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EDINBURGH 2010: WARNING ABOUT “EVANGELISM” THAT DIVIDES CHRISTIANS

PETER KENNY, of Ecumenical News International, reports… 

Ecumenical News International

“Good evangelism” and “bad evangelism” came under discussion when a diverse group of Christians met to discuss the 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference 100 years later in the capital of Scotland. 

Antonios Kireopoulos, the associate general secretary dealing with faith and order issues and interfaith relations for the US National Council of Churches, alluded to, “what I like to call good – or appropriate – evangelism, and bad – or inappropriate- proselytism”.

“It is most harmful, Kireopoulos added, when rather than seeking, ‘to make Christians from among people of other faiths, instead (it) strives to make Christians from among people that are already Christians,’ and suffering under political difficulties.”

After his 4th June keynote speech at the 2010 Edinburgh Missionary Conference, a number of evangelical and Pentecostal speakers from the floor criticised Kireopoulos’ stance. 

“Proselytism gets a lot of attention these days when used in the context of missionary efforts in Muslim countries,” Kireopoulos said. 

It is most harmful, he added, when rather than seeking, “to make Christians from among people of other faiths, instead (it) strives to make Christians from among people that are already Christians,” and suffering under political difficulties. 

The Edinburgh meeting is commemorating the centenary of the 1910 World Missionary Conference held in the Scottish capital, which is seen as marking the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement for church unity. 

The organisers of the 2010 meeting include representatives of Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, as well as of the World Council of Churches. 

Kireopoulos cited the experience in Russia and other Eastern European countries after the fall of the Soviet Union, when missionaries, “generally, but not only from evangelical or fundamentalist Protestant communities in the US, took advantage of the weak”. 

He said the situation could be seen as one in which people saw the other groups as “heathens” who needed to be converted, “rather than as brothers and sisters whose Orthodox Christian self-understanding was just beginning to resurrect after some seven decades in a virtual tomb”. 

In Iraq, where Christian communities had borne much of the suffering since the 2003 US-led invasion, there had been a, “particularly egregious missionary effort”, Kireopoulos said. 

He recounted how he had happened to watch a television program on Christians in Iraq produced, “by the ministry of one of the most famous, or infamous, televangelists on the religious right”. 

The announcer was talking about the suffering and martyrdom of Christian communities in Iraq. “There was film of liturgical celebrations and social ministries being shown, and the speaker offered complimentary comments about these men, women and children, about their bravery, and he lamented the fact that so many of them nevertheless felt compelled to flee their country to escape the ravages of war,” Kireopoulos recounted. 

Still, when the announcer began to contrast these Christians with converts to the televangelist’s own mission community, “He praised the latter for not leaving, for sticking it out through the difficulties of war, basically characterising them as true Christians thus giving a robust witness to Christ, and by implication not wavering in their faith like their apparently feckless neighbours.” 

Kireopoulos said he did not doubt the sincerity of the Iraqis who made up this mission community, yet he was dismayed, “to see these Christians set up as the faithful over and against other Christians as the faithless”. 

He did not see it as helpful to distinguish in this case between good and bad Christians. 

“In a land of other faiths, the focus of this story was on how one brand of Christianity was witnessing better than another brand of Christianity, even at the expense of the latter,” Kireopoulos said. 

“How much more powerful would the witness to Christ have been if the missionaries sent to Iraq were there to support the local Christians, to work with the local Christian churches to foster reconciliation in their communities torn apart by war?” 

www.edinburgh2010.org

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