Missions Textbook 46 Colonialism

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

It has been popular for some time to accuse missionaries – and especially western missionaries – of colonialism, which involves going into another culture and teaching or forcing the people to take on the culture of the visiting missionaries. The extreme of this is conquerors who claimed land for “God and country,” and when the “natives” refused to bow to the King or Queen and be baptized, the conquerors killed them.

Protestant missionaries did not kill anyone, but when they went out into the world in the 19th century, some of them considered their home culture superior to the targeted national cultures. One of their goals was to reform the culture to match theirs at home. For example: insisting that the nationals wear western clothing, rather than the missionaries adapting their clothing to the host nation.

Other missionaries did adapt to the culture, recognizing that their number one job as a missionary was to bring the Gospel to the people. Some of them even saw the colonialism of their unsaved compatriots and tried to defend the local culture from misplaced zeal and greed. From the 1600’s to the 1800’s various countries fought for the possession of numerous countries in Africa. By the early 1800’s, when John Mackenzie entered the scene as a missionary in South Africa, the Africans applied the term colonialist and missionary to refer to the same people. For the Gospel’s sake, John Mackenzie demonstrated the difference between the colonists and missionaries when he combined communicating the Gospel with his constant fight for the rights of Africans. He promoted the British intervention to stop the Afrikaners from taking over the lands of the Botswana peoples. He went so far as to meet with Queen Victoria, and she established a land protection act that allowed Botswana to survive as a nation. Mackenzie understood how to integrate his social work with the Gospel.

The missionary’s primary job is not to improve the economy of the nationals, unless this opens more doors for the message of the Gospel. Economic improvement and the lessening of suffering do not automatically make people open to the Gospel, as Jesus pointed out in Luke 17:17, when only one Samaritan returned to thank him for being healed of leprosy, which could be considered a major improvement in a person’s comfort and economic level.

The Gospel, of course, does change cultures, as new converts grow in their faith and begin to realize how much of their own culture is influenced by demonic practices and animistic superstitions in their previous religion. It is usually best for those new believers to be allowed to grow enough in the faith and knowledge of Scripture to determine which aspects of their cultures are evil and need to be abandoned. However, for missionaries who already know what the Scriptures have to say about some of those evil cultural practices, like burning the young (and older) wives on the pyre of fire with their deceased husbands, it’s difficult to wait until the national Christian community arrives at that conclusion for themselves.

When one studies the actual historical events – apart from the utopian disappointment of “losing those beautiful traditions” – one discovers that Gospel-oriented Protestant missionaries changed societies for the better but did not necessarily make them more “western.” Kenneth A. Bollen, a professor at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill and one of the leading experts on measuring and tracking the spread of global democracy, noticed the connection between Protestant missionaries and increased democracy. Robert Woodberry, a graduate student in sociology at the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill, produced the evidence.

Woodberry demolished the stereotype that Christian missionaries were always closely connected to colonialism. He demonstrated that Protestant missionaries – ones not funded by the state – were strongly opposed to colonialism. Protestant missionaries founded schools that led to more freedom within those countries, and colonialism never took serious root. After years of research Woodberry concluded that areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on the average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher education attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in non-government associations.[1]

For further study on this subject, see Woodberry’s article, “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.”[2] Since these two articles, many others have conducted similar research that have confirmed Woodberry’s conclusions.

So, in spite of some racist and self-serving missionaries – and they did exist – it seems that blossoming democracies today owe their foundation to 19th century Protestant missionaries who were independent of any official state funding. Many Protestant missionaries in China fought to end the British opium trade; other missionaries in the West Indies began the movement to abolish slavery. There are few today who would deny that the eventual abolishment of human sacrifices, drug-induced religious trances, and cannibalism were positive outcomes of the 19th century Protestant missionary movement. Woodberry notes that these missionaries did not begin their careers as political activists or research scientists wanting to preserve the native cultures. Their social reforms were not an end in themselves. They didn’t seek justice or revenge for the nationals. The missionaries fought to shed themselves of the title of colonialist and instead dedicated themselves to bringing the Gospel to the nationals. The reforms were an outworking of the Gospel in the lives of the nationals, as they read and understood the literal, grammatical and in-context interpretation of the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit transformed their minds and hearts, and then their cultures.

[1] “The Surprising Discovery About Those Colonialist, Proselytizing Missionaries.” https://disciplenations.org/resources/the-surprising-discovery-about-those-colonialist-proselytizing-missionaries/

[2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235503063_The_Missionary_Roots_of_Liberal_Democracy

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

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