Missionaries: fiction v fact

 Fiction
Barbara Kingsolver's best-selling novel, The Poisonwood Bible, has been described by some reviewers as a modern classic. 

It's the story of a missionary family in Congo who are all misfits in the environment in which they find themselves. The missionary husband, Nathan Price, is deeply insensitive to the culture and needs of the local people. His insensitivity is exemplified by the fact that he tries to baptize new Congolese Christians in a river filled with crocodiles. He proclaims Tata Jesus is bangala!, thinking he is saying, "Jesus is beloved." In fact, the phrase means, "Jesus is poisonwood." Despite being corrected many times, Price repeats the phrase until his death — Kingsolver's heavy-handed metaphor for her perception of the culturally insensitive folly of modern missions in general.

I'm afraid that his piece of fiction feeds the already existing prejudice of many people: they like to believe that the missionaries who continue to go out to Africa and Asia do more harm than good by imposing alien values on foreign cultures.  I've come across this view several times over the years -  a colleague who scoffed at the many Christian 'do-gooders' in Hong Kong (as though doing good was somehow bad!) and another acquaintance who had been in Borneo and condemned out of hand the Christian missionaries who were working there.

Fact

My own observation in Africa of missionaries and their work has been just the opposite: From a practical point of view they have been to the forefront in medical work and in establishing schools and universities. They have spearheaded equality for girls and women. They have fought against corruption and drunkenness. They have introduced  more productive agriculture. The list is endless.  Then of course, and even more importantly, they brought the Christian gospel with them, which, where it took hold, revolutionised the lives of the converts and altered society very much for the better.

Mengo

Our first  child, Janine, was born in Mengo Hospital, Kampala. 

The Mengo Hospital website says

Sekabaka Mutesa 1(King of Buganda) invited Missionaries to come to Uganda. By the second half of the 19^th Century, Christianity and western medical care had not reached Uganda.  Ugandans were in “Spiritual darkness”; they believed in and practiced witchcraft. Diseases like Sleeping sickness and Syphilis were occurring at epidemic levels in the country.Realizing that his subjects needed the “light”, the then King of Buganda Sekabaka Mutesa 1 invited men of Good will from England to come and evangelize; to bring the “light” that consisted  of three important elements namely: Evangelism, Health care and education.
In response to the King’s invitation mentioned above, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of England sent a team of Missionaries to Uganda. In the team was a Physician, Dr. Sir Albert Ruskin Cook (RIP), who arrived in Uganda on 15th February 1897.  Soon after his arrival, Dr. Cook realized that in order to minister to the spiritual lives of people of Uganda, he had to give attention to their enormous physical problems as well. Consequently on 22^nd February 1897, Sir Dr. Cook held his first outpatient clinic under a tree on Namirembe hill. With that single event, the first seed for the Christian Medical work in Uganda was planted. Ever since, that work has continued to grow and to develop in size and scope uninterrupted for the last 120 years.

For a bit more on this subject see   

https://mengohospital.org/history/

Kigezi High School, and other schools…

I taught for several years at Kigezi High School, originally founded in 1922 as a mission school to give education to those in South-western Uganda who otherwise would not have had an education. 

6th form members of the KHS Christian Union, aged between 18 and 23.

 (Click on picture to enlarge it)

Nearby was Hornby High School, founded by Constance Hornby (a relative of Frank Hornby, the originator of Hornby Trains!)  who wanted to ensure that in a male dominated society, girls would get an education too.   

Hornby High Schhol for girls

After we had left Uganda, one of my Christian colleagues, Elizabeth Traill, became the first headmistress of another mission school, Bishop Kivengere Girls' School, Muyebe. 

Leonard Sharp

Not far from Kabale is Lake Bunyonyi, 

where in 1920 Dr Leonard Sharp, a pioneer missonary doctor, set up a leprosy hospital on Bwama Island.  He built a home and lived with his family on a nearby island which has become known as Sharp island and which is now a tourist destination.

Sharp Island -( now Gorilla Lodge Hotel)

Bwama Island

When I returned to UK and settled near Corsham, I wa surprised to discover that Len Sharp's daughter Joy was living in Corsham with her husband Leon Gower, who was teaching at Hardenhuish School, as I was.  As a result of this coincidence the Gowers and ourselves became firm friends. 

Joy wrote a book about her life on Lake Bunyonyi, and there is an extract from it on the following website: 

https://gorillahighlands.com/places/lake-bunyonyi/sharps-island/

 

John Mackenzie

Finally, I'll add a little story about another missionary to Africa… My own experience of what missionaries have done, as well as the following story make the opposite point to the one Kingsolver makes: the true story of the 19th-century missionary John Mackenzie. When white settlers in South Africa threatened to take over the natives' land, Mackenzie helped his friend and political ally Khama III travel to Britain. There, Mackenzie and his colleagues held petition drives, translated for Khama and two other chiefs at political rallies, and even arranged a meeting with Queen Victoria. Ultimately their efforts convinced Britain to enact a land protection agreement. Without it, the nation of Botswana would likely not exist today. The annals of Western Protestant missions include Nathan Prices, of course, like Kingsolver's fictional missionary.  But the truth is that they include many more John Mackenzies. In fact, research done by the sociologist Robert Woodberry shows that the work of missionaries like Mackenzie turns out to be the single largest factor in ensuring the health of nations.

For more on Woodberry's research see

 http://intersectproject.org/faith-and-economics/robert-woodberry-world-missionaries-made/



The amount of good done by Christians who ditched promising careers to go out to spread the gospel in far-flung places  is inestimable.  During my time in Africa I was surrounded by enormous amounts of evidence of this.

My attention was drawn recently to a short video by Milton Jones, a Christian stand-up comic, who said

Apart from being involved at the beginning of science, systems of government, philosophy, art, schools, hospitals, the emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, social welfare, helping form the basis of the moral code most people live by, and introducing popular notions of justice, mercy, decency and compassion – what has Christianity ever really done for the world?