Christianity has for the most part conceptualized itself as a missionary religion. This energized the wide travels of the early apostles and the spread of the faith across the planet. One particular statement of Jesus tethers the faith to this, recorded at the end of the gospel of Matthew during his resurrection appearance, “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.”
There’s a big problem, however, with the modern iteration of this missionary impulse: it’s wedded inextricably to another religion with an even stronger missionary mindset—Capitalism.
Here’s the thing about modern Christian missions: those with the most energy for mission are people who feel they have a calling to reach “the lost.” Their goal is to save people. There are no humble or small goals. Those truly committed to this way of doing Christianity are striving to “reach the whole world for Jesus Christ.”
Because they believe wholeheartedly in this mission, and they love Jesus un-self-critically (which is to say, they struggle to identify any problematic internal motivations for reaching the whole world), there’s very little interest in things like: the Jesus the world already knows before they arrive to share Jesus with the world, the beauty of the Indigenous faiths they seek to replace with Christianity, or the beauty of human life sans religiosity.
So the one problem with this kind of missionary impulse is its genuine disinterest in what is already good and true about the world they are trying to reach. There is no sense in which they might be reverse evangelized. There is no sense in which the world apart from their particular version of Jesus is doing just fine already.
But more insidious even than this lack of curiosity; the mindsets’ need for those it is reaching to be, or to become, spiritually impoverished.
To understand this side of the problem, it’s worth thinking about modern capitalism. As many point out, the history of capitalism is marked by the constant creation of scarcity.
Ponder that a few times: capitalism needs scarcity for its survival and growth. Those who benefit from capitalism are uncomfortable thinking to long on this point, but the only reason mid-level executives at Walmart can make $500,000 a year plus stock options is because there are thousands of other Walmart employees working at minimum wage to keep the costs of products down, not to mention the millions of people across the planet who work at slavery level wages in order to make the products Walmart sells.
For Walmart to thrive and spread, millions must be impoverished. Then once they are impoverished, they’ll need Walmart to buy the cheap products because they can’t afford expensive ones.
So return now to Christian mission. In order for the gospel to thrive and spread, it’s essential (and evangelical Christians are compulsive on this point) that any faith other than the Christian one be impoverished, weakened, designated as problematic.
These views—modern Christian missionism and the ideology of Capitalism—are married.
“Europe’s elites saw animist thought as an obstacle to capitalism—in the colonies just as in Europe itself—and sought to eradicate it. This was conducted in the name of ‘civilization.’ To become civilized, to be fully human (and to become willing participants in the capitalist world economy), Indigenous people would have to be fired to abandon animist principles, and made to see nature as an object.
We all know that the violence of colonization was justified, by it’s perpetrators, as part of a ‘civilizing mission.’ What we tend not to grasp is that one of the key goals of this mission was to eradicate animist thought. The object was to turn the colonized into dualists—to colonize not only lands and bodies, but minds. As the Kenyan writer Ngūgī wa Thiong’o has put it: “Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world.” (Less Is More, Jason Hickel, 78).
So modern missionaries first need the world to feel like it is lacking something that only their product can fill.
This is why I find movements like Dave Ferguson’s Exponential conference so disturbing1, and why I am so frustrated by mission statements from large churches near me about reaching the whole world for Jesus Christ.
Neither the mega-churches nor the “Exponential” movement have thought through how co-opted they are by another religion altogether—Capitalism. And so they fail to think of Christian mission as something similar to the capitalist impulse, as populated by it. The point is to sell your product to everyone, and in the process convince them their life was empty and meaningless before they bought it.
Capitalism is insidious this way. It can co-opt and make its own even things that should or ought to be inherently anti-Capitalist. Like Christianity.
I think I’ve offered enough critique here for readers to chew on. I think modern exponential missional movements that are attempting to spread and reach the world are troubling, first because they have very little interest in the genuine value of the religious other they encounter, and second because they have a not-so-secret second drive to impoverish those they are reaching so the value of their product might be perceived as greater.
What’s the alternative, you might ask? Well, I’m not completely of the opinion that we need to let go of mission altogether. We all have missions, after all. It’s almost impossible not to be on one.
But we should spend a lot of time with post-colonial critiques and analysis of the impact of late stage capitalism and the way it is inextricably tied into dominant forms of Christianity. Like, a lot more time than we have.
And then we can start with one simple and crucial move: what if we assume that Indigenous peoples, those of other faith or no specific faith at all, already have everything they need? We don’t have to create a lack in them we can then fill.
What does Christian mission look like in this framework? That we are sent not to save those who are otherwise dying, but rather that we are sent for mutuality, neighborliness, in the world? I’d love to be a part of Christian community that was missionary in this sense of the term, not shy about sharing the gospel, but sharing it while being equally open to receiving.
What if the world has everything it needs, and the great joy in life is that we get to go into a world already replete in itself, on a tour with Jesus. What if Jesus is a wonderful bonus rather than a necessary replacement?
And what if we are the ones who need to be reached by the world?
Admittedly, I was intrigued by Exponential for a time, and even read the book, and then realized it was intriguing in the same way a pyramid sales scheme is intriguing. That is, it’s more about the growth than the product.
Hmm…maybe Weber is to blame? ;)
My view on the problematic of missionary work (regardless of who's undertaking it), is very similar to your take here, though I tend to emphasize the psychological aspects—namely the knack we have for binding our spiritual (and/or political) belief systems, or lack of them, to our identities as individuals: I _am_ a Christian (Atheist, Muslim, Buddhist, Lakota, etc.). Thus, to varying degrees, challenging someone's beliefs or faith means challenging their identity. And yet, there is a fungibility to religious/spiritual belief systems, faith traditions, political ideologies, in that "conversion" almost seems like a feature of this capacity we share. Actually, in one sense, maybe that’s an unstated drive behind missionary work: the quest for unlocking the key to our agency in choosing to self-identify as _____.
Having posited that, the question “what if we assume that Indigenous peoples, those of other faith or no specific faith at all, already have everything they need?” is a really great one to start from. Of course—say for example from a “classical” Christian missionary perspective—they may well _appear_ to have everything they need, except, obviously, Jesus…right? :D But yes…an approach that didn’t barrel in with the seemingly default requirement that they abandon everything they know & believe…one that invited them to learn about something new, remarkable, different… To me, this bids us to unpack, to more thoroughly investigate the phenomena behind why certain peoples, like the Marshallese, various Australian aboriginal tribes, US/Canadian First Nations tribes, et al., were more open (even enthusiastic in some cases) to embracing Christianity. What is it they already posses that is so consonant with Christian faith, and shouldn't missionary work seek to test for that capacity from the outset?