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this article on Yahoo and decided to share the original.
This is my best quote to Trump Rants: Russell Moore, the head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, tried to restrain himself on Instagram: “I have no words for this. Actually I think I do but the Holy Spirit won’t let me say them.”
Prominent
conservative voices are criticizing the decision to bring two medical
missionaries who contracted Ebola back to the United States for
treatment.
Real
estate mogul Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson
were both critical of bringing the infected missionaries back to the
U.S. Columnist Ann Coulter went further, questioning why the
missionaries were working in the “disease-ridden cesspools” of
Africa.
Dr.
Kent Brantly, with Samaritan’s Purse, and Nancy Writebol, with
Service in Mission, are medical missionaries who were infected with
Ebola while working with patients in Liberia. They are being treated
at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Continue....
“If
Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and
turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have
done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish
in a century spent in Liberia,” Coulter wrote in a column.
But
the professional provocateur is facing a backlash from the mainstream
Christian establishment, especially evangelicals, for whom overseas
missionary work is an article of faith.
“St.
Thomas should have never gone to India and Jim Elliott should have
never gone into the jungle. Sigh,” conservative columnist Erick
Erickson shot back at Coulter on Twitter.
Samaritan’s
Purse, which is run by Franklin Graham, declined to comment on the
criticisms directed at Brantly and others. Service in Mission was
unavailable for comment.
Denny
Burk, a biblical studies professor at Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, said Coulter was dishing out “pagan foolishness” and
shouldn’t be a go-to source for the theology of mission work.
Andrew Walker from the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious
Liberty Commission called her remarks “absolutely reprehensible,
Christ-denying vitriol.”
Last
week, Trump sent a series of tweets about the missionaries being
treated in the U.S.:
– “Ebola
patient will be brought to the U.S. in a few days – now I know for
sure that our leaders are incompetent. KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!”
– “Stop
the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S. Treat them, at the highest
level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH PROBLEMS!”
– “The
U.S. cannot allow EBOLA infected people back. People that go to far
away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences!”
Russell
Moore, the head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission,
tried to restrain himself on Instagram: “I have no words for this.
Actually I think I do but the Holy Spirit won’t let me say them.”
Conservative
Minneapolis preacher and author John Piper wrote a poem for World
magazine in reaction: “‘Why bring them home?’ Though you be
stumped, This grace will not be trumped,” Piper wrote.
Carson,
who is flirting with a White House run after taking on President
Obama at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, said it was a mistake to
bring the missionaries back for treatment and doctors could have
flown overseas to treat them.
The
head nurse at Emory, where the missionaries were taken, wrote that
Americans stand to benefit from what medical professionals learn by
treating the patients.
“These
Americans generously went to Africa on a humanitarian mission to help
eradicate a disease that is especially deadly in countries without
our health-care infrastructure. They deserve the same selflessness
from us,” wrote Susan M. Grant. “To refuse to care for these
professionals would raise enormous questions about the ethical
foundation of our profession.”
Before
they returned the United States, Samaritan’s Purse arranged for the
missionaries to receive an experimental drug, prompting debate among
Africans over why Americans could receive the drug when Africans
couldn’t have access.
Brantly
was doing a Samaritan’s Purse post-residency program before joining
the medical team responding to the Ebola crisis. He received a unit
of blood from a 14-year-old boy who had survived Ebola under his
care. Brantly reportedly insisted that Writebol receive treatment
before he did.
An
elderly missionary became the first Ebola patient to arrive in Europe
for treatment early Thursday (Aug. 7) when Spain’s government flew
a 75-year-old Roman Catholic priest back from Liberia.
Missionaries
have sometimes received backlash for their involvement in other
countries. Evvy Campbell, a retired professor of intercultural
studies at Wheaton College who once served as a medical missionary in
Sierra Leone, said a similar epidemic of fear surrounded the
beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s.
“It’s
driven by ignorance and self-protection,” Campbell said.
“Missionaries have always gone into these kinds of situations and
have often been on the front line.”
The
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued its
highest-level alert for a response to the Ebola crisis. Ebola has
claimed more than 900 lives in West Africa since the start of the
latest outbreak.
Credit:
Religion News Service by Sarah Pulliam Bailey
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