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Barnabas Fund Rebuts Allegations made by the Evangelical Alliance-UK
By David W. Virtue DD
www.virtueonline.org
May 20, 2016
A 50-page document, Hard Pressed on Every Side -- The Barnabas Fund and Patrick Sookhdeo, published earlier this year, documented the challenges, both personal and institutional, that the ministry has had to face from some of its critics over the years.
The organization alleges in detail the criticisms faced by BF and Dr. Sookhdeo especially and including hostility from the Evangelical Alliance-UK, an organization that bills itself as the largest and oldest body representing the UK's two million evangelical Christians.
The document Hard Pressed claims that between September 1994 and August 1995, the late Len Ashdown had fraudulently been stealing money from EA-UK in several different ways. Dr. Sookhdeo recommended calling the Police. As a result, Mr. Ashdown was taken in for questioning and his home raided. They discovered that he was acting for several Christian organizations as both secretary and treasurer, in which dual capacity he was committing fraud. The Police said they did not have enough evidence to prosecute and suggested a civil action. They also recommended that Dr. Sookhdeo contact the other organisations affected and inform them of the situation. He brought the matter to the Evangelical Alliance, who convened a group under the chairmanship of Rev. Stanley Davies of the Evangelical Missionary Alliance (the missionary arm of the EA, now a separate organization called Global Connections).
They refused to act and wanted to cover up what had happened. They turned, instead, on Dr. Sookhdeo himself. Sookhdeo refused to back down and went to the chair of one of the other organizations that had been defrauded, the Federation of London Christian Unions. However, the chairman, Lewis Rolph, refused to discuss the matter and became defensive of Ashdown and angry with Sookhdeo for raising the issue. Ashdown fired back, contacting some of its largest funders, alleging that Patrick Sookhdeo was committing fraud, which, of course, was completely untrue.
The Evangelical Alliance (EA) appeared to regard Open Doors, CSW and Release as their organizations for religious liberty. On a number of occasions, Barnabas Fund approached the EA to ask why the Fund was not mentioned or included in articles, but no answer was given.
Barnabas Fund UK resigned from membership of the Evangelical Alliance in January, 2013. This was because of the years of marginalization and partly because of their gradually changing theological position. The EA's earlier General Secretary, Joel Edwards, had urged churches to open their pulpits on Sundays to Muslim preachers, which Barnabas Fund and Sookhdeo disagreed with as a policy.
In early November, 2015, Dr. David Landrum, Director of Advocacy for the Evangelical Alliance UK, wrote to an arm of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). He referred to some of Mark Woods' articles in Christian Today, and urged the organization to break its partnership with Barnabas Fund, despite a contractual agreement to acknowledge, publicly, Barnabas Fund's already-given financial support for the WEA arm.
The EA-UK approached the WEA arm at least twice on this. The WEA arm responded by repeatedly asking the EA-UK to contact Barnabas Fund directly to discuss their concerns. Two months on, the EA-UK had still not been in touch with Barnabas Fund. All this happened despite the fact that Barnabas Fund has given grants to national evangelical alliances in many countries and to the World Evangelical Alliance itself.
Following the publication by Barnabas Fund, The Evangelical Alliance (EA) hit back at claims by Barnabas Fund and Barnabas Aid International that it ignored Barnabas Fund in favor of other religious liberty organizations and that its former General Secretary, Rev Joel Edwards, had "urged churches to open their pulpits on Sundays for Muslim preachers".
"The Evangelical Alliance has always been committed to supporting the persecuted Church across the world. We are part of the Religious Liberty Commission (UK RLC), along with Release International (UK arm of Voice for the Martyrs), Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Open Doors, which advocates on behalf of persecuted Christians and we work with member organisations who provide practical support."
EA-UK said it was "surprised and saddened" by the comments made in Hard Pressed on Every Side and was "dismayed that the trustees chose not to discuss their allegations with us first to avoid misinformation and confusion".
In responding to EA-UK's statement about Barnabas Aid, the trustees of Barnabas Aid felt it necessary to respond to the statement on the website of EA-UK dated 11 May, 2016.
"Two meetings have indeed been held with members of the EA and representatives of Barnabas Aid, which we felt were both constructive and prayerful. Both organizations feel that this has been a welcome start in establishing a more positive relationship in the future. The representatives of Barnabas Aid were particularly encouraged by the EA UK's new Chairman, Tani Omideyi, who made his desire clear that a positive relationship between the two organisations should be pursued. We were appreciative of the opportunity to see and comment on their statement. However, the statement gives the wrongful impression that Barnabas has acted unreasonably since resigning as a member of the EA. We are disappointed that the EA-UK did not take this opportunity to correct all the misleading and incorrect parts of the statement which we pointed out to them."
In response to the EA UK's rebuttal that they acted on behalf of the UK RLC in contacting an arm of the WEA, the trustees of Barnabas said, "What they were doing was an attempt to persuade WEA to break its word to BF (from whom it had already received the funds). Furthermore, rather than listing their own specific concerns when writing to the WEA, they instead simply referred them to Rev Mark Woods' articles in Christian Today."
It continued by highlighting a clear conflict between what a member of the UK RLC, Open Doors, is saying and what the EA UK is saying. "Open Doors has categorically denied that they asked the EA to contact the WEA on their behalf, nor were they aware that BF had a relationship with the WEA or that BF funded the WEA...both organisations cannot be right."
"BF's motivation has always been, and remains, to support our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world, providing hope and aid where needed. BF will speak up on matters that affect the persecuted Church, which would not necessarily matter to or impact the Western church. BF continues to see the persecuted Church as the body that shapes its direction, and not necessarily what would be popular in the West. It is because of this motivation that some of the issues raised in the EA-UK statement remain highly important.
"The article that Joel Edwards wrote and the letter in which he subsequently defended his article which included allowing Muslims into Christian pulpits have an implication for the persecuted Church on the frontline. Most of the world's persecution of Christians takes place in Muslim-majority countries and therefore BF was shocked to have found that the General Director of the EA could make such a statement, even if his motivation was good."
Barnabas Aid's statement includes the full article and letter written by Rev Joel Edwards, which confirms what Barnabas Aid has been claiming.
This publication is aware that the current General Secretary of EA UK, Steve Clifford, in a similar statement, encouraged Christians to visit their local Mosque during a VisitMyMosque initiative hosted by the Muslim Council of Britain. Although not mentioned in the Barnabas Aid's statement, this is a well-known Dawa tactic employed by Muslims, and for the head of an evangelical organisation to recommend Christians to visit a Mosque is troublesome.
https://www.premier.org.uk/News/Society/Christians-urged-to-love-their-neighbour-visit-a-Mosque
Barnabas Fund remains firm in its resolve to support the persecuted church wherever it is found, and will support those missions that come to the aid and comfort of those Christians persecuted by Muslim extremists.
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