necessity for obedience and holiness, which is our reasonable service.
Heb 12:14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
Ro 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
>They're religious but don't know anything about relationship and that's what Christ is all about--relationship. He hated the religion of his day because it put people in bondage and it still does in some churches. God wants to set us free to love and worship Him and Him alone.
No. He hated the HYPOCRISY of his day, just like He hates HYPOCRISY today in Christianity. Yeshua said in Joh 15:14, Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. There is no relationship outside of obedience and for those who only have a "form of godliness" and deny His power. Yeshua was a Jewish Rabbi and didn't come to destroy the law, but rather fulfill it. He didn't come to discard Judaism at all and make a religion full of pagan feasts and practices. See, Sun Worship in Church Vocabulary and Would Your Church Allow You To Be Like Jesus?
Mt 23:1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
Links to chase...
Who should convert, Jews or Christians? 143 and related links.
Saved by Grace? Who is the author of anomianism? 30 and related links.
But then again, (ad nauseum) Islam is a religion of peace.
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