User:Whitesurf/Armed Conflict and Proselytizing

Proselitization is sometimes fascilitated by some circumstances and is hindered by others. For example the Christian missionaries have had considerable success in Korea but have not yet made any significant impact in Japan, even though the two countires are adjacent and have shared a common culture.

Existence of an armed conflict can be conducive to proselitization in several ways.

• Religious conquest by a winning group leading to hardships for adherents of the losing faith: Zoroastrians who had themselves once persecuted Mani as an apostate, faced hardships when Iran was conquered. Examples:
  • Under the Islamic rule, the law of inheritance required that a Zoroastrian who converts to Islam received most or all the inheritance of the deceased, while the other siblings who remained Zoroastrians, got nothing [1].
  • In Kashmir, the Mughal Governor Muhta Khan forbade Hindus from riding a horse, wearing a distinguished dress, bearing arms, participating in fairs etc. [2]
• War destroys the social febric resulting in loss of attachment to an older faith. Examples:
  • The Korean war which followed Japanese occupation, reduced the affinity of the Koreans with the Buddhist and Confucian traditions.
  • Evangelical Christianity has risen dramatically in Nepal (from 25 in 1961 to 250,000 in 1996 [3]) since the beginning of the Maoist insurgancy [4], although the two ideologies have nothing in common.
  • In Myammar, The Myanmar Baptist Convention membership increased dramatically in the past couple of decades [5], as insurgency among the Karen [6], the Kachins and the Chins continues.
• Success in war is taken to demonstrate the truth of a faith. Examples:
  • Constantine who attributed his victory in the Battle of Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312 to the use of Christian symbols on his standards. This lead Constantine to become a major supporter of Christianity and a persecutor of the Pagan faith [7]. Codex Theodosianus decrees that:"in all places and all cities the (Pagan) temples should be closed at once, .. And if anyone has committed such a crime (worshipping a Pagan god), let him be stricken with the avenging sword." [8]
  • Amir Khusro writes about the conquest of Cambay: "the wave of the Muslim army ... cleansed the ground by a deluge of infidel blood; ... the sword of Islam purified the land as the sun purifies the earth. [9]"

Also see

• Taiping Rebellion
• Religious Wars
• Christianization of Korea
• Just War
• Hindukush Kafir people

References

• Nepal: Maoist Rebel Activity Impacts Christian Ministry 01 Dec 2004
• A new breed of missionary Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor, April 01, 2005.
• In War and Famine: Missionaries in China's Honan Province in the 1940s, By Erleen J. Christensen, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.
• The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, 1893.
• The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twentieth Century By Bat Ye'Or, Bat Ye'or, Associated University Presses, 1996.
• Apocalypse Now?: Reflections on Faith in a Time of Terror, By Duncan B. Forrester, Ashgate Publishing Co, 2005
• Evangelism Explosion By D James Kennedy, Tyndale House, 1996.
• The Master Plan of Evangelism, by Robert Emerson Coleman, 1994.

category:Religious behaviour and experience category:Religious conversion