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Missionaries have always held a heroic and
romantic place within the Christian imagination. Even today churches regularly
collect contributions for the mission field. The reality, of course, is very
different. From its very beginnings, Christian missionaries have inflicted
tremendous harm on the peoples they "witnessed" to.
In the past, the damage done by missionaries
were shared equally between the Protestant and Catholic churches. Today, most
of the damage is done by fundamentalist, pentacostal and evangelical protestant
sects, mostly from the US, Canada and Europe. Numbering about 80,000 strong
[1] these fundamentalist missionaries spread like locusts throughout the world.
Their destruction of native cultures, and in some cases actually causing the
deaths of these natives, can only be described as a modern cultural and genocidal
holocaust.
We will look at missionary activities in all
the major "mission fields" of the world
* The South Pacific
* Africa
* Asia
* Mother Teresa
* South America
The South Pacific
We start our catalog of the brutality of Christian
missionaries in the island of Tahiti. In 1797, thirty years after the discovery
of Tahiti by Wallis, the first missionaries landed on the island. The missionaries,
sent by the London Missionary Society, tried for seven years to convert the
natives but were unable to make any headway.
It was then that they discovered, as if by
miracle, the proper method of converting the Tahitians. They discovered that
the local chief, Pomare, liked alcohol (distilled by the missionaries) - so
much that he became an alcoholic. Addicted to the distilled spirit (perhaps
the holy spirit), Pomare agreed to back the missionaries in their work of
conversion. Pomare, supplied with western firearms, easily subdued his native
opponents. Upon his victory over his rivals, the whole island was forcibly
converted in one day.
Then the process of inculcating "Christian
virtues" began. Persistent unbelievers, those who refused to be converted,
were executed. Singing was banned (except for hymns) and all forms of adornment,
flowers or tattoo were disallowed. Of course, surfing and dancing were not
permitted as well. The punishment for breaking any of these rules included,
among others, being sentenced to hard labour.
Within thirty years of missionary control,
the population of Tahiti fell from an inital estimate of 20,000 to 6,000.
From Tahiti, the missionaries moved on to
the neighbouring islands. They employed the same tactic that had served them
so well in Tahiti: they would introduce the local chief to alcohol, made him
and alcholic, convert him to Christianity and then leave it to the chief to
convert the locals. After converting the majority the minority that refused
to convert were persecuted and sometimes executed. On the island of Raratonga,
men were conscripted into the missionary police to help eliminate the remaining
idolators. On another island, Raiatea, a man who was able to forecast the
weather by studying the behaviour of fish was executed for witchcraft.
This was how the South Pacific was Christianized.
[2]
Back to the top
Africa
Africa is widely considered to be a missionary
success story. Sub-Saharan Africa is widely considered to be the most Christianized
place on earth. Kenya, for instance, has 65% of its population claiming to
be active Christians. [active meaning church-going]. In Malawi, 68% of the
populace made the same claim. The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire)
has nearly 200 times as many evangelical Christians as its former colonial
master, Belgium.[3]
Perhaps the most famous missionary to Africa
was David Livingstone (1813-1873). Livingstone spoke of "the white man's
burden" to evangelize and civilize the peoples of Africa. (Nobody bothered
the ask the Africans what they thought of this!). A rarely know fact about
Livingstone is that, as a missionary, his mission to Africa was a complete
failure. Throughout his many years in Africa he made only one known convert.
Even this convert, Sechele, eventually lapsed from his faith. Yet it was Livingstone,
through his book Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857)
and his lectures in England, who introduced a whole new group of Europeans
to the "romance" of missionary activities.[4]
Yet, in reality missionary activities were
anything but romantic. Many of the missionaries' attempts to free slaves and
teach them Christianity amounted to no more than changing one form of slavery
to another. Given below is an account of how the Holy Ghost Fathers, a missionary
group in the second half of the ninenteenth century, went about "freeing"
and Christianizing the slaves:
In 1868 the Holy Ghost Fathers chose Bagamoyo
as the site of the first mission station on the East African mainland...Their
ambition was to build a Christian community of freed slaves. Ransoms were
paid to slave traders for the freedom of thousands to slaves. Most of those
released were placed in "Freedom Village" on the mission compound,
but they soon discovered that their freedom was not absolute. The disciplinary
codes enforced by the missionaries were severe, with a rigorous timetable
of work, Christian education and prayers. As the baptised ex-slaves grew up,
they were married off in batches and resettled under the authority of a missionary
priest in a Christian village somewhere inland. [5]
The anthropologist Jaques Maquet had called missionary activities in Africa
a "religious commando attack, aimed at extirpating 'superstitious and
idolatrous' practices and converting whole groups." [6]
The missionaries in general have little respect
for African cultures and regard their peoples as ignorant savages. One early
twentieth century methodist missionary in Umtali, Zimbabwe, wrote of the people
he had set out to evangelize: "Heathen and naked as new born babies,
and as ignorant as beetles." The solution was simple, educate the children
away from their parents and give them western clothing to wear to cover their
naked bodies. As another missionary from Umtali wrote in a letter to the US
in 1916: "Heathen mothers do not know much, but many boys and girls go
to our schools now and are begging to read God's word and write and to take
care of their bodies and be clean and dress like the people of America."
These "heathen" boys and girls were also given "Christian"
names like Kitchen, Tobacco, Sixpence or Bottle. [7]
The missionaries were, of course, part of
the oppressive colonial forces in Africa. In an effort to set up a successful
mission in what is now Zimbabwe, Catholic Jesuits entered into an alliance
with the British South Africa Company (BSAC). Ran by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902),
the collaboration between the Jesuits and the BSCA would have made any imperialist
proud. BSAC needed labor for their gold mines but the native South Africans
were not interested. They were self sufficient farmers and thus had no need
for the salaries offered for work in the mines. The imperialists hit upon
a brilliant idea, the "hut tax", a form of property tax imposed
on Africans that must be paid in cash. [It is important to note that white
farmers did not have to pay these taxes.] Thus to pay for the tax, the Africans
were forced to work. If they failed to pay, they were imprisoned and then
sent to work as prison laborers anyway! In return for donation of land and
protection from Rhodes, the Jesuit took the role of collecting the hated taxes
for the BSAC![8]
Today the number of missionaries from liberal
churches are dwindling, their numbers being taken over by the fundamentalist,
pentacostal and evangelical churches. However much like their ecclesiastical
forefathers of the previous centuries, these missionaries do not believe the
Africans, now largely Christians, are smart enough to keep the faith and churches
going. Thus the rallying cries of the new missionaries involve "making
Africa born again" or "fighting the forces of secularism" or
"battling AIDS". Yet is it obvious that it is not the social or
physical well being of Africans that concerns these modern day missionaries.
Armed with US$250,000 from the Southern Baptish
Convention, Dr. John Goodgame, an American missionary in Uganda, launched
a most unusual campaign against AIDS. Rather than using the money to provide
healthcare or medicine, the money was used to purchase and distribute 100,000
Bibles with sheets pasted onto them giving selected Biblical passages to read.
Some of these passages are predictable exhortations against adultery and other
such "carnal" pleasures. [9]
Yet, just as 150 years of Christian missionary
activities failed to prevent poverty, under-development, famine, apartheid
and civil wars in Africa, it is unlikely that these new evangelical missionaries
will be a force for any good there.
Asia
With the exception of the Phillipines and
South Korea, Asia has been quite resistant to Christian evangelism. The missionaries
found resistance from an entrenched Islam in countries such as Indonesia,
Malaysia and Brunei. In countries with deep cultures such as India, China
and Japan, the locals saw little need to replace their prevailing myths with
foreign ones. Yet this lack of success have not stopped Christian missionaries
from the conversion activities and causing much suffering among native peoples.
Our first story concerns the Mois, a native
tribe of Vietnam of Malayo-Polynesian stock related to many of the native
peoples of Southeast Asia such as the Dayaks of Borneo islands and the Aetas
of the Philippines. From an initial estimate of one million populating the
mountainous regions of South Vietnam, their numbers began to dwindle in the
1950's. This was partly due to these people being forced into hard labour
by the French colonialists and partly due to the activities of the missionaries.
As an example of how missionary activities
could lead to a dwindling native population is that of the Bihs, a subtribe
of the Mois. In the 1940's one of the eleven evangelists who came with the
returned French troops after the defeat of the Japanese, went to Boun Choah,
the main village of the Bihs. Other missionaries had unsuccessfully tried
to covert the Bihs before. One Catholic missionary managed a total of only
ten conversions in five years. However the new missionary, a Mr. Jones, was
not to be detered. Upon studying the Bihs, he found that one of the principle
acts of their beliefs was the custom of burial. Their dead was not buried
at first, but left in open coffins on trees. After a couple of years, the
bones were thoroughly cleaned, and after some ceremonial offerings, they were
finally buried.
Mr. Jones used his political influence to
force the French acting resident to suppress this custom. When the police
arrived to protect him , Mr. Jones went personally to the trees, pulled down
all the coffins on the trees and threw the contents, be they bones or decomposing
corpses, into a common grave. The Bihs were then converted. Convinced that
their ancestors have deserted them due to the desecration of their burial
customs, the Bihs stopped producing offsprings. One local Bih explained that
his people had resigned themselves to extinction. [10]
Next on our list is Thailand. The success
of the Christian mission there has been abysmal. 170 years after the arrival
of the first Protestant missionaries , there are today no more than 300,000
Christians there in a population of 55 million. Buddhism here (as in Japan)
have proven to be a bulwark against Christianity. The missionaries have thus
turned to the hill tribes who are neither Buddhist nor ethnic Thai. One such
tribe is the Akha.
There are nearly 70,000 Akha tribes people
in Thailand, with many more in the neighboring countries of Myanma, Loas,
Vietnam and China. The Akhas are the poorest of the nine hill tribes of Thailand.
They live in conditions of poverty and are generally ignorant of the outside
world. Some Akhas had taken to growing opium while some women have turned
to prostitution. That the Akhas need help is not doubted, that they need missionaries
is highly unlikely.
Matthew McDaniel of the Akha Heritage Foundation
had chronicled the abuse missionaries had inflicted in the Akhas and their
culture. Given below is a summary of his findings. [11]
Many of these Christian missionaries to the
Akhas come from the US with some coming from other Asian countries. The missions
have been at work with the Akha for more than eighty years. Obviously their
objective is not to alleviate the social conditions of the Akha but rather
to use the Akhas' poverty and lack of political clout as a wedge to force
Christianity upon them. The methods are brutal. Honing in on the "weakest
point" in a village, such as a family with problems with the elders,
the missionaries would increase their converts. Upon reaching a "critical
mass" of converts, the missionaries would claim the village as "Christian"
and forbid all practice of the Akha religion. The net effect is clear, even
Akhas who have not converted can no longer practice what has been an important
part of their culture. Some churches have gone even further. They forbid the
Akhas to practice any aspect of their culture. This includes songs, dances
and traditional ceremonies associated with the harvest. In doing this the
missionaries are depriving the Akhas of a basic right of indigenous people
as defined by the United Nations. [12]
The missionaries have little respect for the
Akhas, their cultures and even their well being. One Baptist Mission, run
by an American Chinese lady, resorted to broadcasting it's religious message
over the public announcement system (loudspeakers) to the entire village,
no consideration was given to whether the villagers like it or not! [To get
an idea of how unpalatable this would be to the Akhas, imagine being bombarded
by Osama bin Laden's preaching over the loudspeaker condemning the "crusaders"
and proclaiming Allah's will]. This mission, well funded, had added another
building on its location as well as two satellite dishes on its roof. Yet
they are unwilling to provide economic help to the Akhas. Unable to provide
for his children, one Akha man drank herbicide and committed suicide. He lived
no more than 20 meters away from the mission compound. When asked why they
didn't help in cases of such desperation, the mission replied simply that
they "cannot help everybody, we are here to teach the Bible."
Like many cases throughout history, Christianity
looks set to play a prominent role in the cultural extinction of the Akhas.
Papua New Guinea is an island situated at
the edge of the Southeast Asian archipelago, just north of Australia. It has
a modest population of 3.3 million. With 2,300 missionaries, or roughly 1
missionary for every 1430 Papua New Guineans, the country has the highest
proportion of missionaries in the world. Has this proliferation of Christian
proselytization lead to any spiritual revival? No, only more cultural genocide.
One example of the missionary attitude is
that of Reverend Paul Freyburg, an American Lutheran, who said "I rejoice
in the memories of what I have done and pray that it will continue. I don't
believe that our mission destroyed much of any value." Rev. Freyburg
came to New Guinea in the 1930's and, except for a brief interval during world
war II, have remained there ever since. What did Rev. Freyburg destroy in
his long missionary carreer? He held "renunciation festivals" at
which he was called in to destroy "things of darkness". This of
course includes, "magical objects" and also what he ignorantly described
as "vegetable items". The former are irreplaceble works of arts
and crafts by the natives. The latter are priceless herbal remedies and are
important heritage of folk medicine. The natives were forbidden to perform
any cultural dances and to observe their native festivals. [13]
Fundamentalists missionaries are today at
the forefront of such activities. One such mission, the Pioneers, works among
the Ningram people. Sal Lo Foso, a missionary there, has no qualms about his
activities. These include destroying the "haus tamburan", a "spirit
house" which is the normal focal point of village life for the Ningram,
and building in its place, a church. All forms of traditional songs and dancing
were forbidden. Such destruction of the Ningram culture has no meaning to
Lo Foso, for he believed that for the Ningrams to be "born again",
they must make a clean break with their past.[14]
The missionaries lack of understanding and
unwillingness to try and understand native cultures have left much suffering
in their trail. Australian administrators reported a case in which missionaries
refused to baptised men because they were polygamous. The men started divorcing
their "excess" wives, leaving the women and their children without
much visible support in their society. Another man, with three wives, on being
told that he can only have one, simply killed two of them, so that he could
then-being a monogamous Christian-"go to heaven"![15]
This rush by the natives to get converted
has little to do with the Christian message but everything to do with the
"cargo" they carry.
It was the possessions, the cargo, which the
missionaries had in abundance that mainly impressed the tribal people. Inevitable
they assumed that since the Christian God blessed his followers with cargo,
they they too would be rewarded for following the "Gutnuis Bilong Jisas
Kraist." (New Guinean pidgin for the gospel) [16]
Papua New Guinea is now 94% Christian. Yet
missionaries still arrive in droves. Why? For the simple reason that they
are now importing their denominational bickering into the country. Thus an
Anglican missionary reported finding leaflets circulated among his congregation
by missionaries from the Seventh-Day Adventist church telling them that worshipping
of Sunday is a sure fire step to Hell! In a similar manner, the New Tribes
Mission (or NTM-for more info on this group see the section on South America
below), tells the confused Papua New Guinean that the papacy is the antichrist.
In fact some fundamentalists have taken to distributing the tracts by Christian
publisher Jack T Chick, with cartoons showing, among other things, Catholic
monks going through a secret passage way for an orgy with nuns![17]
Pettifer and Bradley summarised the situation
in Papua New Guinea thus:
The future alone will reveal the cultural
cost and the political consequences of importing the theological bickering
of Western Christianity into an already divided society.[18]
Mother Teresa
In India too, the success of Christian missions
have been limited to the marginal groups: the untouchables, the hill tribes
and the "Anglo-Indians" (Indians with mixed parentage).[19] Some
missions in India had tended to concentrate on proselytizing through the provision
of social services to the poor and needy. While this is certainly a better
method than the ethnocidal methods of the fundamentalists, it should not be
forgotten that these social services in general play a subserviant role to
theology. The mission once headed by Mother Teresa (1910-1997) is a case in
point.
Born in Albania in 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu,
became a nun and a missionary to India. She subsequently changed her name
to Teresa. Her work among the poor in Calcutta attracted the world wide attention
culminating with a Nobel Peace Price in 1979. [20] Yet her work has been criticised
as not one based on the alleviation of suffering but on the morbid theological
celebration of pain and suffering. Christopher Hitchens outlined these rather
disturbing facts in his book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory
and Practice (1995):
Dr. Robin Fox, editor of the medical journal
The Lancet, visited Mother Teresa's operation in Calcutta in 1994. He reported
that he was very "disturbed" by what he saw. There was little anesthesia
to be seen and a near total neglect of medically sound diagnosis. Why were
not the sisters given proper training in simple diagnosis as well as in managing
pain? Because according to Dr. Fox, Mother Teresa "preferred providence
to planning; her rules are designed to prevent any drift towards materialism."[21]
Mary Loudon, a volunteer in Calcutta, had
even worse things to say about Mother Teresa's operation. She reported seeing
in the Home for the Dying more than a hundred men and women all dying and
not been given much medical care. Pain killers used do not go beyond aspirins.
The nuns were rinsing the needles used for drips with plain tap water. When
Loudon asked them why they were not sterilizing the needles, the reply was
simply they had no time and that there was "no point". She also
recounted the case of a fifteen year old boy who was dying because of a treatable
kidney complaint. All that was needed was a cab fare to take the boy to a
proper hospital. But Mother Teresa's peons refused to do so, for "if
they do it for one, they had to do it for everybody."[22]
Susan Sheilds, who worked for almost ten years
as a member of Mother Teresa's order, subsequently left the movement because
of the atrocious negligence she witnessed there. The order's obsession with
poverty means that the nuns and volunteers works under conditions of austerity,
rigidity and harshness. Due to Mother Teresa's fame, Ms. Sheilds reported
that the charity had around US$50 million in their bank account in the US.
The donations kept pouring in, yet little of these were used to procure medicine
or to provide better health care for the suffering. The nuns were rarely allowed
to spend money on the poor they are trying to help. [23]
To Mother Teresa, like all other missionaries,
spiritual well being over-rides everything else. As Ms. Sheilds reported,
"Mother Teresa taught her nuns how to secretly baptised those who were
dying. Sisters were to ask each person in danger of death if he wanted a 'ticket
to heaven'. An affirmative reply was to mean consent to baptism. The sister
was then to pretend she was just cooling the person's forehead with a wet
cloth, while in fact she was baptizing him, saying quietly the necessary words.
Secrecy was important so that it would not come to be known that Mother Teresa's
sisters were baptising Hindus and Muslims."[24]
Perhaps a poignant summary of Mother Teresa's
mission can be seen in a story recounted by herself. A dying man was in terrible
pain. She told him "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus
must be kissing you." To which the man replied: "Then please tell
Jesus to stop kissing me." [25]
South America
It is in South America that the missionaries
are at their most destructive. During the conquest of the "New World",
beginning in the 15th century, Catholic priests and friars, accompanied the
invading armies of Spain and Portugal. All kinds of coercive methods were
used to subjugate and evangelize the Indians. The Indians were exploited,
enslaved and made to work for the settlers in return for protection and religious
instructions. A total of up to 15 million Indians were reported to have died
due to such brutality. [26]
The major damage done in modern times are
by fundamentalists evangelical groups. The two main sects that have major
activities in South America are the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
and the New Tribes Mission (NTM).
The very name, Summer Institute of Linguistics,
suggests an attempt at deception, of concealing their missionary activities.
To the South American governments, the SIL presents itself as lingusitic investigators
of the many languages of the native tribes of the continent. Under this cover,
its 3,500 missionaries conduct their goal of converting the natives. It's
founder William Townsend defends this patently dishonest method by asking
the rhetorical question: "Was it honest for the Son of God to come down
to earth without revealing who he was?" [27]
Founded by Paul Fleming, the NTM today boasts
of 2,500 missionaries in 24 countries worldwide. More conservative and ardently
fundamentalist than the SIL, the NTM has a pronounced policy of recruiting
young evangelists of limited education. Their lack of sensitivity for these
native tribes can be seen in some of their descriptions of them. The natives
are referred to as "naked savages" by Jean Johnson, the widow of
a young NTM missionary, in her book God Planted Five Seeds . In one instance,
Les Pederson, the NTM Field Co-ordinator for Latin America was reported to
have said "those Indians all look pretty much the same". [28]
How do these sects, and others, spread the
word of God? Do they learn the language and then preach? Do the natives then,
by virtue of hearing the "Truth" with a capital "T", automatically
become Christians? No. The methods employed are devious.
One method, as explained by Victor Halterman,
of the SIL, involves cutting off the natives from their source of livelihood.
This involve a few distinct steps; in the words of Halterman himself:
When we learn of the presence of an uncontacted
group, we move into the area, build a strong shelter-say of logs-and cut paths
radiating from it into the forest. We leave gifts along these paths-knives,
axes, mirrors, the kind of things the Indians can't resist-and sometimes they
leave gifts in exchange. After a while the relationship develops. Maybe they
are mistrustful at first but in the end they stop running when we show, and
we get together and make friends.
As the author and journalist, Norman Lewis,
explained in his book The Missionaries: God against the Indians (1988), the
gifts are placed in such a way that at the end the Indians become far removed
from their sources of food and game. It is then that the gifts are stopped.
Halterman continues:
We have to break their dependency on us next.
Naturally they want to go on receiving all these desirable things we've been
giving them, and sometimes it comes as a surprise when we explain that from
now on if they want to possess them they must work for money. We don't employ
them but we usually fix them up with something to do on the local farms. They
settle down at it when they realise there's no going back.
That work at the "local farm" oftentimes
amounts to slavery was (indirectly)admitted by Halterman when he mentioned
that "abuses" sometimes occur. [29]
Another method, aptly called "manhunt"
by Lewis, involves the missionaries going out, sometimes in motorized vehicles,
hunting for natives to integrate them into reservtions set up for missionary
work. The NTM, for instance, went on such a manhunt in Paraguay. Five missionized
natives were killed in one such manhunt. Those unconverted natives were taken
to the NTM camp in Campo Loro. Within a short while, according to Survival
International, all had died of new diseases they had no immunity to. Stung
by criticism, the best reply the NTM 's Director in Paraguay could muster
was: "We don't go after people anymore. We just provide transport."
[30]
A final element needs to be added. As Lewis
wrote:
The unimportance of a comfortable earthly
life, weighed in the balance against the threat of eternal punishment in the
next, inspires many missionaries to gather the souls at all costs, often with
disregards for the welfare of the converts' in this world.[31]
These elements make for a militant fundamentalist
missionary campaign. One that we would expect to cause harm to the natives.
And we would be right. Below are some examples of the evil committed in the
name of Christian evangelism.
The contact work, done in conjunction with
the "manhunt" are sometimes done by Christianized natives who are
trained by the missionaries to carry guns. The "newly contacted"
natives are then rounded off to the mission camp. One American organization,
Cultural Survival, reported in 1986 that natives in the NTM camp in Paraguay
were held there against will. In short, they had been kidnapped.
In another such "manhunt" in 1979,
also in Paraguay, one of the freightened natives fell down from a tree and
broke her leg. (Her right breast had already been shot off by a previous encounter
with the missionaries.) She was compelled, with her broken leg, to walk back
to the mission camp. She subsequently died. [32]
If the process of rounding up the natives
to be converted were bad, their lives within the mission camp were even worse.
Some examples.
Once in the mission camp, many of the natives
either die from starvation or from diseases transmitted by the missionaries
with which the former had no immunity against. In one such mission camp in
Paraguay, the German anthropologist, Dr. Mark Munzel, reported that food and
medicine were deliberately withheld by the missionaries. From a total of 277
natives in April 1972 only 202 survivors were left three months later. A US
congressional report confirmed that 49% of the camp population had vanished!
[33]
Surely the (uninformed) believer may assert:
these natives would be allowed to leave if they do not accept the preachings
of the missionaries. Surely that would be the Christian thing to do. But that
is not the case. Take the following eye witness account by Norman Lewis in
a missionary camp in Paraguay:
I followed him [Donald McCullin-the photographer
from The Sunday Times] into the hut and saw two old ladies lying on some rags
on the ground in the last stages of emaciation and clearly on the verge of
death. One was unconscious, the second in what was evidently a state of catalepsy...In
the second hut lay another woman, also in a desperate condition and with untreated
wounds on her legs. A small, naked, tearful boy, sat at her side...The three
women and the boy had been taken in a recent forest roundup, the third woman
having being shot in the side while attempting to escape.[emphasis mine][34]
Of course Paraguay is not the only place where
the defenceless natives were subjected to Christian genocide. In Bolivia,
William Pencille, of the South American Missionary Society, was called in
to help when white ranchers moving into the tribal areas came upon the Ayoreos.
Pencille persuaded these natives to stop resisting the encroachment of the
cattlemen and to settle on a patch of barren land beside a railroad tract.
The natives, having no resistance to common diseases of the "modern"
man, began to die. Throughout all this Pencille had the means to save the
lives of these people. He had access to many modes of transport, including
an aeroplane, and to funds which could easily have been used to buy medicines
for them. Yet this is what he said: "It's better they should die. Then
I baptize them (on the point of death) and they go straight to heaven."
[Extract from a conversation between William Pencille and Father Elmar Klinger,
OFM , quoted by Luis A. Pereira in The Bolivian Instance] A total of three
hundred natives died in his "care" within a matter of weeks.[35]
[a]
In Guatemala, the leadership of the Summer
Institute of Linguistics had a close relationship with the former military
dictator Efrain Rios-Montt, a fellow evangelical Christian and an ordained
minister of the Gospel Outreach/Verbo Evangelical Church. Rios-Montt has been
implicated in the genocide of the indigenous Mayans and political opponents
in Guatemala during his rule in the early 1980's-with more than 70,000 people
reportedly murdered by his army. His scorched earth policy (or in his own
words "scorched communist policy") against guerilla insurgents was
implemented indescriminately. More than 400 Mayan villages were burned to
the ground-their properties, crops and lifestock, destroyed. Mayans suspected
of supporting the insurgents were tortured and murdered, their women and girls
raped. In the midst of all these atrocities, Rios-Montt was regularly giving
broadcast sermons on morality! Of course, the fact that Rios-Montt was a Christian
was more important to our missionary friends that the fact that he was a mass
murderer. The relationship between the general and SIL was so cosy that he
once had his henchmen serve as escorts for the SIL. [36]
But the worst of the mission linked atrocities
happenned in Brazil. Granted that the main culprits of the genocide were functionaries
of the grossly misnamed Indian Protection Service, the missionaries were at
least partly responsible for these. In the 1980's the Brazilian attorney general's
office began an investigation into the atrocities committed by the agency
over a period of thirty years. It's findings were shocking.
Many native tribes were hunted, murdered and
some to the point of extinction. Some of these include:
Munducurus tribe: reduced from 19,000 strong
in the 1930's to 1,200
Guaranis tribe: reduced from 5,000 to 200
Cajaras tribe: from 4,000 to 400
Cintas Largas: from 10,000 to possibly 500
Tapaiunas: completely extirpated
Other tribes were reduced to only a few (one or two!)individuals and some
by only a single family.
These peoples were culled by various means
by greedy landrobbers who wanted to developed the untapped natural wealth
of the Brazilian rainforest. Some of the methods include:
The Cintas Largas were attacked by dropping
dynamites from aeroplanes.
The Maxacalis were given alcohol and then shot down when they became drunk.
The Nhambiquera were killed in huge numbers by machine gun fire.
Two Patachos tribes were exterminated by giving the unsuspecting Idnians smallpox
injections.
Some of the Indians were murdered by presenting them with food laced with
arsenic and formicides.
The above does not exhaust the creativity of the murderers but should suffice
to show the almost unparalleled cruelty that were visited on the Indian tribes.
What have all these got to do with the missionaries?
The Brazilian newpaper, O Jornal do Brazil had this to say:
In reality those in control of these Indian Protection Service posts [where
the majority of the atrocities had taken place] are North American Missionaries...
This was confirmed by the Brazilian ministry of Indians. Thus, in essence,
the missionaries allowed the atrocities to happen. As Lewis remarked:
Despite the law of every civilized country...that
those who witness...a crime without denouncing it to the authorities are held
to be accessories to the crime, there is no record to be found of any such
denunciation [by the missionaries].
As the newspaper O Globo reported: "it
was missionary policy to ignore what was going on."
Of course the missionaries were not only passively
supporting the genocide of the Brazilian natives. They played active roles
in many of the atrocities. One missionary persuaded 600 Ticuna indians that
the end of the world is taking place and they will only be safe on a ranch.
On that ranch the Indians were made slaves and tortured.
The Bororos, a tribe studied by the reknowned
anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, fell prey to the missionaries as well.
They were banned by the missionaries, who were aided by the local police,
from performing their customary burial rites on their dead. That left the
Bororos without a cultural identity and, one by one, they committed suicide.
As the O Jornal do Brazil explained:
It is sad to see the plight in which these
people have been left. The missionaries have deprived them of their power
to resist. That is why they have been so easily plundered. A great emptiness
and aimlessness had been left in their eyes.
Thus was the power of Christian love in the
Brazilian jungles. [37]
Back to the top
Notesa. If stories such as this sounds appaling,
remember that it is still happening at this very moment. If you want to help,
or find out more about the plight of native peoples such as the Ayoreos, visit
the Friends of Peoples Close to Nature website.
References
1. Pettifer & Bradley, Missionaries: p15
2. Lewis, the Missionaries: p9-15
3. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p125
4. ibid: p72-82
5. ibid: p82
6. Maquet, Africanity: p38
7. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p88-89
8. Davidson, Africa in Modern History: p110
Harrison, The White Tribe of Africa: p69 Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p96
9. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p129-131
10. Lewis, op cit: p36-43
11. Akha.org: Just say "No" to Missionaries.
12. Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples
13. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p53-55
14. ibid: p63-64
15. ibid: p56
16. ibid: p55
17. ibid: p60-63
18. ibid: p60-63
19. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p175
20. Feldman, The Nobel Prize: p310
21. Hitchens, The Missionary Position: p38-39
22. ibid: p39-41
23. ibid: p43-48
24. ibid: p48
25. ibid: p41-42
26. Pettifer & Bradley, op cit: p133
27. Lewis, op cit: p99-100
28. ibid: p115-119
29. ibid: p105
30. ibid: p117
31. ibid: p104
32. ibid: p117-118
33. ibid: p126
34. ibid: p159
35. ibid: p114
36. L. Kirk Hagen, "Creationism's Expanding
Universe: Linguistics May be Fundamentalism's Backdoor into the Public Education
System" Skeptic Magazine Vol 10 No.3 2003: p64-69 See biography of Ross-Montt
in the MoreorLess website.
37. Lewis, op cit: p92-98
