Lumen 22-2

Missionaries

 

Posted  - February 3, 2022

 

Irrelevant tid bit – The need for order is just another disorder.

 

 

This Lumen is a follow up for Lumen 22-1, European Dominance

 

Despite the controversy that surrounds missionaries and their impact on non-western societies, for the most part their willingness to face hardship and struggle has been a testament to their iron spirit and desire to help others.  The “desire to help others” is largely encompassed by the belief that their religion is the “true” or best religion and by converting others the missionaries are helping them attain salvation (defined differently in each religion).  Missionaries frequently have a strong, genuine, fervent belief that they are right in adhering to their religion and others need to be converted to also benefit from membership in their religion.

 

(Much of the information in this Lumen comes from  howstuffworks.com)

 

Three religions have spread by missionary activity - Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam - making them universal, or proselytizing, religions.  Other religions have no such universal aim, but understand themselves as existing only for a particular people, tribe, or nation. 

 

Buddhists were the first wide-scale missionaries, believing that its tenets are universal and meant for all people around the world.  As early as the third century B.C. Buddhist missionaries went to work beyond India including Thailand and Sri Lanka.  Buddhism's presence continued to grow gradually and by the fifth century A.D., missionaries had established the religion in Java and introduced it to other regions.

 

Buddhist missionaries have continued their work ever since.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, Tibetan monks proselytized to peoples in far eastern Russian.  In the 20th century, Japanese scholar D.T. Suzuki was influential in increasing the popularity of Buddhism in the west.

 

Islam is another religion that has employed missionaries.  Throughout its history, Islam spread chiefly through military conquest, but missionary work also played an important role.  Islamic missionaries would often proselytize to recently conquered peoples, establishing a stronger understanding of the faith and more earnest conversions.  Islamic missionaries would even venture into unconquered lands to preach.  Islam never had anything like Catholic missionary orders, but it did start to establish missionary societies by the late 19th century.

 

Beginning late 15th century, Catholic Spanish and Portuguese monarchs commissioned voyages to colonize the new lands and asked missionaries to come along.  When Vasco de Gama arrived in India in 1498, sure enough, a missionary was with him.

 

In the late 18th century, a humanitarian spirit and the abolitionist movement to end slavery took hold in Europe, prompting various Christian organizations to venture out to start missions around the world.  Things changed dramatically in the next few centuries with the rise of European exploration and colonialism.  While explorers sought and found new financial opportunities around the globe, missionaries saw new proselytizing opportunities in the newly discovered populations.  

 

Early Spanish and Portuguese dominance in the Americas allowed Franciscan, Dominican,

Historic mission in California

and Jesuit missionaries to prosper.  Such missionaries taught natives Catholicism along with farming techniques and other trades in addition to building hospitals and schools.  However, a social divide pervaded, and Native Americans weren't allowed to become Christian priests for more than a century, while native populations suffered under harsh treatment from civil leaders.  Some historians criticize the Christian church for not speaking out against this treatment and blame missionary activity for making natives more vulnerable to such abuses.

 

The marriage of convenience between missionaries and colonialism has long been controversial. As European powers spread their economic dominance and influence throughout the world, devoted Christians saw their opportunity to reach and convert "savages".  In their minds, this was the only way to save these remote people from eternal damnation (and in the process secure their own salvation).  Even those missionaries who opposed slavery and political imperialism are accused of cultural imperialism.  However, some historians argue that missionaries themselves usually had pure intentions, evidenced by the fact that they knowingly risked disease and difficult living conditions to do their mission work.

 

Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem "The White Man's Burden" calls for colonial powers to "send forth the best ye breed" and "serve your captives' need."  In other words, Kipling is telling well-bred Europeans they have a responsibility to help the people they conquered.  The poem, now considered misguided and racist, sums up the curious and contradictory attitude Europeans had toward colonized peoples in the 19th century.

 

Africa was the center of much missionary work during the 19th and 20th centuries, which is

Modern relief workers in Africa

the time that various European powers were penetrating and carving up the continent for control.  In many cases, missionaries in Africa sought not only to Christianize natives, but to Europeanize them through dress and culture, which greatly contributed to European dominance and the colonization of “primitive” cultures.  This was also true in the Americas.

 

One example comes from Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse” regarding missionary behavior with Maya natives in the Yucatan Peninsula.

 

            “… bishop Diego de Landa, who resided in the Yucatan Peninsula for most of the                 years from 1549 to 1578…. burned all Maya manuscripts he could locate in his                     effort to eliminate “paganism,” so that only four (manuscripts) survive today.”

 

When we think about native Alaskan cultures, we usually think of Alaskan Inupiat (part of a larger Inuit culture extending east to Greenland along the Arctic Ocean).  But there are several other native cultures in Alaska, including at least Aleut, Athabascan, and Yup’ik.  The Yup’ik live in western Alaska and eastern Siberia.  A 2014 report by the Center for Alaska Native Health Research, University of Alaska Fairbanks, quotes native authors Charles Moss and James Charlie, Sr.:

 

            “The missionaries were welcomed into the communities, but looking back it is clear             now that some of the policies the missionaries instituted had lasting effects on the                Yup’ik people.  For example, while in some communities today, school-aged                        children can no longer speak their Yup’ik language, while in other communities,                    there is no longer any Eskimo dancing.  Among the most disruptive outcome of                    contact and outside influence is the erosion of the core values; the loss of what made             the traditional Yup’ik people a community.”

 

Missionary activity waned by the mid-20th century, partly because it fell out of favor and partly because it had largely succeeded in establishing permanent parishes.  Missionaries' efforts resulted in so many conversions that even today, African Catholic clergy come to the United States to serve in the priesthood

 

Today many feel that missionaries merely gave Europeans an excuse to rationalize their abusive economic practices.  Missionaries are also accused of pushing western ideas and customs while squelching native cultures.  A common belief today is that these missionaries were religious zealots who carelessly trampled on other cultures - despite seemingly good intentions.  

 

Christian religions with active missionary programs today include Catholics, Protestants,

Mormon Missionaries

Orthodox Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS, aka Mormons).  In 2022 the LDS Church had over 53,000 full-time missionaries worldwide.  Indeed, proselytizing is a priority: all young men (and many women) of the faith become missionaries for a span of two years.  According to the US Centre for the Study of Global Christianity, there were 420,000 Christian missionaries of all religions working abroad in 2000.

 

Now that technology has reached most corners of the world, it might seem that traditional missionaries are a thing of the past.  Many devoted Christians still feel an obligation to convert non-Christians - both foreign and within their own societies.  However, mission work in underdeveloped nations has largely become as much (or more) about aid as religious conversion.