I wonder how things worked out for these folks?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,443800,00.html

Interview: Missionary Work in Iraq

Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2003

As the war in Iraq moves into its next phase, Christian missionaries are moving forward with their own battle plans: to distribute humanitarian aid and spread the gospel to the region's Muslims. TIME's Broward Liston spoke with Albert Mohler, the boyish president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S., about the challenges facing missionaries venturing into potentially hostile territory:

To many, the image of American missionaries lining the Iraq- Jordan border, preparing to distribute food, clothing, tents and medical supplies as soon as the shooting dies down, looks eerily like a second invasion. Or at least a profoundly destabilizing force, an army prepared to act on the inflammatory words lobbed between evangelical Christian ministers and anti-American Muslim clerics.

That's a false impression, says Albert Mohler. The missionaries, he says, whose aim is partly humanitarian, see themselves as part of a tradition dating back 2000 years, to the mission that brought Jesus to Jerusalem. It was a journey that provoked unrest, frightened authority and led Christ to the cross, but ultimately, Christians believe, delivered a life-saving message to the world.

Much of the (real or potential) tension facing missionaries, he says, arises out secular thinkers' and Christians' opposing views on religious conversion. "The secular world tends to look at Islam as a function of ethnicity," says Mohler, "which means seeking to convert these people to Christianity is an insult to them. But Christianity is a trans-ethnic faith, which understands that Christianity is not particular to or captured by any ethnicity, but seeks to reach all persons.

"The secular world tends to look at Iraq and say, well, it's Muslim, and that's just a fact, and any Christian influence would just be a form of Western imperialism. The Christian has to look at Iraq and see persons desperately in need of the gospel. Compelled by the love and command of Christ, the Christian will seek to take that gospel in loving and sensitive, but very direct, ways to the people of Iraq."

[mmonk]

1. They are so Alice in Wonderland. It's sad

to be so lost intellectually.

[dkofos]

2. Christians are a brave and ignorant people.

[Waya]

3. Sheeeesh.............

The Christian has to look at Iraq and see persons desperately in need of the gospel. Compelled by the love and command of Christ, the Christian will seek to take that gospel in loving and sensitive, but very direct, ways to the people of Iraq."

Hmmm......that sounds so eerily familiar......I guess old habits die hard....

[canetoad]

4. Actually

the christian DOES NOT have to look at Iraq.....etc.

Fucking grandstanding.

[Waya]

6. Well, so the article says..... that Christians have to look at Iraq..etc...

Christians never miss an opportunity to cram their beliefs down someone's throat - for the last 2000 years they have been at it - and apparently it will never change........

[AndyTiedye]

5. I Think They're More Concerned About a Tradition Going Back About 1000 Years

[NNN0LHI]

7. The godly Mr. Mohler is a torturer. I would have never guessed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Albert_Mohler,_Jr.

Torture

On December 20, 2005, Mohler addressed the problem of whether torture should be used by American military forces in order to gain important information from terrorist suspects. He spoke out against any form of legal codification of torture but stated the following:

Under certain circumstances, most morally sensitive persons would surely allow interrogators to yell at prisoners and to use psychological intimidation, sleep deprivation, and the removal of creature comforts for purposes of obtaining vital information. In increasingly serious cases, most would likely allow some use of pharmaceuticals and more intensive and manipulative psychological techniques. In the most extreme of conceivable cases, most would also allow the use of far more serious mechanisms of coercion – even what we would all agree should be labeled as torture.

...I would argue that we cannot condone torture by codifying a list of exceptional situations in which techniques of torture might be legitimately used. At the same time, I would also argue that we cannot deny that there could exist circumstances in which such uses of torture might be made necessary.

...We are simply not capable, I would argue, of constructing a set of principles and rules for torture that could adequately envision the real-life scenarios under which the pressure and temptation to use extreme coercion would be seriously contemplated.

(Torture and the War on Terror: We Must Not Add Dirty Rules to Dirty Hands - www.albertmohler.com)