Christianity is growing very fast in Africa and Asia and I don't believe its because people are selling their souls for surplus milk powder to use your terminology. As far as I can see, it's primarily the result of the efforts of local Christians, not missionaries from the west.
Some of the language in your post reminded me of a book by Arun Shourie, "Harvesting Our Souls". Have you read it? He seems to be the chief idealogue of the Hindu right-wing nationalist movement, the BJP.
Here are some articles which mention Shourie and his work. The first is a recent news article.
Missionaries tread warily in India
The conviction Monday of an evangelist's killers does not ease fears among Christians and minorities.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
csmonitor.com
NEW DELHI – Like many Christian evangelists in India, the Rev. Richard Howell welcomed Monday's conviction of 13 radical Hindus involved in the murder of an Australian missionary family.
In 1999, Graham Staines and his two young sons were burned alive in their station wagon in the countryside of Orissa by a mob angry over Mr. Staines's aggressive evangelism in this Hindu- majority state.
But despite justice in one case, Mr. Howell says he and his followers cannot rest easy. Since Staines's murder, the number of attacks on Christians and other minorities has actually increased, he says, and the number of laws restricting religious practice has gathered pace across the country. These laws are being pushed by India's pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party that holds power in many states and controls the central government.
"There are attacks practically every week, maybe not resulting in death, but still, violent attacks," Howell says. "They [the BJP] have created an atmosphere where minorities do feel insecure."
Far more than a mere murder trial, the Graham Staines case rapidly became a cause célèbre for human rights groups, secular Indians, and missionaries. At stake, these groups said, was nothing less than modern India's founding principle of secularism that favors no one religion but protects all.
Conservative Hindu analysts retort that the murders, while horrible, were a predictable reaction to secularism run rampant, fortifying the rights of India's minorities to the detriment of the Hindu majority and its culture.
It's this very debate - between secularism and Hindu nationalism - that remains the driving force of Indian politics today and seems destined to keep India's many religious groups at odds for years to come.
"We are seeing a broad attempt to stifle religious minorities and their constitutional rights," says Prakash Louis, director of the secular Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, which provides health and education services to India's lower-caste and tribal communities. Mr. Louis decries the passage of anticonversion laws in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, and other laws that restrict cultural or religious practices, such as the slaughter of cows or the eating of beef.
"There is a fascist tendency toward authoritarianism in this country, and it is not just the BJP or the Sangh Parivar [a coalition of Hindu groups]," says Louis, noting that Congress Party politicians also have spoken in favor of such laws. "Today, they say you have no right to convert. Tomorrow, you have no right to worship in certain places, like the Babri Masjid."
Backdrop of violence
The Babri Masjid, built 500 years ago, was torn down by a mob of Hindu activists in 1992, an act that set off riots nationwide that killed thousands. A special court in Lucknow is expected to announce Friday whether it will file charges against several top BJP politicians, including current Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, for instigating the Babri Masjid destruction.
Citing the Babri Masjid case and the Gujarat riots of 2002, which followed the torching of a train-car full of Hindus by a mob of Muslims, Hindus argue that the violent riots of the past decade are the result of pent-up anger by the Hindu community after hundreds of years of provocations by a series of invaders, first the Muslim Moguls and later the British Christians.
In his influential book, "Harvesting Our Souls," Arun Shourie writes that India's minorities take actions that provoke India's Hindu majority.
"The conversion of even an individual causes grave disruption," writes Mr. Shourie, who now serves as India's minister for disinvestment of state-owned industries. "His family is torn apart. Tensions erupt in the community.... The individual is led to not just repudiate but denounce gods and rituals in which he has grown up."
Targeting the poor
Shourie also notes that while Christians make up a small percentage of the population, perhaps 2.1 percent in the most recent census, they are focusing on India's poorest, least-educated population, especially the Dalit community, who once were called "untouchables." By some estimates, Dalits and other lower-caste Hindus make up more than 40 percent of the population here in India.
With financial backing from churches in the world's richest nations, Shourie and other Hindu intellectuals argue, Western churches can shift the balance of religion in India forever.
A 1999 visit by Pope John Paul II made many Hindus suspicious, especially his statement to attending bishops, "The heart of the Church in Asia will be restless until the whole of Asia finds its rest in the peace of Christ, the risen Lord."
(A spokesman for Shourie said the minister is on an official trip to Germany, and could not be reached for an interview.)
Christian missionaries counter that their work among Dalits provides social and spiritual uplift to a community that was mistreated by upper-caste Hindus for centuries.
But what is certain nearly five years after the murder of Staines is that Christian missionaries are becoming more careful about how they do their work. Instead of talking of conversion, for instance, they speak of "spreading the word of God."
Ashish Lal, pastor of a small evangelical community in New Delhi, says, "The government is slowly tightening a noose across the country, especially against Christians."
But every Sunday, he goes out into the streets in Christian neighborhoods and preaches from the Bible.
"Christianity is conversion," says Mr. Lal, a self-described End-Time Believer, or one who believes that the Apocalypse is imminent. "It brings peace to a Christian to let people know of Christ."
New unrest
But back in the state of Orissa, police officials are once again worried that one man's conversion could be the beginning of communal violence.
This week in the Mayurbhanj district, police were deployed in a protective cordon around a new Baptist church being built by a man who converted to Christianity three years ago.
According to press reports, Baidhara Bindhani and his fellow convert Sudarshan Das began construction of a church on Mr. Bindhani's own land a few weeks ago.
The construction project set off a riot by Hindu neighbors, 500 of whom reportedly marched to the site, stole the building materials, and then forced Bindhani and Mr. Das to drink water mixed with cow dung for the "purification" of their souls.
Next is a hostile review of Shourie's work from an Indian Christian ezine.
More muck from Arun Shourie
He takes great pains to point out that Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity have a secret agenda — baptising the dying. Maybe this explains why the living Christian population in spite of evangelisation is a measly 2.4 per cent!
HE lives off controversy and he’s back at it again. “Kill them, burn them, remove them from the country,” that’s what Arun Shourie would have longed to instruct his fellow Christian-bashers, but unfortunately our dear MP cannot do that as yet in public in a secular country. As a little storm builds up around the book, Shourie would be smiling ear to ear. And even before there is an uproar to ban the book, curious Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims must have picked up this tome priced at a hefty Rs 450. The longer the controversy drags on, the more profitable it is for him. You can visualise the blackmarketers having a field day when it is banned.
WHAT THE BOOK SEEKS TO CONVEY
Christians are anti-national, stop them from practising their religion, that’s the message Harvesting our Souls seeks to convey. The blurb screams — the book is a must read for strengthening our country. It is beyond one’s comprehension how a book that aims to divide the secular structure of India can strengthen the nation.Probably after the Kargil War, Shourie thinks it is the best time to play the security card and tell people that Christian missionaries are spies, whose only aim in life is to convert people by hook or by crook, mobilise them to join and serve the Christian ranks and maybe one day overthrow the Hindu population! He takes great pains to point out that Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity have a secret agenda — baptising the dying. Maybe this explains why the living Christian population in spite of evangelisation is a measly 2.4 per cent! By some twisted reasoning, he arrives at the conclusion that conversion (mind you, even if it is voluntary) is an assault on the religious freedom of the person.
AUTHOR OF CONFUSION
Everywhere the book is full of contradictions. In the introduction, Shourie talks with passion about the emotional and social impact of conversion. He talks about how conversion alienates a person from his roots and ‘deculturises’ him. By the time he rolls to Chapter 19, he is singing a different tune. He scoffs at the Church’s effort to indigenise Christian rituals and adopt local forms of worship. He makes it sound like a conspiracy to lure Hindus to the Christian faith.To him the death of Graham Staines and his two little sons is no great tragedy. The slant is such that you feel that they have, after all, asked for it. The little excerpts from the journal which published letters written by Graham and Gladys Staines does reveal a lot. It is quite clear that Staines did not resort to forceful conversions but was in fact beseeched by the people to baptise them. “They were asking to be baptised,” say the excerpts clearly, so where does the force angle come in?He picks on Mother Teresa for saying that she is not neutral and that she has her faith. It shouldn’t be too hard to understand that if it were not for her faith, Mother Teresa would never have had the the strength to serve the lepers.
THE DEVIL QUOTES TOO
Shourie is good at quoting scriptures to suit his needs. He dips into quotations from the Old Testament and talks about archaic practices that were never practised by Jesus’ disciples. He talks of the Mosaic law and of sacrifices and offerings which indeed belong to the primitive ages as the heading of the chapter says. But he conveniently forgets to quote from the New Testament verses that say that Christ had once and for all sacrificed his life for the remission of the sins of the world. Hebrews Chapter 10 talks at length about how God has no pleasure in sacrifices and burnt offerings and that all he needs is a broken and contrite heart.He describes the primitive rules mentioned in the Old Testament to deal with the heathen, but fails to quote that Christ had turned the Jewish laws upside down. Matthew 5: 44 says “You have heard that it is said, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps your right cheek turn the other to him also.”He quotes the Old Testament whenever it suits him and the New Testament likewise.
He also has the gall to question the basic tenets of the Christian religion, like the virgin birth of Christ Jesus and the authenticity of the scriptures. He picks on the phrase, ‘God is the author of the Bible’ and goes on to try and prove He is not by quoting contradictions within the Gospels. He forgets that the basic teachings of Jesus remain the same. His main grouse, however, seems to be against conversion. He speaks as if the Bible has ordered Christians to convert the whole world by any means whatever. Nowhere in the Bible is this mentioned. Jesus asked his followers to spread the Word but not to force it onto anyone. This is specifically mentioned in Matthew Chapter 10 verse 14: And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. His motive is, however, transparent when he tries to drive a wedge between two minority communities. He freely quotes the holy book of the Muslims, whom he bashed in all his other writings, to disprove the Bible. It seems Shourie would sink to any level to malign Christianity.
christword.com |
