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Is Missions Evil?
Paul Grant, writer
Madison, WI

At Urbana, to paraphrase Psalm 117, we are calling the nations to worship God. To some critics, that could appear problematic. How imperialistic, insensitive and arrogant can we be, to call other people to worship our God? And that’s not the worst of it. At Urbana, we are also calling Christians to join the mission. Urbana, from the perspective of many anthropologists, is a horrible thing.

There are several ways to respond to these issues. First, we have to remember that God uses ordinary and ridiculous people to do great things. Every good thing they have done is God working in them, transforming them, giving them power beyond themselves. Every bad thing they have done is human failure at best and sin at worst.

We need to confess boldly the sin of some missionaries. Because sin hurts the body of Christ, we share in that sin, in the same way that I, as a white person, share in the racial sin of America. Missionaries have done bad things, we admit. However, the Holy Spirit has been able to touch people around the world in spite of the messengers’ shortcomings.

At the same time, we can defend against unfounded, ignorant and belligerent accusations from our peers and professors. Overall, missions has not been a tool of erasing indigenous cultures. Indeed, one might argue there is no other human enterprise more conservative of local cultures and languages than missions, precisely because God values diversity.

In Revelation 21:26, the nations bring into the new Jerusalem the glory and honor of the nations. This means languages and cultures remain intact, as a central component of our worship.

Today, missionaries are translating the Bible into dozens of languages. From a sociological perspective, there is nothing more likely to preserve a language from vicious and all-consuming global capitalism than a sacred text in that language. It lets people know that God values them for who they are. Accordingly, they are more likely to preserve their culture than before.

Unlike global marketers, missionaries are the ones fighting injustice, feeding the hungry, telling the terrified about the God of hope. Go to Thailand, and you will find a missionary shelter for young girls, once sold into sexual slavery, now freed but rejected at home. Is that imperialism? Go to Los Angeles. Where fires were burning less than ten years ago, you’ll find Korean-Mexican churches, worshiping together as a witness to an ethnic powderkeg of a city. Is that hatred?

If you come to Urbana, you’ll experience the most diverse worship you’ll probably see this side of heaven. But that worship has a point, and with it a call. The object of our worship is Jesus, and he calls us to his mission. He calls us to spread his name to the whole world.