The assassination of four Southern Baptist missionaries in Iraq Monday has pointed a spotlight back at one of the more inflammatory aspects of the U.S. occupation: the forced opening of Iraq to Christian proselytizers -- including some of the most viciously anti-Muslim sects in the United States.
Four workers for a Southern Baptist missionary group who were killed in Iraq were remembered as ''people who just had a great heart for helping people out.''
Unidentified assailants attacked a car with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades Monday, killing the workers who were trying to find a way to provide clean water in the northern city of Mosul.
No one likes to see people murdered in cold blood. But the very presence of fundamentalist missionaries in Iraq (as part of the official relief effort, no less) is a cultural and political abomination, as well as a classic example of just how seriously the Bush admnistration takes the struggle against terrorism -- which is to say, not very seriously at all.
This issue has been simmering away since shortly after the invasion, when groups such as the Southern Baptist International Mission Board and Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse began mobilizing to follow the advancing U.S. Army into Iraq. That's the same Franklin Graham who once described Islam as "a very evil and wicked religion."
And Graham is a model of religious tolerance compared to some of his Southern Baptist brethren:
Jerry Vines, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is sending aid and missionaries to Iraq, has said the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was "a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives."
C'mon Jerry, tell us what you really think.
The official party line, it seems, is that the missionaries are in Iraq to do relief work, not spread the gospel. I'm not exactly sure what kind of restrictions the military or the coalition authority puts on their activities, but this news report suggests it amounts to a kind of religious "don't ask, don't tell" policy:
The mission board was the sponsoring organzation of the four missionaries killed Monday (a fifth was critically wounded.) And if the board has agreed to limit its proselytizing efforts in Iraq, somebody forgot to tell its director for the Middle East region:
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Meanwhile, outside of the official relief effort, the board is also helping plant Baptist churches -- and a Baptist school -- in Baghdad:
This story is someways similiar to the actions of the Army Chaplin at the begaining of the war who withheld water from the American troops and a village till he could preach "the good book to them." Our government has allowed all these care packages of bibles and bible thumpers into Iraq. Sooner or later this issue was going to blow up.
I have no problem with Christian missionary types doing what they feel they have a calling to do. But knowing that going into Iraq to start preaching the Crusader's religion to the Iraqis after the Crusaders have just bombed their country to smithereens and killed their family members is the equivalent of pouring gasoline on an already fiery situtation. There is enough religious strife waiting in the wings for Iraq between the Shi'a and the Sunni. They don't need a menage a trois with evangelical Christianity. Remember, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I question the goodness of their intentions in this case when viewed from a broad rational perspective. I further wonder how they would welcome Muslim evangelists into their hometowns in the "Bible Belt", come to convert them as Infidels, so to speak.
There are many places on earth where they could be doing their water relief work and maybe even do a bit of preaching as well without deception. But they chose to go where they would probably meet hostility and perhaps achieve martyrdom. That is not brave, that is stupid and selfish. Iraq doesn't need troublemakers to stir the pot. But then again, maybe they were told you got to score double Brownie points towards Rapture by going to Iraq.
Maybe if the Christian right hadn't been relentlessly trying to pervert our government into a theocracy for the last thirty years I would be more tranquil in the face of proselytizing. Maybe if, by their words and actions, the religious right didn't remind me of Osama and al Qaeda by another name, I'd have charity in my heart for those souls.
As it is, I don't want Christian fundamentalists in government, in foreign policy, or in my face.
