http://abc.net.au/religion/news/fr-christianjihad.htm
Christian Jihad
** Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer are the two Americans recently released by the Taliban after being held and tried for spreading Christianity in Afghanistan. They are usually referred to in the media by the unassuming title “aid workers”, but in fact they’re part of a wider network of Christian groups in the US whose primary mission is aggressively to spread the gospel in Islamic countries. **
These groups are well-organised, highly motivated and not short of cash. ** In addition to Shelter Now - the group that sent Curry and Mercer to Afghanistan, along with Australians Diana Thomas and Peter Bunch - they include Youth With A Mission, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the 10/40 Window group, who see their principal targets as the countries between ten degrees north and forty degrees south of the equator - what they call “The Resistant Belt”, incorporating “billions of spiritually impoverished souls”.**
Since their return to the US, ** Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer have admitted that they were, in fact, spreading Christianity among their Afghani hosts, and it appears that their efforts were part of a concerted push by American evangelical groups to wage “spiritual warfare” against the unconverted followers of Muhammad ** - a campaign that has acquired a whole new set of meanings since the attacks of September 11th .
Deborah Caldwell is the Senior Religion Producer at Belief.net, and she’s been documenting this phenomenon for some time. ** She calls this military-style campaign a “Christian jihad”, and she’s talking to David Rutledge about its evangelical holy warriors.**
Deborah Caldwell: I think these groups are all in touch with each other in some way or another, I think the Internet has absolutely accelerated that. There are discussion groups that they can get on to - I mean, ** I ran across one website in which one man was basically acting like a broker, to help people smuggle The Jesus Film into Muslim countries, and he had set up some kind of network in which to do that, and he was connected with all of these various Christian groups.**
So, is there some kind of ‘Command Central’? No, but do they all know each other? Absolutely, yes.
David Rutledge: And Shelter Now estimate that ** they’ve distributed Christian material to some 334 million Muslims. ** Do you credit that claim?
Deborah Caldwell: To be honest with you, the guy I interviewed who gave me that figure was somewhat disappointed that they didn’t have more missionaries overseas in Muslims countries, and that they hadn’t evangelised more. So I actually think that the figure is probably pretty accurate.
When they say “evangelise”, the thing to keep in mind is that it’s the “carpet-bombing” approach to evangelism. Because they count when they’ve given out a tract, when they’ve shared the Jesus story, when they’ve shown The Jesus Film - and they’re relentless about this, so I think it’s possible that if they can trek it into somebody’s house somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and get a group of villagers to watch it, then they can tally that up as part of their total.
David Rutledge: They’re also saying that the ** number of missionaries in Muslims countries has quadrupled since 1990.**
Deborah Caldwell: Exactly. And that’s because of a concerted effort; it actually has a millenarian streak to it, aiming at the year 2000.
In 1989, a group of people got together and decided that they were going to try to spread the Good News by the year 2000, ** and they gave themselves this 10-year window in which to do it.** And the Southern Baptist Convention got involved in this - that’s the largest Protestant group in the United States, with 15 million members - they completely reconfigured their international mission in service of this goal.
But I think that towards the end of the 1990s, it got more intense toward Islam and Muslims, because they began to see them more as a political threat.
David Rutledge: ** I’ve heard that there are seminary programs in the US devoted to training specifically for ministry to Muslims, is that right?
Deborah Caldwell: That’s exactly right; there’s a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, that has such a program.** And they try to do two things: they are (they say) training evangelical Christians to “understand” their Muslim neighbours, and in the United States, the number of Muslims is estimated as between 3 million and 8 million. It’s definitely a growing group of people, and before September 11th, a lot of Americans thought, “oh, this is really interesting, we’ve got this large group of people and we don’t really know that much about them”.
And I think there was some of that going on with the Southern Baptist Convention, they genuinely did want to try to help equip their ministers to understand Muslims and therefore help their own parishioners to understand them. But part of it was also wanting to figure out ways to evangelise specifically to Muslims.
David Rutledge: Well, 2001 has certainly brought its own unique opportunities: a spokesman from one of the evangelical groups - ** Word of Hope - thinks that the involvement of Muslims with September 11th has “weakened the faith” of many other Muslims, and that this presents a golden opportunity for Christian groups to spread the gospel.** Do you think there’s a sense among American Muslims that their faith has been weakened or compromised?
Deborah Caldwell: To be honest, no. I talk to lots of Muslims as well as Christians, and I don’t think their faith is any bit weakened by this; ** I think in some ways their faith is strengthened. **
Some of it is just - as it would be for any of us - a sort of sad defensiveness. But a lot of them are trying to delve deeper into their faith, to figure out what it is that’s essential, at the core of Islam. Because I think they feel a need to defend it, and so they need to know it as well as they possibly can. They’ve probably got tons and tons of Christian neighbours who are asking them “what’s going on with your faith?” So the discussion boards on our website really don’t reflect a loss of faith at all; they reflect Muslims being very “out there” about defending their faith.
David Rutledge: Can you tell me about how these Christian groups operate - we know that they’re placed in situations where they can not just get jobs in Islamic countries, but where they can make friends and win the trust of local Muslims - ** and these are known as “tunnelling” techniques.** Can you tell me more about them?
Deborah Caldwell: They tend to be very secretive about their techniques - and they’re right; if these people are found out, then their lives are endangered, just like Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer’s were.
But some of the things I have heard are that ** American Christians will get themselves admitted to a university in one of these countries, ostensibly to study something unrelated to religion. Then they will establish relationships with local people, and then maybe invite a couple of people over to their house, and the next thing you know, they’re putting the video of The Jesus Film into the VCR, or they’re handing over some tracts written in the local language that they just happen to have, or they’ve got the New Testament in the local language.**
David Rutledge: Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry have admitted that 20% of the Taliban’s charges against them were valid. So what was that 20%, what did they do as evangelising Christians in Afghanistan?
Deborah Caldwell: My understanding is that they went to someone’s house, and they showed The Jesus Film. And they say that they just happened to be talking about their faith, because that’s what people naturally do there, and these people asked them questions about their faith, and asked them about Christianity, and so they just had to answer. And I think they also gave a boy a book about Jesus.
David Rutledge: Do you think that Curry and Mercer - or any other people from these organisations - might be a little more uncomfortable now about this kind of approach - not just because of the dangers for proselytising Christians, but because of the danger that it passes on to non-religious aid groups? Is there any soul-searching among evangelical groups about their methods?
Deborah Caldwell: I think before they were released by the Taliban: no, I don’t think there was any soul-searching about it. But I’ve heard recently that this is now starting to become a conversation among evangelicals here in the United States.
Partly because they’re putting local Muslims in danger, partly because they’re putting secular aid workers in danger - and partly, they’re examining themselves and saying “hey, maybe we really shouldn’t be breaking the law”. But I think that the impulse to evangelise is so strong among evangelicals - after all, that’s what they’re all about - that it will be very hard for them not to keep doing that.
David Rutledge: Another thing that worries people about ** this fervent evangelism is that it involves an implicit devaluation of Islam. And of course this was made quite explicit recently by Franklin Graham, who came out and said that Islam was “wicked, violent and not of the same God”. ** How characteristic of these groups is this sort of contempt for Islam?
Deborah Caldwell: I think it’s really characteristic; ** most of these groups are fairly vocal about it. **
** It’s in all of their literature, and I notice on the discussion boards on our website, that there are a lot of Christians who have no trouble saying that Islam is evil, or that it incites people to evil. **
They understand, of course, and will say that American Muslims can be (and in most cases are) completely peace-loving, wonderful people. But that doesn’t mean they think the Muslim faith is OK, because they really don’t. And they’re having trouble with the whole question of pluralism here in the United States, because President Bush has been so open and welcoming to Muslims - and he was like this even before September 11th, he always talked about Muslims in the context of the Abrahamic faiths: Judaeo-Christian and Muslim all together in the same breath. And I know from talking to evangelicals that they’re struggling with that.
David Rutledge: We have to admit that there’s a degree of courage in what they do. But of course since September 11th, the stakes have become a lot higher, and from now on there’s going to be a whole new degree of courage required for this kind of evangelism. Do you think it’s going to make Christian groups bolder or more cautious about what they’re doing?
Deborah Caldwell: I think they’ll be more cautious in talking about it. But it will probably become even more a badge of honour. ** I really see Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer as becoming cult celebrities here among evangelicals. **
I actually think that they’re going to become the next Cassie Bernall- you know the girl; the myth goes that she said “yes, I believe in Christ” and was then shot by Dylan Klebold -
David Rutledge: This was during the Columbine High School massacre?
Deborah Caldwell: Right. And that willingness to stand up for one’s belief is held in incredibly high regard among these people. And especially it’s because Curry and Mercer are very appealing, and because they survived, that I think they’ll become celebrities.
David Rutledge: They’ll certainly become acknowledged as “veterans in the field”, and ** we’ve seen a lot of rather worrying war rhetoric coming from people like Luis Bush, founder of the 10/40 Window group, who’s said that “if we are to storm the enemy’s territory, we must put on the full armour of God and fight with the weapons of spiritual warfare” and so on ** - you’ve gone so far as to call it a “Christian jihad”.
Deborah Caldwell: Exactly. They call this “spiritual warfare”, and they consider it biblical and holy. And I think they’ll go on doing that; they hold this sort of aggressive Christianity in such high regard.
David Rutledge: It’s interesting, because we’re hearing a lot about the emergence of a radical, so-called “pre-medieval” Islam. And I wonder if this is going to be countered, now, by an equally radical “pre-medieval” Christianity, what you might call a “Roman” Christianity. Like the early Christians, who walked willingly into the lions’ jaws and sang hymns as they met their martyrdom. Do you think this kind of thing is going to be revived?
Deborah Caldwell: That’s a really interesting idea. I think that’s really possible. And I’ll tell you, I think the places where it’s most likely to happen are places like Sudan and Nigeria, places where there are Christians and Muslims together in constant battle with each other. And I mean physical battle, not just getting on Internet message boards and screaming at each other.
They’re killing each other, and I think it’s tragic enough that it’s happening there, and I can’t imagine it happening here yet, but I do think that the rhetoric is going to be ratcheted up higher and higher, and I think that real martyrdom will be glorified wherever it occurs.