Post by farid s on Mar 1, 2006 18:48:32 GMT
Right-Wing Christian Evangelicals: War for Souls in Iraq and Beyond
Yoginder Sikand
Right-wing evangelical Christian groups in America are among the most vociferous supporters of Bush’s global ‘war on terror’. As they see it, all religions other than (their version of) Christianity are nothing less than the inventions of the Devil, and their followers are doomed to eternal perdition in hell. For them, America’s current ‘war on terror’ is nothing less than a divine mandate to America to break down the walls of heathendom, paving the way for them to pursue what they call their global commission to spread the ‘good news’ of Christianity. Not surprisingly, evangelical groups have been quick to enter Iraq in the wake of American arms, distributing Bibles and material aid.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is one of the several American evangelical groups now operating on a war-footing in Iraq. Established in 1845, the SBC is the largest and most powerful ultra-conservative Protestant Christian organisation in the country. It has a membership of some 16 million in America, with some 42,000 churches. In a statement of its beliefs it insists that salvation is possible only through belief in Jesus Christ and his death on the Cross, and is predicated on baptism in the Christian church. Non-Christians, no matter if they have led morally upright lives, ‘become transgressors’ and ‘are under condemnation, that is, they are lost’. It insists that those ‘without a personal commitment to Jesus Christ will be consigned to a literal hell, the place of everlasting separation from God’. ((SBC Resolution on the Necessity of Salvation, June 1988).
The SBC is firmly committed to Bibilical literalism. ‘The Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God and is the infallible touchstone by which all other authorities, teachers and traditions must be judged’, it lays down (SBC Resolution on Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics, 1994). It asserts that the Bible is ‘God’s revelation of Himself to man’, a ‘perfect treasure of divine instruction’. ‘It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter’. Not surprisingly, it is vigorously opposed to liberal Christian groups who advocate a contextual understanding of the faith and a more conciliatory position on other religions. It argues that the belief that ‘hell is not a reality’ and that ‘all people will eventually be saved’ is completely erroneous. Hence, it insists on the fundamental duty of the Church to spread the Christian faith and to uphold ‘the belief in a conversion theology’. (SBC Resolution on the Necessity of Salvation, June 1988).
The SBC, like other evangelicals, sees as its primary task the conversion of the entire world to Christianity. ‘The Great Commission mandate of our Lord Jesus’, it declares, ‘compels us to disciple the nations’ (SBC Resolution on the Priority of Global Evangelism and Missions, 1999). The SBC is convinced of the urgent need to ‘share Christ with all people everywhere to the end that the unsaved may be converted and the unchurched may become a part of Bible-teaching, Christ honouring congregations (SBC Resolution on Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics, 1994). The SBC’s global conversion agenda is directed by its International Missions Board (IMB), which is now active all over the world. The IMB operates on a multi-million dollar annual budget, sending thousands of American missionaries to various countries every year. In 1999, in the course of a single year, it claimed to have established 5000 new churches in different countries and to have recorded some 750,000 baptisms. In 2003 it recorded over 500,000 baptisms worldwide, and the total number of congregations reached 87,419, a net increase of more than 20 per cent over the preceding year. In 2003 its overseas church membership stood at more than 7 million, with 1523 international missionaries working in the field.
The SBC operates in the classical colonial missionary mode, its missionaries armed with the Bible in one hand and material aid in the other. Its ‘Cooperative Programme’ runs a vast network of social work projects—distributing food, medical aid and providing education—that gives its missionaries a vital entry point into what it calls ‘unreached people groups’. Material assistance to the needy is seen as simply a means to bring them to Christ. Photographs and video clips of well-fed rosy-cheeked white Americans doling out food and Bibles to hungry natives are proudly displayed on the SBC’s website and those of affiliated organizations as a sign of its commitment to what it sees as God’s mandate to it to spread the ‘good news’.
As an ultra-right wing church, the SBC’s political stance has consistently been pro-establishment, and one of its principal functions has been to provide suitable theological sanction to American imperialism. In the heydays of the Soviet Union, the SBC was regarded as a bulwark against what was seen as the menacing threat of communism. It lent full support to the American state’s war on communism, which it equated, in its own words, with ‘cancer’. The ‘Christian faith’, it declared, ‘is incompatible with communism’. It expressed its gratitude to ‘all agencies, organizations and persons who guard our homes, our churches and our nation against communist subversion’. ‘We speak our No to communism when we say Yes to Jesus Christ’, it announced in a resolution passed at its annual meeting in 1962 at the height of the Cold War. It insisted that the ‘proper and only adequate response to the challenge of communism is to be thoroughly Christian, and to seek to establish and support New Testament churches at home and abroad’ (SBC Resolution on Communism, 1962). This, of course, tied in comfortably with the American policy of sponsoring right-wing Christian groups in the so-called ‘Third World’ to counter ‘red menace’.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, American Christian evangelicals have been among the most forceful champions of the Huntingtonian thesis of a ‘clash of civilisations’ pitting the ‘Christian’ West against Islam. Leading evangelicals have issued statements that clearly indicate that they see America as engaged in nothing less than a crusade against the Muslim world. Rich Cizik, vice-president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals spoke on behalf of the American Christian right-wing when he declared that Islam had replaced the Soviet Union as a major focus of concern for evangelicals. Accordingly, American evangelicals have launched a massive camapaign to demonise Muslims and Islam, playing on deeply-rooted anti-Muslim prejudices among Christians. Jerry Vines, for instance, former president of the SBC, described Muhammad as a ‘demon-possessed pedophile’. Numerous other evangelicals have issued statements in the same vein, causing considerable embarrassment to Bush, an evangelical himself.
www.islaminterfaith.org/nov2004/article3.htm
