Mother Teresa could not be reached for comment.

Are you saying that some missionaries' primary motive is not to convert people to christianity? I have a hard time believing that

I'm a new poster. One of the central tenants of our faith growing up was caring for the poor as Jesus did. Mission work was all about serving others, not converting. There'd be a prayer before meals and a service on Sunday, but no proselytizing. If people wanted to hear about religion they had to ask. We only shared our faith through our example of being kind. Service, as Jesus did, was the goal.

We didn't send people on tourist-y missionary trips. We has one or two missionaries embedded in communities. They'd express needs back to the church community and we'd raise money. The missionaries were supposed to make sure funds were used well. They also did a good amount of physical labor helping others.

This is the same church that locally built one house a year through habitat for humanity. One year the family was Islamic immigrants from Somalia. No problem. It was about serving the poor, not converting. The family did join us for Sunday church dinners, but we never ever expected them to convert.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I ask out of ignorance, but is it a significant issue these days? I’m just not familiar with what is happening in those areas.

The Mormons positively require the young people to go out and be missionaries. They prey on people in polynesia, micronesia and the Pacific for some reason.

LDS here . You could not be more wrong. Only about half of young Mormons do a mission. Males have to fund it themselves after completing a year or 2 of college. Women have to be 21 so most are not yet dome with college. Not all Mormons have that kind of money. Not all Mormons have that desire.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see, it’s evil, hateful, wrong, exploitative and every other badness for people to travel to share what they believe is good news, but it’s perfectly OK for you to denounce and defame generations of people from countless denominations because you disagree with them.

IME, people are most often threatened by a message that makes them suspect that what they insist they believe is not true, so they get aggressively defensive. When people think what they’re being told is silly, they more often ignore and/or laugh it off.

When the missionaries leave, should they take their schools, colleges, hospitals, water programs and everything else they brought with them?

Thank you.

NO, thank you. Only selfish, "unchristian" people would destroy the good they had done out of spite.

Anonymous wrote:I see, it’s evil, hateful, wrong, exploitative and every other badness for people to travel to share what they believe is good news, but it’s perfectly OK for you to denounce and defame generations of people from countless denominations because you disagree with them.

IME, people are most often threatened by a message that makes them suspect that what they insist they believe is not true, so they get aggressively defensive. When people think what they’re being told is silly, they more often ignore and/or laugh it off.

When the missionaries leave, should they take their schools, colleges, hospitals, water programs and everything else they brought with them?

Thank you.

I grew up in a Christian Pentecostal missionary family. You cannot imagine the anguish, guilt, confusion, embarrassment I've dealt with because of it.
It makes me sad, that my parents couldn't just want to go and help people, but would instead make it all about "saving souls,""leading them to Jesus," blah blah.
Oldest bro is a very intelligent, intellectual atheist. It's probably been at least 5 years since he's been in a church.
2nd bro was was Muslim, now a diehard Hindu. Very anti-Christian.
I don't really believe in God but interestingly married a Catholic man and like the low-key Catholic rituals, at least I don't feel pressured to say/believe anything there and kind of like the mindlessness of it all (minus the strong emotional/passionate element in charismatic Protestant circles).
Little bro is the only pretty much Christian one of us.

Anyway, it's still a struggle for me. Just knowing how hurtful my parents' "calling" has been to poor people in traditional societies who would be better helped in other ways.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my home country in Asia (not third world) I noticed these missionaries and their families always live in very expensive housing (as an analogy, it would be like a missionary family with 4-5 kids living in a SFH in NWDC). Also the churches they plant in each city seems to be in expensive addresses too. When I looked up their home church it was some no-name local ministry in the Midwest. I know they may get tax written off as a religious institution but where does all the funding usually come from?

The missionaries I know live in the slums where they serve and beg for their own food and the supplies they need to help others.

Wow. I know zero of these, but I know plenty of well-off people going on “missions” who who beg in manipulative GoFundMes for money to pay their transportation and farrrrr from “live in the slums and beg” accommodations.

If you like human rights and believe in the dignity of all human beings, thank Christianity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I am from South East Asia and was born into one of the eastern religions. It absolutely enrages me to see western Christians come to third-world countries to convert us, trying to destroy our local practices, languages because they think they know better than us. The absolute disdain they have towards us brown people is disgusting. I think they should just be banned by all governments. Want to do humanitarian work - enroll with non-religious AID organizations. Keep your bible and your prejudice to yourself.

You couldn't be more wrong. Christian missionaries shouldn't be destroying "local practices, languages". They're trying to spread the good new of Jesus Christ, and if they're doing more than that, then shame on them. But don't dismiss all missionaries because of a few bad apples.

People are perfectly capable of finding God (whatever that means to them) without the help of judgmental fundie missionary tourists. I grew up in the southern baptist cult. Even as a teen, I knew it was messed up. I became a hospice chaplain because I wanted to help people transition in peace, not convert them to my way of thinking.

When you use language like that, you cannot be reasoned with.

That’s what they are. If you shut down and stamp your foot like a toddler when these people and their practices are called out for what they are, you cannot be reasoned with.

(not the PP)

Anonymous wrote:I have never met a Muslim proselytizer. Have you?

Adhere to my sect’s interpretation of modesty under penalty of stoning strikes me as a bit preachy.

Anonymous wrote:So you guys don’t believe in freedom of speech?
I’m an atheist but I don’t understand why you would favor banning speech.

Please learn what “freedom of speech” means and doesn’t mean before responding again. Thanks.

Anonymous wrote:OP, I think you don't understand why they do it.

The Bible basically directs Christians to spread the Christian message to **every country** in the world. Many believe Jesus will not return until this has been completed. Thus, these missionaries believe they must come to your country.

That’s nice. They should be barred.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see, it’s evil, hateful, wrong, exploitative and every other badness for people to travel to share what they believe is good news, but it’s perfectly OK for you to denounce and defame generations of people from countless denominations because you disagree with them.

IME, people are most often threatened by a message that makes them suspect that what they insist they believe is not true, so they get aggressively defensive. When people think what they’re being told is silly, they more often ignore and/or laugh it off.

When the missionaries leave, should they take their schools, colleges, hospitals, water programs and everything else they brought with them?

Do the missionaries understand how un-Christlike their conditional so-called charity actually is? What would Jesus think of: Love thy neighbor as thy self — as long as you can first force thy neighbors to celebrate every twisted conditions that have been attached to this mockery of “Love”?

I’m sorry, but the cartoonish, caricature you paint really bears no resemblance to reality. Even in the 1500’s, the goal of Jesuit missionaries in Asia was to alleviate corporal suffering as well as to offer people the tools to (as the Jesuits saw it) attain eternal life. The letters of St. Francis Xavier are replete with examples of this. I don’t know where you got this idea of “conditional” charity; I’ve spent a ton of time around missionaries spanning nearly three decades and I’ve never once encountered anything like that.

? if they're not spreading the word they're not "missionaries." What you're describing as helping people can be done by any secular charitable organization. The difference is that along with the missionaries' help comes a sermon and efforts to convert them to a particular religion.

That is simply not true. Mission work is an example of love in action. People give in love and typically receive love in return. The missionaries I know don’t force a sermon or try to force conversions. What they do is give an example of agape, self giving love. The people they help often receive from them for the first time the respect and dignity due them as human persons. And if you think “secular charitable organizations” don’t have an agenda as powerful as any overdrawn Bible beater caricature dreamed up by any fiction author, well, you’re not doing your homework.

‘Giving love’ and ‘receiving love’. This is your elevator speech?

It’s like spreading an STD.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I am from South East Asia and was born into one of the eastern religions. It absolutely enrages me to see western Christians come to third-world countries to convert us, trying to destroy our local practices, languages because they think they know better than us. The absolute disdain they have towards us brown people is disgusting. I think they should just be banned by all governments. Want to do humanitarian work - enroll with non-religious AID organizations. Keep your bible and your prejudice to yourself.

Most people who agree to get "converted" in this way merely graft their existing religions and beliefs onto Christianity, and take the food, the dental care etc, but go ahead and believe what they want. For all the money they spend, I don't think the missionaries are very successful.

Many missionaries, particularly in the current age, make no effort to make converts beyond their own example of a life well lived. In one major Asian country, for example, all the “best” schools are Christian. They are in high demand. Students of the predominant (pagan) religion come and are educated. Most of them stay the religion they were. But their lives are changed for the better, and they in turn better the society.

The best schools are Christian because there is so much meddling of the church and state (and concomittantly $$$). Some Koreans I know see this as a profound problem and wish for more separation of their government and church, so "their lives and society are changed for the better" is just your opinion.

Actually, I’m the country I’m thinking of, Christians are a very tiny minority, with no power (or personnel) for much meddling.

The characterization of something as “just your opinion” is perhaps the single most vacuous intellectual artifact to emerge from the relativist intrusions into the US educational system, long bereft of any semblance of actual logical or philosophical training. That said, I think it is fairly clear that a society where missionaries have laid the educational groundwork for colleges and universities; the training of engineers, physicians and other professionals; and the example of actions motivated by altruism and charity rather than clan or tribe, is objectively far better off than if that had not happened.

OK but why keep obscuring which specific country and societies that you are talking about?? This is an anonymous forum, I think you can deal with criticism

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see, it’s evil, hateful, wrong, exploitative and every other badness for people to travel to share what they believe is good news, but it’s perfectly OK for you to denounce and defame generations of people from countless denominations because you disagree with them.

IME, people are most often threatened by a message that makes them suspect that what they insist they believe is not true, so they get aggressively defensive. When people think what they’re being told is silly, they more often ignore and/or laugh it off.

When the missionaries leave, should they take their schools, colleges, hospitals, water programs and everything else they brought with them?

Do the missionaries understand how un-Christlike their conditional so-called charity actually is? What would Jesus think of: Love thy neighbor as thy self — as long as you can first force thy neighbors to celebrate every twisted conditions that have been attached to this mockery of “Love”?

I’m sorry, but the cartoonish, caricature you paint really bears no resemblance to reality. Even in the 1500’s, the goal of Jesuit missionaries in Asia was to alleviate corporal suffering as well as to offer people the tools to (as the Jesuits saw it) attain eternal life. The letters of St. Francis Xavier are replete with examples of this. I don’t know where you got this idea of “conditional” charity; I’ve spent a ton of time around missionaries spanning nearly three decades and I’ve never once encountered anything like that.

? if they're not spreading the word they're not "missionaries." What you're describing as helping people can be done by any secular charitable organization. The difference is that along with the missionaries' help comes a sermon and efforts to convert them to a particular religion.

That is simply not true. Mission work is an example of love in action. People give in love and typically receive love in return. The missionaries I know don’t force a sermon or try to force conversions. What they do is give an example of agape, self giving love. The people they help often receive from them for the first time the respect and dignity due them as human persons. And if you think “secular charitable organizations” don’t have an agenda as powerful as any overdrawn Bible beater caricature dreamed up by any fiction author, well, you’re not doing your homework.

So missionaries are just spreading love? Well, that should make OP feel better, see she thought they came to third-world countries to convert the people and destroy their local practices and languages because they think they know better than those folks. But you're saying that's really not the case, they're just spreading love. O.K.

Those are the missionaries I have experience with. They do what they do because of their religious beliefs but nothing they provide is contingent. I’m sorry if that doesn’t comport with your preconceived notions.

The problem with the OP’s assertion is that it demands the existence of a nebulous “they,” entirely alike in motive and behavior, across decades or centuries, if not millennia. There is no such “they.” Missioners are people. People’s motives vary and not infrequently change over time.

Are you saying that some missionaries' primary motive is not to convert people to christianity? I have a hard time believing that