800,000 Muslims . . . Er, I Mean, 2,000 Muslims Become Christian
This story was making the rounds over at First Things (The Anchoress and Gateway Pundit) this weekend so I thought I'd post my response here as well.
The headline? 800,000 Sudanese Muslims Have Become Christians. The source? A Dutch article, somewhat mangled by internet translation.
The reality?
Grossly exaggerated - on the scale of the 6 million Muslims become Christians every year story that was circulating last year. There have indeed been many conversions in southern Sudan but they are almost all from non-Muslim backgrounds. As I commented on both blogs:
"I hate to be the one to burst people’s bubble but I’m in touch with the major networks of missionary news and statistics and nothing on this scale is being reported for Muslims in Sudan. Evangelicals follow this sort of thing assiduously and they love to crunch numbers.
Arab World Ministries puts it this way:
“Estimates of Sudanese Muslims who have become Christians range from 200 to 2000. With decades of prayer and nearly fruitless ministry behind, a harvest among Northern Sudanese Muslims seems to be beginning.”
Operation World sums it up this way:
“The population in the north is largely Sunni Muslim, though among them are 300,000 or more Coptic Christians and maybe 2 million southern Christians displaced by war. Sufi religious orders are strong – especially Ansar, followers of the famous Mahdi. A small but increasing number have become Christians – disillusioned by Islam and attracted to Jesus. There are probably some thousands of these. There are reports of whole villages turning to Christ. Pray that their numbers may increase. There is a remarkable openness among many.”
So there have been some conversions but maybe 2,000 – which is really significant - but not 800,000.
I think the source of these numbers is Joel Rosenberg who is an evangelical who writes popular thriller novels. His numbers are greatly exaggerated. (I don’t know where he got them.)
There are really significant numbers of Muslims becoming Christians in the past 20 -30 years – but not numbers like this. The largest numbers that I have ever seen reported are 10,000 (Algeria) or 20,000 (Turkey) – which are staggering – if you know the history of Muslim missions.
When you hear suspiciously large, rounded numbers like this – millions or hundreds of thousands of Muslims becoming Christians – always check out the numerous evangelical missionary resources online – Joshua report, Operation World, or some of the agencies focusing on the Muslim world.
Cause chances are, those numbers, as in this case, are wildly inflated.
posted by Sherry W @ 6:49 PM
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5 Comments:
I pray this article makes the rounds of the Internet :)
In this recent interview -in Spanish- to Italian bishop Mazzolari, from Rumbek, South Sudan, he says that he has been there 20 years, and Catholics have come from 7 percent to achieve the 11 percent. He himself says it is very slow. 80 percent is animist.
http://www.forumlibertas.com/frontend/forumlibertas/noticia.php?id_noticia=14855
BISHOP Mazzolari is a great pastor, with an effective NGO www.cesarsudan.org , 30 priests and y 54 nuns for a diocesis the size of half-Italy. He worked in the USA many years and speaks fluent English.
I think that most of the conversions in southern Sudan are to some form of evangelical Christianity, not Catholicism. The good bishop has done well to see Catholics grow to 11% in 20 years.
This post doesn't make sense. The article is not only about Sudan, in fact, the article's title is 'Millions of muslems now christian'(Miljoenen moslims nu christen')
It talks about the Arabic and Islamic world (Arabische en islamitische wereld). So even if there are only 2000 converts in Sudan, conversion rates in the rest of the Arabian world may be far higher.
Anon:
the very rough English translation of the first paragraph ends:
In Sudan as a land of cruelty and shot against the Mohammedan regime Christians off many Muslims. 800,000 of them have become Christians. 800.000 of them became Christians.
Hence the not unnatural assumption that they were saying the 800,000 Sudanese Muslims had become Christians. I don't read Dutch.
Might there be 800,000 Muslims around the world who have become Christians over the past say 30 years?
It's possible - but I think it would be the very high end of possible estimates.
And would depend upon whether you are counting those Muslims who have been baptized or also those who are non-baptized "followers of Jesus" who are tracked by evangelicals but would not be considered to be Christians by Catholics or the Orthodox.
500,000 baptized Muslim background believers in the whole world over the past 3 decades would probably be closer to the mark.
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