Post 99—Conversion: An Obsession?

A Peek Behind the Scenes 

You may be wondering how I choose my subjects for these posts. It may seem to you that I move from pillar to post without any obvious rational. To some degree that’s true. I do not have a well worked out schedule of topics that rationally follow each other. It goes like this. I come across a discussion or opinion during the course of my readings and find myself reacting, “Oh, I should do a post on that subject.” Or an important event takes place. I have a whole list of subjects waiting to be tackled. Then, as I write on it, the subject itself calls up a related subject that then needs attention to round off the one I am working on. And so I move today from a WCC interfaith conference to conversion. Before I even begin writing on it, the subject has already led to a consideration to, of all things, total depravity for a next post.  And so it goes. If I’ve made you curious, then I’ve succeeded!

Conversion among Religions

So, conversion. In the light of the above paragraph it will not be difficult for you to understand why I take on that subject. That conference called on all the faithful of all religions to do away with their “obsession” with conversion.  That decision is not difficult to follow for some Eastern religions or Judaism and others, for those are not traditionally missionary religions. They are more like tribal religions that are restricted to and identified with one distinct people, like the Jews. Or they may largely be concentrated in one geographical region like Hindus and Buddhists.

My Christian reading of the Old Testament (OT) makes me wonder why Judaism is not a missionary religion. I read in the OT that God’s plan for Israel was temporarily to focus on Abraham’s offspring. But the long-range plan was for Abraham’s seed to become a blessing to the entire world. Well, don’t have the space to treat this more extensively. The last half century, Buddhism, one of the Eastern religions, has become quite active in the West, not only following its immigrant adherents, but finding ready soil among fall-outs from either Christianity or secularism. For these and other non-missionary religions, it is not difficult to follow the demand to drop the obsession to convert. They never had it to begin with, except then this recent exception.

Conversion in Islam--No/Yes

Two religions that are particularly missionary minded both in theory and practice are Christianity and Islam. For these two religions, a call to drop their “obsession” with conversion amounts to considering the religions themselves as “obsessions,” for their missionary character is part of their core or essence. You take away this missionary thrust and you end up with a stultified version no longer true to its deepest core.

I can somewhat understand Muslim leaders signing on to this declaration. They do not talk of conversion so much as reversion, that is a coming back, a coming home.  That is to say, to them everyone is by nature and by birth a Muslim. When a person leaves another religion to become a Muslim, he does not convert but revert. She returns to what is the created natural religion; she returns home where she belongs. Secondly, calling people back to Islam, though a drive deep within the religion, is also considered a natural pose. Of course, you want people to become Islam. That’s not an obsession; that’s the best thing you have in mind for them, the greatest gift one can offer to your neighbor or entire nation. So, when Muslims sign on to such a document, they are thinking not of themselves but of Christians with their aggressive missionary approach. When they sign but nevertheless continue to preach their gospel, to Christians that seems like duplicity and hypocrisy. Not so to Muslims. They merely do what comes and is natural. According to Muslims, it is Christians who are doing the unnatural, which thus amounts to an obsession.  

However, when Muslims are busy urging folks to "revert," to other religions they are converting, while they pledged to quit. It's one of the many reasons people tend to mistrust the words of Muslim leaders. 

Concluding Remarks

Well, too late in this post to start talking about this Christian and, as other people see it, Muslim “obsession,” even though I have not yet reached the quota of 750 words. But I’ll let it go for now and come back to the subject in the next post.  This implies that the subject of “total depravity” will be pushed ahead one slot.  I think you can live with that, for it is not a very pleasant subject! No one is eager to think about that subject, let alone talk about it!  BBBRRRR! How awful!