HEADLINE: Mix of Quake Aid and Preaching Stirs Concern

BYLINE: By DAVID ROHDE; Neela Banerjee contributed reporting from Washington for
this article.

DATELINE: MORAKETIYA, Sri Lanka, Jan. 19

A dozen Americans walked into a relief camp here, showering bereft parents and
traumatized children with gifts, attention and affection. They also quietly offered
camp residents something else: Jesus.

The Americans, who all come from one church in Texas, have staged plays detailing
the life of Jesus and had children draw pictures of him, camp residents said. They
have told parents who lost children that they should still believe in God, and held
group prayers where they tried to heal a partly paralyzed man and a deaf 12year-old
girl.

The attempts at proselytizing are angering local Christian leaders, who worry that
they could provoke a violent backlash against Christians in Sri Lanka, a
predominantly Buddhist country that is already a religious tinderbox.

Last year, Buddhist hard-liners attacked the offices of the World Vision Christian
aid group and vandalized or threatened churches and pastors 75 times. They accuse
Christians of using money and social programs to cajole and coerce conversions.

Most American groups, including those affiliated with religious organizations,
strictly avoid mixing aid and missionary work. But scattered reports of
proselytizing in Sri Lanka; Indonesia, which is predominantly Muslim; and India,
with large Hindu and Muslim populations, are arousing concerns that the good will
spread by the American relief efforts may be undermined by resentment.

The Rev. Sarangika Fernando, a local Methodist minister, witnessed one of the prayer
sessions in Sri Lanka and accused the Americans of acting unethically with
traumatized people. ''They said, 'In the name of Jesus, she must be cured!''' he
said. ''As a priest, I was really upset.''

The Americans in Sri Lanka belong to the Antioch Community Church, an evangelical
church based in Waco, Tex. Two members of the church were arrested, and accused of
proselytizing, by the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2001. When the United States
invaded the country several months later, pro-American Northern Alliance forces
freed the women, who church officials say did speak with Afghans about their
personal ''relationship with Jesus.''

The Antioch Community Church is one of a growing number of evangelical groups that
believe in mixing aidgiving with discussing religion, an approach that older, more
established Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services call unethical.

In Sri Lanka, alarmed local Christian leaders say proselytizing at such a sensitive
time could reverse the grass-roots interfaith cooperation that has emerged since the
tsunami and endanger Christians, who make up 7 percent of the population. The
country also has sizable Hindu and Muslim minorities.

The Rev. Duleep Fernando, a Methodist minister based in Colombo, the capital,
brought the Americans to the camp here. Mr. Fernando said they had described
themselves as humanitarian aid workers. He and other Sri Lankan Christian leaders
say raising religion with traumatized refugees is unethical.

''We have told them this is not right, but now we don't have any control over
them,'' said Mr. Fernando, who called the group's Web site postings ''unnecessarily
explosive.''

''This is a dangerous situation,'' he said.

In Indonesia last week, reports that a missionary group named WorldHelp planned to
raise 300 Muslim tsunami orphans in a Christian children's home in Jakarta brought
an outcry from Muslims. The group later said it had never had custody of the
children.

Sri Lankan refugees, camp administrators and church officials said the Americans
here had identified themselves only as a humanitarian aid group. In an interview
here on Wednesday, Pat Murphy, 49, a leader of the team, said the group was a
nongovernmental organization, and not a church group. ''It's an NGO,'' Mr. Murphy
said. ''Just your plain vanilla NGO that does aid work.''

But the church's Web site says the Americans are one of four teams -- for a total of
75 people -- dispatched to Sri Lanka and Indonesia who have persuaded dozens of
people to ''come to Christ.''

When the group's postings were read to Mr. Murphy, he confirmed that the Americans
were from the Antioch Community Church, but said the group would never use relief
goods and gifts to entice or pressure people into becoming Christians. He denied
that the team, which sent about half its 24 members to work in the eastern town of
Kalmunai, was trying to convert people. The church has 2,000 members.

''We simply provide people with information,'' he said, ''and they do with that what
they like.''

A Jan. 18 posting from the team in Indonesia says the country's devastated Aceh
Province is ''ripe for Jesus!!''

''What an opportunity,'' it adds. ''It has been closed for five years, and the
missionaries in Indonesia consider it the most militant and difficult place for
ministry. The door is wide open and the people are hungry.''

The Rev. Jimmy Seibert, the senior pastor of the Waco church, said in a telephone
interview that the church would evaluate whether the group's members should identify
themselves as aid workers. But he said the church believes missionary work and aid
work ''is one thing, not two separate things.''

''My hope is that as a follower of Jesus they would bring who they are into the
workplace,'' he said, ''whether they are in a workplace in America or a workplace in
Sri Lanka.''

Older Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Relief and
others with religious affiliations say they do not proselytize, abiding by Red Cross
guidelines that humanitarian aid not be used to further political or religious
purposes. Ken Hackett, president of Catholic Relief Services, said that in the last
20 years there had been an increase of smaller Christian evangelical groups
providing relief aid in the wake of disaster.

''I think there are new groups that are driven by missionary zeal,'' Mr. Hackett
said. In the last several weeks, Mr. Hackett said, his group has received anecdotal
reports of proselytizing in countries devastated by the tsunami.

''From our partners in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia we've heard that there have
been instances when American and other Christian groups have been proselytizing and
casting aspersions on the faith of people there,'' he said. ''Some of these groups
raise questions about other faiths, saying that people would be better off if they
converted to Christianity immediately.''

Several American evangelical aid groups have arrived in Sri Lanka, but no reports of
proselytizing by those groups have emerged, according to Sri Lankan church
officials. The Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, visited
Sri Lanka this week to encourage the workers of his evangelical aid organization,
Samaritan's Purse, who plan to work in Sri Lanka for the next five years.

Other American evangelical aid groups, including Gospel for Asia and World Relief,
are active on the country's devastated east coast, according to Sri Lankan and
American aid workers.

Members of Mr. Graham's group said they did not engage in proselytizing, but said if
local Christians wanted to build a church they would help them. Officials from World
Relief, the aid wing of the National Association of Evangelicals, have said in
interviews that they try to first build trust with local people and then look for
opportunities for conversions, in some cases years later.

More evangelical groups are apparently on their way. A message posted on the Web
site of the Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell says the school he founded, Liberty
University, is preparing to send a team to Sri Lanka, India and other countries
battered by the tsunami.

''Distribution of food and medical supplies along with the dissemination of
thousands of Gospel tracts in the language of the people will keep the L.U. team
very busy,'' the Web site says. ''Mission trips to the Asian region by many L.U.
students will follow in the months, and perhaps years, to come.''

Ron Godwin, president of Jerry Falwell Ministries, confirmed that the Liberty
Foundation was organizing a shipment of rice, medication and Scriptural excerpts,
but said the primary goal of the effort was relief, not proselytizing. ''Everything
we do is in the name of Christ,'' he said. ''But we try to be sensitive in areas
where it may be politically sensitive, and we have no litmus test for those we give
rice to.''

According to the Waco church group's Web site, its teams in Sri Lanka and Indonesia
are performing ''children's ministry,'' seeing ''many people saved'' and continuing
to ''minister to families and children through prayer and evangelism.''

According to its Web site, the congregation uses small groups called ''cell
churches'' to attract new members. The reports from Indonesia and Sri Lanka refer to
''cells'' and ''lifegroups'' in both countries.

Residents of the camp here reported no healings as a result of the group's prayers.
But they said they appreciated the aid and activities for children that the group
provided and did not want to see them end.

Organizers in a nearby camp have declared the Americans missionaries and barred them
from entering. Camp organizers here said they believed that the group was trying to
convert people, but did not want to further upset the tsunami victims by cutting off
the aid.

W.L.P. Wilson, 38, a disabled fisherman with a sixth-grade education, said he
allowed the Americans to pray three times for the healing of his paralyzed lower leg
because he was desperate to provide for his wife and three children again. Mr.
Wilson, a Buddhist, said that he believed that the Americans were trying to convert
him to Christianity but that he was in ''a helpless situation now'' and needed aid.

''They told me to always think about God and about Jesus and you will be healed,''
he said. ''Whenever I ask for help they always mention God, but they do not give any
money for treatment.''

and reaction

The poisonwood problem
by David Batstone

A front-page story in The New York Times this week raised a red flag about evangelical relief groups in Asia who are mixing tsunami relief work and proselytizing. While many mainstream, faith-based agencies abide by Red Cross guidelines that humanitarian aid not be used to further political or religious ends, some mission groups happily pass along gospel tracts with food and medicine.

Honestly, I don't know where to begin as I lay out a response to this controversy. I did run an economic and social development agency in Central America for more than a decade, and we were explicitly faith-based. A majority of our local partners were Catholic and evangelical churches that offered programs such as community micro-credit, innovative agricultural skills development, literacy (often linked to study of the Bible), and children's nutrition. But then and now, talking about humanitarian aid and spiritual motivation trips land mines for different segments of the general public.

A healthy slice of New York Times readers are appalled, I am sure, that religious groups were leading the charge to provide aid to the victims of the quake/tsunami in South Asia. For some secularists, all religious people who establish a mission for humanitarian aid overseas are typecast into the 1950s characters of Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Poisonwood Bible. At best, the characters are ignorant of the local culture, and at worst downright manipulative, with the missionary considering charity a foil to convert the needy "natives."

It's time for secularists with these stereotypes in mind to catch up with reality. There's a broad range of spiritually motivated relief agencies - Catholic Charities, Church World Service, Mennonite Central Committee, Jesuit Refugee Services, Lutheran World Relief, just to name a few of the Christian ones - that understand their mission as helping humans in their time of suffering. Period. Their approach is that such acts alone are the _expression of love, compassion, and justice to which they feel called.

To be sure, there are some mission organizations - particularly in evangelical churches - that bear out Kingsolver's typecast. I was raised throughout childhood in an evangelical church, so I know well the mentality of her missionary characters. When I was carrying out my work in Latin America, more than a few old family friends asked me why I "was wasting my time" on projects that aimed to effect real social change or stimulate long-term economic development. In their eyes, that was "social welfare" work more properly relegated to secularists. The work of a faith-based agency should be, in their eyes, propagation of the Christian message and winning converts. After all, as one friend reasoned with me, if the Latin Americans you work with are not saved and have to spend an eternity in hell, your projects accomplish nothing.

It is the explicit intent of some evangelical aid groups to view aid as stage one of a longer conversion strategy. Once the recipient experiences the mercy of the organization, they perhaps will be more open to receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ and be baptized into the church.

But, by and large, most evangelical missions organizations have become a bit more cautious in the way they mix evangelization and material assistance. In other words, it is rare to find a group that requires an individual to sit through a sermon in order to get a meal.

Two very different theologies - how God exists in the world, if you will - undergird these distinct approaches to humanitarian assistance.

The Kingsolver-esque "food in exchange for your soul" agencies understand redemption to be a purely spiritual transaction. In their theology, this world has fallen into evil and is beyond redemption. The work of Christians is to preach a personal message that salvation from this fallen world is available to any individual who will make a decision to follow Christ. If people remain Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, or of a more local faith, they are destined for hell. In this worldview, it is easy to judge the sinner and point their way toward salvation.

If you saw the world this way, wouldn't your compassionate choice be to do everything possible to save the people of the world? Providing humanitarian assistance in a time of crisis would be an effective way to gain people's trust so that they would hear your message. This, in essence, is the ethos of the proselytizing aid agency.

That is not how I experience God in the world, or understand God's calling me to a vocation of service. Along with most Christians who are operating in humanitarian assistance internationally, I experience God calling people to act with love and justice wherever we find suffering.

When we stand in those places, we intensely experience God, working with us and through us - and at times in spite of us - to bring moments of redemption where there is brokenness. Spiritual practice so conceived throws us into acts of re-uniting what has been torn apart, confronting evil with goodness, and showing love where there is hatred. We do not judge, lest we be judged. We aim to embrace. We are simply invited to join in God's presence, and where it takes us - or those whom we serve - we rarely know. Our faith is hope in things not yet fully seen, yet we are confident in the path before us.