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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My church hosted missionaries when I was a kid. My understanding was that the goal was to go and serve communities by helping pregnant mothers and babies, educating kids, and building sanitation. The missionaries were there to share their Christianity only through their example, not through proselytizing. They'd host a church session on Sunday and all were welcome, but it's was not required. No knocking on doors. No taking money from the community. Just service and helping those less fortunate. We considered helping others who are less fortunate to be a key part of our faith.

I was shocked when I learned about Morman missionaries and that they are taking money from underprivileged communities.

I’m a former Mormon missionary PP and the tithing issue wasn’t a huge deal for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was a problem, and the church does hand out charity unfairly, but in my area people benefited financially from the church as much as they contributed. The church helped people find jobs, gave people money for medical and dental care, and assisted with with rent, and set up the congregation in a way to be sure everybody had enough food. It certainly wasn’t enough charity and again I don’t agree with the tithing requirements (I could write a lot about how problematic that whole thing is), but the demand for financial contribution isn’t the reason I think missionary work should be restricted. It’s the demand for cultural conformity.

That’s great for all those people who benefited from the charity you’re talking about, and it’s not as bad as what Mormons do sometimes (some Mormon missions are service-only). But let’s get real: those churches have a motive. They want people to be like them, to believe like them, to follow the same rules, to spend time together, to read the same things, etc. People forget that White America, and especially white American Christianity, has its own culture. We are sometimes so steeped in it that it’s hard to see, but it involves values about work, food, socialization, spending money, even punctuality. It impacts everything about somebody’s life. And white religious culture and many other cultures can’t completely coexist in the same person. So you do see a deterioration of cultures even if it’s just from service oriented missions.

I really don't think it was about converting as much as serving. Our church also hosted a local food pantry, soup kitchen, and clothing closet. We did collections for kids in foster care. None of those activities had any pressure to join our church or to become Christian. It was all about serving those less fortunate.

I'm sure they the work done abroad wasn't perfect, but I don't think any less so than other non-religious charitable endeavors from the 80s and 90s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My church hosted missionaries when I was a kid. My understanding was that the goal was to go and serve communities by helping pregnant mothers and babies, educating kids, and building sanitation. The missionaries were there to share their Christianity only through their example, not through proselytizing. They'd host a church session on Sunday and all were welcome, but it's was not required. No knocking on doors. No taking money from the community. Just service and helping those less fortunate. We considered helping others who are less fortunate to be a key part of our faith.

I was shocked when I learned about Morman missionaries and that they are taking money from underprivileged communities.

I’m a former Mormon missionary PP and the tithing issue wasn’t a huge deal for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was a problem, and the church does hand out charity unfairly, but in my area people benefited financially from the church as much as they contributed. The church helped people find jobs, gave people money for medical and dental care, and assisted with with rent, and set up the congregation in a way to be sure everybody had enough food. It certainly wasn’t enough charity and again I don’t agree with the tithing requirements (I could write a lot about how problematic that whole thing is), but the demand for financial contribution isn’t the reason I think missionary work should be restricted. It’s the demand for cultural conformity.

That’s great for all those people who benefited from the charity you’re talking about, and it’s not as bad as what Mormons do sometimes (some Mormon missions are service-only). But let’s get real: those churches have a motive. They want people to be like them, to believe like them, to follow the same rules, to spend time together, to read the same things, etc. People forget that White America, and especially white American Christianity, has its own culture. We are sometimes so steeped in it that it’s hard to see, but it involves values about work, food, socialization, spending money, even punctuality. It impacts everything about somebody’s life. And white religious culture and many other cultures can’t completely coexist in the same person. So you do see a deterioration of cultures even if it’s just from service oriented missions.

I really don't think it was about converting as much as serving. Our church also hosted a local food pantry, soup kitchen, and clothing closet. We did collections for kids in foster care. None of those activities had any pressure to join our church or to become Christian. It was all about serving those less fortunate.

I'm sure they the work done abroad wasn't perfect, but I don't think any less so than other non-religious charitable endeavors from the 80s and 90s.

Anonymous wrote:It's what Jesus wanted. Matthew 28:

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

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”?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree that missionary tourism is the worst. My church growing up (southern baptist) was really into this, and even my devout parents rolled their eyes and never encourage me to participate. My favorite was when they went to Mexico (to...convert the already Christian population to a different kind of Christianity?)

There might be a handful of cases though where I'm thinking that converting a local population was a good thing. I'm thinking of those limited times and places where local religions included practices like child sacrifices, etc.

I'm no historian but I would think any incidences of child sacrifices would have been hundreds of years ago when good old Christians were burning people at the stake, torturing etc. And yes, many religions have committed atrocities, wasn't only the christians.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My church hosted missionaries when I was a kid. My understanding was that the goal was to go and serve communities by helping pregnant mothers and babies, educating kids, and building sanitation. The missionaries were there to share their Christianity only through their example, not through proselytizing. They'd host a church session on Sunday and all were welcome, but it's was not required. No knocking on doors. No taking money from the community. Just service and helping those less fortunate. We considered helping others who are less fortunate to be a key part of our faith.

I was shocked when I learned about Morman missionaries and that they are taking money from underprivileged communities.

I’m a former Mormon missionary PP and the tithing issue wasn’t a huge deal for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was a problem, and the church does hand out charity unfairly, but in my area people benefited financially from the church as much as they contributed. The church helped people find jobs, gave people money for medical and dental care, and assisted with with rent, and set up the congregation in a way to be sure everybody had enough food. It certainly wasn’t enough charity and again I don’t agree with the tithing requirements (I could write a lot about how problematic that whole thing is), but the demand for financial contribution isn’t the reason I think missionary work should be restricted. It’s the demand for cultural conformity.

That’s great for all those people who benefited from the charity you’re talking about, and it’s not as bad as what Mormons do sometimes (some Mormon missions are service-only). But let’s get real: those churches have a motive. They want people to be like them, to believe like them, to follow the same rules, to spend time together, to read the same things, etc. People forget that White America, and especially white American Christianity, has its own culture. We are sometimes so steeped in it that it’s hard to see, but it involves values about work, food, socialization, spending money, even punctuality. It impacts everything about somebody’s life. And white religious culture and many other cultures can’t completely coexist in the same person. So you do see a deterioration of cultures even if it’s just from service oriented missions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There might be a handful of cases though where I'm thinking that converting a local population was a good thing. I'm thinking of those limited times and places where local religions included practices like child sacrifices, etc.

I'm no historian but I would think any incidences of child sacrifices would have been hundreds of years ago when good old Christians were burning people at the stake, torturing etc. And yes, many religions have committed atrocities, wasn't only the christians.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Totally agree that missionary tourism is the worst. My church growing up (southern baptist) was really into this, and even my devout parents rolled their eyes and never encourage me to participate. My favorite was when they went to Mexico (to...convert the already Christian population to a different kind of Christianity?)

There might be a handful of cases though where I'm thinking that converting a local population was a good thing. I'm thinking of those limited times and places where local religions included practices like child sacrifices, etc.

I'm no historian but I would think any incidences of child sacrifices would have been hundreds of years ago when good old Christians were burning people at the stake, torturing etc. And yes, many religions have committed atrocities, wasn't only the christians.