A crusade after all?

In Russia, 10 years of ambitious Western evangelizing brought many benefits in charitable facilities and conversions from atheism, he says. But it also introduced "forms of spiritual bribery" and a Western-style notion of religion as easily changeable. This conflicts with Russian Orthodox and Russian Muslim traditions, "where one is born and grows in a religion as part of one's experience in blood, soil, people, and connection," he says. It has bred great resentment among Russians, who feel the West, "having won the cold war, is now engaging in a form of religious pillaging."

"That view prevails amply in Russia, and I can see it perhaps prevailing in Iraq if [evangelism] develops," Witte says. Russia has reacted with new legislation that curtails many religious rights in favor of state-sanctioned groups.

The situation could be compounded in Iraq, he suggests, because the country is under military law, and internal religious and political differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims need to be worked out. "Time has to be given for that kind of exercise independent of a phalanx of Christian groups providing additional points of conflict," he says. "This is the last place where Christians should be rushing in."

Woodberry, too, is cautious. "Although Christians are called to witness in both word and deed, timing is very important," he says. "Now there is great mistrust of Americans and Christians." Whatever is done, he adds, should be in cooperation with both Iraqi Christians and Arab Christian organizations.

Some say the White House should simply restrain the president's friends to demonstrate that US forces are not in Iraq to open the door for evangelism. Witte says there's a legal basis for doing so: "The notion that these groups have an unencumbered right to march in and evangelize is simply not so in law - in a military law context, severe restrictions are permissible."

Yet it could likely be done by persuasion. During the first Gulf war, Franklin Graham sent thousands of Arabic-language New Testaments to US troops in Saudi Arabia to pass along to local people. This violated Saudi law and an agreement between the two governments that there would be no proselytizing. When Gen. Norman Swarzkopf had a chaplain call Graham to complain, Graham said he was under higher orders. He later told Newsday, however, that had he been explicitly asked, he would have desisted.

A greater concern of some people is that the administration may in fact support the effort, given the president's beliefs and the import of conservative Christians as a political constituency.

Bush has after all moved ahead with his domestic faith-based initiative, although Congress has not passed the authorizing legislation. Meanwhile, the former deputy director of the White House office for faith-based programs has a new job: building nongovernmental institutions in Iraq.

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