THE MISSIONS AND THE DAMAGE DONE Sins of the Missionaries EVANGELISM’S QUEST TO CONQUER THE WORLD Stephen R. Welch

ach year, Americans contribute millions of dollars through corporate-giving campaigns and Sunday tithes to support the ostensi- Ebly humanitarian work of overseas Christian missions. This work—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving medi- cine to the sick—seems a worthy cause, an outwardly selfless endeavor unsullied by the salacious headlines and bitter dis- putes now roiling the life of the church at home. But Christendom’s missionaries bear their share of contro- versy. Though most private donors and corporate sponsors are unaware of it, overseas missions have long been embroiled in scandals involving allegations of predatory behavior towards the vulnerable. Though the largely poor and illiterate victims have complained loudly for decades, their allegations involve no sexual misconduct and thus garner few headlines in the West. Their outrage, vented halfway across the globe, rarely reaches English-language media at all. Evangelism is waged in earnest in a large swath of the under- developed world, from North Africa to East Asia. Missionary strategists call this region the “Unreached Bloc” or the “Last Frontier.”1 In the rural backwaters and isolated tribal ham- lets of countries like , missionaries routinely peddle the fruits of generosity—food and medicine—as “inducements” for conversion to Christianity. When these allurements fail, more aggressive means may be employed, not barring fraud and intimidation. Apparently, in the Unreached Bloc, “harvesting” A White missionary baptizes a native child in an African country during the 1950s. souls is an end that justifies almost any means. of . . . the Hindus of the world is targeted.”2 THE FINAL FRONTIER The church’s “soldiers” in the field get the message. As This subordination of humanitarian service to proselytization a - (formerly Bombay) based missionary whom we is a matter of theology—evangelical Christians believe they shall call “Paul” (he asked that his real name be withheld) hold a divine mandate, their “Great Commission” from Jesus, attests, he and his colleagues in India have been unequivo- to spread their creed. But it is also a matter of policy. During cally instructed by their superiors to “work extra hard in the his 1998 visit to India, for example, Pope John Paul II bluntly conversion process and choose any means possible to convert stated that the Christianization of Asia is “an absolute priori- these heathens.” With such marching orders, earthly conse- ty” for the Catholic Church in the new millennium. He openly quences can be cavalierly disregarded. “It’s not how we con- 3 linked the Vatican agenda for that region to its conquest of vert that matters,” Paul insists. “Conversion is what counts.” the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His In India, considered one of the richest “harvest grounds” language, says Sanal Edamaruku, founder of -based in the Unreached Bloc, the methods that missionaries like Rationalist International, leaves little room for interpretation, Paul employ have stirred seething bitterness and resentment even among secular and progressive-minded Indian citizens. among the “heathen” public. Perhaps no mission tactic galls “It is, in fact, not the fantasy of [Hindu nationalists],” he more bitterly than the intentional targeting of any society’s states, “but hard reality . . . nothing less than the conversion most vulnerable members—its children. Missionaries have long capitalized on the leverage they Stephan R. Welch is a freelance writer who specializes in exercise over India’s young through thousands of church-run religious extremism and related topics. hospitals, schools, and orphanages. For example, in a 1923

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report to Rome gleefully titled “The Spiritual Advantages of Famine and Cholera,” the Archbishop of Pondicherry related how a famine had “wrought miracles” in a local hospital where “baptismal water flows in streams, and starving little tots fly in masses to heaven.” A hospital is a “ready-made congre- gation,” the report contended, where there is “no need to go into the . . . hedges and compel them to ‘come in.’” Thanks to infection, they “send each other.”4 Thirty years later, a government inquiry exposed the wile by which the baptismal water had been made to flow so easily. Catholic priests had been instructed to learn some- thing of medicine in order to gain access to the bedsides of sick Hindu (and Muslim) children. There, on the pretext of administering medicine, priests secretly baptized the children before they died.5 What is troubling are the reports that this

“...Church embezzlement has come to exceed the global income of the missionary enterprise by a full one billion dollars annually.” practice continues today, with formulas of baptism whispered and holy water sprinkled surreptitiously over non-Christian patients even in the hospices of such well-known orders as the Missionaries of Charity.6 Christian missionary schools, too, remain ubiquitous in modern India. Many Hindu families believe that missionary schools offer a good education; for others, a church-run school is their only, or only affordable, option. Nonetheless, these schools can abuse parents’ trust by trolling the classrooms for AFP PHOTO converts. In one highly publicized 1998 case, the I. P. Mission A sister belonging to the Missionaries of Charity closes the door to the main entrance of Girls’ School in the town of Rajkot, Gujurat State, issued New “Mother House” in Calcutta. Testaments to Hindu schoolgirls and pressured them to sign John Joseph, a Christian member of the National Minority declarations of Christian faith. The declaration, printed on Commission charged with investigating reported cases of per- the last page of each New Testament volume, stated that the secution, complained that most of the cases that hit national signatory was a “sinner” and that she had accepted the Lord and international headlines in recent years were nothing Jesus as her “personal savior.”7 but “colorful lies, half-truths or highly exaggerated stories Naturally, parents were outraged. Not only was this “conver- unleashed by Indian Christian NGOs and missionary groups sion” performed without their consent—illegal in India when to mobilize Christian donor agencies to open their wallets.”9 minors are involved—but several girls reported that school Even when homeland wallets are open, overseas ministries staff had intimidated them into signing the declaration. Parents feel strong pressure to pay at least part of their own way. Some and other Hindus marched to the school to protest, and a wave missionaries have become inventive fundraisers; others have of publicity quickly mounted. Embarrassed, the school recalled sought revenue in less ethical ways, as recent exposures of the New Testaments and published an apology with the promise child-adoption rackets in missionary orphanages have revealed. that “such literature” would not be distributed again.8 Like parochial schools, church-run orphanages have long Along with the apology, the school accurately denied a been fixtures of Christian evangelism in India. Legally wards rumor alleging that protesting parents had burned copies of of the orphanage, the children are usually raised as Christians, the Bible during their demonstration. Nevertheless, this rumor and it is not uncommon for those who do not find homes to circulated wildly in India’s English-language press and was adopt the church as their surrogate family and become priests later repeated uncritically by Western media, adding fuel to or nuns when they mature. This swells the ranks of native a propaganda campaign that claimed that Christians in India clergy, a welcome bonus given the dearth of seminary admis- faced regular persecution from Hindu fundamentalists. Since sions in the West. Distasteful as this may be to many Hindus, this campaign began, giving to missions in India has increased an Indian orphanage is within its rights to raise its wards as considerably—demonstrating that prosecution of the Great it sees fit. Still, those rights do not extend to fraud. But fraud Commission requires more than Bibles and baptismal water. is what twenty-five families encountered in 2001 in Arunachal

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Pradesh, a mountainous state in India’s northeast. with offers of food and medicine is not illegal per se, but is hardly ethical—especially given that so many of the tribals ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL METHODS and dalits (“untouchables”) who are its typical targets have With the promise of providing their children an education, a little understanding of the very concept of religious “conver- Catholic priest from the neighboring district of Nagaland report- sion.” The notion of conversion as such is alien to Hinduism. edly charged parents 10,000 rupees per child (about US$250 Recognizing this, Mohandas K. Gandhi criticized the practice each) for tuition, room, and board at the St. Emmanuel Mission in no uncertain terms: “I strongly resent these overtures to Convent in Rajasthan, some 2,500 kilometers away in India’s utterly ignorant men,” he once protested, criticizing mission- northwest. That price was high, but parents considered it a bar- aries who, in order to gain converts, “dangle earthly paradises gain for a “sahib-run” (i.e., Western-style) school. Some parents in front of them [the dalits] and make promises to them which later developed misgivings, however, and traveled to Rajasthan they can never keep.”12 to visit their children. On arrival they were shocked to discover Whatever one calls the offer of material allurements in that the children were not enrolled at St. Emmanuel’s. In fact, exchange for religious conversion, it does not deserve the they were not in any school at all—they had been placed in an appellation “charity.” But this is lost on missionaries like orphanage. The priest who ran the orphanage said he had paid Paul, who offers no apologies when confronted with Hindu 5,000 rupees per child to a fellow priest—from Nagaland—and objections. “If Hindus believe that certain tactics like offering allegedly demanded compensation to the tune of this sum before money, food, or clothes to their naked children in return for releasing the children to their families.10 embracing Christ are immoral, then what can I say?” he pro- The victims of such schemes typically come from India’s tests. “All congregations and missionaries have been advised “tribals,” Hindu communities in India’s most underdeveloped to follow these techniques, as others will only fail. Sounds enclaves that have retained distinct local cultures that isolate immoral, but that is the only way.” them from the modern Indian mainstream. Illiterate and des- One cannot help but ask how conversions garnered through perately poor, tribals rank high on missionaries’ target lists allurements can be considered sincere, to say nothing of genu- for conversion. They are the unreached of the Unreached. ine, in the sense that the convert has experienced a significant Both Rome and its Protestant competitors have been par- change in beliefs. This has been a longstanding criticism of ticularly aggressive in efforts to convert the tribals. Exploiting evangelical methods, and missionaries in India are reminded customs that make female children economic burdens on of it each time money runs short, when they are forced to their families, missionaries reportedly induce tribal mothers renege on their promises and their flocks return to Hinduism. to relinquish baby girls shortly after birth. Often the mothers But when asked how aping conversion for a bowl of food could are promised that rich Westerners will adopt their daughters be considered a “real” conversion, Paul has a quick, if rather and they will live a “much better life.” The mother is typically optimistic, answer. “Embracing Christ through ‘food,’ ‘shelter’ paid about $70 for her child, who is then adopted by Western or some other way may be considered a full conversion,” he parents for a “donation” of $2,500. says, because “their children,” being raised in the Church, There is an irony to the notion of tribal “orphans,” accord- “will soon be one-hundred-percent Christian.” ing to Arvind Neelakandan, a volunteer with the Vivekananda History suggests otherwise. Duarte Nunes, the missionary Kendra (VK), a Hindu nonprofit that works among the tribals. prelate of Goa, expressed the same doctrine as early as 1520.13 In most tribal communities, Neelakandan explains, “Orphans Almost five hundred years have since passed, much of that as we know them are non-existent”; parentless children are time under the rule of pro-Christian imperial governments, typically cared for by their extended families. But, he explains, and yet Christians stand at no more than 2.4 percent of India’s missionaries will “fleece money from their foreign donors by population. India remains incontrovertibly Hindu. That may be projecting these very same children as ‘orphans’” in fundrais- why, out of either impatience or desperation, some mission- ing campaigns. Indignant, Neelakandan suggests that, rather aries have chosen to adopt more persuasive measures than than focusing their efforts on schemes to raise money or allure allurement to secure conversions. converts, evangelists ought to focus on the social betterment of In the time of Duarte Nunes, Jesuits supported by the the tribals, particularly their young girls. The VK, for instance, Portuguese military had Hindus forcibly seized and their lips specializes in educating tribal girls in useful—and secular— smeared with pieces of beef, “polluting” them as Hindus and subjects such as science and mathematics.11 thus making Christianity their only option for salvation.14 Such The practice of allurement, or providing “inducements” to blatancy is not possible today. Instead, the violence of others the poor in return for their conversion to Christianity, is quite can be used as a threat. common, and many missionaries readily admit using it. It is also nothing new. In the days of the Portuguese invaders, the INCITING VIOLENCE Jesuits simply paid Hindus by the hundreds to participate in The tribal village of New Tupi lies in a deep, forested valley in mass baptisms. Today’s methods are more subtle: conversions the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. It also borders are “bought” with food, medicine, promises, and microloans. the district of Nagaland, where a guerilla war between Naga Microlending programs are increasingly popular, providing a separatists and the Indian government has ground on for revenue stream for cash-strapped missions as it adds financial decades. A Protestant missionary started a primary school credit to the other blandishments missionaries can offer in in New Tupi and actively evangelized there for a number of exchange for conversion. years. Response to his ministry was lukewarm, however, and The practice of enticing the hungry and sick to Christianity villagers report that the pastor was feeling pressure to move on

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to greener “unreached” pastures. Failing to uproot the people staffed by some 434,000 foreign missionaries and wielding an from their traditional Vaishnavite faith (a monotheistic branch annual global income of eighteen billion dollars. And yet, for of Hinduism) apparently became a prestige issue with him, so all the money that is spent—an astonishing $359,000 for each as a last resort he played what could be called his “trump card.” person baptized—the benefits of evangelism are meager.17 The pastor of New Tupi began preaching a new sermon. Even harsher realities are revealed by WERC research, which According to villagers, he told them to “get converted within finds that most plans to evangelize the world have fallen “mas- one and a half months,” or else “everybody will be in trouble.” sively short” of stated goals and reveal that church embezzle- In his warning, he allegedly invoked the name of the National ment has come to exceed the global income of the missionary Socialist Council of Nagaland, or NSCN, the gun-toting insur- enterprise by a full one billion dollars annually.18 gents in nearby Nagaland who, as locals knew well, indulge in Meanwhile, the quality of life for India’s Christian pop- kidnapping and extortion. The people of New Tupi clearly got ulation remains dismal. Despite “crocodile-tears for the the pastor’s message: convert to Christianity now, or terror- oppressed,” says Edamaruku, and contrary to apologists’ ists may soon arrive at your doorstep.15 frequent boast that Christianization brings justice and equal- Sadly, this is not solely the behavior of a few renegade cler- ity to the “untouchables,” dalits who convert find that as gy. Displaying the “neurosis of the converted,” as V. S. Naipaul Christians, they remain “as ‘untouchable’ as they had been terms it, many ex-Hindu converts seek to demonstrate their as Hindus.”19 While more than 75 percent of the Catholics in faithfulness and worth to their new creed by affecting open India are dalits, dalits make up less than 5 percent of Indian hostility toward the faith they abandoned. This hostility is usu- priests. The vast majority of the church hierarchy is upper- ally expressed through contemptuous labeling: calling Hindus caste, a fact bitterly lamented by Christian “untouchables.”20 “heathens” and Hinduism “demonic” or “evil.” Too often, Undeterred, Christendom forges ahead with its drive to contempt escalates into physical aggression: disrupting Hindu plant churches. As Paul tells us, the Vatican planned to add 40 festivals, harassing recalcitrant family members or neighbors, percent to its missionary budget for India in 2003. “That could and desecrating Hindu temples and relics. mean a lot of rupees,” he says. “More churches will be built in Tension between converted tribals and their Hindu neigh- India, thus more converts.” That those rupees could be spent bors gained national press coverage in Dangs, a district in on more productive endeavors does not occur to him. Gujurat state. The conflict grew so intense that villages and Even the assertion that mere exposure to Western ideas even families were being rent apart. In 1999, India’s National and institutions provides some benefit holds little water, par- Human Rights Commission convened a special investigation ticularly when the principal effect of mission work is to replace into the conflict. Some of the most damning testimony that one set of superstitions with another. Tales of miraculous investigation heard was given by Ghelubhai Nayak, a respect- healings, even exorcisms, are frequently found in evangelical ed social scientist and disciple of Gandhi, who has worked in newsgroups. In a typical testimonial, an ex-Hindu claimed tribal welfare in Dangs for over fifty years. that, after losing her sight following a fever, her husband had In his testimony, Nayak said that the conflict at Dangs was practiced Hindu “witchcraft” on her but could not heal her. But, rooted in the work of Christian missionaries. In the preced- after “accept[ing] the Good News” and taking a vow “never to ing three years, Nayak stated, there had been at least fifteen worship idols,” the woman “felt a touch” on her eyes and was instances in which Christian converts, “under the influence of miraculously made to see. “Now,” she says, “I am all right and their preachers,” desecrated idols of the Hindu saint Hanuman, all my family members have accepted Jesus Christ.”21 who has been venerated as an incarnation of the Hindu god This is hardly the fruit of Western “enlightenment.” In the Siva, a servant of Vishnu, by the Dangs tribals for generations. end, evangelism seems to offer little more than an exchange of In one incident, he said, the converts urinated on a statue of idolatry for bibliolatry, gods for devils, and magic for dogma. Hanuman; in another they “crushed Hanuman’s idol to pieces Meanwhile, families are ruptured, divisions are sown among and threw it away in the river.” In addition to the desecration, communities, and indigenous ancient traditions no less valid Nayak testified, converts had raised the ire of their Hindu neigh- bors by repeatedly, publicly denouncing Hindu saints as shai- tans, or “Satans.” This was done, again “under the influence of their preachers.” The native clergy, it seems, were themselves Ingersoll on ex-Hindus afflicted with the Naipaulian “neurosis.”16 Missionaries WHAT OF THE BENEFITS? Nineteenth-century agnostic orator Robert Green On the whole, no one can deny that, through the efforts of Ingersoll offered the following advice to American Christian evangelists, thousands of people across the develop- Methodists, the most indefatigable foreign mis- sionaries of the day: ing world have been fed and clothed. But the question remains, when the benefits of mission work are weighed against the My advice to the Methodists is to do what little good they social costs of aggressive proselytizing, are the peoples of the can right here and now. It seems cruel to preach to the heathen a gospel that is dying out even here, and fill Unreached Bloc better or worse off for having Christian mis- their poor minds with absurd dogmas and cruel creeds sionaries in their midst? that intelligent men have outgrown and thrown away. One has to wonder. According to the World Evangelization Research Center (WERC), there are more than four thousand mission agencies. Collectively, they operate a huge apparatus,

27 http://www.secularhumanism.org Feb. / March 2004 or holy than those striving to replace them are disparaged for the sake of a jealous ideology bent on homogenizing the world. It is not widely advertised in the West that Gandhi, that icon of compassion and self-sacrifice, detested proselytizing. In his multivolume The Collected Works, he states categorically that “the idea of conversion . . . is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”22 If missionaries could not conduct service for its own sake, he said, if the price of their charity was conversion, he preferred that they would quit India alto- gether. This was a man who was neither a Hindu “fundamentalist” nor an extremist. And he well knew the suffering and need of his poorest countrymen.23 Nonetheless, missionaries in the field remain ever optimistic, albeit misguided, about what they are doing. “I do admit our means of conversion are almost horrible Photo by Kamal Kishore REUTERS Tribal activists shout slogans during a sit-in to protest against Christian missionaries who work in India amongst the poor in nature,” admits our friend Paul, “but I and tribals. The activists said that missionaries force tribals in remote areas to convert. The protests coincided with the visit suppose we are doing this for a reason.” of Pope John Paul II to India. Self-doubt seems to hover in his words, but he then finds harbor in a familiar rationale. “The reason is Christ. It is honorable.” He then pauses and asks, “Wouldn’t you say so?”

Notes Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalayas Arunachal Pradesh Trust) 2, no. 9 (July 2001): 3. 11. Aravindan Neelakandan, personal e-mail to author, 11 January 2002. 1. “The Last Frontier,” International Mission Board, December 19, 2002, http:// 12. Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Collected Works (New Delhi: Government of www.imb.org/core/WE/lastfrontwo.htm. An updated version (November 6, 2003) is India Press, 1976) 64:400. available at http://www.imb.org/WE/lastfront.asp. An entire research industry, deploy- 13. M.D. David, ed., Western Colonialism in Asia and Christianity (Bombay: ing specialized racial and linguistic databases, ethnic mapping projects, and training Himalaya Publishing House, 1988), p. 8, quoted in Sita Ram Goel, History of resources has been mobilized for the world evangelism movement. See, for instance, Christian-Hindu Encounters, AD 304 to 1996 (Voice of India, 1996), p. 14. Global Mapping Inter national, http://www.gmi.org/index.html. 14. David, p. 19, quoted in Goel, p. 12. 2. Sanal Edamaruku, “Indian Rationalists Defend the Right to Criticize Pope,” 15. Vishwinath, “Pastor Threatens to Call Army of the ‘Good Shepherd’ to New Rationalist International 22 (October 25, 1999). See also “Vatican’s Asian Agenda Tupi!” Breezy Meadows 2, no. 6 (April 2001): 4. Revealed,” op. cit., 25 (November 14, 1999). 16. Ghelubhai Nayak (fax transmitted to Special Bench of the National Minorities 3. Paul [pseud.], e-mails to author, December 23, 2000, through February 3, 2001. Commission, India, 7 January 1999), quoted in Arvind Lavakare, “A Gandhian Speaks 4. Arun Shourie, Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas Out from Dangs,” Rediff On the Net, 19 January 1999 (19 December 2002), http://www. (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 1994), p. 16. rediff.com/news/1999/jan/19arvind.htm. 5. Government of Madhya Pradesh, Report of the Christian Missionary 17. David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson, “Status of Global Mission, 2003, Activities Enquiry Committee, (Nagpur: Government Printing Press 993, 1956), in Context of 20th and 21st Centuries,” World Evangelization Research Center, vol. 2 part B, p. 54, quoted in Shourie, p. 8. The document is also available online January 2003 (November 6, 2003), online at http://www.gem-werc.org/resour as “Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report on Christian Missionary ces.htm. Nor are the mid-2003 figures unusual: Barrett and Johnson noted that Activities” at http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ncr/. “ecclesiastical crime” exceeded mission income by $1 billion in their 2002 report as 6. Particularly notable is the memoir of Susan Shields, former member of well. According to their mid-2003 report, ecclesiastical crime is growing at more than the Missionaries of Charity, whose unpublished manuscript, In Mother’s House, 6 percent per year and is projected to exceed mission income by $5 billion in 2025! is quoted in Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: in 18. $19 billion in “ecclesiastical crime” versus $18 billion in global income. Theory and Practice (London: Verso, 1995), pp. 43–50. Shields also published a Barrett and Johnson, loc. cit. brief article in FREE INQUIRY concerning her experiences (“Mother Teresa’s House 19. Sanal Edamaruku, “God Longs for All Hindus! Covert Operations of the of Illusions,” FI, Winter 1997/98, pp. 31–32.) Evangelical Church in India,” Rationalist International 83 (29 November 2001). 7. I. P. Mission Girls’ High School, declaration of faith (July 1998, photocopy 20. See “Problems & Struggles: Archbishop Arulappa Condemns Vatican for with translation). Promoting a Dalit Bishop as His Successor,” Dalit Christians (19 December 2002), 8. Office of the Principal, I. P. Mission Girls’ High School, letter to Rajkot VHP http://www.dalitchristians.com/Html/arulappa.htm. and Bajrang Dal (July 1998, photocopy with translation). See also Ravindra Agrawal, 21. “India: And the Blind Receive Sight!” Fax of the Apostles (April 2001), quot- “Church Conspiracy in the Guise of Service,” available online at http://www.hssworld. ed in “Religious World News for Mission Mobilizers,” Brigada Mission Mobilizers, org/all/baudhik/christianity/CHURCH_CONSPIRACY.html. 27 April 2001. Electronic subscription. 9. Sanal Edamaruku, “Are Christians Really Persecuted in India?,” Rationalist 22. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Government International 43 (27 July 2000). of India Press, 1971) 64:203. 10. Vishwinath, “Church as an Edifice of Fraud!,” Breezy Meadows (organ of the 23. Gandhi, 46:28.

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