Articles

Bert B. Beach

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Adventist Review - Scandals within the Catholic Church
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Dialogue Magazine
Adventist styles of worship

Eighth Forum
Part 1
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Liberty Magazine - Religious Liberty and the Constitution
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Shabbat Shalom - Challenges and problems of the Jewish-Christian dialogue
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"Proselytism in the Context of Globalization, Religious Liberty, and Nondiscrimination" (Printer-Friendly version)

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Bert B. Beach: Adventist Statesman

The Adventist Review profiled Bert B. Beach in a cover story in its November 8, 2001 issue. The article is divided up into five .JPG* files which are listed below, and they will open in a new window:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

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The Current Setting

We are living in a newly found climate of religious freedom. Increasingly, we no longer have government protected (and financed) state churches with religious “hunting reserves.” Islamic countries, of course, offer a different picture of their own. Proselytism is an inevitable sign or consequence of religious division and growing religious pluralism. As there will be political campaigns by competing parties where there is democracy, as there will be economic competition where there is an open market, thus there will be religious competitiveness in the religious forum. We must strive, however, to see that this clash of religious beliefs be fair, without discrimination, hatred, prestige chasing, vindictiveness, or acrimony.

Non-Uniformity Regarding Evangelism

Evangelistic mission is an inescapable mandate of Christianity.

In the New Testament we find not only the “great commandment”—to love God and neighbor— but also the “great commission” to go, teach, baptize and disciple all people as followers of Jesus Christ. (Matt. 28:19, 20) Christianity can be said to have a global vision.

On the other hand, evangelism and its correlative activity, proselytism, are not generally practiced by Hindus and Jews, and only to some extent by Buddhists. Islam practices what appears to be a two-sided form of proselytism, promoting Islam in non-Muslim areas, but prohibiting any evangelism/proselytism in Muslim countries, thus endeavoring to ensure that people born into Muslim homes remain by all means Muslims. As Silvio Ferrari has pointed out, in Muslim countries the condemnation of any apostasy from the integral Muslim way of life is clearly linked to the prohibition of proselytism. (Fides et Libertas, 1999, p. 14)

Disagreements and Agreements Regarding Evangelism

There are no doubt significant disagreements among Christians regarding mission, witness, evangelism, and proselytism:

Disagreements regarding ecclesiology and sacrament, disagreements between those who are out going and those who emphasize evangelism as internal renewal, between those who think globally and see the world as their parish and those who have an exclusivistic or canonical territorial view of the church and think locally or nationally. There will also be in evangelism/proselytism disagreement between those who believe in the legal equality of all religious bodies, without discrimination, and those who claim that historical precedence and/or greater numerical size gives them special and more rights than others. Thus, we find laws against proselytism in various countries where there is a majority religion linked to national identity, such as Greece, Ukraine, Israel, and many Muslim countries.

One reason for anti-proselytism legislation is a false hope and illusion: achieving uniformity or religious homogeneity. Such societies can no longer exist and keep power in this age of globalization, rapid change, travel, and instantaneous communication of information, except by a holocaust type of approach, religio-ethnic cleansing (as appears to be the case in parts of Indonesia), use of religious police, and medieval totalitarianism.

There are, however, some general agreements among Christians that have a bearing on evangelism:

Evangelistic mission is central to the Christian faith
Christ has a unique role
Power of prayer
The church community is not conterminous with society
Evangelistic mission is what God does more than what human beings do, albeit God works through human instrumentalities.

The implications of this last point are not always fully understood. If God is the Author, then when a Christian is hindered in evangelism he or she feels violated, limited, discriminated against, restricted in obedience to the divine mission, even persecuted.

Tensions Between Rights

We already mentioned the great new fact of our era—religious liberty. However, there seems to be a conflict between the universality of religious freedom, as supported by the United Nations instruments and other documents, and the concept of cultural relativism of religious freedom. Furthermore, there is also a perceived conflict between the right to freely change religion and the right to freely keep a religion, the right to try to convince other people, and the right to be left alone. Two other rights, which at times are complementary, but at other times are in opposition to each other, are the right of the individual person and the right of the institution (e.g. - the church). Of course, every person should be able to exercise the right to determine to which organization to belong or not to belong, and similarly every religious organization should have the right to decide its own membership requirements, including “entrance” and “exit.” The problem comes when the religious organization does not want to permit leaving and uses the police power of the state to enforce membership. Van der Vyver says very pointedly: “By submitting to totalitarian control of their internal affairs by governmental agencies, the religious institution forfeits its internal sphere sovereignty and becomes a pawn of religious oppression by the powers that be.” (Johan D. van der Vyver, “Religious Freedom and Proselytism,” The Ecumenical Review, Oct. 1998, p. 422)

Despite these tensions, the UN has clearly upheld the right to spread one’s religion by teaching and manifesting it. The final act of the UN World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna 1993) affirmed that “All human rights are universal, indivisible, and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner...it is the duty of states, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights.” (Part I, par.5) “Equal manner” means no discrimination.

Definitions of Proselytism

Looking again more closely at the question of proselytism, we have to remember that historically, the term did not have a pejorative connotation, as it generally does today. Unfortunately, there has been for some years a tendency to give proselytism a negative sectarian meaning, by using it to refer to witness and evangelism by other religious confessions, never one’s own, for, after all, reprehensible methods are never used by “my” church, but only by “other” religious bodies!

I prefer to use the term “improper proselytism,” than simply “proselytism.” Proselytism is an equivocal term, rife with misapplications. There are many different definitions of proselytism, many self-serving. Here are some definitions:

Improper Proselytism

As already stated, it seems preferable to use the term “improper” or “false” proselytism. It is easier to come to an agreement on this basis, because most people are opposed to what we might call corrupt witness. We have false proselytism when there is:

Many and maybe most people would agree that these eight approaches constitute false proselytism (though some would say that all proselytism is by definition false!) There are a number of problems that arise, some ethical, some ecumenical, and some doctrinal. For example, evangelistic activities by members of one church among members of another church (even non-practicing or lapsed formal members) are seen by some as ipso facto false proselytism. They would say: if you must, go preach in non-Christian countries. The answer is: while every Christian has a right and duty to witness, not everyone is called to go to non-Christian countries. Furthermore, Christian witness cannot be limited because one’s neighbors are formal members of a church.

Who is “Churched”?

There are also the fundamental questions regarding who is a believer, who is a Christian, who is “churched” and who is “unchurched”? Is a baptized person automatically a believer all his or her life, even though that person never (or almost never) goes to church, has no living faith, and apparently no living connection with Christ? Is such a person really “churched”? This question becomes all the more significant due to the substantial inroads of secularism and agnosticism within formal Christian ranks, not least in established churches.

Common Witness and Pastoral Care

The suggestion is made in ecumenical circles that the answer to some of the proselytism problems lies in joint witness based on love and mutual recognition. This is the approach suggested by some Orthodox Church leaders. Where there may be, for example, inadequate pastoral care, evangelical churches should support existing historical churches by engaging in common witness. This makes some sense when applied to situations where there are already well-developed ecumenical relations and mutual respect and equality, and basic doctrinal agreement But this is difficult to envision where there is substantial doctrinal disagreement and where newer (though not necessarily new) churches are looked down upon, discriminated against and, at times, treated by some established churches as a sort of religious plague to be vaccinated against, at best, or preferably placed in quarantine by government action!

It is also at times claimed that the proselytizing efforts by the evangelicals are nullifying the pleasant climate of Christian love that existed in the past. However, historically this has often not been the case. For example, in eastern Europe before the communist revolution, the minority churches or religious groups were discriminated against and often persecuted, not infrequently with the conivance of the majority churches.

Evangelistic cooperation presupposes a modicum of agreement in theology and ecclesiology, respect, conversations, and dialog. This ecumenical potting soil is often lacking. Churches that have been around for well over a century or longer are identified as sects and refused recognition or status as churches. There are cases where churches that complain vociferously about western proselytism, refuse conversations or dialog and discriminate against other churches. Is it logical to talk about Christian love under these conditions? One can rightly ask whether what the anti-proselytism lobby wants is not so much cessation of proselytism, as the elimination of other religious bodies seen as unwanted competition.

Right to be Proselytized

There is one aspect of proselytism that is often overlooked. In dealing with the right to proselytize, one must also consider the right to be proselytized, that is the right to receive information, to be taught, to grow in religious experience. We should recognize not only the right to witness and impart information, but also the right to receive information. This is one of the basic human rights recognized by the United Nations. Any strict anti-proselytism regulations cut off the supply of new and different religious information, restricting both the dissemination and receiving of ideas. Furthermore, should we not also listen to the witness and views of those who have been proselytized and converted from one church (usually formal belief) to another church (usually living faith)?

Right Not to be Coerced

Spiritual teaching, which may lead individuals to abandon their organized religion, of their own free will, is not improper proselytism, as indeed the European Court held in the Greek Kokkinakis case. The crucial issue of proselytism is the question of coercion. If there is coercion, such proselytism is improper and to be condemned as false. Tad Stahnke puts it this way: “Thus, the more that proselytism interferes with the ability to freely choose, the more the regulating power of the state may be attracted.” (“Proselytism and the Freedom to Change Religion in International Human Rights,” BYU Law Review, 1999, No. 1, p. 327)

While opposing harmful competition, the Charta Oecumenica adopted (April 27, 2001) jointly by the Conference of European Churches and the Catholic Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, makes it clear “that every person can freely choose his or her religious and church affiliation as a matter of conscience, which means not inducing anyone to convert through moral pressure or material incentive, but also not hindering anyone from entering into conversion of his or her own free will.”

It is my view that a key—perhaps the key—issue in proselytism is the use of force. In this context, force is a two-edged sword: force can be used to pressure people, to cram a new religion down peoples’ throats, to coerce them in various ways to change religious affiliation. This is wrong. However, force can also be used to twist peoples’ religious arms, constraining them to remain within a given religious affiliation. This is also wrong. We have here what I would call reverse proselytism. In essence, forcing people to remain formal members of the church in which they were baptized, usually soon after birth, with no free choice of their own. In this connection, all kinds of constraints can and are at times used:

Violations of Ethical or Moral Norms

Recognizing that false proselytism is improper, it must also be said that most wrong forms of evangelism come under the aegis of ethical behavior, not statutory limitations. Much false proselytism is a violation of moral norms not legal norms. Such behavior may be undesirable and morally suspect, not to say reprehensible, but the government is not there to correct faulty thinking or repress false religious witness. The state cannot read minds or consciences and motives. State involvement in this sphere can easily lead to great human right abuses and partisan discrimination. While we can agree on various definitions of improper proselytism, it is not easy to always know where to draw the line and where just public order and the rights of others are violated. Indeed, the state must protect such rights, but most false proselytism falls into the area of moral violations which should not come under the preview of the state. Indeed, the Hungarian Constitutional Court was quite right in holding (1993) that it is not for government authorities to decide what is proper religion, but a matter of “self-interpretation by the churches.” (“East European Case Reporter of Constitutional Law,” The Ecumenical Review, October 1998, p. 425)

Guiding Principles for Responsible Dissemination of Religious Belief

Let us present a few thoughts regarding a possible “Code de Bonne Conduite” dealing with proselytism. As already mentioned, there are two-sides in the matter: the proselyters (outside) and those subject to proselytism (inside). Both sides need to act properly and respectfully.

To deal with the issue of proselytism and aiming at a constructive relationship between religions and human beings, the IRLA convened conferences of experts in 1999 and 2000 (primarily in Spain). The following 14 important principles were agreed to by consensus of the experts, for the responsible dissemination of religious beliefs: (Fides et Libertas, 2000, pp. 96-98)

Some Solutions and Conclusions

B. B. Beach
May, 2001

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