The Missionary Position – Excavations Of An Unruly Past
By Dave Bennett
25 September, 2012
Countercurrents.org
I was taking a routine walk (shuffle, actually) aided by my cane on the upper parking lot roof when two attractive young ladies greeted me ("Nice day for a walk.”) I asked them if they lived here, since they had parked in the visitors section. "No we're just visiting, invited for dinner. Do you know what missionaries are?"
It was a trap, and I fell into it so easily. "Of course! My parents were missionaries,” I said, “and I was born in the mission field!"
That led to more discussion. I had the time, and they had the time. Had I ever heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? Finally it dawned on me – these kids were Mormon missionaries, committed to a two year stint to proselytize the faith in a ‘foreign’ land.
Naturally, I had to say that I didn't approve of missionaries, my own missionary parents included.
Naturally, they asked why – a reasonable question.
My answer included these points:
1. As I saw it, It was a form of colonialism – arrogant and intolerant. The missionaries' religious faith has been a divisive force in our country and the world.
2. It has led to wars from the 'Crusades' and beyond, and served to justify land grabs and genocide of indigenous peoples from India to the Americas.
3. The missionaries' premise is that they know better, that they are better than the people they are trying to convert. That is extremely presumptuous. In very few cases have the missionaries diligently studied the culture(s) of the target people(s).
Of course I was preaching my own brand of faith. I doubt if I made converts of these pretty young missionaries. We parted in a friendly way, and they handed me a card and invited me to check their website. [mormon.org]
My statement that few missionaries “studied the cultures of the target peoples,” was based on my own parents, posted to the shores of Lake Titicaca, who knew nothing about the culture of the Quechua folk to whom they were bringing the gospel’s ‘message of salvation.’
Many years later my job as a documentary filmmaker took me to the town of Nain on the Labrador coast. I’d heard the was a Moravian Mission based there, ‘progressive’ in that day, in that they were trying to preserve the language and hunting skills of the indigenous ‘Eskimo’ people (They now prefer the term ‘Inuit.’)
I airmailed the missionaries to ask if they could recommend a place there that my cameraman and I could stay. They graciously replied that we could stay with them in the mission house.
We learned a lot, there. It turned out that they were scrapping the plan to preserve the old ways, in favour of accelerated English language instruction, as they feared the encroaching mining industry would take undue advantages.
The couple -- in their forties – had a 12 year-old daughter, whom they had sent to live with grandparents in England. They didn’t want her to be ‘contaminated’ by Eskimo culture. [!]
Both missionaries had extracurricular activities. The lady – who had a master’s degree in biology – was identifying and cataloguing the sub-arctic plants of her region.
Her husband was taking a correspondence course in Sociology, and proudly showed me his draft thesis.
It fell open at a page that struck me; he had written: “All Eskimos have an unnatural attitude toward sex…”
All? An oxymoron. Unnatural? Compared to what? Just whose attitude was ‘natural’? That did it for me! Score: Christians 0 – Doubter 1.
Later in North Sumatra I met Lutheran missionaries from Australia who knew nothing about the rich culture of the Batak people they “served.”
Of course, Canadians like me we have demonstrated our own share of ignorance and arrogance in our treatment of aboriginal peoples.
As I quoted in an earlier article: [1]
“Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian problem." These are the words of Duncan Campbell Scott who served as director of the Indian Affairs Department for two decades. In 1920, he made it mandatory for all native children between the ages of 7 and 15 to attend residential schools… For Scott the mechanism was simple. He delegated a few mainstream Christian missions with the task of creating schools "to take the Indian out of the Indian." The missionaries were given absolute authority. It was an abdication of responsibility.
“The fatal flaw was that there was no accountability and no provision for oversight. We know now that this is a recipe for disaster.”
As I thought more about my conversation with the young ladies, it occurred to me that I had actually come across cases where “the missionaries studied aspects of the culture(s) of the target people(s).”
My first inkling came at an airport lineup in Kupang, Indonesia. The young couple in front of me told me that they were missionaries for the Summer Institute of Linguistics – SIL for short.
I checked their website later It begins…
“SIL International -- Partners in Language Development…
SIL serves language communities worldwide, building their capacity for sustainable language development, by means of research, translation, training and materials development.”
So far so good. But what can we make of this dizzying ‘explanatory’ statement?
“Global literacy issues have staggering statistics concerning marginalized minorities, language of instruction, language preservation, poverty, women's education and alphabets for previously unwritten languages.”
A click on the ‘Who We Are’ button reveals:
“Founded in 1934, SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc) has grown from a small summer linguistics training program with two students to a staff of over 5,500 coming from over 60 countries. SIL's linguistic investigation exceeds 2,590 languages spoken by over 1.7 billion people in nearly 100 countries…” [2]
There is no mention of their funding source(s).
An article in Wikipedia says:
“SIL International…is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic’ knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages.” [3]
Later I read John Perkins excellent exposé, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He writes:
“I was familiar with SIL missionaries from my Peace Corps Days. The organization had entered Equador, as it had in so many other countries, with the professed goal of studying , recording, and translating indigenous languages…SIL had been working extensively with the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon Basin during the early years of oil exploration when a disturbing pattern appeared to emerge. While it might have been a coincidence (and no link was ever proved), stories were told [that] some SIL members went in and encouraged the Indigenous people to move from that land onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, clothes, shelter, medical treatment and missionary-style education. The condition was, according to these stories, they had to deed the lands to the oil companies.” [4]
How did a bible thumping missionary group get linked to the oil companies?
That was the focus of a 1995 book Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon (by Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett - Harper Collins, 1995. 960 pages).
In her review of the book, journalist Carmelo Ruiz writes, “High on Colby and Dennett's list of priorities was to learn about a mysterious missionary organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).
”The authors found SIL a veritable empire whose missionary activities spanned every country in the Amazon basin… SIL even has its own air force and communications system, the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS), which permits it to act virtually independently from the governments of the countries where it operates… the authors went on to research the American institutions, private and governmental, that provided support for SIL's mission. These included Standard Oil of New Jersey; the Pew family, creators of the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco) and the Pew Charitable Trusts, the US Agency for International Development.” [5]
The terrible internal struggle of Nathanial Amegbe, a native Ghanian, between the values preached at a Catholic mission school and the values of his tribe is the basis for Canadian author Margaret Lawrence’s novel, This Side Jordan. [6]
On the other hand, my best friend – ethnic Chinese – attended a Catholic mission school in Malaysia. He became a teacher and book editor for a globally known publisher.
So it’s not all bad.
When the great Tsunami hit the shores of Sumatra, I Emailed a reporter I knew at the scene and asked her which organization was the likeliest to direct donations to the people who needed it most. In her reply, she sent me the name of a Christian Mission NGO.
In times of catastrophe, people instinctively seek out a community they know – and that’s likely to be a religious community; but it could, as well, be a union or a Humanist (read Atheist) Society.
As the possibilities of catastrophe – climate, financial crash, global warfare – increase, it is my fervent wish that people of good will can put aside differences of religion and recognize their common humanity.
Adlai Stevenson once said, "I believe that if we really want human brotherhood to spread and increase until it makes life safe and sane, we must also be certain that there is no one true faith or path by which it may spread."
References
[1] www.countercurrents.org/bennet300408.htm
[2 http://www.sil.org/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_International
[4] http://www.johnperkins.org/
[5] www.cephas-library.com/church_n_state_rockefeller_and_evangelism.html
[6] http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Laurence_Margaret.html
Dave Bennett is a former filmmaker and consultant whose work had taken him to many places. He now lives with his wife in a small highrise apartment in Belleville where he enjoys a lovely view of Lake Ontario.
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