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Secular missionaries and a life disconnected
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By Aaron Charlop - Powers
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Thursday, July 27, 2006 |
Experiencing turbulence, I awoke startled. Tired, cramped, I was ready to land in Kenya, but the map said we were just crossing over the Mediterranean. To my left snored a middle-aged man wearing a black shirt with bold orange letters that read: Baptists for Botswana.
Missionaries speckle the Kenyan landscape—roaming in Range Rovers, rivaling the cheetah population—wild creatures in their own right as they Bible-thump their way into the slums proselytizing predatorily on the starving poor, poaching tribal traditions towards the brink of extinction. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world. Kenya is a Christian country. Most mission work that is done in East Africa is headquartered in Nairobi, the largest city between Cape Town and Cairo, the control center for thousands of sentinels seeking to civilize the barbarians, redeem them in Christ.
The presence of Christian missionaries is undeniable, but it is easily eclipsed by the bigger cars, budgets, houses, egos, and bolder t-shirts of the secular missionaries that occupy the gated neighborhoods surrounding the city center. Forget cheetahs—we are the wildebeest. Like the religious work that is headquartered here, any news agency, NGO, micro-credit scheme, fair trade organization, women’s empowerment group, or foundation has an East Africa office here. I am a disciple of the secular gospel, doling out condoms, pushing women’s rights, starting sustainable enterprise, empowering youth, in command of all the jargon, the development testaments new and old.
With a faith as strong as a Baptist for Botswana, I believe that the work I do is right, part of a larger plan that will help positively impact the lives of those same starving poor. I choose not to think of my work as predatory, but when I walk through Kibera on a Sunday and hear the sermons, revival meetings, and exorcisms my scoffing at religious mission work doesn’t make my white skin, my presence in the largest slum in East Africa any less obnoxious. Neither condoms nor communion are helping in the long term.
Both sets of missionaries are equally culpable, both to blame for the problems that aren’t fixed, for living a lifestyle that is entirely disharmonious, prowling the slums by day—be it to convert or to vaccinate—and eating $15-dollar meals by night before retreating to a gated compound. Doctrines aside, there is a common baseline that indicts missionaries of all belief systems. There are no simple solutions, and while both sides insist they are right and the other wrong, neither is consistent. Lifestyle is a choice. Inevitably, the most religious and the most secular, both passionate, live disconnected from the work they do, keeping them in business by driving, buying, living, socializing, drinking, and sleeping the system that causes the problems they work to solve.
—Aaron Charlop-Powers
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