It's not a crusade ... no wait, it is

In a story that's probably already pinned up on the al Qaeda HQ bulletin board, Thursday's Washington Post (reprinted in Friday's Wall Street Journal) reports on how the composition of Iraqi Christianity is being radically altered by the war. The traditional eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches are being displaced by western Evangelicals, who have been seeking converts from the other Christian churches but also from Muslims. Which is really just what the Iraqi civil war needs right now.

One thing that emerges from the story is an issue that George Bush and Karl Rove have managed to disguise in the domestic context: that these are branches of Protestantism who have no respect for the traditional Catholic Church:

In interviews, Delly and Sleiman [Catholic and Chaldean bishops] were torn between their belief in religious freedom and the threat they see from the new evangelicalism. They also expressed anger and resentment at what they perceive as the evangelicals' assumption that members of old-line denominations are not true Christians.

"If we are not Christians, you should tell us so we will find the right path," Delly said sarcastically. "I'm not against the evangelicals. If they go to an atheist country to promote Christ, we would help them ourselves."

Even juicier quotes come from Robert Fetherlin, vice president for international ministries at Colorado-based Christian and Missionary Alliance. Yes, in these stories about evangelising reactionary churches, there's always a Colorado angle. Anyway:

"We're not trying to coerce people to follow Christ," he said. "But we want to at least communicate to people who He is. We feel very encouraged by the possibility for people in Iraq to have the freedom to make choices about what belief system they want to buy into."

His marketing terminology reveals a complete lack of understanding of the cultural context of religion, though it fits nicely with Dubya pulling a new self-religiosity off the shelf about the time that his political ambitions started to kick in. And Fetherlin's formulation leaves the door wide open for proselytising. Since the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are always in the mood for analogies to British colonial history, we suggest reading up on the background to the Indian Mutiny to decide if having freelance evangelicals running around Iraq is a good idea.

[Previous entry in this series]