Add Africa to the list of dangerous arenas where Christianity and Islam are clashing. Anyone charting global hot spots may know as much, but viewers of "Battle for Souls," on the Discovery Times Channel tonight, can get a lesson in compounded pain. The continent is already gasping through pandemics of poverty and AIDS, so bloodshed among true believers seems to inflict new lacerations on broken limbs.
"Battle for Souls" leads viewers into the riotous troubles with a focus on unrest in Nigeria. Christians dominate that nation's southern region; Muslims have large communities in the north. In the overlapping central strip, missionaries and evangelical Christians can count conversion successes, aided by Western methods of population mapping and televised Gospel messages.
Some Muslims in the area have shored up their resolve with stricter adherence to the Koran. Interpretations include sentences like death by stoning for adulterers and amputations for thieves.
Intensity on each side has led to unrest in the streets, including church burnings. Victimization and retaliation have begun a violent interplay, and the program shows how blame can be assigned to aggressors in both faiths. The Muslim and the Christian avenues to salvation might be seen as peacefully parallel in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere, but the African paths have dangerous bends. "Islam and Christianity do seem set on a collision course," says Philip Jenkins, a Penn State professor of history and religion.
Many rural communities are in need of much healing, and religion provides aid, both spiritual and practical. "In Africa you virtually have to depend on divine intervention to have things working for you," explains Timothy Ulondade, a missionary in Nigeria. He mentions prayers that spigots will yield water and phones will have dial tones.
The program follows a pair of American missionaries who have brought both Christian messages and indoor plumbing to a poor Muslim community called Blindtown. The missionaries, Bill and Dorothy Ardill, a married couple, pay respects to an emir who tolerates their proselytizing. Presumably, his constituency is better off with Christian-financed services, even if the exposure to these Westerners leads a few Muslims to convert.
For more than a decade the Ardills have run a surgical clinic and an after-school center, while raising children of their own. Dorothy Ardill covers her head in a Muslim area, so as not to cause a riot, she says, and she touts her openness while Gospel-spreading as a form of respect. "We are not stealth," she says.
Another Christian missionary talks for broadcast only with his face obscured by dim lighting and video digitizing. "John," as he calls himself, will soon take his wife and two children into a country where his proselytizing is illegal. Still, he says he feels protected, if not from prosecution, then certainly from damnation.
"The safest place for us to be is in the center of God's will," he says. He adds his view of Islam, which he hopes to supplant, convert by convert: "I simply don't believe that" Christianity and Islam "are coeqeuals," he says. "I believe that one is the truth and the other is not."
Larger strides in spreading Christianity are accomplished not by Westerners but by Nigerians like Bishop David Oyedepo. His Canaanland megachurch can hold 50,000 worshippers in a jubilant session, sent out over the airwaves. The complex, with buses and broadcast equipment, is financed "not one dime from America, not one penny from Europe," Bishop Oyedepo says.
The Muslims must feel somewhat threatened from all the growth of a rival faith, but the program is less comprehensive in showing them on camera. Some militants may be responsible for a spate of church burnings, and the program does not get deeply into which faction first got violent. Aggression can come in many forms, the program deftly shows, and perhaps Christian missionary zeal intrudes dangerously in a Muslim's most guarded sense of self.
"Battle for Souls" looks carefully at an untenable problem and leaves a viewer anxious about the prospect of more Muslim-Christian outbursts. The producers follow big ideas about theology and poverty wherever they lead, and the concluding segment tracks an ambitious Nigerian Pentecostal pastor who plans churches in each of Brooklyn's ZIP codes. Such meandering undoes the narrative, but teaser-heavy, "Dateline"-style storytelling would surely oversimplify a delicate discussion.
BATTLE FOR SOULS
Discovery Times Channel, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time