Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

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The character of the message is that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Missionaries bring aid because they bring the Gospel. They wouldn't bring aid without bringing the Gospel. But like that idiot who tried to convert the Sentinelese, they would bring the Gospel without aid, if they felt so compelled. I don't think it's incorrect to say that everything else is a means to the common end. Christianity is an assimilationist religion. Jesuits may do it differently than Catholics who may do it differently than Baptists, but conversion is always the end goal.

>You've also underestimated the agency of indigenous cultures and their ability to appropriate Christianity, so much so that some Tiwi Islanders (islands to the south of PNG) insist that they converted the Catholic church when it embraced them.

I mean, they didn't, that isn't ever really how that works. Whatever Catholicism they appropriated will inevitably erase and obscure their culture and identity, as will the influence of Western culture. I couldn't read the article you posted unfortunately but I did find an article that basically seems to tell the story[0]. I also found an article written by someone of Tiwi descent that tells a less friendly, or at least more complicated story[1].

I'm more willing to believe the word of a native over a Christian missionary, all else being equal. It may not be fair but history demonstrates that the relationship between Christianity and indigenous peoples is one of exploitation, suffering and colonization more often than not.

[0]https://www.abc.net.au/religion/tiwi-christianity-aboriginal...

[1]https://www.thenorthernmyth.com/2017/12/20/graverobbers-god-...

The message is also "love your neighbour as yourself", and this "Lord" that people bow to is, according to the message, someone who died instead of taking that Lordship by force.

While it might be true that "Missionaries bring aid because they bring the Gospel" to some degree, it is also true that the Gospel brings aid. It is the message that generates the desire to help people.

Your accusations of "assimilation" are just too simplistic. Take, for example, bible translation. In Australia, Anglican missionaries did not put much effort into translating the bible into indigenous languages as the had essentially hooked their mission projects up to the assimilatory 'White Australia' policy of the government. BUT that was in stark contrast to their actions in the rest of the Pacific, where they put great effort into translating the bible into native languages.

> Whatever Catholicism they appropriated will inevitably erase and obscure their culture and identity

This again is just completely dismissing the agency of the converted people. Not to mention easily observed cultural particularities across the world. For example, I experienced a group of Solomon Islanders praying. In my Western culture, we would pray one at a time, but they all prayed out loud, all at the same time. Western values of a particular view of orderliness hadn't overridden their culture.

> I'm more willing to believe the word of a native over a Christian missionary, all else being equal.

Fair enough. I do not deny at all the paternalistic, violent, coercive and assimilationist past (and still present) actions of the church. It is shameful and inexcusable. But I don't for a minute admit that this is because the church was being faithful to it's mission and founder. It's because it wasn't being faithful to the message that it perpetrated these crimes.

But again, it is reductionist to say that this is the only experience. Australian Indigenous culture, Maori culture, traditional PNG cultures are still alive and well, and Christian members of these people groups still choose to be Christian. A simple appeal to "power imbalances", "assimilation", "indoctrination" etc. to explain why they remain so is to rob them of agency.

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