Peeling Back the Evangelical Onion: Worldviews and World Affairs
James Wellman, Jr. Friday, 1 September 2006
The contemporary media-driven image of missionaries, and by extension all evangelicals, is a familiar stereotype. Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible, for instance, paints a picture of an American missionary family in the Congo who are superficial cultural imperialists with a father who is a near sociopath. Films including Hawaii (1966), The Mission (1986), Black Robe (1991), and At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991) include portrayals of deeply flawed and sexually repressed missionaries who care more about themselves than those they serve. The moral worldview of most missionaries is presented as being compromised by arrogance, self-righteousness, and misogyny. More recently, a documentary film called The Tailenders aired nationally on PBS and presented missionaries as mere salesmen for global capitalism. "Where Protestant missionaries go, industrial capitalism follows," intoned the voice-over narrator. "To convert to evangelicalism is to replace indigenous collectivity with the pursuit of individual economic gain."
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