Morehead is precisely what modern Pagans need: a person who is willing to look and capable of thinking beyond the evangelism tenet of Christianity. It is there, it is the shadow waiting in the wings, and there need not be anything slippery about his shining a light on it, acknowledging it, and offering to move on from there. I agree that some cynicism is appropriate there. I don’t agree that we should prejudge him with it.

I have a matching agenda, which he will see here or will see if he responds to my post on his blog: I work for the day when evangelism becomes a practice rather than a requirement of faith, and is no longer the threat that you and I clearly see in it. We can’t do it from the outside by ourselves. We must have a cooperative spirit from inside.

Notice the slippery rhetoric in Morehead’s response: the assumption that “we have a range of issues that we need to discuss.”

We do? Says who? When was this decided? The assumption is that “dialog is good,” but might one also argue that “dialog is irrelevant”? Who is served by this “dialog”?

Lots of assumptions in his writing …

Also, the idea that “most religions’” adherents are evangelistic is a bit slippery too. His only other example is Buddhism, which *was* somewhat evangelistic in its early centuries. But tribal religions? Shinto? Taoism? When was the last time you had missionaries from the Native American Church at your door?

Are the average adherents of most religions driven to “share”?

That said, I believe that Mr. Morehead contradicts himself. While he goes to some pains to soften the motivation and worldview of evangelism – and while I am certainly prepared to take him at his word first, that he and his compatriots do not see non-christians as “objects” of any kind and second, that conversion is not the sole intent of any dialogue – that it remains an important and final goal of such dialogue is confirmed by his own statement that “Christians seek to be true to their religious tradition and the one upon whom it is based, and this means accepting the responsibility of communicating the gospel and making disciples as Jesus taught.” From this I must conclude that Mr. French’s suspicions are well-founded.

Further, in seeking to allay those suspicions, Mr. Morehead takes a “well, they do it too” sort of approach, using Buddhism as his prime example.

First, very few pagans of my acquaintance have any interest in pagan evangelism whatsoever. While one likes to have fellow travelers, many pagans “find” paganism in a process very different from the osmosis by which Christianity seems to embed itself in a Western mind by virtue of its cultural ubuiquity. Pagans are largely self-made – in effect, they evangelize *themselves* rather than others.

Second, Buddhism is a poor example of “pagan” relationships to anything, and its selection reveals an awkwardly blunt categorical thinking on Mr. Morehead’s part. Buddhism is Buddhism, not Paganism in its modern sense, regardless of the derivation of the term.

Third, while some Christian thinkers or leaders may have agreed with some Buddhist thinkers or leaders that both religions share an evangelical urge, I have to say that I’ve seen none of it among practicing American Buddhists. Unless one considers the simple act of saying “this is how I see it, and by the way have some tea” to be itself an act of conversion.

This is how I see it, and by the way have some mead.

First, I do not consider Paganism or any other new religious movement or minority religion in the West to be a “cult” to be countered. The article referenced above was written years ago to evangelicals in a community who identify themselves as “counter-cult” order to persuade them to move beyond pejorative labels and confrontational conceptions of and relations with NRMs as cults and instead to consider them religious or spiritual cultures.

Second, Christians seek to be true to their religious tradition and the one upon whom it is based, and this means accepting the responsibility of communicating the gospel and making disciples as Jesus taught. Of course, this is not all Jesus called us to do, and it must be balanced with loving our neighbors as ourselves, but if we are to be true to the teachings of Jesus we cannot avoid this area of our spirituality. Even so, this need not mean we view people as mere objects to be converted, or that we cannot have a dialogical agenda broader than evangelism. Recall that in Jason Pitzl-Waters post on this topic at The Wildhunt that he called a handful of colleagues and I “missional Christians.” I have never hidden or denied by efforts at sharing Jesus’ message with others, but I try to do so as part of an overall part of my Christian life that need not conflict with important things like Pagan-Christian dialogue.

Third, consider that the adherents of most religions are evangelistic in the sense that they share their religion and want to see others adopt it, even though they go about this practice in very different ways. It is not only the monotheistic religions that hold this view, but religions like Buddhism do as well, again, in very different ways. There is a history of Buddhist-Christian dialogue which has recognized the missionary impulse of both religious traditions but which accounts for this in the dialogue process so that respectful and genuinely two-way dialogue can take place so that dialogue is not merely a front for evangelism, a problem that I readily acknowledge often takes place when evangelicals engage in the process. I submit that if a missionary component of these two religions does not invalidate genuine dialogue then the argument that a missionary commitment invalidates genuine dialogue is inaccurate. It may not be appropriate for *some* Pagans who find it problematic, but those who do not it is theoretically possible, as demonstrated in the different religious context of Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Whatever our views on this issue, I think it demonstrates that we have a range of issues we need to discuss, and even though we will disagree at the end of the day it is better to build our relationships and discuss them rather than ignore each other or continue to be defensive about each other.