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Park Eun-jo, the pastor of Saemmul Church in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province, said Monday the church will stop performing volunteer work in Afghanistan, since he said it was not welcomed by that country. Twenty-three members of the church were taken hostage in the war-torn country last week. In his capacity as the chairman of the Korean Foundation for World Aid, which invited the abducted volunteers to Afghanistan, he plans to withdraw other volunteer workers as well. The foundation said it is seriously considering relocating its remaining workers to safer areas in the country. In addition to the 23 who have been kidnapped, the foundation has 42 workers doing volunteer work at hospitals, kindergartens and universities in the Afghan capital Kabul and in the southern city of Kandahar. The decision by the church and the foundation is a natural one.
Korean evangelical groups have dispatched 16,616 missionaries to 173 countries around the world, the second-highest number in the world next to the United States. Some 4,700 Korean evangelical missionaries are working in Muslim countries in Southwest, Southeast and Central Asia, where local governments strictly ban Christian proselytizing. In August last year, around 2,000 evangelicals attempted to hold a mass rally in Afghanistan, but ended up returning to Korea due to resistance from Afghan authorities. Park says his volunteers came to Afghanistan only to do volunteer work, but the locals reportedly knew very well that the Koreans had come from a church.
Afghanistan remains a stronghold of Osama Bin Laden, who has declared a jihad or holy war against the U.S., Europe and the Christian world at large and masterminded the devastating Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. That’s how strong anti-Christian sentiment is in Afghanistan. Even outside the country, the clash between Christianity and Islam underlies the tension, violence and bloodshed taking place in the Middle East. And religious clashes can lead to worse bloodshed than those involving racial or ideological differences.
Volunteer work is good. But in a multicultural and multi-religious age and especially in a place like Afghanistan, where there is a sharp hatred of Christianity, a deeper understanding of indigenous conditions must precede the dispatch of volunteer workers.
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