I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are golden
I used to watch https://www.youtube.com/@MissionaryBushPilot deliver stuff around PNG in a Kodiak. If you're into aviation, the videos are golden
On the other hand, the MAF is a highly questionable organization that exists specifically to convert the local people away from their own belief systems into whatever brand of evangelical Christianity its supporters are peddling. There's plenty of bush plane videos from Alaska, Nunavut and other challenging places in the world from ordinary small commercial bush plane operators.
It's morally indefensible in my opinion for a bunch of random people from many thousands of km away to go off to some pre-technology rural villagers' home territory and basically say "everything you believe is wrong, here's our god, you must follow and believe in him or you're going to hell".
If people want to go do bush plane things in remote areas and work in very challenging environments as weird foreigners, there's plenty of ways to justify that in the form of a secular NGO (something like Medecins Sans Frontiers) without combining it with missionary work.
If there is no funding for helping the people coming from the non evangelical sources, i'm sure the people would rather have medicine than keep dying, no matter the indoctrination they receive
> On the other hand, the MAF is a highly questionable organization that exists specifically to convert the local people away from their own belief
At this stage in the ecocide and genocide of West Papua, any eyes are welcome no matter what their biases. If they want to convert people to their belief system, honestly I couldn't care right now as long as they protect the indigenous West Papuans from being genocided by Prabowo and his cronies and the beautiful ecology of the island from being ecocided.
Are they actually violently forcing anyone though, like Russians did in Siberia etc?
Probably not, but there is a massive imbalance of power between white missionaries with the trappings of the modern world and indigenous people.
Do you see diversity of cultures with different levels of development on the planet as a problem? Because as long as it exists there will be the imbalance
>Do you see diversity of cultures with different levels of development on the planet as a problem?
When a more 'advanced' group use their wealth, technology, medicine etc to control a less developed group - yes that can be a problem.
Do you argue for full isolation and no assistance between those groups you describe?
No.
can you describe how such groups can coexist without isolation so that the more developed one helps the less developed one without a degree of influence and control in some shape or form?
ideally something not too far removed from how the world works today
Groups like MSF go and provide medical without trying to control or religiously convert people.
only contacting each other via humanitarian aid is more isolation than coexistence.
Humanitarian aid also exerts influence, if anything by showing how advanced the more advanced group is. For someone whose religious practice involves traditional medicine or shamanism for treatment, western medicine seems like is obviously a religious influence and control. (It also has issues like alleged bartering treatment for sex or food supplies helping mostly the bad guys with guns)
and you're looking at locals like they are too dumb to reject a new religion. it's a condescending view. locals in Siberia did reject the new religion at first and paid the price in blood, it stopped when they learned to pretend to be Christian and keep their traditions under wraps. the situation seems completely different here.
> It's morally indefensible in my opinion for a bunch of random people from many thousands of km away to go off to some pre-technology rural villagers' home territory and basically say "everything you believe is wrong, here's our god, you must follow and believe in him or you're going to hell".
But...why? If they are just saying that, why is that indefensible? The villagers' are free to reject that message (or a more accurate version of it), as are you or anyone else.
Because they never "just say that." Christians aren't raised to believe that "no" is a valid answer - that means eternal damnation after all. Everyone must accept Christ, that's the message, and Christians must do whatever it takes to get that message across. Food, medicine and other elements of "civilization" are always used as leverage, a means of influence and control, to pacify and eventually convert. Inevitably another "pagan" culture is erased, its heritage and language forgotten, its children indoctrinated (perhaps by force as happened with American and Canadian indigenous people) and its people made subservient to Western interests.
All that has been true, but it was not always true, and it is only half the truth.
You've used "never" and "always" as if Christianity, Christian missions, and the cultures they try to reach are a monolith and the same everywhere. You've also insisted that any aide must only be to strengthen the power of the missionaries, and has nothing at all to do with the character of the very message itself.
You've also underestimated the agency of indigenous cultures and their ability to appropriate Christianity, so much so that some Tiwi Islanders (islands to the south of PNG) insist that they converted the Catholic church when it embraced them (https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/publications/going-...)
> underestimated the agency of indigenous cultures l
yeah thinking "we shouldn't influence poor locals because obviously we can do it so easily" is a little condescending.
I know people from the west who reject religion but pretend just enough to get some benefit from the church, why assume locals are too dumb to do it.
there were historic cases where native people rejected a religion and paid price in blood. THAT is a problem. if there is no forcing, there is no problem.
The character of the message is that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."
Missionaries bring aid because they bring the Gospel. They wouldn't bring aid without bringing the Gospel. But like that idiot who tried to convert the Sentinelese, they would bring the Gospel without aid, if they felt so compelled. I don't think it's incorrect to say that everything else is a means to the common end. Christianity is an assimilationist religion. Jesuits may do it differently than Catholics who may do it differently than Baptists, but conversion is always the end goal.
>You've also underestimated the agency of indigenous cultures and their ability to appropriate Christianity, so much so that some Tiwi Islanders (islands to the south of PNG) insist that they converted the Catholic church when it embraced them.
I mean, they didn't, that isn't ever really how that works. Whatever Catholicism they appropriated will inevitably erase and obscure their culture and identity, as will the influence of Western culture. I couldn't read the article you posted unfortunately but I did find an article that basically seems to tell the story[0]. I also found an article written by someone of Tiwi descent that tells a less friendly, or at least more complicated story[1].
I'm more willing to believe the word of a native over a Christian missionary, all else being equal. It may not be fair but history demonstrates that the relationship between Christianity and indigenous peoples is one of exploitation, suffering and colonization more often than not.
[0]https://www.abc.net.au/religion/tiwi-christianity-aboriginal...
[1]https://www.thenorthernmyth.com/2017/12/20/graverobbers-god-...
The message is also "love your neighbour as yourself", and this "Lord" that people bow to is, according to the message, someone who died instead of taking that Lordship by force.
While it might be true that "Missionaries bring aid because they bring the Gospel" to some degree, it is also true that the Gospel brings aid. It is the message that generates the desire to help people.
Your accusations of "assimilation" are just too simplistic. Take, for example, bible translation. In Australia, Anglican missionaries did not put much effort into translating the bible into indigenous languages as the had essentially hooked their mission projects up to the assimilatory 'White Australia' policy of the government. BUT that was in stark contrast to their actions in the rest of the Pacific, where they put great effort into translating the bible into native languages.
> Whatever Catholicism they appropriated will inevitably erase and obscure their culture and identity
This again is just completely dismissing the agency of the converted people. Not to mention easily observed cultural particularities across the world. For example, I experienced a group of Solomon Islanders praying. In my Western culture, we would pray one at a time, but they all prayed out loud, all at the same time. Western values of a particular view of orderliness hadn't overridden their culture.
> I'm more willing to believe the word of a native over a Christian missionary, all else being equal.
Fair enough. I do not deny at all the paternalistic, violent, coercive and assimilationist past (and still present) actions of the church. It is shameful and inexcusable. But I don't for a minute admit that this is because the church was being faithful to it's mission and founder. It's because it wasn't being faithful to the message that it perpetrated these crimes.
But again, it is reductionist to say that this is the only experience. Australian Indigenous culture, Maori culture, traditional PNG cultures are still alive and well, and Christian members of these people groups still choose to be Christian. A simple appeal to "power imbalances", "assimilation", "indoctrination" etc. to explain why they remain so is to rob them of agency.
> everything you believe is wrong, here's our god, you must follow and believe in him or you're going to hell
"Democracy" and "human rights" is basically that but on steroids. Surely you're not a cultural relativist that simply going to allow uncontacted people to be racist and misogynist willy-nilly?
Those things aren't at all equivalent, so I'm not sure I understand your point.