July 10, 2011. (Romereports.com) The Vatican has teamed up with Evangelicals and the World Council of Churches to make guidelines for Christian missionaries.  The document “Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World” says missionaries should renounce all “deception and coercive means”. It's meant to ease any religious tension over Evangelization in non-Christian societies. The Vatican's department for Inter-religious Dialogue helped create the document, thanks in part to the help of it's undersecretary, Andrew Tanya-Anan.


Msgr. Andrew Tanya-anan
Undersecretary, Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue
“The conversion is the gift from God, this is important for us. Therefore we have to witness of life, our own life, and that's the very most important and in particular that we cannot use the way as a way to hurt the people through violence, no way.”

The document also calls on individual Christian churches to create their own guidelines when dealing with the non-religious and people of other religions. However, Christian missionaries are universally told to “reject all forms of violence...and appreciate what is true and good” in other religions.

Msgr. Andrew Tanya-anan
Undersecretary, Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue
“We never compromise, that we have to at the same time, that we have to respect the Evangelization, we cannot impose on anybody to convert so we give them time to reflect.”

Religious groups describe the document as groundbreaking for the collaboration across religions as well as between different Christian denominations.

The document also denounces any proselytizing with the use of “financial incentives and rewards.”
According to the World Evangelical Alliance, these guidelines were created to address accusations of “unethical methods” being used by Christian missionaries. They hope this document will help to spread the Gospel in a peaceful manner.