A Baptist nurse who worked at a missionary clinic was gunned down Nov. 21 in Sidon, Lebanon, apparently in response to the clinic’s evangelical activities, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Bonnie Penner Witherall, 31, was shot three times in the head at close range with a 7-millimeter pistol, the police said, and collapsed in a pool of blood right inside the door of the two story building that housed both the Unity Center clinic and an evangelical church. Police said they believe she was murdered by a lone gunman.
“The killing was the result of a hostile Muslim reaction in Sidon to the preaching and indoctrination lessons the center was giving to Muslim youths,” an unidentified Palestinian official told the Post.
The New York Times reported that clinic members had been threatened in recent months after a group of religious leaders learned they were handing out literature and talking to groups of young Muslims and Jesus. Some Muslim clerics had denounced the evangelical Christians from the pulpit.
Witherall and her British-born husband, Gary, were partner missionaries with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. The missions agency had been involved in a public dispute in Sidon because of evangelism efforts in the community. Sidon’s Roman Catholic archbishop had warned Witherall that evangelistic activity might cause her problems.
“We told her she might be vulnerable to insults or even being hit, and she answered that she would consider it an honour,” said Bishop George Kwaiter, in an interview with the New York Times.
“We don’t accept this kind of preaching,” he told the Times of the proselytizing. “We reject it totally.”
(BP)
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