islam_60203

Posted: 5/30/03

Evangelical group urges
temperance in talk about Islam

WASHINGTON (RNS)–While affirming their right to proselytize, leaders of the evangelical Christian community issued guidelines last month to foster better relations between Christians and Muslims and criticized some prominent evangelicals' strongly negative generalizations about Islam.

The guidelines were issued at a half-day forum sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. The forum was attended by 50 representatives of mission, advocacy and educational evangelical organizations.

It is dangerous to oversimplify Islam by labeling it, said Clive Calver, president of World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“As evangelical Christians, we disagree with Islam, and we are allowed to disagree, but how we disagree is important,” he said. “The question is: How do you disagree without being disagreeable?”

Although not mentioned by name, participants were acutely aware of the public scrutiny of evangelical groups since Franklin Graham, head of the aid organization Samaritan's Purse, called Islam a “wicked” religion. Similar views have been voiced by evangelical broadcasters Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as well as former Southern Baptist Convention President Jerry Vines.

SBC officials, through a release in Baptist Press, criticized the national media for drawing a connection between the conference statements and the previous firestorms created by Graham, Robertson, Falwell and Vines.

At the conference, NAE President Ted Haggard warned that everything evangelicals say is public rhetoric now.

The Washington-based IRD, a conservative think tank that monitors religious freedom issues, released guidelines authored by IRD Vice President Alan Wisdom on what is appropriate and inappropriate in Christian-Muslim communication.

The document's first recommendation called on evangelicals to “seek to understand Islam and Muslim peoples.”

Paul Marshall, a fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, a Washington organization that promotes global human rights, noted that Muslims “know much more about the West than we know about them,” pointing out that many Muslim extremists obtained advanced degrees in Europe or America.

But sometimes understanding can go too far and “attempts to meld Christianity and Islam” by overemphasizing commonalities is damaging, according to Wisdom.

While dialogue, both locally and abroad, is a good start, it must have a goal, Marshall said, asserting that communication could stimulate cooperation between Muslims and Christians on relief work, religious freedom and human rights issues.

However, IRD President Diane Knippers noted that evangelicals “always want to talk about Jesus.”

A spokesperson from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said it's OK for evangelicals to want to spread their faith.

“That's something that is not particular to evangelicals, and in the marketplace of ideas, that's fine,” said Hodan Hassan. “The problem is when the line gets crossed and leaders within any faith begin to demonize another faith.”