The National Council of Churches USA has a team in Southeast Asia working to assess ways that denominations in the United States might be helpful to churches torn apart by the tsunami and with relief efforts in general. Vince Foster, director of NCC’s FaithfulAmerica.org project, is part of the team and is writing a blog that reports on their experiences. One of the questions Foster has encountered is the appropriate role for Western churches to play. Are we there to provide relief, evangelize, or both. Foster writes:
January 10, 2005, Colombo, Sri Lanka -- In an earlier post I mentioned that on the heels of the disaster some Christian evangelists were using the tsunami as an opportunity to evangelize and convert Sri Lankans from Buddhism or Islam to Christianity. Today we traveled to a small coastal village near Colombo to visit an orphanage ruined by the wave. On our way we came upon a boy dressed in new jeans and a bright white Yankees t-shirt, and carrying a brand new Bible. We stopped and asked where he was going and he told us, “To the prayer.” We learned that there would be some fifty survivors from this fishing village attending the meeting led by an American evangelist.
What is interesting -- and this is purely speculation -– but there is a better than average chance that this young man, or at least some of the fifty in attendance, were Buddhists –- at least before tonight. This illustration touches at the heart of the tension between Buddhist leaders and visiting Christian groups, some of which, such as FaithfulAmerica, are here not to evangelize but to help provide relief. There are some who say evangelists are exploiting this nation’s bad fortune to gain converts, while some evangelists believe they are doing exactly what their faith commands them to do.
A couple of years ago I took a class in evangelism and walked away believing that Western Christians (particularly white ones) should not be allowed to conduct evangelism in other nations (or in communities other than their own). True evangelism can only take place when it occurs with two groups of people who have equal power in the relationship. Handing out relief aid in Southeast Asia post- tsunami at a Bible study is not evangelism – it is extortion.
M. Thomas Thangaraj is a professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is from southern India – where I traveled in 2003 – and has served as a pastor in congregations of the Church of South India. He writes in his book The Common Task: A Theology of Christian Mission that:
Mission is possible only in a spirit of mutuality in the sphere of interhuman relations. There are no longer “missioners” and the “missioned.” All are missionaries in a relationship of mutuality.
He further writes:
History proves that we have not always appreciated the mode of mutuality in our relationships. Humans have related to each other in an I-It relationship rather than an I-Thou relationship. The tragic history of slavery bears ample witness to this. Similarly, the way in which various societies have organized themselves in the past and continue to do so is indicative of this lack of mutuality. In the history of Christian missionary movements of the last three centuries, for example, one can detect this problem. The very term “mission field” to denote a group of people of nations is symptomatic of the kind of I-It relationship the missionary enterprise had entailed.
Our task right now in Southeast Asia should not be about evangelism – it should be about relief, about finding ways to work in interfaith partnerships with Buddhists and Muslims, and about working with local Christian communities to support their efforts.
Samaritan's Purse is one of the best known Christian relief agencies in the world today. It is lead by Franklin Graham, son of Bill Graham. They intertwine relief efforts with evangelism in a way that shows an utter contempt for mutuality. Their web site tells the story of how Franklin Graham got involved with the organization and it offers us great insight into his theology:
In the summer of 1973, Bob Pierce (founder of Samaritan’s Purse) met his eventual successor, an adventurous young student—Franklin Graham—with a growing heart for world missions. Intrigued by his many stories from the field, Franklin began to spend more and more time with the seasoned Christian statesman. In 1975, he accompanied Bob on a life-changing tour of some of the world’s neediest mission fields, where Franklin saw the poverty of pagan religions and the utter despair of the people they enslave. God had captured his heart for missions.
Graham and his group see disasters like this as an opportunity to swoop in and save souls. That is not what the people of Southeast Asia need right now (or ever for that matter). Let the Christian churches in India worry about evangelism efforts among their own people. When Americans try and accomplish the same task we often end up supporting oppressive governments and economic policies that only benefit the west. Western Christians, for example, supported the colonial powers that ruled Southeast Asia until the end of World War II. The poverty in the world has nothing to do with pagan religious – it has everything to do with those in the West who advocate economic policies that benefit our own people and which essentially attempt to re-colonize the “third-world.”
Our job as Christians today should simply be to respond to the crisis and to honor the requests made by local churches. People are dying and there is a job to do.
