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Interpretation
2. Globalization
3. Missionaries in Africa
4. Religion & Prosperity
5. Racism
6. Ecuminism
7. In a Strange Land
8. Bibliography

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Ecumenism and Exclusivity

Brother David Wright, minister of the Bible Believers church outside Yazoo City, Mississippi, and Father Theophilus Okpara, Associate Pastor at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Lake Village, Arkansas, they shared many religious beliefs, including the belief in Jesus Christ as their personal saviour, and the need to carry the Word to the world -- to evangelize. However, their ideas about other denominations were very different.

Father Okpara declared, "there is one factor that is common in all orders as far as the Christian churches are concerned, and that is the word Christ. And therefore they should get themselves involved in the ecumenical discussion. If they eliminate themselves from the ecumenical discussion it means they are not Christians."

Brother David Wright rejected ecumenism, saying, "We have a situation right here in Yazoo City, ... we have the Ministerial Association, which I am not a part of and will not be a part of because of the way it's made up. It brings everything in... The Bible talks about the Harlot and her Daughters. The Harlot is the whore Church herself ... -- that's the Catholicism -- and her daughters are Protestants who have taken on her theology and her teachings and is identified in the pagan worship with her, and what have you. And so almost all your Protestant churches has joined hand in hand with it. So that would bring in Methodist, Baptist, Pentecost, all of them the same. They're all going the same direction. They're all going into what they call ecumenical movement. The ecumenical movement is the image of the Beast of Revelation 13, is made up of the Protestant groups.

Conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism has deep roots in Western Europe and the United States. Italian American women we interviewed in Clarksdale, Mississippi, told us that, when they were children in the 1920s, their Catholic priest forbade them to attend their classmates' Protestant churches, even to attend weddings and funerals. The Second Council of Bishops (Vatican II), 1962-65, dramatically reformed the Catholic Church. One of the changes was to promote dialogue among Christian denominations -- the ecuminical movement.

Most fundamentalist Christians retain their opposition to Catholicism. Those denominations that draw heavily on the chapter in the Bible called "Revelation" are, generally, most adamant in their anti-Catholicism. In "Revelation", the Apostle John recounts an apocalyptic vision of the end of this world and the second coming of the Christ, in highly symbolic language. One of these symbols is a woman who is "the mother of prostitutes" (Revelation 17). When Brother David Wright says, "The Scriptures clearly identifies Catholicism as the Beast" and speaks of the "whore Church," he refers to these passages.

page 1-Interpretation | 2-Globalization | 3-Missionaries in Africa | 4-Religion & Prosperity | 5-Racism | 6-Ecuminism | 7-In a Strange Land | Bibliography