Study: Missionaries make the world a better place.

[Perd Hapley]

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html?share=tf%2F2HPcra9UMuf3VEER3ryYAyV2f82tL&fbclid=IwAR1uZPGu9ZYl47ln5r_QqF-s-Po9FKShOdsegpt7-NZTwyjz8-gUfIBPL-w

It's about a study done several years ago, that confirmed a correlation between Protestant missionary work in Africa and Asia, and higher rates of literacy, democracy, etc. I liked this article, and I'm a little biased, so I probably excerpted way too much.

Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.

In short: Want a blossoming democracy today? The solution is simple—if you have a time machine: Send a 19th-century missionary.

There is one important nuance to all this: The positive effect of missionaries on democracy applies only to "conversionary Protestants." Protestant clergy financed by the state, as well as Catholic missionaries prior to the 1960s, had no comparable effect in the areas where they worked.

Independence from state control made a big difference. "One of the main stereotypes about missions is that they were closely connected to colonialism," says Woodberry. "But Protestant missionaries not funded by the state were regularly very critical of colonialism."

...so far, over a dozen studies have confirmed Woodberry's findings. The growing body of research is beginning to change the way scholars, aid workers, and economists think about democracy and development.

Setting out one morning on a dusty road in Lomé, the capital of Togo, Woodberry headed for the University of Togo's campus library. He found it sequestered in a 1960s-era building. The shelves held about half as many books as his personal collection. The most recent encyclopedia dated from 1977. Down the road, the campus bookstore sold primarily pens and paper, not books.

"Where do you buy your books?" Woodberry stopped to ask a student.

"Oh, we don't buy books," he replied. "The professors read the texts out loud to us, and we transcribe."

Across the border, at the University of Ghana's bookstore, Woodberry had seen floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with hundreds of books, including locally printed texts by local scholars. Why the stark contrast?

The reason was clear: During the colonial era, British missionaries in Ghana had established a whole system of schools and printing presses. But France, the colonial power in Togo, severely restricted missionaries. The French authorities took interest in educating only a small intellectual elite. More than 100 years later, education was still limited in Togo. In Ghana, it was flourishing.

What began to emerge was a consistent and controversial pattern—one that might damage Woodberry's career, warned Smith. "I thought it was a great, daring project, but I advised [him] that lots of people wouldn't like it if the story panned out," Smith says. "For [him] to suggest that the missionary movement had this strong, positive influence on liberal democratization—you couldn't think of a more unbelievable and offensive story to tell a lot of secular academics."

But the evidence kept coming. While studying the Congo, Woodberry made one of his most dramatic early discoveries. Congo's colonial-era exploitation was well known: Colonists in both French and Belgian Congo had forced villagers to extract rubber from the jungle. As punishment for not complying, they burned down villages, castrated men, and cut off children's limbs. In French Congo, the atrocities passed without comment or protest, aside from one report in a Marxist newspaper in France. But in Belgian Congo, the abuses aroused the largest international protest movement since the abolition of slavery.

Why the difference? Working on a hunch, Woodberry charted mission stations all across the Congo. Protestant missionaries, it turned out, were allowed only in the Belgian Congo. Among those missionaries were two British Baptists named John and Alice Harris who took photographs of the atrocities...

[lee n. field]

There is one important nuance to all this: The positive effect of missionaries on democracy applies only to "conversionary Protestants." Protestant clergy financed by the state, as well as Catholic missionaries prior to the 1960s, had no comparable effect in the areas where they worked.

So, you get better results when your missionary is not also an agent of some foreign gov't.  Quelle surprise.

I'm currently reading through Augustine's City of God.  He has a pithy comment in book XV, where I'm currently at, on the use of and invocation of God by the earthly temporal city.  If I find it again, I'll edit it in.

[Perd Hapley]

So, you get better results when your missionary is not also an agent of some foreign gov't.  Quelle surprise.

I'm currently reading through Augustine's City of God.  He has a pithy comment in book XV, where I'm currently at, on the use of and invocation of God by the earthly temporal city.  If I find it again, I'll edit it in.

Augustine? That old, dead African guy?

[WLJ]

Maybe it has something to do with their STYLE   

[lee n. field]

Augustine? That old, dead African guy?

Roman Berber, yeah.

[charby]

Send a bunch of missionaries to Latin America. Maybe that will stop folks from wanting to leave as refugees.

[freakazoid]

[Sindawe]

When Missionaries of whatever faith that carry a message of literacy, reason and equity of opportunity & treatment for all along with their message of faith is all well and good.

Although I do find it interesting that I've never had any Hindu, Buddhist, Bahá'í, Sikh or Quetzalcoatl missionaries come pounding on my front door.  Unless you count the large number of Corvids that hang about in my neighborhood.

[Perd Hapley]

Send a bunch of missionaries to Latin America. Maybe that will stop folks from wanting to leave as refugees.

https://www.dahlfred.com/index.php/blogs/gleanings-from-the-field/814-operation-auca-january-8-1956-sixty-years-later

[RoadKingLarry]

https://babylonbee.com/news/calvinist-missionaries-provide-remote-village-fresh-clean-craft-beer-supply?fbclid=IwAR1OFe_oES2d9j57TkxTZgXnvgR0rtI8LgDU3632bUBHSSpMmyFBt2WiptI

[Pb]

https://www.dahlfred.com/index.php/blogs/gleanings-from-the-field/814-operation-auca-january-8-1956-sixty-years-later

"8. Wise as serpents, innocent as doves

When approached by the tribesmen wielding 9 foot spears, the 5 missionaries could have tried to escape or used the pistols they carried. Such an action should be reviewed in our day when believers are encouraged to purchase handguns and a Christian University president tells his students to be prepared to use them by saying, “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here.”"


False.  One of the missionaries did shoot one of the attacking Auca indians.  It is not clear if the injury was fatal or not however.