HVK Archives: 50 Christian groups promise no missionary activity in Israel
50 Christian groups promise no missionary activity in Israel - CNN Networks
Posted By Ashok Chowgule (ashokvc@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in)
31 March 1998
Title: 50 Christian groups promise no missionary activity in Israel
Author:
Publication: CNN Networks
Date: 31 March 1998
JERUSALEM (AP) Representatives of 50 Christian evangelical groups have agreed to make an unprecedented joint statement
promising not to carry out missionary activity in Israel.
As a result, Israeli legislator Nissim Zvili said Monday he would
drop his sponsorship of an anti-proselytizing bill that has drawn
protests from Christians around the world.
"This is better than a law," Zvili told The Associated Press. "This
is a very big accomplishment."
In the statement, the Christian groups say they "rejoice in the
presence of the Jewish people in this country of their ancestors"
and agree to avoid "activities which...alienate them from their
tradition and community."
Missionary activity touches a particularly raw nerve in the Jewish
state, home to 300,000 Holocaust survivors. Some Jewish groups
have accused Christian churches of apathy or complicity in the
Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jews.
Clarence Wagner, director of the evangelical foundation Bridges
for Peace, said the joint statement was an important step toward
understanding between Jews and Christians. "We don't believe
that we have been or are in any way a threat to the Jewish
people," he said. The proposed anti-proselytizing bill would have
banned possession of any written material that proselytizes which
some Christians feared could be used to ban possession of the
New Testament.
Zvili said he had proposed the bill after receiving a proselytizing
tract in the mail.
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