How not to evangelize a Muslim

[Greg M. Johnson]

There's an interesting "This American Life" story about the destruction of a little girl.  She was a Muslim by family tradition but happily living a typical American schoolgirl life until school authorities took a string of actions to destroy her:

http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=322

My position on evangelism is that if even the Liberal-Protestants are quoting scriptures that Christ will draw all to Himself, we ought to tell folks that in some way before they die.

Here's my analysis on how NOT to evangelize, based on the mistakes (or outright ugly motivations) of the evangelism that took place in this story:

1) Hell without a conviction of sin.
In the story, the girl came home sobbing and asking questions about why she was going to hell.  I've griped about this before.  To the heart completely convicted of sin, hell doesn't seem so unusual an idea.  Hell as a penalty for what is in effect "choosing the wrong sports team" is wacked. The problem I have with the Religious Right is they talk freely of hell but then wallow in a Gospel Reductionism that bristles at criticism of the middle class, from racism to global warming to Iraq, at least on TBN.

2)  Evangelization must refrain from expression of cultural ignorance.
In this story, a school district made up or distributed  some mandatory materials for a 9/11 commemoration that stupidly implied that the character of Muslims was related to the attack.  The schoolgirl of course knew that this had nothing to do with the character of her scarf-wearing mother.   (GW Bush at least has courageously said, "Islam is a religion of peace," and gotten flak from the ignorant for doing so.)

3) Evangelization is something other than singling out of folks from a secular environment from a position of authority.
In this case, they had a team of happy secular kids. Then the district distributed that 9/11 book and the teacher proselytized using the candy-can analogy.  The result was that the teacher by inaction if not example set the stage for extreme bullying of the little girl. I would imagine instead that the approach might be to single-out with love, rather than to single-out in a way that gives a natural platform for bullying by the ignorant.

4) Evangelization must completely absolve itself from geopolitics, and most especially an impression of naked self-interest.
"Because I don't want to be killed by terrorists, I will therefore evangelize all Muslims around me"  ain't going to cut it. I'm on the mailing list for a traveling evangelist from one of those big, popular missionary organizations.  In one of his newsletters, he quoted Ashcroft's slur about "Christianity is God gave his son to die for you, Islam is they give their sons to die killing you."  (paraphrase from memory).   I challenged him about it.  He retracted in an email to me, but not in the same newsletter.





--
"Too many lifetimes are consumed by an irrational rebellion against the bullies of one's youth."

Greg M. Johnson
http://pterandon.blogspot.com