"But with gentleness and respect": Why missions should be ruled by ethics - An Evangelical Perspective on a Code of Ethics for Christian Witness
Thomas Schirrmacher
Mission corrupted
"The First Book of Common Prayer" of the Anglican (Episcopal) Church, authorized in 1549, says in its liturgy:
"There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted."
This is even true of Christian mission, of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, the "Prince of peace". This is why, for example, the Pope apologized to the Jews and to scientistsi for using force against them in history, instead of trying to listen to them, convince them by good argument, and live peacefully together with them.
The international Lausanne Covenant' of 1974, probably the most influential Evangelical document in existence, not surprisingly calls heartily for mission, nevertheless states in article 12:
"At other times, desirous to ensure a response to the gospel, we have compromised our message, manipulated our hearers through pressure techniques, and become unduly preoccupied with statistics or even dishonest in our use of them. All this is worldly. The Church must be in the world; the world must not be in the Church."
Article 13 therefore sees the peace of a country as an important matter:
"It is the God-appointed duty of every government to secure conditions of peace, justice and liberty in which the Church may obey God, serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and preach the gospel without interference."
I am very sorry, as is the World Evangelical Alliance, (WEA) for any case, in which evangelicals, especially those connected with the 140 national Evangelical Alliances, have put undue pressure on other people to call them to conversion or have violated human rights in the name of mission. Evangelicals love the Bible and by using unethical means of evangelism, those who have used such methods were disobedient to God's word, as the First letter of Peter commands:
"But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak badly against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil." (1 Peter 3:15-17)
Even though the WEA and the national alliances often do not have the influence on their members they would wish to have and surely have no influence on the millions of other evangelicals, who even refuse to go together with the international evangelical bodies, the WEA is willing to use its influence in any way possible to ensure that mission stays away from any misuse of people and never violates their human rights and dignity.
1 Peter 3:15-17
Let me return to 1 Peter 3 to give my ideas a biblical foundation. Here you find a complementarity of the necessity of witness, even apologetics (the Greek texts says apologia', originally defense in a court) on the one side, and respect for the dignity of the other human being in "gentleness and respect" on the other side. The dignity of man does not lead us to hide our hope, but to clearly state, explain, and even defend it, but the clear answers to questions with a bad intent can never allow us to destroy the dignity of the people with whom we are talking. Both sides are complementary, as both are an inevitable essence of our faith.
Christians see others always as images of God, even if they totally disagree with them. In Christianity, their human rights do not stem from being Christians, but from being men and women, as God created all people and created them equal. There are religions, which only accept human rights for their own adherents, but Christians defend even the human rights of their enemies - and pray for them and love them.
At a time, when especially Islamicists pour violence on many Christians and in which Hindu or Buddhist nationalists go against Christians and others in countries like India or Sri Lanka, it would be easy just to point to the others. But the Christian faith is very self critical - the Old and New Testaments mainly criticise the people of God and not other people. We do want to say with the Pharisee in Christ's example: "God, I thank you, that I am not like the others", but we need to say like the tax collector, who said: "God, have mercy on me, a sinner" (from Luke 18:11-13). So our first question as Christians is not: What do others do, but, as Peter's letter says, even in the middle of false accusations: Are we gentle and full of respect to our fellow human beings, to whom we try to explain our hope and faith?
I know that many of the delegates - Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental and Protestants alike - come from countries where Christians are under much pressure from a State religion or by politically extreme wings of religions, like those from Algeria, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal or Myanmar. But even as we do not want to hide any crimes in the name of religion, your testimonies show, how important it is and what a testimony it is when we do not pay back but want to react Christ-like to pressure, violence and even martyrdom.
Why Evangelicals?
Evangelicals always have been highly dedicated to religious freedom, including the religious freedom of non-evangelical churches. When in the middle of the 19th century, pastors of state churches and independent churches in Europe started to meet across borders, thus forming the earliest ecumenical movement, religious freedom in Europe, where religion was still often compulsory, was one of their major goals. In 1852 e.g., a high ranking delegation of the Evangelical Alliance visited the Ottoman sultan on behalf of persecuted Orthodox churches and in this tradition today well equipped evangelical religious freedom lawyers have run and won cases in the European Court for Human Rights for several non-protestant churches, like the Bessarabian Church or the Greek Orthodox Church. The orthodox churches in Turkey as well as the dying old churches in Iraq today find their greatest help in evangelical organizations, as evangelicals heavily use international media, but also - as in the case of Germany - the help of parliament and governments.
The estimates for the number of evangelicals range from 300 to 700 million; the WEA seeks to serve a global constituency of 420 million. These evangelicals seem to be more often in the middle of the problems, when it comes to confrontations between non-Christian religions and Christianity, and even within Christianity. Why is this so? What does the professor of sociology of religion in me say self-critically about the movement to which I belong?
1. Evangelical groups overall have the highest percentage of Christians who come from a non-Christian background and become Christians as adults or at least as teenagers. Only among sects like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses are there sometimes higher percentages of first generation adherents. The evangelical movement is rapidly growing in Africa and Asia (primarily through the witness of Africans and Asians) and producing a lot of Christians with no local or general history of peaceful interaction within the culture. In Turkey for example, 95% of all evangelicals are converts from Islam. Of course they draw much more attention and threats than the historic churches, which often have paid for their existence the price of never intervening with the rest of the population.
2. Evangelical groups seldom represent old autochthon churches. There are no Evangelical' countries like there are Catholic, Orthodox, or Lutheran countries. Even though they make up hundreds of millions, Evangelicals are not the major religious grouping in any country of the world, perhaps with the exception of Guatemala.
3. Many evangelical groups have large branches within traditional and mainline churches. This is the reason why the WEA probably has half of its adherents within the mainline churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and half of it in churches outside the WCC. The evangelicals tend to be very active church members and stir up much more discussion in the denominations, hopefully often for the good, but sometimes for the bad.
4. Evangelical groups often have an Anglo-Saxon background and transport the American idea of total freedom of speech and press and total freedom for the individual, as well as less respect for old traditional structures and cultures. But as American evangelicals make up only 8% of all evangelicals in the world, this is rapidly changing.
Religious Freedom in its modern form - not the anti-religious and violent form of the French revolution - but the modern, peaceful form, was, so to speak, invented' by Baptist Roger Williams at the end of the 17th century in Providence - Prof. Gary Colpepper from Providence College is among us. We are glad about this start, but not all countries are prepared for the form of religious freedom that America, Canada or Australia have long practised. Christian Western Germany, for example, adopted this kind of religious freedom only in 1949 and even then it was only gradually really accepted by churches and people. And some forms of freedom of speech in the USA even concern Europeans and European Christians.
5. Evangelicals mostly have a very flat hierarchy and non-denominational bodies like the WEA have moral authority but no direct means to get bad sheep to change. (Of course that is no different from the WCC.) As the Bible and the emphasis on a very personal decision for one's faith hold the movement together, the WEA has its major authority through theological teaching and exposition of the Bible, which show that certain things are unethical in light of Divine revelation.
6. Evangelicals recently are very much driven by the enthusiasm of the Majority World (Two-Third World'), no longer by the Western type of religion.
Asia has become one of the big centers of Christianity and the leading one in absolute numbers. South Korea is second only in number of missionaries in all the world to the USA - be it Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical or Pentecostal missionaries, and India and China have each more fulltime and lay evangelists within their countries from all Christian branches than any other countries. And if the vast growing number of Catholics and Evangelicals eager to evangelize China and the whole world get political freedom to do so, this development will rapidly speed up.
The large Christian bodies, whose hierarchies are still often dominated by Western people, cannot just tell Christians in Africa and Asia how they should behave. Only together with their enthusiasm for Christ, their deep spiritual life, and their theological and academic insight, can we find good ways for the future.
On the other hand, evangelical groups are very highly dedicated to defending religious liberty worldwide and are rarely involved as a party in civil wars, and are not connected with terror groups in any way. This should be honored more by other groups!
In countries like Sri Lanka or the historic Catholic islands in Indonesia, there is no longer much difference between the pressure on new evangelical churches and those Catholic and Orthodox churches, who have been there for centuries.
One of the founders of the German Evangelical Alliance, Theodor Christlieb, professor of practical theology and mission at Bonn University, fought for years at the International Alliance conference, using a book in several languages discussed in the British parliament and other means, against the Indo-British opium trade. He did so because he saw it as both immoral politics and an immoral way of doing mission, and a wrong mixture of presenting the gospel by using political and military pressure.ii There are many similar examples which show that Evangelicals have a history of being aware of unethical means of spreading the Christian faith.
From WEA perspectives
Let me add some words from the specific perspective of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA).
We need to agree on a code of acceptable conduct in the spreading of the Christian Gospel and what conduct needs to be banned, such as inducing people to convert by bribing them, using harassment, threats or political force, robbing children from their parents or lying about one's own faith. From our point of view these are universal principles and a code should not be directed solely against Evangelicals and Pentecostals (which is a branch of Evangelicalism). As Evangelicals and Pentecostals carry out a great part of all Christian missions, if we want to pursue the black sheep within Evangelicalism
/Pentecostalism we will only succeed if the wording of any Code is acceptable to the WEA constituency as a whole. Otherwise Evangelicals will rightly say: "This is one of the long list of statements against Evangelicals". To be frank, many Evangelicals have often had the impression that any warning against proselytism' is actually a veto against any evangelism or at least against evangelism by evangelicals, by not differentiating between the many different evangelical groups. In the past it has seemed as if only evangelicals made mistakes in evangelism.
I do not say this to accuse anybody, but to ask you to give us a chance to be involved and to ask you to understand how we can win over Evangelical black sheep' to adhere to acceptable modes of evangelism. In the same way as the Catholic church has moved away from using politics as a means to safeguard or expand the church, so evangelicalism has its own developments leading to our being part of this meeting, and I hope we all are willing to distinguish between the groups meeting here in general, and certain of their wings that create problems in their own bodies as well as with outsiders.
WEA and Evangelicals in general are very upset about what some American tele-evangelists say from time to time about other religions, such as turmoil in countries like the recent turmoil in India. Think, for example, of Pat Robertson's statement that all Muslims should leave the USA, which was a headline on many major Indian newspapers next day, arguing that if Christians want Muslims to leave their' country, why do they object if Hindus want Christians to leave India! I just happened to be in India that day and was shocked. This was a good example of a bad mixture of evangelism and party politics with a very strange and unfeasible political idea.
I also ask all churches and branches of Christianity to stand together against violent attacks by others. The growing attacks in e.g., India and Sri Lanka, with anti-conversion laws against Catholics and Evangelicals at the same time, should be answered together and not by pointing to another Christian confession's fault. If there are faults, and most often they are on all sides, we need to find ways to discuss them among ourselves, not through public press accusations and statements.
In countries like Malaysia or India, the Catholic Church, the National Councils of Churches, and the National Evangelical Alliance have already formed joint umbrella organizations, that can speak to the State with one Christian voice and can help to stand together in the middle of persecution.iii
I propose, in order to get around the whole topic of theological and ecumenical pitfalls, that we keep this strictly a discussion leading to a written code of conduct, where Christians see the borderline between acceptable missions protected by religious freedom and undue forms of trying to call people to conversion, especially through economic and political means. We, then, as the whole body of the largest world religion, could ask other world religions not to follow our code, but to agree on and write a code for and with themselves, setting aside any problem of syncretism among religions and setting aside the problem of Christians needing to agree somehow on missions to non-Christians.
An ethical code
Improvements in recent Christian history
But let me now leave speaking specifically to evangelicalism and turn to our common task.
Changing one's religion - and the political unrest following it - is not a new phenomenon, but a very historic one, be it famous people like Augustine, be it whole continents (e.g., Southeast Asia to Buddhism, Europe to Christianity or Northern Africa and the Near East to Islam) and it has often played a central role in local and world politics.
In Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist societies not changing one's religion was very often more due to the pressure of culture and surroundings, than due to conviction. In history, probably more people were forced to change their religion or to stay in their own religion, than there were people, who freely and knowledgably chose or kept their religion.
In most of the past centuries Christians were often, like most Muslims are today, demanding that other people leave their religion and convert, but not allowing to leave one's own religion, be it Christianity or Islam, punishing apostasy with all kinds of civil results, from losing family, civil rights, reputation and jobs to losing one's life.
We experienced and still experiencing the end of the Constantinian era, which includes the end of safeguarding Christianity by means of the Caesar and forcing people into the church by political, juridical, economical and other civil pressures. Most Christians feel this is not a catastrophe but an advantage. The Christian faith again can live by spiritual means and through the power of the Holy Spirit, and does not need the help of the worldly powers, be it armies, governments or business.
In the overall picture, Christianity and its churches as a whole have taken the right course in the last hundred years, abstaining more and more from violence, from being involved in wars or civil wars, and from using political means or economical pressure for missions. I do not say that there are not still some bad situations, but if you compare the year 2007 and roughly a century ago, today bad situations like Northern Ireland or the so-called Christian terrorist organisation National Liberation Front' (NLFT) in Northeast India or the Nagaland rebels are at the fringe of Christianity, and the churches or Christians involved are criticised by the vast majority of Christians or churches worldwide, while e.g., in the First World War in Europe many major churches fuelled the war and gave their authority to European countries involved in war as well as in the whole colonial world. Praise God, there no longer is a broad acceptance of violence in propagating its own message in the Christian world. There is just the opposite development as in Islam, where the Islamicist's acceptance of violence to conquer the world makes inroads into the Muslim community even where they lived peacefully with other groups for centuries.
The forced conversion of the Saxons by the German emperor or the Goa inquisition in India are mainly history, and we Christians are glad, because they belong to the darkest pages of church history. Today millions become Christians every day, who do not come from a Christian background, but do so by pure conviction without any pressure. More people are converting to Christianity than at any time when Christians allowed violent expansion to corrupt its message. What the gun boats of Western colonial powers did not achieve in China, the gospel message achieves nowadays without outside help.
Nowadays it is more the Christian community that suffers hard persecution in certain countries and areas and the number of martyrs is growing daily. Virtually all Christian' or former Christian countries grant religious freedom to all religions, while the number of "non-Christian countries" that do not grant the same rights to Christian churches is still high.
The arguments for anti-conversion laws in some states of India (three since the 60s and 70s, some more just recently) and in Sri Lanka are mainly in vain.iv Besides true or half true historic examples and the devastations by liberation armies with a background in Christian areas the examples they quote do not stand the test of research or belong to the area of conspiracy theories, e.g., Christian missionaries bringing deadly bacteria to Brazilian tribes.
If we want to fight the persecution of Christians, if we want to fight for the right to testify to our faith and practise it in public, we should start even more to ban any means of practising our faith and witness which violates the human rights of others! And we should ban them together.
Holding the next generation to one's religion?
We have to see that worldwide developments do not make things easier. Globalisation will lead to an ever growing meeting or confrontation between religions, from the private level up to world politics, whether it be peaceful and fruitful, or whether it be senseless or harmful. A higher percentage of the world population changes their religious affiliation every year than ever before. There are three major reasons for this.
1. Children today often change the profession, life style and music of their parents, even move to totally different places or countries, and many feel less and less obliged to follow the traditions of their forefathers. A growing number of orphans or displaced people even have no chance to get to know their parents' culture and home. In the Western countries parents have to pay for their children's education, even if they do not like the professions their children choose. What started in the West makes inroads into one country and culture after the next.
Religion is no exception here and it can hardly be made the only exception.v In the Western world it is just normal that children change religion and political orientation. In other regions of the world statistically this phenomenon is on the rise and often meets cultures that are totally unprepared and experience this as a shock.
2. Globalisation including radio, TV and internet confronts every adherent of a specific religion at least in theory with all the many other religions in the world, while 100 years ago the vast majority of the world's population never got into contact with the message of another religion or another confession in their whole lifetime!
3. In a democracy there is religious freedom and religious pluralism. That normally helps small religious communities without any political influence more than the majority religions, who in pre-democratic times often could rely on the help of politics and civil society for at least subtle pressure of the whole culture to stay with the religion in which one was born. Especially in democracies many young people choose their favourite religion as they choose their favourite music style or even cell phone company and have no grasp what major impact this has for society, culture and tradition. In Eastern Europe many churches and religious groups are experiencing this more and more since 1989 and for many it is like a thief in the night.
The human rights revolution protecting religious freedom has brought about a religious balkanization and a growing war for souls, which all kinds of anti conversion laws have often tried to stop- usually with no real results.
What we need to achieve as Christians is - from my point of view - the combination of a clear YES to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and to prayer, that the Holy Spirit convinces the heart of people, with a clear NO to unethical ways of doing it, ways that go against the command and the spirit of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
From Lariano to Toulouse
The inter-faith reflection on "Conversion: Assessing the Reality", met at Lariano (Italy) on May 12-16, 2006. 27 people, representing Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and the Yoruba religion agreed that a code of conduct for propagating one's own faith should be achieved. The meeting was organised by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Vatican City, and the Office on Interreligious Relations & Dialogue of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, and was supposed to be the first phase of a three phase process.
The first meeting was supposed to be an inter-faith meeting discussing the whole project in general and give a chance to listen to the complaints of people of four non-Christian religions. The second meeting, which was prepared by a small group meeting January 11-12, 2007 in Geneva, was supposed to be a larger meeting of all branches of Christianity (though some other faiths could be present as observers to bridge the process from the first to the third phase), trying to achieve the text of a code of conduct. The third phase will be more of an inter-faith meeting again, trying to enlarge the idea of a code of conduct to all religious groups as far as they are willing to get involved.
In my opinion the central result of Lariano is in the following two paragraphs.
"Freedom of religion is a fundamental, inviolable and non-negotiable right of every human being in every country in the world. Freedom of religion connotes the freedom, without any obstruction, to practise one's own faith, freedom to propagate the teachings of one's faith to people of one's own and other faiths, and also the freedom to embrace another faith out of one's own free choice." (Report Lariano 2006, no. 2)
"We affirm that while everyone has a right to invite others to an understanding of their faith, it should not be exercised by violating other's rights and religious sensibilities." (Report Lariano 2006, no. 3)
The theme of the second phase was agreed to be "Towards an ethical approach to conversion: Christian witness in a multi-religious world". Thus the main task will be to fill in the details to thesis no. 6 of the Lariano Report: "A particular reform that we would commend to practitioners and establishments of all faiths is to ensure that conversion by unethical' means is discouraged and rejected by one and all. There should be transparency in the practice of inviting others to one's faith." (Lariano Report 2006, no. 6)
The theme "Towards an ethical approach to conversion: Christian witness in a multi-religious world" clarifies two things:
1. The second phase is an intra-Christian phase.
The idea is that Christians first of all find a code of conduct among themselves and are willing to bind themselves in applying it also in their relations with other religions. If even Christians are unable to find a peaceful way of doing missions among each other in a way that respects the human dignity and rights of others, how could it be found among the different religions?
But if Christians can find a code of conduct, it could bring encouragement to other world religions to find a code of conduct among their own branches and finally those codes could be compared and possibly built into a code of conduct for all religions.
Christians should start with a self-obligation, not to make a deal with other religions, but because they want to act morally right and Christ-like, and possible mistakes of others do not give them the right to act unethically.
If Christians agree to a code of conduct, they can also start to put it into practise among their own followers. Often local Christians groups - e.g., Catholic or Evangelical - will not always listen to their representatives on a world level (eg the Vatican or the World Evangelical Alliance), but a code would be a good starting point for discussion and hopefully put a lot of moral pressure on Christians who combine mission with unnecessary offense to people, or with unethical economic and political pressure.
2. The second phase has a practical and ethical goal, not a mainly theological one.
From my point of view, it should not be the center of the discussion to find a common theological definition of missions because: 1. A lot of good documents have been produced by ecumenical and evangelical study conferences on these topics; 2. ethical standards on how to deal with other Christians and other religions can be put in place even when theological agreement is not yet achieved or cannot be achieved for the time being. The center should be a code of conduct to which we all agree, describing ethically what should never happen in the realm of mission.
Theological and confessional pitfalls should not allow us to be sidetracked from a discussion leading to a written code of conduct, where Christians see the borderline between acceptable missions protected by religious freedom and undue forms of trying to get people to convert, mainly through means in the area of the economic and political world. We then, as the whole body of the largest world religion, could ask other world religions - if not to follow our code - , to agree on a code of conduct for and within themselves, leaving out any problem of syncretism and the Christian needing to agree somehow on the evaluation of non-Christian mission.
A code of conduct that bans ways to urge conversion by unethical means only makes sense if it is not directed against any one group alone. If it is true, what the Lariano Report writes for all religions, then it also must be true for all branches of Christianity: "We acknowledge that errors have been perpetrated and injustice committed by the adherents of every faith. Therefore, it is incumbent on every community to conduct honest self-critical examination of its historical conduct as well as its doctrinal/theological precepts. Such self-criticism and repentance should lead to necessary reforms inter alia on the issue of conversion." (Lariana Report 2006, no. 5)
There are needs to be clarification of language too. Not only, because language of warfare can easily sound like using unethical means in mission, but also because wrong theological language can lead us into problems.
So e.g., we all agree that we cannot convert someone. We can witness, we can explain to him what conversion means, we can call him to conversion, but we cannot convert him. A human being can only convert his own heart to his creator and this conversion is only possible because of God's grace and the wonderful action of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, the saying I converted him' easily slips from our lips, even though it is both theologically wrong and can easily be misunderstood by outsiders.
3. The second phase includes discussion of human rights in general
A code of conduct - even though formulated by Christians only for the time being - would be of great value in talking to governments that want to know how to permit religious freedom legally (including the right to do mission), but at the same time to defend against using religion for suppressing human dignity or unnecessary social unrest.
Many governments are nervous and fear that religions will fuel strife, violence and social unrest. We can help them a lot by speaking with one voice and giving them a practical code from our side.vi
Thus, besides discussing Christian mission, we also have an ethical-political topic. How can we preserve the human right of religious freedom, while at the same time preserving the same right of others and preserve all other just human rights?vii
Article 18.2 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says: "No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice." We want this to be true for us, but we also want this to be true for others, with whom we engage in discussion.
Let me add one thing for the sake of completeness, which is often forgotten: Violence and undue pressure cannot only be used to get people to leave a religion, but also to stay in it! To force young people to stay in e.g., a natural religion in a Brazilian tribe, is as bad as to force them to become e.g., Christians. You also can violate human rights by preventing people from converting to another faith.
Unethical means
The Roman Catholic Church stated at Vatican II in Ad Gentes': "The Church strictly forbids forcing anyone to embrace the Faith, or alluring or enticing people by worrisome wiles."
What could some of those unethical means be? E.g.:
-Bribe people by money, goods, medical treatment, opportunities or offices, that is, offering people non-spiritual rewards for their conversion.
-Threaten people with civil consequences, putting undue psychological pressure on them or press them for decisions they cannot oversee, e.g., because they are too young or mentally ill.
-Use the authority of a state function while in office (e.g., as police or state school teacher).
-Give or refuse financial advantages (e.g., through banks or in inheritance laws).
-Preach to captive audiences', who cannot freely leave (e.g., army officers to their soldiers or a prison director to inmates).
Let me give one example of what a code of conduct could contain concerning the use of military force (and that should be in agreement with all Christian bodies):
"The State and its army has the duty to defend peaceful Christians if they become the victims of illegal violence, but it does not do it specifically because they are Christians, but should do so for anybody else becoming a victim of violence. But, at the same time, an army can never have the task to defend Christianity, propagate the gospel or conquer land for Christianity. In history many Christian areas were conquered by armies, but this was wrong, and using an army to spread a religion is always a wrong mixture of the different tasks of the Church and the State."
It is similarly true that Christians may use the legal system of their states to defend their rights.viii But equally they should not use the laws and the courts to hinder the rights of other religious groups, if they legally and ethically practise their freedom of religion.
I know that in Islam, Hinduism and partly even in the Jewish faith, the religious law applies one-to-one to all worldly things including the state and makes a separation of church/organised religion and state difficult. But even more so I think that Christians should take the lead and in a kind of self obligation declare that they no longer want to use the monopoly of force of the state for churches' purpose.
To be condemned are violence, coercion, threat, harassment and enticement, as are lies and feigning of false facts to win people for Christ, who otherwise would not follow him.
It will not be easy to nail those unethical means down in a concrete code of conduct, especially as historical, religious, cultural, and political conditions are so different in the world, e.g., if you compare Germany, India, Saudi Arabia and Nepal. But nevertheless we should try to become concrete and not to leave everything loose in only general terms.
Is a forced conversion a conversion? I think all Christian confessions agree that a conversion has to be a deeply personal, finally thought through move of the heart. A forced conversion is nothing we want and nothing we can accept. Therefore if people tell us that they want to convert, we should always give them and offer them time for discernment and should not be speedy to baptise them, but be assured that they really know what they are doing. There also should be honesty and transparency concerning what Christian faith means and what is expected of Christians after their conversion. Christianity is not a secret cult but open to the public. We do not have anything to hide (Matthew 10:26-27). Jesus said concerning those who want to become his followers: "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?" (Luke 14:28; see vv. 27-33). We have to help people to calculate the costs, not to rush them into Christian churches, only to find out later, that they have been cheated.
Ethics and mission belong together. The Christian witness is not a room free of ethics; it needs an ethical basis to really do what Christ commanded us to do.
When people today see daily in TV that religious groups are willing to use any means to further their cause, Christians clearly have to state what means we never will use - and that if some Christians use them anyway, they have lost their right to call this method Christian. The teenager's motto from the US WWJD ("What would Jesus do?") has to guide us especially when we fulfil Jesus' Great Commission.
Literature (alphabetical)
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J. Paul Martin, Harry Winter, O.M.I. "Religious Proselytization". pp. 29-50 in: Abdullahi Ahemd An-Na'im (ed.). Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa. Religion and Human Rights Series. Maryknoll (NY): Orbis Books, 1999
Mary Motte, Joseph R. Lang (ed.). Mission in Dialogue. Maryknoll (NY): Orbis Books, 1982. pp. 443-488 ("Religious Freedom and the Local Church's Responsibility for Mission")
Andreas Nehring. "Bekehrung als Protest: Zur Konstruktion religiöser Identität der Dalits in Indien". Zeitschrift für religionswissenschaft 12 (2004): 3-21
Thomas Schirrmacher. The Persecution of Christians Concerns Us All: Towards a Theology of Martyrdom. Idea-Dokumentation 15/99 E. VKW: Bonn, 2001
Thomas Schirrmacher. "Trinity and Work". S. 63-82 in Brian Wintle u. a. (ed.). Work - Worship - Witness. Festschrift for Prof. Ken Gnanakan. Bangalore: Theological Book Trust, 2003
Thomas Schirrmacher. "Missio Dei". pp. 165-188 in: Klaus W. Müller (ed.). Mission im Islam: Festschrift für Eberhard Troeger. VTR: Nürnberg & VKW: Bonn, 2007
Thomas Schirrmacher, Klaus W. Müller (ed.). Scham- und Schuldorientierung in der Diskussion: Kulturanthropologische, missiologische und theologische Einsichten. VKW: Bonn & VTR: Nürnberg, 2006
Paul M. Taylor. Freedom of Religion: UN and European Human Rights Law and Practice. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2005
M. Thomas Thangaraj. "Evangelism sans Proselytism: A Possibility?". pp. 335-352 in: John Witte, Richard C. Martin (ed.). Sharing the Book: Religious Perspectives on the Rights and Wrongs of Proselytism. Religion and Human Rights Series. Maryknoll (NY): Orbis Books, 1999
Towards Common Witness: A call to adopt responsible relationships in mission and to renounce proselytism. WCC commission Mission and Evangelism'. 19.9.1997. www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/mission-and-evangelism/19-09-97-towards-common-witness.html
Hans Ucko (ed.). Changing the Present, Dreaming the Future: A Critical Moment in Interreligious Dialogue. Geneva : World Council of Churches, 2006
Johan D. van der Vyveer, John Witte (ed.). Religious Human Rights in Global Perspectives: Legal Perspectives. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1996
John Witte, Michael Bourdeaux (ed.). Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia. Religion and Human Rights Series. Maryknoll (NY): Orbis Books, 1999
John Witte, Richard C. Martin (ed.). Sharing the Book: Religious Perspectives on the Rights and Wrongs of Proselytism. Religion and Human Rights Series. Maryknoll (NY): Orbis Books, 1999
John Witte, Johan D. van der Vyveer (ed.). Religious Human Rights in Global Perspectives: Religious Perspectives. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1996
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Professor Thomas Schirrmacher holds chairs in ethics, in missiology, in world religions and in international development in Germany, Romania, USA, Turkey and India, and is rector of Martin Bucer Theological Seminary (Bonn, Zurich, Innsbruck, Prague, Ankara).
As an international human rights activist he is on the board of the International Society for Human Rights, manager of the Religious Liberty Commission of the German and the Swiss Evangelical Alliance, member of the Religious Liberty Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance and director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (Bonn, Cape Town, Singapore) of the World Evangelical Alliance.
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i When speaking about the Galilei-affair.
ii See my "Christlieb, Theodor". S. 188 in: A. Scott Moreau (Hg.). Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions. Baker Books: Grand Rapids (MI) & Paternoster Press: Carlisle (GB), 2000; "Christlieb contra Opiumhandel". pp. 105-109 in: Karl Heinz Voigt, Thomas Schirrmacher. Menschenrechte für Minderheiten in Deutschland und Europa: Vom Einsatz für die Religionsfreiheit durch die Evangelische Allianz und die Freikirchen im 19. Jahrhundert. zugleich Idea-Dokumentation 3/2004. VKW: Bonn, 2003; and my first doctoral thesis: Theodor Christlieb und seine Missionstheologie. Wuppertal: Telos, 1985.
iii The number of books and study conferences, where the through bodies are presented equally, are on the rise, e.g., in Carl E. Braaten (ed.). Church Unity and the Papal Office: An Ecumenical Dialogue on John Paul II's Encyclical Ut unum sint. Grand Rapids (MI): Eerdmans, 2001, where there is a strong evangelical statement included. See also the ecumenical statements in Harold D. Hunter, Cecil M. Robeck. The Suffering Body: Responding to the Persecution of Christians. Milton Keynes (GB): Paternoster, 2006.
iv Eg "Conversion Tactics - Violence". www.christianaggression.org/tactics_violence.php. Andreas Nehring. "Bekehrung als Protest: Zur Bekehrung religiöser Identität der Dalits in Indien". Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 12 (2004): 3-21 proves, that anti-conversion laws are not griunded in any Christian danger whatsoever, but in the protest of the Dalits against Hinduism and the political reaction of those Hindus, who do not want to loose the caste identity of India. See also Yaruingam Awungshi. Hinduism and Christianity in India: A Study of Socio-historical Process of Conversion. New Delhi, India : Uppal Pub. House, 2005
v See the discussion in Paul M. Taylor. Freedom of Religion: UN and European Human Rights Law and Practice. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2005, that discusses the centrality of the right to change one's religion for religious liberty and the human rights in general.
vi See the excellent discussion in Burkhard Guntau. "Möglichkeit und Grenzen der Religionsfreiheit". Materialdienst der EZW 70 (2007) 9: 325-336.
vii The best discussion of this topic known to me besides the article of Guntau is: Jean-Paul Marthoz, Joseph Saunders. "Religion and the Human Rights Movement". pp. 40-69 in Human Rights Watch World Report 2005. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2005, also seperat under www.hrw.org/wr2k5/religion/religion.pdf. See also John Witte, Johan D. van der Vyveer (ed.). Religious Human Rights in Global Perspectives: Religious Perspectives. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1996; Johan D. van der Vyveer, John Witte (ed.). Religious Human Rights in Global Perspectives: Legal Perspectives. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1996.
viii See my "Darf ein Christ vor Gericht gehen?". S. 143-156 in: Thomas Schirrmacher, Thomas Zimmermanns (Hg.). Ein Maulkorb für Christen? Juristen nehmen Stellung zum deutschen Antidiskriminierungsgesetz und ähnlichen Gesetzen in Europa und Australien. Bonn: VKW, 2005. zugleich idea-Dokumentation 12/2005.
