Posted on 04/18/2003 6:55:40 AM PDT by Incorrigible
April 18, 2003
BY MARK O'KEEFE
Two leading evangelical Christian missionary organizations said Tuesday that they have teams of workers poised to enter Iraq to address the physical and spiritual needs of a large Muslim population.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, and the Rev. Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse said workers are near the Iraq border in Jordan and are ready to go in as soon as it is safe. The relief and missionary work is certain to be closely watched because both Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention have been at the heart of controversial evangelical denunciations of Islam, the world's second largest religion.
Both organizations said their priority will be to provide food, shelter and other needs to Iraqis ravaged by recent war and years of neglect. But if the situation presents itself, they will also share their Christian faith in a country that's estimated to be 98 percent Muslim and about 1 percent Christian.
"We go where we have the opportunity to meet needs," said Ken Isaacs, international director of projects for Samaritan's Purse, located in Boone, N.C. "We do not deny the name of Christ. We believe in sharing him in deed and in word. We'll be who we are."
Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' International Mission Board, said $250,000 has already been spent to provide immediate needs, such as blankets and baby formula. Much more will follow, along with a more overt spiritual emphasis.
"Conversations about spiritual things will come about as people ask about our faith," said Kelly, based in Richmond, Va. "It's not going to be like what you might see in other countries where there's a preaching service held outside clinics and things like that."
Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, is urging caution for the two groups, as well as other evangelical organizations planning to go into Iraq.
"Evangelicals need to be sensitive to the circumstances of this country and its people," said Cizik, based in Washington, D.C. "If we are perceived as opportunists we only hurt our cause. If this is seen as religious freedom for Iraq by way of gunboat diplomacy, is that helpful? I don't think so. If that's the perception, we lose."
Graham, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham, has been less diplomatic about Islam than his father has been. Two months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Franklin Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion" during an interview on NBC, the television network. In his book published last year, "The Name," Graham wrote that "The God of Islam is not the God of the Christian faith." He went on to say that "the two are different as lightness and darkness."
On the eve of the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis last year, the Rev. Jerry Vines, a former denomination president, told several thousand delegates that Islam's Allah is not the same as the God worshipped by Christians. "And I will tell you Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah's not going to turn you into a terrorist," Vines said.
Widespread condemnation of those comments followed from other Protestant leaders as well as from Catholic and Jewish groups. The Graham and Vines statements even created a problem for President Bush, who has called Islam a "religion of peace."
Bush, an evangelical Christian himself, has close ties to both Franklin Graham, who gave a prayer at his inauguration, and Southern Baptists, who are among his most loyal political supporters.
Isaacs, who works for Franklin Graham, refused to comment about his boss' views of Islam, except to say, "most of Franklin's work is to the Muslim world and those are sincere acts of love, concern and compassion."
In a written statement, Graham said: "As Christians, we love the Iraqi people, and we are poised and ready to help meet their needs. Our prayers are with the innocent families of Iraq, just as they are with our brave soldiers and leaders."
Isaacs said Samaritan's Purse has assembled a team of nine Americans and Canadians that includes veterans of war-relief projects in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Rwanda and Somalia. The teams include a doctor, an engineer and a water specialist.
They will bring resources that include a system that can provide drinking water for up to 20,000 people, material to build temporary shelters for more than 4,000 families, packages of household items for 5,000 families, and kits designed to meet the general medical needs of 100,000 people for three months.
So far, there's no budget for the effort because it's so fluid, said Jeremy Blume, a Samaritan's Purse spokesman, but donors are being asked to help. A Southern Baptist fund-raising drive is under way to help underwrite the cost, Kelly said. Both groups said only private donations have funded their plans thus far, with no government assistance in the works.
Southern Baptists, representing a denomination of 16 million members, have workers in Jordan waiting to help refugees. But so far, few refugees have arrived, perhaps because it's still too difficult for much of the population to maneuver between warring militaries on their way to the border, Kelly said.
Baptist Men, a national organization devoted to providing disaster relief work, has promised to send volunteers from the United States "on a moment's notice," Kelly said.
As soon as they gain access to northern Iraq, teams will go, Kelly said, with plans of feeding up to 10,000 or more people a day.
"The hope is that as the war front moves and the situation in the outlying areas improves, we'll be able to send mobile teams in.
"Our understanding of relief ministries is that anytime you give a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus you've shared God's love in a real physical way. That also raises the question as to why you did that. When people ask you, you explain that it's because of the love of God that has been poured out into my life and I have a deep desire that you know that same love as well."
(Mark O'Keefe can be contacted at mark.okeefe@newhouse.com)
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Do "you" also refer to Pope John Paul II as "a pope." I accord him and your religious leaders, if any, more respect than that.....
You likely would be embarrassed by your "prima facia case" if you were to get ahold of some history books and look at some of the old gals who lived in plural marriages.
At the risk of sounding uncharitable, a good many of these fine ladies in fact were old, cranky, weathered, and extremely pug-ugly to the eye.
And Joseph Smith was far too busy -- building up and presiding over the Church; building and serving as mayor of the city of Nauvoo; organizing and sending the several hundred men of the Nauvoo Legion to fight on the side of the US in the "Mexican Wars;" travelling far and wide; dodging tar, feathers, and the hangmen's nooses of mobs; and finally being murdered, along with his brother, after being arrested and held without charges being filed -- to act on the purported "lust" you falsely attribute to him.
If you want to throw stones, at least get the history right. It's there from numerous non-LDS sources for all to see. And stop embarrassing yourself. in a manner that is unbefitting of a child of God....
Help I am at my wits end!
....with 14 yr old Helen Kimball
Note, it does not say some nations.
But once again we have take ALL the Bible says...and balance ALL scripture when it comes to an issue.
Jesus clearly told the disciples not to waste their time on places where they were NOT WELCOME and their message was not accepted.
If any places fit this description it is Islamic regions where the Gospel is not only rejected but forbidden by law.
Jesus was wise enough to know that trying to push the Gospel on people who don't want it is only going to breed resentment.
Furthermore if these religious zealots stir up resentment in Iraq at this time, they will not only damage the name of Christianity, but could also put our troops in danger.
So once again..I don't disagree with preaching the Gospel...I just believe this is really poor timing...and that somebody like Graham who is known best for calling Islam an "evil and wicked" religion will not be welcomed.
No, but a whole pack of your compatriots has sought to have us all banned for asking any questions about your religion or your leaders.
I'm not Catholic. And I doubt if you would know any of my religious leaders.
How did "marrying" someone for "time and eternity" keep them from being alone on the frontier?
According to Mormon historian Todd Compton, in his book In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, Compton documents that Smith had eleven wives between 14 and 20 years old, nine wives between 21 and 30 years old, eight wives between 31 and 40 years old, two wives between 41 and 50 years old, and three wives between 51 and 60 years old. And eleven of these women were already married to other men at the time Joseph married them. At least one third of them were well out of danger of "otherwise being alone on the frontier", as you put it, at the time Joseph proposed marraige. And only five of them were over the age of forty!
Let's summarize those ages again:
20 wives between 14 and 30
13 wives between 31 and 60
Compton concludes his findings about their ages:
"The teenage representation is the largest, though the twenty-year and thirty-year groups are comparable, which contradicts the Mormon folk-wisdom that sees the beginning of polygamy as an attempt to care for older, unattached women. These data suggest that sexual attraction was an important part of the motivation for Smith's polygamy" (p. 11).
That didn't come from one of our scholars - one of your scholars said that.
It sure didn't come by an open and organized influx of zealots under a leader who is known in China for calling the religious beliefs of the majority "evil and wicked", immediately following the overthrow of their Govt by America's military.
The timing of this couldn't be any worse.
Those who have evangelized China have shown more awareness of the situation and wisdom when it comes to missionary work...which I agree with....which is the point I am trying to make.
Athens had direct democracy for a while, except in time of crisis, when they voted power to a strongman. It did not work above the city-state level, and not well there. The PATRICIAN class practiced "democracy". The slaves (lot's of slaves) and to some extent the peons (forgot the name for the common folk) did not participate.
I guess you could get it to work in a pagan culture if it was on the level of a city state (can't degenerate into pork hunting for separate regions, highly homogeneous voter) and only the most responsible quarter of your population did the voting.
Your Roman example boosts my case even more. It degenrated into Emperors who demanded worship like a god in a relatively short time after it expanded out of Rome itself.
Your two poor examples from over a thousand years ago bolster my case rather than refute it. Without a Judeo-Christian world view, self government is very difficult if not impossible to sustain.
Remember the Christian relief girls held by the Taliban in Afghanistan... how much irreversible damage was done, how much resentment? I'd like to see source information on that if you have it.
Anyone who's heard their story knows that these girls took an approach to evanglizing that was completely different than the one we see being proposed now.
They sure weren't part of army of evangelists who went to Afghanistan in the name of a well known minister who is probably best known by Muslims for calling their faith "evil and wicked".
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