THE PROBLEM WITH MISSIONARIES

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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.
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.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.

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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.
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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.
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 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.
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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.

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From WHEN RELIGION BECOMES EVIL

by Charles Kimball
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YOU HAVE A MISSION

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...everything on the earth has a purpose,

every disease an herb to cure it,

and every person a mission.

This is the Indian theory of existence.

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Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket)

(1888-1936) Salish Tribe

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THE INHERENT VALUE OF SILENCE

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The first American mingled with his pride

a singular humility. Spiritual arrogance was

foreign to his nature and teaching.

He never claimed that the power

of articulate speech was proof of

superiority over the dumb creation;

on the other hand, it is to him

a perilous gift. He believes profoundly

in silence - the sign of a perfect equilibrium.

Silence is the absolute poise or

balance of body, mind, and spirit.

The man who preserves his selfhood

ever calm and unshaken by the storms

of existence - not a leaf, as it were,

astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the

surface of shining pool - his, in the mind

of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude

and conduct of life.

If you ask him: "What is silence?"

he will answer: "It is the Great Mystery!"

"The holy silence is his voice!"

If you ask: "What are the fruits of silence?"

he will say: "They are self-control,

true courage or endurance, patience,

dignity, and reverence.

Silence is the corner-stone of character."

"Guard your tongue in youth," said

the old chief Wabashaw, "and in age you

may mature a thought that will be

of service to your people."

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Charles Alexander Eastman

(Ohiyesa) - Santee Sioux

From THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

First published in 1911

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A GIFT FROM THE INDIANS

This is a passage from The Soul of an Indian,

published in 1911. It was written by Ohiyesa,

a Santee Sioux Indian from Minnesota, who took on

the white man's name Charles Alexander Eastman.

He knew traditional ways and believed in the workings

of the Great Mystery, yet also believed in Christ,

went to Dartmouth, and received a M.D. from

Boston Univ. He became an adviser to presidents,

and spent much of his life building bridges

between the two cultures.

Amazon lists a number of sellers who have his

writings in stock - all have been republished

in recent years.

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I am an Indian;

and while I have learned much from

civilization, I have never lost my Indian sense

of right and justice.

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When I reduce civilization to its most basic terms,

it becomes a symbol of life based on trade.

Each man stakes his powers, the product of his

labor, his social, political, and religious standing

against his neighbor. To gain what?

To gain control over his fellow workers,

and the results of their labor.

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Is there not something worthy of perpetuation

in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth,

our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to

impoverish or enslave his neighbor?

Where the good things of Earth were not ours to

hold against our brothers and sisters, but were ours

to use and enjoy together with them, and with whom

it was our privilege to share?

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Indeed, our contribution to our nation and

the world is not to be measured in the material realm.

Our greatest contribution has been spiritual and

philosophical. Silently, by example only, in

wordless patience, we have held stoutly to our

native vision of personal faithfulness to duty and

devotion to a trust. We have not advertised our

faithfulness nor made capital of our honor.

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But again and again we have proved our worth

as citizens of this country by our constancy in the

face of hardship and death. Prejudice and racial

injustice have been no excuse for our breaking

our word. The simplicity and fairness has cost us dear.

It has cost us our land and our freedom, and even the

extinction of our race as a separate and unique people.

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But, as an ideal, we live and will live, not only in

the splendor of our past, the poetry of our legends

and art, not only in the interfusion of our blood

with yours, and in our faithful adherence to

the ideals of American citizenship,

but in the living heart

of the nation.

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