Posted: 5/19/03
Should Christian 'soldiers' march onward in Iraq?
By Robert Marus
ABP Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (ABP)–Now that the United States has won the physical war in Iraq, should American Christian missionaries join a spiritual one there?
Christian leaders disagree, but the question is profoundly timely–especially since some think the insertion of American Christian missionaries into the nation's volatile religious and social mix could spark a “holy war” of its own.
Soon after the end of major hostilities in Iraq, American Christian groups announced their desire to enter the country to spread humanitarian aid and–eventually–the gospel. Samaritan's Purse, the Christian relief and aid organization run by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, announced its intention to provide relief in Iraq soon after the fall of Baghdad.
A spokesman for Samaritan's Purse refused to provide details on how many workers the organization has poised to enter Iraq or whether they already were in the country. Instead he pointed to a statement released by the organization that read, in part, “In response to requests from Christians in Iraq, with whom we've worked for many years, Samaritan's Purse plans to provide physical aid, including water, shelter and medical supplies to help as many Iraqi people as we can.”
Likewise, groups such as the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board are preparing to distribute humanitarian aid in Iraq–and in some cases already are.
According to IMB spokesman Mark Kelly, the board hopes to begin distributing as many as 95,000 boxes of non-perishable food items, packed by volunteers in local churches, to Iraqis in need. An unnamed IMB worker was quoted in a May 9 press release telling IMB trustees, “The doors to Iraq are opening slowly, but they are opening.”
The aid packages are being provided to recipients “with no strings attached,” Kelly said. But the project is being advertised on the IMB's website under a headline that asks the question, “Will the unreached peoples of Iraq ever hear of God's love?”
The IMB's instructions on packing the food boxes request that no Christian literature be placed in them. But Kelly said he did not know of a way IMB officials could assure that no religious literature found its way into the kits.
After the fall of Baghdad, American journalists and foreign-policy pundits began debating whether the Bush administration would or should open Iraq to Christian groups–especially evangelical ones–eager to begin missionary work in the war-ravaged country. Journalist Max Blumenthal, in an April 15 article in the online magazine Salon, wrote, “Foreign policy experts–and even some moderate Christian groups–are already warning that efforts by the conservative Christians to capitalize on the fall of Saddam could inject a decidedly religious tone into Bush's stated plan to democratize Iraq.”
Similarly, Muslim expert Charles Kimball has said repeatedly that postwar proselytizing by American Christians in Iraq is a bad idea. “In the first place, this is an area that is living with the history of the Crusades and in the shadow of colonialism,” said Kimball a professor at Wake Forest University, as he spoke on the National Public Radio program “Fresh Air” May 5. “It's an area where people are already very suspicious … of what U.S. intentions and U.S. motives are.”
The show, produced by public-radio station WHYY in Boston and hosted by journalist Terry Gross, focused on the question of whether and how American missionaries should go into Iraq in the near term.
Kimball's position was countered on the program by Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a frequent media apologist for the SBC.
Ever since Islamic extremists were implicated in the Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S. commenced its “war on terrorism” in response, President Bush has insisted America is not fighting a war on Islam or Muslims but with extremists of any faith. In speeches, Bush repeatedly has called Islam a “religion of peace” and has developed ties with moderate Muslim clerics and groups in the U.S.
However, many of Bush's political and religious allies in the U.S. haven't been nearly as diplomatic in their handling of Islam. In recent months, conservative Christian activists such as Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell and “700 Club” host Pat Robertson have issued sharp criticisms of Islam that have ignited firestorms of controversy. One comment by Falwell reportedly sparked riots between Muslims and Hindus in India that left five people dead.
Franklin Graham, an ally of the president who offered prayers at Bush's inauguration, also has inspired controversy with repeated comments that Muslims and others have found offensive. Shortly after Sept. 11, he called Islam “a very evil and wicked religion” and repeatedly criticized the faith in harsh terms.
Now, with Graham's group poised to enter Iraq, many observers are asking if that's a good idea. They particularly wonder if it's advisable in Iraq's current power vacuum. Many fear that politically active clerics among Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority could stir up the kind of revolution that in 1979 established a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in neighboring Iran.
“To go into an area–especially to tie aid to some kind of proselytizing initiative –would be to fuel the worst sort of fears that this is a new kind of crusade, that this really is a kind of Christian imperialism,” Kimball said in his “Fresh Air” interview. “And I think that is tantamount to a lighted match in a room full of explosives.”
Mohler, on the other hand, expressed strong support for a missionary presence in Iraq.
“I would certainly like to see evangelical Christians go into Iraq and every other nation, in the name of Christ, and with the most sensitive presentation of Christian truth, along with a very urgent need and desire to meet the most basic human needs of the people in that area,” he said. “I fully expect there will be evangelical missionaries from many other nations of the world (in Iraq), so that it will not be an American effort but a Christian effort.”
Christians ministering in Iraq and elsewhere should make it clear they do not represent the American government, Mohler added. “We're there in the name of Christ. Christianity is trans-ethnic, trans-political, trans-national, and that is essential to the Christian gospel.”
IMB spokesman Kelly reflected Mohler's view. “If there are problems with American relief efforts in Iraq, it will have at least as much to do with the fact that the group is Americans and not just American Christians,” Kelly said. Noting that in the Muslim world the perception that all Americans are Christians is widespread, he added, “It would not be a problem that only evangelical groups would have.”
Southern Baptist missionaries, many of whom have worked in Islamic countries for decades, are well-versed in local history and culture and therefore sensitive to the delicacies of such work, Kelly said.
“When they select projects … one of the things they look at is whether that community would be open to receiving assistance,” he explained. “If they find any evidence that Southern Baptist relief would not be welcomed, they would go somewhere else where it would be wanted. Nobody has any desire to see the lives of people in Iraq made more difficult, or to see a delicate situation inflamed by these kinds of sensitivities.”
Kelly also noted that, when possible, Southern Baptist workers in the region would work with other evangelical Christian groups in the region, including Arab Christian groups and indigenous Iraqi churches.
Working with Iraqi Christians would be a good move, agreed Bill O'Brien, a former Southern Baptist missions leader and founder of the Global Center at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. American missionaries could help avoid the appearance of being leaders of a new imperialist crusade by working under the authority of indigenous Christian groups, he suggested.
“The first thing a person or a group would really have to be willing to (do is) establish credibility and earn the right to be heard,” O'Brien said. “And the best way I can think of to do that would be to go into partnership or under the auspices of existing churches in Iraq.”
According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated 750,000 of Iraq's 23 million people are Christians. O'Brien noted that Iraq is home to Christian worshipping communities that are nearly as old as the faith itself.
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