Today marks 19 years since I was baptized into the Catholic faith, and I was hoping for a little good news to celebrate my re-birthday. And ninme, bless 'er, provided it in the form of this most excellent link. It's a shibboleth of missionary work that it's nearly impossible to convert a Muslim (there are particular difficulties, as Card. Pell notes here --curtsies again to ninme). But like many things widely held to be true, not only does that turn out not to be true, it's not true to the tune of 667 Muslim converts to Christianity each hour in Africa, more than 6 million per year. The link takes you to a conversation on al-Jazeera about what to do in the face of the "Christian missionary octopus." This gives a whole new meaning to the accusation that Christians are suckers.
Do read the link; it's facinating on many levels. Muslim recognition that it's Christians who are providing humanitarian aid to Africa's miserable; concern that humanitarian aid allows Christians to manipulate the poor (that's a charge, incidentally, often levelled against fundamentalist missionaries in Catholic countries); the distorted stories (I sincerely doubt Belgium bought Somalian children for the purpose of baptizing them, when Belgium doesn't baptize its own children.) Plus, I wish to heaven Christians were as organized and powerful as these guys think! And I believe many evangelicals would be surprised to learn that they have ceded all Christian leadership to the Vatican.
