I never liked missionaries.
The main thing is that I feel as if they are foreigners coming in to provide food/water/social assistance in trade for a belief system. However, most of them are bound by responsibility by their religious group to give to others. Which is nice. If they are helping without recompense, the system is laudatory. If not, well… who can discern intent? The history of missionaries is not even in the neighborhood of laudatory, so let’s start with that. We’re now in and era wrestling with culture appropriation, but a decade (or so) ago the issue was colonialism. More to it: colonialism rose to the fore of concerns of perennial, justified concerns.
And yet I listened to something today [ed. -ish] that suggested my beliefs re missionaries were hypocritical [ed spoiler I don’t change my beliefs too much]. In a Chris Hayes podcast he interviewed a guy who visits very conservative red districts in order to acknowledge the liberals who are there and, at best, integrate their concerns into the global, liberal concerns. A compassionate visit from the mother ship stinks of paternalist colonialism. And yet.
His story is unbelievable fascinating and unbelievable. Low income upbringing, heavy heavy drug addiction, soup kitchen and avant-garde theatre, a notable arbitrary encounter with a seminal book on community organizing, getting clean, getting active, and now this. He was there and he knows how to get to them who are also there. Get to them via their things of life that are relevant. No one is left or right or conservative or liberal in the absolute. We have nuance in our “hearts” and, at best, our simple desires in life are our immediate and immediately honest desires in life. The small-town and poor-town citizens have a voice and ambition to be kindled. And the undeveloped third-world country citizens have a yearning for kindled development.
That sounds as racist/culturist as it felt to type.
Basically: missionaries visit places that need physical, material assistance and assist, bringing with them, or often times not, a look at the good book. Political missionaries visit and bring ideology and, yet also, pull ideology from their hosts. No answer is wrong when you’re a political missionary, and contra answers change the ask-er as opposed to the ask-er-ee. The missionaries can and should learn.
At best.