Head of postwar effort arrives in Iraq; Baptist leaders defend evangelical aid
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--The retired general who will head postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq arrived in Baghdad April 21 as debate continues over plans by evangelicals to assist in relief in the war-torn country.
Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Jay Garner landed at the former Saddam International Airport in Baghdad nearly two weeks after coalition forces toppled the capital. He said his first priority is to restore such services as electricity and water.
"What better day in your life can you have than to be able to help somebody else, to help other people, and that is what we intend to do," the Associated Press reported Garner as saying.
The country is in need of an influx of volunteers to help in assisting relief efforts. A story in Baptist Press April 17 quoted the International Mission Board's John Brady as saying Iraq presents a unique opportunity to demonstrate the love of Christ.
"We in the church are the body of Christ," said Brady, who coordinates IMB work across the Middle East and northern Africa. "It is through us that He wants to work in this troubled part of the world.
"There will be both an urgency and an opportunity inside Iraq after the war. This will be a narrow window of opportunity and we must begin getting ready now." A checklist of steps that need to be taken before volunteering to serve in Iraq is available on the IMB's website at: going.imb.org/vim/main/default.asp.
The fact that Southern Baptists and other evangelicals -- such as Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse organization -- intend to assist with relief efforts has drawn worldwide attention. The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., for example, quoted Walter Brueggemann, religion professor at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., as saying, "Without impugning the motives of these people, what it amounts to is another thrust of Western imperialism.
"I think it is exactly the wrong time and the wrong place. I don't care what they say, what they're after is to impose their faith on that culture. In the best of times, that's insensitive, and in this worst of times it's just absurd," Brueggemann said.
But Southern Baptist leaders have defended the need to serve Iraqis in the name of Christ. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, recounted on MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" April 16 how his family and his church are preparing "family food boxes" -- packed with various food items -- that will be sent to Iraqis in need.
"Our family is busily putting this together as thousands of other Southern Baptist are, because ... we follow a Savior who told us that we are to feed the hungry," he said. "We are to clothe the naked.
"[W]e're doing this to help people who are hungry and we're not going in there ... to do an evangelistic crusade. But if they ask us -- if they ask us why we're there to do it -- we're going to tell them [it's] because we love them [and] because Jesus loves them."
Land added that "if we're asked we will tell people that we're there because our Savior has told us to come in and to treat our neighbors as ourselves...."
Another Southern Baptist leader, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., pointed out that the Christian faith crosses ethnic lines in an interview with Time magazine.
"The secular world tends to look at Islam as a function of ethnicity," Mohler said, "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."
Religious freedom, Mohler added, is needed in Iraq.
"It would be an appalling tragedy if America were to lead this coalition and send young American men and women into battle, to expend such effort, to then leave in place a regime that would lack respect for religious liberty," he told Time. "I think one of the major Christian concerns, and one of my personal concerns, is to see religious liberty, religious freedom [take a prominent position in] the vision of freedom that America holds up to the world."
