Now five Baptist missionaries have answered that question. Larry T. Elliott, 60, and Jean Dover Elliott, 58, of Cary, NC, Karen Denise Watson, 38, of Bakersfield, CA, and David E. McDonnall, 28, of Rowlett, Texas were killed yesterday in a drive-by shooting on the east side of Mosul. Carrie T. McDonnall, 26, remains in critical condition.

At least one of the missionaries, Larry T. Elliott, had a history of mission work in hot spots abroad, according to The Biblical Recorder. And The Amarillo Globe-News reports that David E. McDonnall had done undercover work for the IMB in an unnamed country: “…missionaries who practice in restricted countries do not reveal the true nature of their visits.”

Iraq used to be one such place, but since the American victory, it has become fair game — or, at least, legal territory — for the Christian missionaries who followed (and in some cases, raced ahead of) the troops. Not that locals laws have slowed Christian missionaries down. According to some evangelical estimates, the number of American missionaries to Muslim nations — known as “10/40” for the longitude and latitude coordinates within which much of the world’s Muslim population lives — has at least doubled since 1990.

“The Father is doing His greatest work,” says the International Mission Board, adding that the “increase in martyrdom,” of which yesterday’s murders are only the latest example, is a sign from an interventionist God that the “liberation” of all Muslim lands should be at the heart of Christian missionary efforts.

One Baptist group, Conservative Baptist International (motto: “Expanding the harvest”) began training Iraqi refugees in Jordan to become “church planters” as early as 1991. Last year, at the brink of the war, CBI reported that “a different kind of army awaits their chance to impact the people of Iraq.”

Such agencies are often efficient providers of aid, and more. Last summer, a spokesman for a more moderate evangelical agency, World Vision, told The Revealer that World Vision workers were busy with a different kind of harvest, gathering unexploded cluster bombs from playgrounds and school yards (World Vision has since officially left Iraq until conditions are more stable).

More doctrinal missionaries are just as dedicated. They’ve built hundreds of hospitals around the Muslim world, and hundreds of “Jesus mosques”; they’ve taught English to millions and made the Bible their primary reading material; they’ve transferred vast sums to the third world for small enterprise and preached that the money should be used in the pursuit of “Biblical capitalism” (a theology most vigorously developed by Christian reconstructionist Gary North, whose many books and newsletters are — ironically — available free online).

Before the latest Gulf War, the Baptist Missionary Board saw the invasion of Iraq as an opportunity to strike a decisive blow for their cause. They called Iraq the “Final Frontier,” and spoke of the media with which they’d fight their crusade as “spiritual ammunition.”

And now yesterday’s victims — or martyrs, to some — are the subject of one more addition to the armory.