Bundling of Aid, Christianity Stirs Concerns

As soon as the war ends, Christian evangelical groups are poised to go into Iraq with offers of food, medicine, blankets -- and testimony about their religious beliefs.

The prospect of evangelicals moving into a country where 97% of the population is Muslim could complicate an already dicey reconstruction effort, intensifying feelings in the Arab world that the United States is waging a war not on terrorism but on Islam.

“We are entering a period where there are two big exclusionist, monotheistic faiths -- Christianity and Islam,” said James Hudnut-Beumler, dean of the divinity school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “The way in which people from the Christian West, in the midst of the conflict or its aftermath, engage Muslims will have long repercussions for the shape of that conflict and for postwar reconstruction in Iraq.”

Evangelical groups that have said they plan to offer humanitarian aid in postwar Iraq include the Southern Baptist Convention; Samaritan’s Purse, a relief operation headed by the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham; and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. They have stressed their intention to give aid in the form of food and supplies. But they also want to spread the Gospel.

In explaining their mission, evangelicals often cite Matthew 28, verse 19, in which Jesus instructs: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

“We read that as a commandment,” said Mark Williams of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a Colorado-based evangelical group. “It’s not, ‘If you want to.’ It’s a commandment.”

But other Christian relief organizations worry that the evangelicals will taint their work, turning the instinct to reach out in a humanitarian way into more fodder for a clash between two of the world’s dominant religions.

“Combining assistance with proselytizing only increases suspicion in the Muslim world that this war is part of a crusade against Islam. It’s very destructive,” said Rick Augsburger, director of emergency programs for the New York-based National Council of Churches’ charity arm, Church World Service, which has launched a $1-million fund-raising campaign for pediatric services in Iraq.

For the White House, the situation poses a delicate dilemma. President Bush is a born-again Christian who counts the evangelical movement among his strongest supporters. But he also is anxious to win the war in Iraq, where any hint that the military protectorate is connected to a religious-based effort could make the postwar climate tougher for the administration. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has said that it is not up to the administration to determine which groups should provide aid to Iraqis.

Some Muslim leaders are fuming. “It is very deceitful,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They come with food in one hand and Bibles in the other.”

Hooper, who has made a study of evangelical practices over the years, said such efforts are even more disconcerting coming from someone like Graham, who has called Islam “a very evil and wicked religion.” In a commentary published recently in the Los Angeles Times, Graham said his group will offer aid “with no strings attached.” Sometimes, he added, “the best preaching we can do is simply being there with a cup of cold water, exhibiting Christ’s spirit of serving others.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, which sponsors about 5,000 missionaries in 153 nations, also is eager to send volunteers from the United States to help distribute aid to Iraqis.

“If we get the word that the war ends on Tuesday, we’ll be out the door as soon as we can schedule the travel,” said Mark Kelly of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, based in Richmond, Va. “There is a tremendous amount of excitement about the opportunity.”

Although Iraq is a secular country -- Saddam Hussein’s religion has been described as Arabic socialism, modeled after Stalin’s Soviet Union -- it is overwhelmingly Muslim, with a small but prominent Christian minority (about 3% of the population) that includes Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz.

The attempt to convert Muslims to Christianity has a long and sometimes violent history.

Dudley Woodberry, a professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, said Christians have been in Iraq since the 1st century, and that the first Protestants arrived in 1841. Over the years, Christian outreach to other faiths has changed, growing more sophisticated and often more personal in approach.

In the last 20 years, evangelical Christians have begun targeting Muslims in what is called the “10/40 window” -- the rectangle that stretches between latitudes 10 degrees and 40 degrees north from West Africa to East Asia and includes most of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims, 800 million Hindus and 350 million Buddhists.

The Southern Baptist Convention cites as “too sensitive” any disclosure of its missionary work in the 10/40 window, but in December 2001 a spokesman told the Washington Post that about 27% of the group’s missionaries are stationed there, up from 1% 15 years earlier.

As Christian missionaries began to arrive in the region, many Muslim countries passed laws to prohibit proselytizing. The Taliban in Afghanistan outlawed the practice, and arrested two Christian aid workers from Texas for dispensing Bibles. The women were rescued by special operations troops when U.S. forces toppled the Taliban last year.

Other missionaries have paid with their lives. A 31-year-old woman from Portland, Ore., was killed in Lebanon last year working in a clinic providing free prenatal care to Arab women. Three American missionaries who worked at a hospital in Yemen were killed in December.

“In the best of times, these people [evangelicals] excite passion among Islamists, and this is not the best of times; this is the worst of times,” said Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA intelligence official. “In the Arab media, this war is being portrayed as a clash of civilizations. It’s not fair, but that’s the perception. And these people -- I’m sure they’re doing this out of the purest of motives -- but they are going to be targets. They are walking into a disaster.”

Apart from such physical risks, many theologians said that combining humanitarian aid with religion is unwise and perhaps un-Christian.

“American Christians in particular ought to think what it would be like if we had some catastrophic thing down in Texas,” said Dean Hudnut-Beumler of Vanderbilt. “Imagine if Muslims said, ‘We’re going to help. The people of Texas really need us. We’re going to bring them tools, and also bring word” about Islam.

For Ben Homan, president of Food for the Hungry, the issue is the nature of Christian charity. Food for the Hungry, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., is mobilizing to provide food, medical care, blankets, shoes and school supplies for 100,000 Iraqis in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra and Kirkuk.

Adamant about avoiding groups that tether their aid to religion, Homan said: “No one forced me to accept the love of Jesus. And it is just plain wrong to coerce anyone into any belief system.”

But many Christian evangelicals say that’s not what they’re about. Workers at the Southern Baptist Convention say they avoid overt proselytizing, discussing religion only in response to questions.

“The Iraqi people have just suffered incredibly,” said Kelly of the convention’s mission board. “The love of God stirs in me and wants me to reach out and help them.”