World Missions: You’re Doing it Wrong

“[M]issionary programs have become downright wicked. The purpose of a missionary program is to preach the gospel. What have we made it? Well, we made it extensively, everything else under the sun. We have, among other things, established an education program. Now, this in itself has done incredible damage. It is one thing for Christians in a missionary field to set up their own schools as they become Christians and as they grow, and to train their won, it is another thing for us to go in there and establish schools according to our pattern. Because, what do we do the moment we create such schools? Well, when we go say into the heart of Africa or Asia and establish a mission school, immediately what we are establishing in that school is an American standard of life and an American standard of education which has no relevancy to the life in their village. And when they go back they are very unhappy. And we take the best of these students and we bring them to this country to colleges and universities, and when they go back it is impossible for them to live among their own people, and we support them, because it is impossible for them to get back to the same standard of living. And what do they become, most of them? Leaders of revolution. They are the communist leaders almost uniformly.

Then what do we do? We also because we are so full of human love, and it is thoroughly humanistic love, we set up mission hospitals. Now, I can understand why many fine missionaries find this a good thing, because certainly it brings people too you, because they are coming to you perpetually for sickness and so on. But what do we do? Again, we destroy the fabric of local life. For example, here are people, say in the jungle of Africa, who are living according to a certain standard of living, which is very meager, very poor, but that is all they know. And until they are converted, they are not going to be capable of much else, but we go in there, and instead of having a very high death rate they suddenly have a very low one. So they have a population boom, but they don’t know how to provide food for them, all they do is to destroy the jungle around them, they lay waste to natural resources, and they are demanding handouts from us.” ~ R. J. Rushdoony in For Every Oppressor a Destroyer, a lecture in the series Studies in Eschatology – Zechariah