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Mounds of garbage fester in the streets of Baghdad. Iraqis continue to suffer from a lack of basic services, including water and power. Hospital looting has deprived the city of key medical supplies. Meanwhile, stockpiles of medicine, food, and other relief goods remain stuck outside Iraq's borders as the country's typically broiling summer sets in.

Aid trickles in, but frustrated relief agencies wait as violence and insecurity in Iraq delay their entry. Several aid groups have threatened to stay out if the United States military decides to coordinate relief efforts longer than necessary. Relief agencies argue that working too closely with the armed forces could create a faulty perception that relief is tied to U.S. political objectives.

Even more formidable barriers await Christian groups that seek to combine witness to Jesus Christ with humanitarian aid.

Ninety-six percent of Iraq's 22 million people are Muslim, and many have shown themselves hostile to any Christian presence.

This spring, American media complicated this challenge by feeding public suspicions that America is following its military campaign with an army of Christian soldiers disguised as aid workers. A spate of articles reignited controversy by dredging up the late 2001 remark by Franklin Graham, head of the Christian relief agency Samaritan's Purse, that Islam was "a very evil and wicked religion."

On March 26, a Religion News Service article reported that Samaritan's Purse and the Southern Baptist Convention would provide humanitarian relief among Iraqi Muslims. Next, the multifaith website Beliefnet posted a harsh assessment by Deborah Caldwell. Caldwell quoted the combative Muslim spokesman Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as saying Graham would go to Iraq to convert people to Christianity.

"Franklin Graham obviously thinks it is a war against Islam," Hooper said. The New York Times reprinted Caldwell's piece on April 6. Other media outlets published critical looks at Graham's role in relief in Iraq. Beliefnet staff members wrote several of them.

Evangelical relief groups, finding themselves on the defensive, stressed that providing physical relief to suffering people is their main objective. Graham explained his organization's goals in a Los Angeles Times op-ed article on April 2: "Samaritan's Purse will offer physical assistance to those who need it, with no strings attached. Sometimes the best preaching we can do is simply being there with a cup of cold water, exhibiting Christ's spirit of serving others."

Ben Homan, president of Food for the Hungry, agreed: "If an earthquake struck in Texas, and someone forced you to hear a religious message in exchange for food or medicine, we think that would be wrong."

Nonetheless, for most evangelical relief groups, the question is not whether, but how and when, they should convey their faith. Agency leaders say that while aid will not be conditioned on a person's accepting the gospel, relief workers will be available privately to answer spiritual questions as they come up in the context of relationships. Food for the Hungry plans to spend $546,000 a month to feed 15,000 Iraqi families in the mostly desert country for three months.

Len Rodgers, president of Venture International, has 20 years of experience working in the region. He told CT that local Christians could best do the work. "It's not seen as proselytism, but as the church [people] doing what they always do—serving 'the least of these.' They don't pass out literature indiscriminately. The bottom line is relational. They treat people as people."

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June 2003, Vol. 47, No. 6