(Dutch Premier Balkende's visit to President Bush inspired me to write this story).
In 1975, Dr Henry Kissinger, speaking about the CIA's policy towards Iraqi Kurds, declared that "covert action should not be confused with missionary work". Ahem. Amidst more horrific, gruesome carnage, Al Jazeera reported today that in Iraq, "The International Bible Society has distributed 10,000 books in Arabic, titled "Christ Has Brought Peace". Poor Jesus, I'd personally think he'd turn in his grave, if he had one. And if he rose again, he'd emigrate. Premier Balkenende would kick him out of Holland. But that's rhetoric, so let's explore this further. 1. DRIED FOOD Al Jazeera comments guardedly: "The presence of missionaries in the majority-Muslim country is highly resented by locals as another element of foreign interference." In fact, Christianity Today magazine admits 96 percent of Iraq's 22 million people are Muslim, as against a few hundred thousand Christians, and that some Muslims are hostile to any Christian presence. So what the hell are they doing there then ? More recently some Christians in Iraq panicked about the idea that Sistani would declare an Islamic State, but in fact, the Shiites have not adopted any official policy hostile to Christian Iraqi's. That's more Western propaganda. It would be the least of their worries. If anything, Shiite concern is with foreign invaders trying to reshape Iraq into the image of Christianist capitalism. But obviously this does not stop the empire's evangelists at all. Al Jazeera estimates about a hundred functional missionaries gained official clearance from the occupying forces to go personally to Iraq, since Baghdad fell to American and British troops last April. Quite possibly the number is higher, taking into account circumstantial evidence. Previously, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 5,411 personnel serving around the world, raised money from 42,000 congregations nationwide, to send about 45,000 boxes of dried food to Iraqis (beans, rice, flour, and other staples). Jim Walker, one of the members of the team handing out this food in Iraq, told IMB's Urgent News bulletin that he had met village children "starved of attention, and I could tell some of them have not eaten well. But their biggest need is to know the love of Christ." The christian boxes included zero religious literature (which could have been blocked by the military at the border), but they featured a label quoting John 1:17 in Arabic: "For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ." SBC's Jim Brown, a director of World Hunger and Relief Ministries, explained that he thought this verse was an appropriate expression of Christian faith to Muslims. "Moses and Jesus are both prophets for Muslims," Brown said. "I don't think a Muslim would find that verse offensive." I would. I would get very irate. However, Mr Brown added that the misionary organisation had no plans for "mass evangelism" in Iraq. He explained, "Freedom to share God's love in Iraq is limited to one-to-one, God-given opportunities, not man-orchestrated events." How how does the scene operate ? Mrs. Jackie Cone, age 72, a Pentecostalist grandmother from Ohio, went to Iraq in 2003. She said recently God told her to join a second mission to Iraq in 2004. "I sensed Him telling me to come back in January". Mrs Cone is confident she has converted people in Baghdad. In her hotel, she met a Muslim woman on crutches, with a leg operation due that day. Mrs Cone knelt on the lobby floor, and prayed that surgery would not be required. "I saw her that evening and she said God had healed her, and she hadn't needed the surgery. She didn't say Allah, she pointed to Heaven and gave God the glory," Mrs Cone said. Mrs Cone led the Kurdish woman and her brother in prayer, asking Jesus to enter into their hearts. "I'd given them a Bible and a Jesus video in Arabic. I think they think of themselves as Christians now," she said. "They have the Bible, and I hope they will grow in grace." I hope grandma Cone returns home in one piece. If she doesn't, I don't think it would have much to do with the Lord. Best to keep Grandma home, I would say. 2. THE THEOLOGY OF IT There has actually been considerable debate in American christian circles about the real scope for evangelising the good news in post-sanctions Iraq. Ben Homan, the president of the Food for the Hungry aid organisation, commented quite sensibly that "If an earthquake struck in Texas, and someone forced you to hear a religious message in exchange for food or medicine, we think that would be wrong." Quite. "Food for the Hungry" actually spent millions to feed thousands of Iraqi families. World Vision is likewise actively involved in charity work (mainly in Mosul). World Relief, Food for the Hungry, and Venture International have been working with Jordanian church agencies and the United Nations to supply Iraq's churches with food, medicine, and school supplies. When the sanctions were still imposed, the scope for charity work was more limited, but now opportunities are expanding. Along with that, the urge to spread the truth of Jesus in Iraq is be increasing. In December last year, John Brady, the IMB's head for the Middle East and North Africa, said "Southern Baptists have prayed for years that Iraq would somehow be opened to the gospel". "Southern Baptists must understand that there is a war for souls under way in Iraq," his bulletin added, claiming that rival missionaries also entering Iraq were "pseudo-Christian". Marxists don't seem to have any monopoly on sectarianism, if they ever had it. In fact modern christianism makes Marxism look rather liberal. Jon Hanna, an Ohio evangelist associated with Connection Magazine who has been to Iraq, took 8,000 Bibles into Iraq. He describes himself as a humanitarian worker, who saw a window of opportunity. Hanna claims that in November 2003, he met a missionary team from Indiana, which had shipped in an astonishing 1.3 million Christian tracts into Iraq. "A US passport is all you need to get in, until the new Iraqi government takes over." he said. "What we thought was a two-year window, originally, has narrowed down to a six month window". The actual motivations of the modern authorities on the will of the Good Lord Jesus vary a great deal though. For example, Jerry Vines, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, said the Prophet Mohammed was a "demon-obsessed paedophile". Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham and the head of Samaritan's Purse (a big donor to Iraq), has claimed that Islam is a "very evil and wicked religion". Wonderful stuff. Just what they need (sic.) in Iraq. Over there, people get their head blown off for saying a lot less. In an interview with Time Magazine, Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary had a more theoretical explanation: "The secular world tends to look at Islam as a function of ethnicity,which means seeking to convert these people to Christianity is an insult to them. But Christianity is a trans-ethnic faith, which understands that Christianity is not particular to or captured by any ethnicity, but seeks to reach all persons. The secular world tends to look at Iraq and say, well, it's Muslim, and that's just a fact, and any Christian influence would just be a form of Western imperialism. The Christian has to look at Iraq, and see persons desperately in need of the gospel. Compelled by the love and command of Christ, the Christian will seek to take that gospel in loving and sensitive, but very direct, ways to the people of Iraq." 3. BIG BANG THEORY So how does all that christianist imperialism work out in practice then ? Let me put it this way: it could all end in a big bang, and that's not meant as a joke, because in the modern imperialist epoch, Iraq has sustained an extremely bloody history of religion-driven and imperialist massacres. The import of Bibles and Bible bashers from America could make things a hell of a lot worse, not better, regardless of what your beliefs might be. Because with everything else going on, it aggrevates, it riles the ire of people trying to do very basic things to survive and improve life. On 15 March, four US Baptist missionaries of the Virginia-based Southern Baptist International Mission Board were shot dead in Mosul in an ambush, including two women. They included Karen Denise Watson, 38, a onetime jail officer who sold her home and possessions to focus on missionary work and was a member of Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield since 1997; a married couple, Larry and Jean Elliott, 60 and 58, of Cary, North Carolina; and David E. McDonnall, 28, of Rowlett, Texas. McDonnall's wife, Carrie, 26, is reportedly in a critical condition. What were the missionaries doing ? Church officials in Bakersfield said they were working on a water purification project, whereas the IMB said they were on a trip to survey the needs of people in the region. The Elliotts had served with the missionary organization since 1978, mostly in Honduras. Watson had joined a year ago. Apparently, the missionaries were travelling in one car, when they were attacked by two or three men firing from a car with AK-47s. An off-duty Iraqi policeman found the missionaries' car, shortly after the shooting, and took the wounded to an Iraqi hospital. US army air medical evacuation helicopters later transported the victims to a combat support hospital in Mosul. Iraqi police and the FBI have been involved in an inquiry into the incident. "Arab Christians have been accused of being 'entities of the West,'" Gustavo Crocker, senior vice president of programs at World Relief, stated a while ago. "By our enabling them to show the love of Christ, we are also strengthening the position of the church in the region." But how can you "strengthen the position of the church", if you're dead as a doornail ? As far as I understand the christian theory, if you're in heaven with God, then there are no more churches you can strengthen. 4. JUST KEEPING IT SIMPLE One of the four missionaries killed, Ms. Karen Watson, was born in Bakersfield. She went to high school in Arroyo Grande. Church officials said she had been converted to the faith after the deaths of her fiance, her father and her grandmother, all within two years. "That was a crisis point in her life," neighbors said. "Things like that could make you better, or bitter. For Karen, it made her better." After intensive church attendance at Valley Baptist Church, Karen said she wanted to develop further into missionary work. So, in 2002, she took a leave from her job as a detention officer at the Lerdo jail for the Kern County Sheriff's Department, to go to Kosovo and El Salvador for the Lord. Before she returned back to Iraq, Karen had sold her home, her car and all her possessions, and had written a two-page letter in longhand, to be opened in the event of her death. A Valley Baptist Church Pastor, Phil Neighbors, read out a post-mortal message by the deceased Karen Denise Watson in Bakersfield. The letter said, "You're only reading this if I died. To obey was my objective, to suffer was expected, his glory my reward." A section dealing with her funeral said straightforwardly "Keep it simple". Karen is simply dead. But where is the "glory" in this story ? I don't see it at all. I just see these reports of carnage and mutilated corpses. Where I live, we've had people shot dead in our neighbourhood, and nobody here likes it, but that's chickenfeed, compared to Iraq. The truth is that there is nothing "glorious" about Karen's death. If God is about anything at all, God is about life, not about brutalising and murdering people, which is what human beings do to each other. Karen should have stayed home, or shifted out of Bakersfield somewhere else in the States and settle down with a good man. To cap it all, President Bush is now back on the campaign trail to defend his war record. His advisers said reportedly on Tuesday that the President intended to press his case that the world is safer with Saddam Hussein out of power, and that he wanted to use the first anniversary of the war's start on Friday to draw sharp contrasts with Kerry over foreign policy and leadership. The IHT said Bush's initiatives "also underlined the extent to which the campaign had become subject to the unpredictability of overseas events, and pointed up the complications Bush faces in trying to balance the demands of the presidency with running a re-election effort." . Speaking from the Oval Office on Tuesday with the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende at his side, Bush demanded that John Kerry should provide evidence to support his suggestion last week that foreign leaders want to see Bush defeated. "If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you've got to back it up with facts," Bush told reporters. What more facts does he need ? Personally, I'd have to side with John Kerry when he said to told the war veterans: "Nothing is more important than telling the American people the truth about the economy, health care, and war and peace. This administration has yet to level with the American people." Jurriaan .
