June 12, 2000
Chicago Declaration asserts right to evangelize all people
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___ATLANTA (ABP)--Top evangelical leaders have joined prominent Southern Baptists in a rejoinder to critics of efforts to preach the Christian gospel to people of other faiths.
___A "Chicago Declaration on Religious Freedom" released June 2 challenges those who contend that attempts to proselytize non-Christians "undermine a peaceful, pluralistic society and may lead to intolerance, bigotry and even violence."
___That language echoed a plea last year by a council of interfaith leaders in Chicago for Southern Baptists to call off plans to blitz the city with volunteer missionaries this summer.
___The Council of Religious Leaders in Metropolitan Chicago, in a November open letter to Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson, expressed fear that a plan to send 100,000 evangelists to the city might undo progress made in interfaith dialogue or even encourage extremists to commit violence.
___Southern Baptists rebuffed that request, but more recent projections have scaled back the scope of the planned effort considerably.
___The Chicago council isn't mentioned in the statement drafted over three months at the initiative of Bob Reccord, president of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Richard Land, president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. In fact, the effort's coordinator, NAMB Vice President Phil Roberts, told Baptist Press it is called the Chicago statement because that is where most of the planning and writing meetings were held.
___However, both the statement's text and comments by signers to the media were clear in their view that criticism of evangelical witnessing constitutes censorship.
___"Evangelicals have run headlong into a sobering reality in our nation--the noose is tightening around the neck of religious liberty," Reccord told Baptist Press.
___"I think the declaration puts our critics on notice that they're going to have to defend what appears to a lot of Americans to be intolerance," Land told the Dallas Morning News. "They are denying our rights, because our faith calls on us to witness."
___Joining 21 original signers were more than 60 individuals who endorsed the statement. Supporters include some of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders: Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson, Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary, David Neff of Christianity Today, Janet Parshall of the Family Research Council, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice and evangelist Billy Graham's son, Franklin Graham.
___The statement declares, "Misguided or false notions of pluralism must not be allowed to jeopardize anyone's constitutional right to evangelize or promote one's faith."
___The declaration calls for religious liberty for all, says Christians have a responsibility to evangelize and describes witnessing as "not merely an act of obedience but also an act of love."
___It also acknowledges that "some Christian churches have failed to exercise proper respect for the rights of others" and rejects "coercive techniques, dishonest appeals or any form of deception" in evangelism.
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