Evangelicals in Muslims Lands: Targeting Christians?

Usually when we hear about evangelical Christians proselytizing in Muslim lands, we think of them going around trying to convert Muslims to Christianity - and certainly some of that goes on. However, it turns out that the reality may not be quite so simple as that. According to many Christian leaders in Arab nations, these evangelicals actually target Christian communities first and foremost, trying to convert those who are already Christian to an American brand of evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity.

Al-Jazeerah reported a couple of years ago:

These communities can be uniquely susceptible to the evangelical message. The Protestant sensibility, with its emphasis on Bible-reading, personal rather than communal conscience, redemption by grace rather than good works, and so on, initially evolved as a critique of Roman Catholicism. The Catholic Church has had centuries to respond to (and in some ways accept) that critique. However, for Eastern Christians the Protestant challenge ... is relatively new.

One interesting aspect of this is how it demonstrates the differences between American Protestantism and Christianity elsewhere in the world. Christianity isn’t precisely the same everywhere is appears. Religion always influences the culture around it, but it is also always influenced by that culture as well.

Part of the targeting of Eastern Christians may be the result of evangelicals’ inability to win converts among Muslims. Their critiques of Eastern traditions and rituals score points because, at least to a certain degree, Evangelicals know what they are talking about. When it comes to Islam, however, they tend to be profoundly ignorant. When Muslims see that ignorance, they will readily dismiss the conversion attempts. The future for Eastern Christians is itself a difficult question:

Suspected at home of being insufficiently Arab, disparaged in the West as voluntarily isolated, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic, the Eastern Christians are a community with few friends. But the evangelical question raises a larger issue than just the isolation and vulnerability of Eastern Christians: How can a Bush administration committed to raising the freedom level in Iraq also respect the communal and confessional ties that hold its society together?

I’m not sure that the administration does care, but only time will tell.

 

Read More:

• Islam
• Religion in Iraq