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Human Stories and the Mission of God American author Elbert Hubbard is credited with the comment that "life is just one damned thing after another." But even if this were true, who can function in everyday life with such a cynical outlook? Rather, we need to find ourselves in some narrative, for each human being is, quite literally, "words made flesh." Without stories—stories about ourselves, about our families and ancestors, about our social groups, tribes, nations, and religions—there can be no self-consciously distinctive human existence. Stories are integral to human identity, providing one with a sense of location vis-à-vis everything and everyone else. It is our participation in these stories that makes us "we" and the rest "they." Personal and communal identity means participating in the selective common memory of a uniquely delimited group. The precise shape, content, and interpretation of historical recollection can be highly controversial and is not easily controlled. Some people and groups stubbornly insist on versions of memory that are viewed as seriously distorted, deliberately falsified, or even potentially threatening to the preservation of the social status quo. The recent assassination in Istanbul of Hrant Dink—editor-in-chief of Agos, a bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly newspaper—is a reminder of how loath a people are to be reminded of their trespasses. One of Turkey’s most prominent Armenian voices, Dink enraged Turkish nationalists in October 2005 by writing about the slaughter, exile, and disappearance from Asia Minor of nearly two million Armenians between 1915 and 1923. Because the official government report admits to only war-related "relocations" and some "untoward incidents," he was charged under article 301 of Turkey’s penal code with insulting Turkish identity and was given a suspended sentence. Dink, but not the memory of Turkish atrocities, is now dead. Sadly, this tragedy is not exceptional. Human beings experience and interpret events so variously that their stories must, it seems, always be in conflict. Since our stories are inevitably incomplete, one-sided, and only partially true, the custodians of more self-flattering narratives must do their utmost to silence or discredit alternative versions. As George Orwell famously observed, "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." The question posed by Stanley Skreslet in his lead essay (whether there is a missiological approach to the history of mission), then, is as natural as it is legitimate. One understands at once that he will make a case for missiological historiography—for recorded memory, that is, in which Christian mission occupies a special place. The accompanying articles hint at the ecclesiastical and national diversity of missionaries whose imaginations were animated by the common conviction that they were part of a story much grander than themselves or even than their great nations. To their minds, this conviction laid upon them the inescapable necessity of replacing indigenous stories with their inherited understanding of God’s redemptive work in the world. It went without saying that when the "heathen" were invited to take their place as active participants in this story, they should eagerly do so, with gratitude. Not surprisingly, whether it was Catholic Mission Sisters in New Zealand, Orthodox missionaries in central Asia, or Protestant missionaries in Africa and the Pacific, all reveal themselves in retrospect to have been prisoners of their own and often of their nations’ self-serving stories. But there was more at work, for within their stories lay at least the seeds of a more humble self-awareness that would one day enable their heirs to both see and acknowledge, without rancor or defensiveness, the deficiencies of their spiritual forebears and yet to learn from them. Robert Smirke’s commemorative painting above, with its highly stylized depiction of "civilized" missionaries and partially clad Tahitians, speaks volumes more than could have been realized at the time. To the modern eye, the picture symbolizes the crude, ethnocentric propaganda of a bygone era, revealing little of what actually happened, but much about the sensibilities of the missionary supporters for whom the picture was crafted. Despite such distortions, the story brought by these flawed messengers was grasped by the Tahitians, to such an extent that now, two centuries later, some 85 percent of the inhabitants of French Polynesia embrace the Christian story as their own. So, can history be read missiologically? Can missionaries, with their self-interested participation in what they regard as God’s mission, be trusted to produce coherent, persuasive, significant history? Skreslet provides a thoughtfully affirmative response to this question, and the other essays in this issue lend modest but compelling support to his contention. For Christian scholars, at least, history is not simply "one damned thing after another." —Jonathan J. Bonk Front cover: The Cession of Matavai to Captain James Wilson, by Robert Smirke, RA. The painting was commissioned by the Directors of the London Missionary Society in 1798 to commemorate the grant of land to build a mission in Tahiti. CWMPA.
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