International Bulletin of Missionary Research

Issue 34:2, April 2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FULL ISSUE (64 pp., 5.6 MB PDF)

---

Mission as Invasion?

To invade, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “to enter in a hostile manner, or with armed force; to make an inroad or hostile incursion into.” Evoking as it does the destructive chaos and terror of war, this definition can hardly be applied to the well-intended short-term foreign mission forays of an estimated 1.5 million Christians from the United States each year. Convinced that they must love not only in word but also in deed, and that followers of Jesus are indeed their brother’s or sister’s keeper, these men, women, and idealistic young people represent all that is best in a faith that advocates loving one’s neighbor as oneself, being generous to the poor, and caring for those bereft of family. Theirs is a faith, furthermore, that insists that passivity in the face of need will not do. As the Bible puts it, “Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin” (James 4:17).

But Karla Ann Koll in her article raises troubling questions about the gap between the worthy intentions and the sometimes detrimental outcomes of these short-term ventures, drawing an unflattering analogy to wolves coming to the aid of lambs. She alludes to the ethical ambiguities implicit in the asymmetric access to power and resources that characterizes these relationships.

And it is here that invasion’s broader connotations are worth pondering. Invasion can refer to a harmful incursion, intrusion, or encroachment of any kind, from malignant cells to morally harmful ideas. Ecologically, the term refers to the introduction of nonindigenous plants or animals that in time have an adverse and even fatal effect within their new habitats. Invasion can apply to the violation of another person’s territory, rights, liberties, body, or property. Each of the five human senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch—and, one might add, emotion, is susceptible to invasions of various kinds. And invasion can apply to Christian missions.

Edward Cleary’s observation that “grassroots Catholics [in Puerto Rico] viewed the coming of Americans as a disaster, much like the destructive hurricanes that struck the island just before the U.S. invasion” should remind us that our interventions in the life of another people, another church, another country—no matter how well intentioned—can have debilitating or even disastrous side effects. William Bivin notes that Queen Isabella’s sixteenth-century encomienda system, ostensibly intended to further the spiritual education of Indians, in fact reduced them to servitude and changed their status to one of perpetual inferiority, subhumans capable only of receiving charity, but with nothing linguistically or socially to contribute to the larger social or ecclesiastical good. However well intentioned, church and mission practices have served, in Bivin’s words, to “eviscerate indigenous peoples’ self-esteem and marginalize their accomplishments.”

Robert Priest, whose groundbreaking research is summarized in this issue, assesses the expanding role of short-term foreign missionaries as an expression of American Christian concern for the world. Megachurch congregations, eager to do good and to do it quickly and efficiently, bypass traditional mission agencies, oblivious of the painful lessons learned from decades of missionary work and deep familiarity with indigenous peoples. They cannot waste years or even months learning another language, becoming comfortable in another culture, and identifying more than superficially with another people. The tedious, time-consuming business of incarnation—Jesus was a three-mile-an-hour Palestinian Jew—is not an option. They have no time to be truly converted themselves.

Human invaders over time have proven themselves adept at justifying their actions by appealing to nobility of motive, expectation of ultimate good, or sacred duty. Retrospectively, when an invasion’s disastrous effects on an incumbent population have resulted in social reorganization favoring the invaders and marginalizing the original incumbents, a careful selection of memories is garnished and polished to legitimate and even celebrate the process. Such is human history. But should, or can, the church not do better than this?

I conclude with a note on the iconic cruciform statue of Christ which appears on this page—in its cross-like form a symbol associated with the suffering of the one who died to take away the sins of the world. Since then, the cross has been wielded by invaders—from violently acquisitive to naively intrusive—as warrant for their actions. This massive art deco statue of Christ the Redeemer, which has loomed over Rio de Janeiro since 1931 from the top of Corcovado Mountain, is one of the most recognizable “Official New Seven Wonders of the World.” But viewed against the backdrop of the powerful invaders who—often in the name of Christ—have re-created the continent in their image, it is a deeply ironic testimony to the decidedly un-Christlike objectives, means, and outcomes of centuries of “Christian” invaders. The Father, whose will is to be done on earth, and the Son, who promised that the meek would inherit the earth, seem—for now—to have been disregarded by powerful interests bent on having their way.

With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear that not just indigenous peoples but especially their invaders need to be converted.

—Jonathan J. Bonk
bonk@omsc.org

 

---

Issue 34:2, April 2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FULL ISSUE (64 pp., 5.6 MB PDF)