(6 of 11)
"Henry" and "Sarah" practice a kind of evangelism that might satisfy the staunchest agnostic. In the early 1980s they arrived in the North African country where they serve as missionary-team leaders. "We didn't want to run through, do our thing and preach," says Sarah. "We wanted to live." They founded an adventure-travel business and made friends. They talked sports and taxes and children with their neighbors, went camping with them and gathered with them on Muslim feast days. They didn't hide their faith, but they didn't press it on others, so when a friend's friend who had taken a Christian correspondence course approached them on behalf of his family, they shared Christ on his terms. "They pursued us," Henry insists. The two clans grew close and still are; eventually several of the Muslims embraced Christ. To tentmaking theorists, this is "relationship evangelism." Henry prefers to speak of the difference in connotation between two Arabic words, tansir and tabshir. "Tansir means to coerce people to change their religion," he explains. "Tabshir means to share, to be a witness."
At its most subtle, tentmaking embodies St. Francis' edict: "Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words." ("Be someone's friend, not an Amway salesman," paraphrases one veteran.) But the sometimes clandestine status can breed bad habits. Visa bans turn many Evangelicals, usually straightforward to a fault, into truth stretchers, if only at the customs desk. They use encrypted e-mail and code words or smuggle Bibles. "Some," says a Christian minister in Morocco, "seem to have been inspired by the book of James, verse 007." It is not really their fault, says the leader of one mission, contending, "It should not be dangerous for a person to move to a different country and, to use the words of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 'manifest his belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.'" Yet a classroom scene at Columbia International University in South Carolina reported last year by Mother Jones magazine demonstrates an unnerving ethical elasticity. "Did Jesus ever lie?" asks a lecturer. His class replies, "No." "But did Jesus raise his hand and say, 'I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?'" Again, 20 voices call out, "No!" (The instructor confirms the quote but says that it was taken out of context.)
Then there are the apparent attempts by some missionaries to camouflage their faith as a kind of Islam: inviting prospective converts to "Jesus mosques," publicly reciting the Muslim creed, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet"; or allowing themselves to be regarded as Muslim mystics, or Sufis. Such techniques are rationalized as part of "contextualization," the necessary presentation of new ideas in a familiar idiom. But Ibrahim Hooper, of the Washington advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations, claims, "They know it won't work to just say, 'We want you to become Christian, and here's why.' So they have to pretend to be Muslims." Some Evangelicals are also wary. Jesus mosque "blurs the issue," says a missionary in Jordan. "If Muslims are coming to Christ, they really need to know what they're coming to."