Of course, I'd hate to think the outcry that would occur if some organization were to start also placing Qu'rans or Bhagavad Gitas or Torahs or whatever else you might have.

I don't think there would be much at all. The last time I was in Hawaii on a business trip I looked in my hotel room drawer and found a book of writings about Budda along side the requisite bible. I actually read through quite a bit of it during my trip (you can see how much fun I am to travel with!) and found some very revealing differences between it and the parables of Jesus.

As for the rest of this thread, I've been trying not to respond to every post, as that tends to make for a very closed, uninformative discussion that is more focused on one person’s beliefs than fostering any meaningful exchange of ideas. Thus I’ve been very interested in a lot of what’s been said, and I’ve learned a few things about the “outsider’s” view of evangelism. At this point, however, there are a few points I’d like to make:

1. There are two reasons evangelism is offensive: the message itself and the method employed to deliver the message. While a Christian can (and should) do nothing about the offensiveness of the message (how can we change it since it is the core of what we believe to be true?), methods should always be questioned to make sure that what the listener is responding to is the message, not the method of delivering it.

2. Christianity is about a personal decision to trust Jesus as Savior and cannot/ should not be coerced. The reason for this is not so much ethical as it is rational: in Christianity, God is interested in the heart more than deeds. People baptized against their wills still have the same faith after the process as they do beforehand. While other religions do believe that people are changed by being forced to practice certain rituals, Christianity does not teach this, though clearly some have done it anyway (the Crusades, the chaplain from Bonzi’s link).

3. The morality of evangelism directly corresponds to the truth. If Christianity is true and there are consequences for not believing it, it would be immoral for Christians to not do everything possible to help others believe. On the other hand, if Christianity isn’t true, then it is immoral (if there is such thing as morality; see Peters’ post above) to proclaim a lie as if it were the truth.