Governments aren’t the only ones using secret agents these days. Baxter Jackson uncovers the truth about the use of undercover missionaries in the Muslim world.
I was seriously considering becoming an undercover agent of the Lord.
In exchange for some back alley preaching and a few hush-hush conversions to Christianity here and there (a sort of save the world one heathen a time kind of thing) Azusa Pacific University was offering me (at 50% the going rate) a Masters of Arts in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).
The impetus for such a bargain basement MA is a spiritual battle being fought in tandem with the physical conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine in what Christian missions strategist Luis Bush calls the “10/40 window,” an area stretching across North Africa and Asia from 10 degrees south of the equator to 40 degrees north of it.
According to Southern Nazarene University’s Dr. of Missions Howard Culbertson, of the 55 least evangelized countries, (countries with the least amount of actively proselytizing Christian missionaries), 97% are within the ten forty window.
In the vernacular of the Christian Coalition, of which George Bush is a supporter, these countries are known by the corporate like moniker of Creative-Access Countries (CAC’s).
Egypt, my home for the past 9 months, just so happens to be one of these countries.
Means To An End
Photo DavidDennisPhotos
What makes Egypt a CAC is that although the government generally tolerates missionary groups, if they actively recruit converts, it is seen (as in most of the predominantly Islamic world of the 10/40 window) as a violation of dhimmitude, the concept under which proselytism by non-Muslims is strictly forbidden.
While there is no state law saying that it is forbidden to change one’s religion, it is a common fact that in Egypt, a convert from Islam to Christianity risks being arrested and imprisoned. In stricter Islamic countries, the penalty for apostasy is often death.
Ironically enough, groups such as the Christian & Missionary Alliance seek to save Muslim souls through the teaching of a subject that George Bush, a self-professed born-again Christian, seems to have skipped one too many times at Yale: English.
Rather than using the teaching of English as an end in itself (as it should be, in my opinion as a English teacher) it is being used as a means to an end.
The end of “saving” Arab souls somehow justifies the means of outright deception and manipulation. This Christianized version of the old bait & switch con may indeed be, as touted in a recent article in Christianity Today “the ultimate language lesson.”
The article’s author explains the strategy behind the stealth crusade quite succinctly with this bold statement: “Start an evangelical church in Poland and no one will come. Start an English school, and you’ll make many friends.”
The Process Of Apostasy
Here’s how it works. Once a potential “agent of the Lord” is identified and screened for covert operations in a potentially hostile environment, work platforms and visas are secured by a sponsoring organization.
In an industrialized nation such as China, the pretext to secure the needed documents is to teach English through an already established institution such as a university. In developing countries such as Egypt, a community or health center is often opened so that English and/or computer classes can be offered as the front to hide the true motive of evangelization.
Integral to such neighborhood centers is a coffee shop or lounge area where agents and potential converts can chat.
Integral to such neighborhood centers is a coffee shop or lounge area where agents and potential converts can chat. Once the relationship that begins in the classroom is deepened between the teacher and students over coffee and conversation, the process of apostasy is well under way.
Ed Mangham and his wife Julie have opened three of these centers in an undisclosed Creative-Access Country.
In a recent magazine article “Building on a Grand Heritage” the couple related how their centers are full of former Muslims. In fact, 95% of the students in their English and computer classes are Muslim and 75% of the patients in their clinic are.
The couple’s success, they suspect, may be attributed to the more subtle methods of modern day missionaries. Ed notes that the means may have changed from a formal church setting “to sitting down to talk with an Arab who does not know Christ – whether it’s over bitter Turkish coffee – or an espresso in our center’s coffee shop.”
The end remains the same: convert Muslims to Christianity.
Good Intentions
The issue, as Julian Edge clarifies in his article Imperial Troopers and Servants of the Lord, and as I see it also, is one of transparency.
By dressing their true – albeit well intentioned motives – in the guise of teaching English, these missionary groups are not conducting themselves honestly (1 Thessalonians 4:12; 1 Timothy 2.2) nor with due candor (James. 5:12) as scripture entreats them to.
They are tarnishing the noblest of all professions, a profession that Jesus was a part of himself: teaching.
Rather than operating by the Christian principles of transparency, honesty, and integrity these covert missionaries have opted for the easier softer way of false pretenses, deception, and manipulation.
And intentions, no matter how good, tend to produce more harm if not conducted with honesty.
What do you think of covert missionary work? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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16 Comments... join the discussion!
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I think it’s important to make the distinction between missionary work in general, and missionaries that use covert means. It’s irresponsible to paint them all with the same brush. After all, it’s doubtless there has been many examples of beneficial work done by Christians abroad. The trouble is when the “help” comes in one guise when it’s really about another.
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Just another bait and switch sales tactic. I don’t get the point of converting anyone. Religion is still religion. Teach them English, enable access to the world, build on their inate decency and hopefully marginalize the violent radicals. But to replace one faith with another strikes me as pointless.
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Sounds pretty sick to me. Manipulation is manipulation. Is this supposed to bring peace to the Middle East?
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@Don –
I feel exactly the same way. I cannot wrap my head around why it is necessary to go out and “save” people who are already perfectly happy with their religion. If you want to go help people, that’s fine, but why can’t you respect their own beliefs?I think this situation is dishonest and manipulative.
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Nice post, Baxter — I hope it gets some attention from the Middle East. Reminded me of hiding from persistent Jehovah’s Witnesses in Japan.
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If you want to know why these groups are spending money to convert people, you have to ask how they got the money to spend in the first place. It’d be nice to let people be content in their beliefs, but people who aren’t of the faith don’t pay in.
Any faith that has to sell itself is already untrustworthy.
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I agree with Cate and Don, if you aren’t going to teach strictly English then don’t go at all. I never understood the reason for conversion except for their own personal game of adding notches to their belts of Christianity. Leave these people alone, or do the job you were sent to do instead of some secret mission or your own personal vendetta.
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I agree with the opinions of Carlo and Don above. If you are living to let your light shine, then people will be attracted to what you are doing and want to know why you are doing it. They can then decide through their own study. Understanding and not conversion should be the mission. We want Muslims to be tolerant of those who are not as well as visa versa.
Stop the covert proselyting! Give freely to the “Samaritans” in your life without making it necessary for them to accept all your beliefs. One of the scary things about Muslim law is the death penalty for apostasy. That is a relative opinion that can span a lot of territory but Christian conversion is definitely one of those violations.
I say teach but stop breaking the law of the land where you live.↵ -
bringing education, economic development, and social resources to areas that need it: +. peddling religion, covertly or otherwise: -.
Great article, Baxter.
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Thanks ya’ll for reading and weighing in on this issue. Really appreciate your comments.
Nothing more dangerous than self righteouness combined with good intentions, is there?
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Thanks for you post, Baxter. Manipulation and deception, especially in matters as personal and consequential as faith, is inexcusable. But to lump together a wildly diverse group of people (call them “missionary English teachers”) and brand them as secret agents, cloak-and-dagger proselytizers, or the like only degrades your intelligence and their integrity. Really, how many of these “imperial troopers” have you personally befriended? How much of their teaching have you actually observed? On what basis are you able to decipher their actual intentions and motivations? (You seem to be unsure whether or not their work is fueled by “outright deception and manipulation” or “well intentioned motives.”) Perhaps you could clarify the motives that you know best–your own. Is your aim to use extremism (characterization) to spark an active, opposing consensus to extremism? Or do you imagine something grander, like cleansing English language teaching worldwide of anyone who embraces such contagious superstitions as divine love, forgiveness, and human liberation? That would be a fairly heady “mission” in its own right, although already commissioned by an evangelical atheist “priesthood” (Julian Edge, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Chris Hitchens, etc.; no “priestesses”?), espousing doctrines that ring with religious-like certainty. Together they are prepared to exorcise the world of that most debilitating curse: faith. Do you wish that we should join them?
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Alright then, so I’m not just preaching to the choir. Hallelujah!
So, anyone doing something under false pretenses has no integrity and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I’ve actually known a few undercover missionaries and even taught at a university in Cairo that was founded with the express purpose of converting Muslims.
My motives for writing this article were to expose these Christians who say one thing but do the other. You know, the hypocrites.
For me, God is the truth and anything I can do to bring us closer to it is just me bringing my own light to the sum of all others.
Thanks for weighing in on this and salem mailekum (Peace be upon you),
Baxter↵ -
Rich Slimbach is a professor of TESOL at Azuza Pacific University (the same univeristy that was prepared to offer me a cut-rate MA in TESOL in exchange for some back-alley preaching and a few hush-hush conversions there). What ’s interesting and telling about his post is that he didn’t identify himself as such.
Richard Slimbach, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Global Studies, Sociology, and TESOL
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences↵ -
Quality is many times more important than quantity. Many beliefers proudly claim themselves as majority.
The suspiscion is all around that (undercover) missionarists are trying to convert other beliefers into their faith. Interesting is that it’s mainly the Muslims they are targeting. It’s a threat for Muslims. But i may say the best protection for Muslims is to make attempts in improving their own understanding of their belief. Also the Christians/Hindus, etc do of their own beliefs in case it happened to them(A Muslimah, insha Allah)
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Being a former missionary it saddens me to be informed of activities like this. However, I must put forth my somewhat coinciding and contradicting view point.
Somewhere around 30 or 35 years ago there were reports of Christian missionaries traveling to the South Pacific and other places in South East Asia, but more specifically Papa New Guinea. Their goal was to reach tribes that hadn’t been preached to, to expose them to the Christian religion. Whether or not that was appropriate is debatable, but that is a whole other argument, so let’s ignore that part. However, instead of speaking with these people and letting them get to know them as a people and see how they live their life and explain to them their beliefs and allow them to make their own decisions, they would storm into the villages and destroy any symbol of their pagan or otherwise beliefs. They essentially force fed Christianity to them.
Being a Christian, this sickens me, it freezes me to my core. I despise anyone capable of doing something like this.
(That is my somewhat coinciding view point.)
However, when I traveled to Panama at the age of fifteen with twenty other teenagers and two adults, all of whom I had never met before and who had never met each other, that was not our goal. Our mission was to simply share our knowledge, to bring some joy and caring to anyone and everyone we met. We hiked for a day, after driving for hours from David, to reach the village of Alto Caballeros. While there we would split into groups of two or three and walk the village over and to the nearby dwellings, offering our assistance in anyway possible. My group ended up finding a gentlemen who was rebuilding his home and digging away into the mountain side to expand it.( His home was not covered in siding and a perfect roof-it was made from bamboo covered with palm leaves) I spent my time every day for a week simply going to his house and helping him build, I never tried to force my beliefs upon him, I let him ask the questions. Him and his family were both very curious as to my beliefs. At the end of the week on my last day, which they knew, it was like every other day. I helped them work and bid them farewell. They didn’t “convert”, but perhaps they learned something, perhaps in a years time they will make their own decision to join Christ. (My somewhat contradicting opinion.)
We didn’t go there to force feed anyone, and as far as my knowledge goes, we didn’t. All I ask is that you don’t allow one or a few examples, of how religion can be just as filled with lies and deceit as the evil they are trying to protect the world from, spoil your entire view on a religion. If we allowed ourselves that foolish, ignorant view point we would never respect Christians, Muslims, Zen Buddhists, Jews, and so on and so forth.
Just as so many on this website tell everyone to keep an open mind, eye and ear it pains me to see people closing each and everyone of those.Salam Alaykum,
Jared Krauss↵
