THE PROBLEM WITH MISSIONARIES

.
.
.

 

.

.

.

It is no accident that the world's

two largest and most widespread religions

include a missionary imperative.

Unlike faithful Hindus, Jews, Taoists,

and practitioners of Shinto, Christians and

Muslims are expected to carry the Good News

and the Islamic call to faith, respectively,

to the far corners of the world. Although they

disagree on the precise nature of God's revelation

and the paths to the ultimate goal, adherents in

both traditions agree that their faith incorporates

a missionary mandate. Far too often in both

traditions, however, a narrow understanding of

mission has combined with cultural imperialism

and military power in ways that destroyed any

witness to God's love and mercy.
.

.Examples of missionary-related abuses abound.

The history of the spread of Christianity and Islam

in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas (for

Christianity) is a checkered one at best.

Pick a continent and study the behavior of

those who came in the name of these religions.

Raw power and conquest sometimes dominated

the process. Conversion by force is often inter-

twined with moving stories of people whose faith

and courage changed them and their communities

in many positive ways. Certain missionaries made

life-changing contributions, making possible

greater opportunities in health care, education,

and the economy, but celebrating the positive

doesn't tell the whole story. When missionary

zeal is informed by absolute truth claims

defining who is "saved" and what is acceptable,

the propagation of religion frequently

includes sinister dimensions.

.

.

.
.

The California missions system (1769-1834)

as founded and developed by Father Juipero

Serra exemplifies the problem. Serra's piety,

courage, and commitment to evangelize

Native Americans have been affirmed by

his critics as well as by those who advocated

for his beatification in 1988 (a formal step

toward canonization as a saint in the Roman

Catholic tradition). A professor of theology,

Serra left Spain for the mission field of the

new world in 1749. By the time of his death

in 1782, he had walked some twenty-four

thousand miles through Mexico and California

and established twenty-one Franciscan missions.

However noble his intentions, his methods and

close cooperation with Spanish government

and military officials were cruelly devastating

to the indigenous people. The mission was,

in fact, part of a larger strategy of colonization

and conquest. Serra and his fellow missionaries

traveled to new territory with Spanish military

contingents and apparently understood
themselves as agents of both God
and the civil government.
.

.

Serra and others like him viewed the

native population as savage heathens

who had to be disciplined as children.

Their version of discipline would warrant

state intervention and charges of child

abuse in California today. The Franciscans

were convinced that cultural conversion was

a prerequisite to conversion to Christianity.

With righteous determination, "they went

about the task of dismantling what they

regarded as backward traditional lifeways,

social structures, mores, and values of

Indian peoples." Missionaries destroyed

towns, separated families, instituted slavery

and economic exploitation, applied religious

coercion ruthlessly, and carried out various

types of corporal punishment.
.
 George Tinker, a Native American seminary
 professor and pastor to Lutherans and Episcopalians
 in Denver, closely examines Serra and three

other highly respected historical missionary

leaders and concludes that they were naive

and possibly unwitting partners in genocide.

Without question, the California mission is

part of a larger pattern beginning with the

subjugation of Aztecs and other native peoples

in Mexico. Franciscans, Augustinians, and

Dominicans carried the enterprise north

into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and

California.
.

.

.
The uncritical mixing of religious, political,

military, and economic realms in the missionary

conquests of the Southwest offends contemporary

sensitivities and contradicts the cherished

principle of the separation of church and

state. It is far closer to the military, political,

and religious expansion of Islam in the seventh

and eighth centuries. These and missionary

movements in Asia and Africa reflect another

era and outdated worldviews. In different

ways at different times, Christian and Muslim

missions rested on absolute truth claims -

stated or assumed - that theirs was a superior

culture and religion. In fairness to early

Islamic expansion - across North Africa and

into Spain, through the Fertile Crescent and

across Mesopotamia and Persia into India -

there is little evidence of widespread conversion

at the point of a sword.

*

From WHEN RELIGION BECOMES EVIL

by Charles Kimball
.

.
.

.

.

.