The Missionaries

OK, so if you believe missionaries are out there doing good, helping remote peoples to improve their lives, I suggest you put aside any thoughts of reading this book. In fact, put it down and walk away. Stop reading here, and probably don't read any reviews of this book.

It is fair to say there are no positive outcomes in this book. It is totally providing the bad news, the terrible stories about the worst of the missionaries. I do believe there are well intentioned people and beneficial programmes out there - this is not their story. This is grim reading.

Tahiti, Vietnam, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela all feature. Perhaps Guatemala and Paraguay are covered in more depth.

In each country Lewis describes the time he spent. He tries to reach the remote areas, spend time with the Indians (the traditional local inhabitants are usually called Indians - but not in the case of Tahiti and Vietnam) spend time with the missionaries and explain the outcomes of the intervention.

In many cases the missionaries in question are American Evangelist (but not always), are very organised, and are without doubt destroying the culture of these remote tribes. So many aspects are common to these missions - forcing the Indians to wear clothes rather than their native dress (or lack of), preventing the natives from performing their customary dancing, singing and ceremonies (other than singing hymns), moving the nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes into houses in the missions, indenturing or enslaving the Indians into working on farms and plantations, modifying their attitudes to sex. As well as that, eliminating the Shaman and traditional beliefs of the Indians and converting them to believe in a fairytale about sky wizards and a heaven and hell scenario which they cannot even translate into a workable concept for the Indians.

I mean this literally - the translations turn the core concepts of Christianity into a ridiculous jumble of meaningless rubbish. Some examples were given, including this ridiculous translation of the crucifixion for the Panare tribe: (P190)
The Panare killed Jesus Christbecause they were wickedLet's kill Jesus Christsaid the Panare.The Panare seized Jesus Christ.The Panare killed in this way.They laid a cross on the ground.They fastened his hands and his feetagainst the wooden beams, with nails.They raised him straight up, nailed.The man died like that, nailed.Thus the Panare killed Jesus Christ.

Here was a quote which summed up some of the translation nonsense: (P189)
Difficulties arose from the fact that, as in the majority of Indian languages, there are no equivalents in Panare for many words held as basic concepts of the Christian religion. There is none, for example, for sin, guilt, punishment and redemption. There are many other pitfalls. The concept of a universal God runs contrary to all the processes of Panare thought, and in any case he cannot be thanks, but only congratulated. ‘God is love' may be translated as ‘the Great Spirit is not angry!'. The panare mentality and character were established in relatively protected forest environment over thousands of years. In this famines were impossible, plagues are not recorded, and the wars that shaped our history were reduced here to at most to a ceremonial skirmish. Consequently the Indians can only grope after the meanings of words coined in a more stressful society. The biblical dramas become hardly more than shadow plays. How can the walls of Jericho fall down for a man who has never seen a brick? How can an Indian, who has never known dearth be urged to store up treasure in heaven?What point can the parable of the talents of silver have to Panare whose language possesses no word for profit? Most of the biblical animals are missing from the rainforest, so ‘the Good Shepherd' may have to be translated as ‘the sharer who looks after the pigs' *. Redemption is explained as a trading bargain after the arduous rigmarole of cash payments, debits and credits have finally been made clear. Adam and Eve and the fall of men were omitted from the Panare translations owing to their horror of incest.”
The * footnote says To some the image seemed inappropriate, so elsewhere small numbers of sheep were imported and raised in an unfavourable environment, so that this could be put right.

According to Lewis, tied up in some of this mission work is a high level political and big business corruption. Politically the missions have power - and wealth. The missions play a part in moving the Indians out of their nomadic or semi-nomadic locations opening the way for development of their lands - felling or forests, establishment of plantations etc - the Indians are then forced to work on these plantations.

Written in 1988, but drawing from the authors travels over many years, this book reads well in individual chapters, but missed an overall narrative to move from the individual stories to a conclusion. It ends abruptly, without even a summary statement. This probably dropped my rating from five to four.