The Southern Baptists are getting it from all sides recently.

Monday, January 24, 2000

The Southern Baptists are getting it from all sides recently. Every time they announce yet another evangelistic thrust or outreach project, officials or outspoken members of some other groups complain of unfairness or even civil rights violations. Almost all religions embrace conversion efforts as a doctrine and must, in logic and fairness, accept conversion appeals made to its own members by other religions. That some religions do not much practice their doctrine of conversion does not justify their complaints, but may simply betray a snobbish and selfish social irresponsibility.

The evangelism program of the Southern Baptist Convention has announced its intention to send 100,000 volunteers to Chicago this summer in an effort to saturate the area with its message. In reaction, a coalition of Jewish, Roman Catholic and liberal protestants angrily issued a public challenge. You have no right to come here, they say. Now, I can appreciate how breathtaking it is for these groups to envision 100,000 Southern Baptist descending on them within a short span of time. Yet, Chicago would welcome 100,000 sports fans for a Super Bowl game. Perhaps they should stand in awe that any church could mobilize such a host for any effort. Perhaps they should respect this. Perhaps they are resentfully jealous.

The Southern Baptist Convention met in Salt Lake City in 1998, and the Mormons complained about their having been prepared to dialog with Mormons. Jewish leaders regularly object to the idea that Jews can remain Jewish and also become Christian believers. Most recently, Moslems and Hindus have condemned the Prayer Guides that make suggestions on praying for members of those religions.

Southern Baptist Missions officials tell me the Chicago effort is to recruit volunteers specifically to do community service and that evangelism is incidental to that. They say most of their evangelism is aimed broadly at anyone with whom they come in contact.

What these objecting groups may find especially unsettling is that the Southern Baptists sometimes target particular groups and that they are skillfully organized and shockingly successful. Finally, they come trained in methods and informed of the beliefs and professed beliefs of the target groups.

What can be more humiliating than a Southern Baptist quoting the Hebrew scriptures to a Reform Jew who hasn’t bothered to read them in English translation? How disturbing it is to a Catholic when a Southern Baptist quotes Roman Catholic theology to him of which he had never heard.

Southern Baptists – of whom, by the way, I am not one – often impress me by their confidence, but sometimes disappoint me with a characteristic presumptuousness. Individuals impress me with their zeal, but at times confuse methodological aggressiveness with gospel assertiveness. There have been times when I wondered if they aren’t as interested in making Southern Baptists as Christians. That they have a right to engage in evangelistic efforts and seek to evangelize others is, however, beyond question. There might be valid criticism of excesses, but the right to evangelism is above criticism.

Some objecting groups state they themselves never reach outside parochial confines to offer their faith and belief to anyone and, therefore, the Southern Baptist ought not to do so. Shame on them. If the faith of these groups is at all meaningful to it members, they must believe it would become meaningful to the millions longing for some meaning in their meaningless existence. If their faith is sterile and impotent, they need the Southern Baptists.

The religious freedom, for which thousands fled Europe to found this country, by definition provides for evangelism, i.e., the right to testify to ones faith and invite others to join ones faith. If Southern Baptists are not allowed freedom to exercise their faith by evangelism, they do not have American freedom. If Southern Baptists do not have freedom, there is no freedom because its definition has been destroyed by intolerance.

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays