Source: Religion News Service
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, June 2010: “Good evangelism” and “bad evangelism” came under discussion when a diverse group of Christians met to mark the 100th anniversary of the historic 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference.
Antonios Kireopoulos, the associate general secretary for interfaith relations for the New York-based National Council of Churches, on Friday (June 4) used his keynote address to draw a line between “good” evangelism and bad “proselytism.” Evangelism is most harmful, he said, when it “strives to make Christians from among people that are already Christians,” and suffering under political difficulties.
In Iraq, where Christian communities had borne much of the suffering since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, there had been a “particularly egregious missionary effort,” Kireopoulos said. “How much more powerful would the witness to Christ have been if the missionaries sent to Iraq were there to support the local Christians, to work with the local Christian churches to foster reconciliation in their communities torn apart by war?”