Editor’s note: Half Devil, Half Child is a documentary on “born-again Islam” with the simple goal of setting Americans face to face with Bangladeshis who understand firsthand the danger of the Insider missions practices being imported from the West. The title of the film is taken from a line in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “White Man’s Burden.”
Over the last century, Christianity has grown dramatically in the 10-40 Window. In Bangladesh, as Western colonies faded into history, young, dynamic leaders came out of Islam and into the church. Bolstered by strong fellowship and an outspoken witness, Muslim-background Christians planted churches, started schools, translated resources, and grew into a vibrant, visible, Christian church. But something else was lurking in the shadows.
Under the guise of evangelistic contextualization, colonialism has evolved. Western missionaries are encouraging new believers to keep their faith “inside.” Baptized Christians are going back to the imams and back to the mosques. Rather than identifying themselves as Christians, they are calling themselves Isai or “Jesus” Muslims. Bibles are being produced that omit references to God as Father and to Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It is an idea that turns the gospel upside down, reversing what the Bible means when it calls people to turn to Christ and out of darkness and into the light.
No simple diatribe against accommodation, “Half Devil, Half Child” calls the church in the West to remember who it is in Christ’a new creation that requires a wiser approach to missions and better use of our material blessings. This film challenges our taste for the comfort, ease, and safety we enjoy. It identifies what drives a movement that creates invisible Christians for an invisible and ineffectual church, to the glory of Islam. It is a call to recapture for the West what has been known for millennia’that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It reminds us to let our light shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven.
Opposed by both Muslims and “Insider” Westerners, faithful men called from Islam to Christ and his visible body continue to plant churches, preach the gospel, train new leaders, and love their enemies. Hear them speak of their love for Jesus Christ and the freedom of his gospel. Journey to Bangladesh and meet the men who tell a story of deception and confusion, but also of true faith. Join these men who are giving all they have to reach their nation with the faith delivered once for all to the saints, and’once for all’to light the 10-40 Window.
“A lot of evangelicals were raised with this contrast between getting saved and joining the church. And those seeds are now bearing fruit, disastrous fruit, in the Insider Movement. I can see how people raised with that dichotomy can believe that they can keep everything secret; they can have Jesus in their heart privately, but not publicly identify with Christ and his church. But that’s not the way it is in the book of Acts. Everybody who believed was baptized and was joined to the church and met regularly for the means of grace and was under the oversight of the elders, not of the imams. What’s so striking in the history of the church is that people were willing to be martyred for that’people were willing to be martyred for their testimony to Christ. It seems, to me at least, that in the Insider Movement no one is called to be martyred.” (Quote from Michael Horton’s interview in Half Devil, Half Child.)
Half Devil, Half Child is a Red Futon Films documentary. It is directed by Bill Nikides and produced by Jay Friesen. Jon McKee is director of photography.
