On the one year anniversay of the Sept 11 terrorist attack, a leading Sri Lankan evangelist named Ajith Fernando wrote an open letter to Christians in the USA. He sensitively and powerfully delivered an urgent message that he called, “A View from the Other Side of the Globe.” Since then I have tried in vain to see that this prophetic voice from the Global South get a hearing in the USA. To no avail. Christians in the US don’t want to hear it, and mission leaders from the US don’t see the issues either.

The letter itself is too long to quote here in its entirety. Nor have I been able to find a link via “google”. What I will do is highlight some of the issues he addresses.

1. a growing gap between the opinions and perspectives of Christians in the “West” and those of Christians from the “majority world”. This comes with a sense that Christians in the US don’t understand and are not willing to listen and genuinely consider why people are angry with the US. Christian leaders in the West are not in touch with the humiliations that Muslims are experiencing in the face of global dominance of Western culture.

2. “I want to appeal to the Church (in the USA) to be careful about lending its support to Western military initiatives…If they see (that is, Muslims) the Christians as strong people coming to hit them, then they will hate us and oppose our gospel even more. This is why it may be necessary for the Church to divorce itself from the power of the West, which much of the rest of the world resents.”

3. “It is necessary for the Church (in the US) to divorce itself from statements like, ‘We are the greatest nation on earth’ because our religion tells us, ‘In humility consider others better than yourselves’. These are all vital issues that churches in the West need to think about if they are to be involved in missions.”

Ajith Fernando is an evangelist. His heart is to see the world evangelized and the name of Christ honered among the nations. From what I can tell, the questions that he raises are NOT on the agenda for Cape Town. Am I wrong on this? I’m curious…are there other voices from “the other side of the globe” that want these issues addressed at the gathering?