It’s that time of year again.
We’re talking about The Holidays, the season when Thanksgiving and Christmas bookend America’s annual celebration of its history of Christian influences. It’s a season of family gatherings, annual notes to far-flung friends and acquaintances, garish holiday-themed sweaters designed to provoke smiles, and, for some, even a few religious services.
It’s a big deal journalistically, too, of course. Editors/producers and reporters/content providers seek out warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good features meant to remind media consumers of the genuine goodness individual humans are capable of showing others, including strangers.
We call it the holiday spirit and, except for the rampant consumerism, I appreciate the seasonal goodwill. And why not? Upbeat news is a welcome change from the disconcerting stories we’re usually fed. It’s good for the soul, and I need not subscribe to the traditional beliefs for it to warm my heart.
It’s also a time when journalists seek to probe the theological aspects of our holiday narratives, often to the distaste of those news consumers who prefer the comforting familiarity of traditional tellings or even the more sobering messages of traditional Christian faith in Advent and Christmas.
Such stories — here’s one example from a few years back that ran in the Guardian — are tricky, requiring solid sourcing and clear, even-handed and respectful explanations.
Another category of holiday stories addresses the consequences of past Christian actions that a reporter can link to the season, even if the link is indirect at best. Take this recent Washington Post story — “This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later” — on how the indigenous tribe, the Wampanoag, that first encountered the Pilgrims in what is now Massachusetts were decimated by the encounter. Here’s a large bite of it:
Just as Native American activists have demanded the removal of Christopher Columbus statues and pushed to transform the Columbus holiday into an acknowledgment of his brutality toward indigenous people, they have long objected to the popular portrayal of Thanksgiving.
For the Wampanoags and many other American Indians, the fourth Thursday in November is considered a day of mourning, not a day of celebration. Because while the Wampanoags did help the Pilgrims survive, their support was followed by years of a slow, unfolding genocide of their people and the taking of their land.
“For us, Thanksgiving kicked off colonization,” (Darius Coombs, a Mashpee Wampanoag cultural outreach coordinator) said. “Our lives changed dramatically. It brought disease, servitude and so many things that weren’t good for Wampanoags and other indigenous cultures.”
Linda Coombs, an Aquinnah Wampanoag who is a tribal historian, museum educator and sister-in-law of Darius, said Thanksgiving portrays an idea of “us seeming like idiots who welcomed all of these changes and supports the idea that Pilgrims brought us a better life because they were superior.”
Now let’s consider another Post story: “U.S. missionaries have long tried to convert the ‘unreached’ in the Amazon. Now Indigenous groups are fighting back.” This one’s a look at present-day Brazilian Amazonian tribal members who strenuously object to continued missionary attempts to convert them.
This one’s even trickier that the Wampanoag story, targeting as it does one of traditional Christianity’s core beliefs and practices.
Christians trace their belief in the necessity of evangelizing the “unreached” to the New Testament, specifically references to the faith’s Great Commission (this is from the Gospel of Matthew):
… Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The unreached are those who have not yet heard, as Christianity claims, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, and that faith in Him is essential for human souls to gain heavenly salvation.
Missionary work may be a bedrock Christian practice, but history, I’m afraid, has shown repeatedly that it has hurt virtually every indigenous group in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia ever since the early European colonialists, who, of course, acted with the full support of the era’s Christian clergy and governments, as well.
By “hurt” I refer to the cultural destruction, territorial loss, political and social subjugation, illness, death, poverty and resource destruction that has afflicted indigenous peoples around the globe.
I am not offering an opinion on whether the Christian belief in heavenly salvation is an accurate depiction of what can happen after human death. Nor am I judging whether the after life is more important in the overall scheme of human existence than life on earth.
I may not be a Christian, but neither am I arrogant enough to publicly dismiss others’ religious beliefs out of hand simply because they are not mine. Still, if you believe that your theology unquestionably trumps another’s life circumstances, we disagree.
The question here is how all of this plays out in news coverage.
As with the Wampanoag piece, the Brazil story stresses the indigenous point of view. It’s a complicated piece that is not always easy to follow, but I urge you to try. Here’s the link again.
Now here’s some of the story’s lede. This excerpt is long but captures the story’s point of view.
ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil — Eliesio Marubo watched as the tribal leaders assembled before him. First came the Matses of the White River. Then the distant Kanamari. Then both factions of the Marubo people. All had come, at his request, to put aside their differences and discuss what he called a common adversary.
Their forest was beset by outsiders — illegal gold miners, land grabbers, deforesters. But the time had come to confront the one who predated them all.
“Missionaries,” Marubo said.
The meeting hall was at the gateway of one of the largest indigenous territories in Brazil, called the Javari Valley, a swath of forest larger than the state of South Carolina. With its estimated population of 6,300 indigenous people, it’s considered the world’s largest repository of uncontacted peoples. On a planet with vanishingly few places beyond the reach of modern civilization, the valley’s enduring isolation has made it one of the most alluring places for evangelists trying to reach the last people to have never heard the name Jesus Christ. …
But the biblical commission that followers of Jesus “make disciples of all nations” is increasingly colliding with the laws of man in Brazil, where the right to voluntary isolation is enshrined in the constitution and where it’s illegal to contact isolated indigenous groups without government permission. Now, for the first time, indigenous communities in the Javari Valley are mounting a unified defense, using the tools of the state against the unwanted and, they say, at times illegal religious advances into their territories.
“They are invading our lands without our permission,” Marubo, 40, told the leaders. “And without the permission of the authorities.”
Marubo is the first indigenous lawyer to have come out of the Javari Valley. The only legal representative for its peoples, he last year filed on their behalf what is believed to be the first lawsuit by an indigenous group aimed at expelling Christian missionaries from their territory. A victory could set a legal precedent, further restricting access to isolated groups and reducing the historic role American evangelists have played in the forest.
The Javari Valley Indigenous Peoples Union alleges that two American missionaries and the Brazilian husband of a third plotted to reach the isolated Korubo people, potentially exposing them to the coronavirus.
A judge ordered the preliminary expulsion of the missionaries, along with the Brazilian offshoot of a large American evangelist organization, during the pandemic. But Marubo wasn’t satisfied. He had heard rumors that the Americans had returned. He looked back at the assembled leaders.
“I need to know what you know,” he said. Marubo didn’t want the missionaries out only during the pandemic. He wanted them gone for good.
Regular GetReligion readers may recall that I’ve written here on occasion about my own journalistic experience staying and traveling with members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (the world’s largest evangelical Protestant missionary organization) in Ecuador and Peru back in the 1970s. Here’s a link to one of my past posts.
As a result of my experience I closely follow news about the world’s remaining intact indigenous peoples. These days, much of this mainstream news focuses on the downside of centuries of Christian proselytization — a sad circumstance that I accept as an historical given and beyond refutation.
Among the contemporary Christian leaders who have voiced concern for the Amazon’s indigenous groups is Pope Francis.
Christian publications have also confronted the issue, as contemporary takes on morality and religious pluralism have shifted news media coverage of missionary activities away from the glorifying uncritical to the more realistic critical. This earlier piece from the theologically liberal National Catholic Reporter, for example, covers much of the same ground as the recent Post’s Brazil story.
Those who support missionary work argue in favor of the essential services missions provide to indigenous communities. Health care, education and transport, they argue, is often provided largely by missionaries (and non-religious NGOs) in nations with poor government services. Some will argue that this is an angle that should be included in coverage.
But is the price worth it? Missionaries, said Cultural Survival, a Cambridge, MA-based indigenous rights advocacy group, show little respect for the cultures of indigenous peoples. (I saw this for myself during my time in South America.)
On the contrary, they overtly undermine the confidence of indigenous peoples by robbing them of their beliefs and faith in themselves, Cultural Survival’s website says. “Missionary-designed development projects often work to integrate tribal peoples into a national society by promoting the sort of individualism perceived as essential for survival in modern society yet which runs counter to community-based economic patterns.” (Full disclosure: I contribute small amounts to Cultural Survival.)
Ok, readers. Now it’s your turn. How do you feel about this Washington Post coverage of contemporary Christian mission work? Please post your thoughts in the commentary section below.
FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited illustration from a website covering missionary work with Hindus.