wfn.org | Chicago religious leaders make plea against proselytizing

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Nov. 30, 1999	News media contact: Linda Bloom·(212) 870-3803·New York
10-21-71B{642}

By United Methodist News Service

United Methodist Bishop C. Joseph Sprague is among a group of Chicago
religious leaders asking Southern Baptists not to target their city for a
major evangelistic event next summer.

Sprague noted that the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago
is "very receptive for the Southern Baptists coming here for works of
justice and mercy" and would work with them on projects for the poor and
dispossessed.

"But we are not eager to have them come into this community to proselytize,"
he told United Methodist News Service on Nov. 30. "We have a very good but
fragile balance among the innumerable religious entities here."

In a Nov. 27 letter to Southern Baptist Convention President Paige
Patterson, the council acknowledged the group's right to evangelize but
expressed concern that Muslims and Jews appear to be among the primary
targets of the campaign to convert. The Southern Baptist International
Mission Board recently produced a prayer guide calling for the conversion of
Jews, Hindus and Muslims.

Sprague pointed out that there is a history of religion-related violence in
the community. "Traditional proselytizing would both fray the thread of
mutual understanding and support and create yet another potential for
violence," he said.

That possible violence would not come from the Southern Baptists themselves,
but from "deranged individuals" who would seize on the idea that people who
don't believe a certain way are second or third class citizens.

A case in point, he noted was that of Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a former
member of the World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist group based
in East Peoria, Ill. Smith embarked on a shooting spree in Indiana and
Illinois last July.

He allegedly wounded six Orthodox Jews as they left a Chicago synagogue,
killed a black man walking with his children in Skokie, Ill.; fired at an
Asian-American couple in nearby Northbrook; fired upon two black men in
Springfield, Ill.; shot at six men of Asian descent in Champaign-Urbana,
Ill.; and killed a member of the Korean United Methodist Church in
Bloomington, Ind., as he walked toward the church.

The bishop said the council had met with local Southern Baptists before
releasing the letter to the national body. "There seemed to be more
understanding of our point of view and to the situation here from the local
leaders than there appears to be from this national movement," he added.

If the Southern Baptists still descend en masse upon Chicago next summer,
the council will try "to help guide them in directions that would be helpful
rather than hurtful here," Sprague said.

Herb Hollinger, spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, told Religion
News Service that he doubted the letter would prompt a change in plans.
Hollinger said the denomination's leaders were shocked to receive the
letter.

"We're surprised that the religious leaders of Chicago don't see our heart,"
Hollinger said in a Nov. 30 Religion News Service story. "Our heart is to
bring a message of good news, encouragement, faith, hope to people. That's
our intent and that's certainly what we're going to try and do."

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United Methodist News Service
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