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Please note that 2 articles follow: *Tempering Evangelism: Tsunami missionaries should put aid first *Evangelicals accused of preaching to survivors --- (1) Tempering Evangelism: Tsunami missionaries should put aid first Dallas Morning News Monday, January 24, 2005 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/012505dnedievangelists.d7421.html Zeal for converting non-Christians sets evangelical Christianity apart from other expressions of the Christian faith. You will find evangelicals all over the world, teaching, preaching and healing broken bodies and broken lives. They do much good. But sometimes they go too far. We are dismayed at the furor ignited by members of Waco's Antioch Community Church, which sent a relief team into tsunami-stricken Sri Lanka. According to The New York Times, the Waco evangelicals have outraged Sri Lankan Christians and non-Christians by aggressively proselytizing among the country's Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists. Some native pastors complain that the Texans are putting all the country's Christians in peril from militant Buddhist factions. The Rev. Duleep Fernando, a Sri Lankan Methodist, told The Times that the Texans induced him to bring them into a refugee camp, pretending to be merely a humanitarian group. "We have told them this is not right, but now we don't have any control over them," the sadder-but-wiser pastor says now. Aid to the poor and oppressed is a central tenet of Christianity, and missionary efforts over the centuries have often mixed material aid with subtle or not-so-subtle invitations to convert. It is difficult to draw a bright line between what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. But deception � hiding one's evangelical aims � is wrong. And so is imperiling the lives of Christians who can't hop a plane bound for D/FW if non-Christian militants turn violent. Even absent that, the internal damage to a society can be profound. "Soupers" in Ireland and "rice Christians" in Asia are some of the epithets that reflect the bitter resentment toward people who are perceived to have abandoned their historical faith in return for handouts from proselytizing sects. That's why many Christian aid organizations today try to separate humanitarian efforts from evangelism outreach. But the Waco church explicitly rejects that strategy. One paralyzed Buddhist fisherman told The Times he believes the Waco team is trying to convert him, but that he is "in a helpless situation," and feels he has no choice but to submit to their ministrations. How can Christians be proud of that? http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/012505dnedievangelists.d7421.html -- (2) Evangelicals accused of preaching to survivors By David Rohde The New York Times Sat, Jan. 22, 2005 http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/10708683.htm?1c MORAKETIYA, Sri Lanka - A dozen Americans walked into a relief camp here, showering bereft parents and traumatized children with gifts, attention and affection. They also quietly offered camp residents something else: Jesus. The Americans, all from Antioch Community Church in Waco, have staged plays detailing the life of Jesus and had children draw pictures of him, camp residents said. They have told parents who lost children that they should still believe in God and held group prayers where they tried to heal a partly paralyzed man and a deaf 12-year-old girl. The attempts at proselytizing are angering local Christian leaders, who worry that they could provoke a violent backlash against Christians in Sri Lanka, a predominantly Buddhist country that is already a religious tinderbox. Last year, Buddhist hard-liners attacked more than 100 churches and the offices of the World Vision Christian aid group, accusing them of using money and social programs to cajole and coerce conversions. Most American aid groups, including those affiliated with religious organizations, strictly avoid mixing aid with missionary work. But scattered reports of proselytizing in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India are arousing concerns that the goodwill spread by the American relief efforts could be undermined by resentment over missionary work. The Rev. Sarangika Fernando, a local Methodist minister, witnessed one of the prayer sessions in Sri Lanka and accused the group from Waco of exploiting traumatized people. "They said, 'In the name of Jesus, she must be cured!' As a priest, I was really upset." Antioch Community Church has made international news before -- in August 2001, when two of its members were arrested and accused of proselytizing by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry were freed when the United States invaded the country several months later. Antioch is one of a growing number of evangelical groups mixing humanitarian aid with discussions of religion, an approach that older, more established Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services call unethical. In Sri Lanka, alarmed local Christian leaders say proselytizing at such a sensitive time could reverse the grassroots interfaith cooperation that has emerged since the tsunamis and endanger Christians, who make up 7 percent of the population. The country also has sizable Hindu and Muslim minorities. The Rev. Duleep Fernando, a Methodist minister based in Colombo, the capital, brought the Americans to the camp. Fernando said they described themselves as humanitarian aid workers. He and other Sri Lankan Christian leaders say raising religion with traumatized refugees is unethical. "We have told them this is not right, but now we don't have any control over them," said Fernando. "This is a dangerous situation." Sri Lankan refugees, camp administrators and church officials said the Americans have identified themselves only as a humanitarian aid group. In an interview Wednesday, Pat Murphy, 49, a leader of the team, said the group is a nongovernmental organization, or NGO, and not a church group. "It's an NGO," Murphy said. "Just your plain vanilla NGO that does aid work." But the church's Web site says the Americans are one of four teams dispatched to Sri Lanka and Indonesia who have persuaded dozens of people to "come to Christ." Heather Mercer is with the team in Indonesia. Asked about Antioch's Web postings, Murphy said the group would never use relief goods to pressure people. "We simply provide people with information, and they do with that what they like," he said. A Jan. 18 posting from the team in Indonesia says the country's devastated Aceh province is "ripe for Jesus!!" The Rev. Jimmy Siebert, the senior pastor of the Waco church, said in a telephone interview that the church would evaluate whether the group should identify themselves as simply aid workers. But he said the church believes that missionary work and aid work "is one thing, not two separate things." Older Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief and others with religious affiliations say they do not proselytize and abide by Red Cross guidelines that humanitarian aid not be used to further political or religious purposes. http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/10708683.htm?1c __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 ------------------------ Yahoo! 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