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!  

Post 98—Long on Freedom Talk

An International Multifaith Conference

Some time ago the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Vatican held a joint conference to find a common code for religious conversions.  First, a word of identification. I believe we all know that the Vatican is the Rome-based headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC).  You may not be familiar with WCC. It is a group of nearly 350 denominations that include Reformed, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical churches and only God and WCC know who else. 27 persons attended the conference, including adherents of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Animism as represented by the Yoruba tradition. So, a small group as far as world conferences go, with the Christian organizers having a mere scant majority.

As I understand it, they made two major decisions. The first, is freedom of religion, officially already a recognized a non-negotiable throughout the world, though the practice falls far short of the official. The second, to go easy on converting others. As the report put it, “All should heal themselves from the obsession of converting others.” 

Freedom of Religion?

          Non-Christian Persecution of Christians

As to the first, insisting on freedom of religion is great. It is virtually a global mantra. But then what do you do in a world where Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims in particular deny Christians their freedom in scores of countries?  Buddhism and Hinduism are traditional tolerant religions that in the past gave Christians and Muslims freedom to practice their religion. But recently they have become increasingly intolerant of especially Christians and Muslims.  One of these days I will devote a few posts to illustrate the truth of this last sentence. In general, wherever these traditionally tolerant religions find themselves threatened by either Christians or Muslims, they become intolerant and oppressive; they even begin to persecute, destroy and kill.

As to persecution of Christians by Muslims, do you even need to be made aware of that?  It’s all over the map, not only in the Muslim-dominant countries, regions and societies, but even in the West, though sometimes there indirectly through their willing lackeys, some of whom are very powerful, but politically correct  people who glad hand Muslims and refuse to face the Muslim reality in their own Western countries. Geert Wilders is perhaps the most (in)famous Westerner who tries to awake sleeping secular Europeans to this reality. The fact that he often does this in a totally blunt and politically incorrect manner does not mean he is totally wrong in his major concern. In Canada we have our own Ezra Levant.

          Christians Persecuting Christians

And then I have not even mentioned the freedom that Christians in some countries deny other Christians! This takes place in some Orthodox societies, where the dominant church resists the incursion of Evangelical Christians—in Greece and Russia in particular. Now there maybe some semi-legitimate reasons for such resistance, such as Evangelical, often American, disrespect for local deep-rooted historical churches and their leaders. Nevertheless, the principal of freedom of religion stands and may not be undermined by perhaps disgusting or insulting behaviour on the part of outside challengers.  I can well imagine that fundamentalist foreign missionaries can present a serious problem among these Orthodox churches, but that must be solved within the range of religious freedom, not by curtailing it.

A parallel situation obtains in Roman Catholic Latin America, where all strands of Protestants have established missions, churches and institutions, especially Charismatics.  The members of these new churches mostly are drawn from the RCC. So, no wonder the RCC resists them, sometimes in whatever way they can.

We can even make the same point about secular countries and quite a few of my posts speak of secular resistance to full-orbed Christians. However, secularists were not invited to this conference. So, in this post I will leave them alone. 

 

A Grain of Salt

So, here sit these religious leaders with all their wisdom and pomposity, robes and mitres and hats and staffs and all. Very impressive. All of them piously affirming and insisting on religious freedom for all their people, while at home they support and possibly even engineer intolerance and persecution of the very faiths with whom they have signed for tolerance in this conference.

I always take the declarations and communiqués  of such conferences with less than a grain of salt, knowing that many of the signers do so hypocritically. I have taken part in similar conferences between Christians and Muslim in Nigeria and understand the dynamic. The participants use the same language but interpret it in terms of their own religion and, often secretly, exercise the right to hold the declaration they signed in reserve.

The next post will deal with the alleged obsession.

The website of the WCC is  www.oikoumene.org/