Heresy?

When a missionary goes into a primitive land with the backward natives and the daily challenges for survival, he may be quite proud of himself for having taken on the task of bringing the true faith to the ignorant heathen. More souls for the Lord. Of course, I speak of Christian missionaries but the principles apply with all religions and with political and nationalistic or fanatical terrorist groups as well.

These diverse groups of highly committed people have some things in common. They are “true believers” whatever their religious, political, scientific or revolutionary orientation. They may spend considerable time and effort learning the native tongue . This gives the impression that they are acquiring the linguistic skills to become further oriented to the “primitive” community, and developing a better notion of the native society. Although a certain amount of this learning occurs, It does not appear to be the central purpose of learning the language.

The real reason seems to be to better impart the new dogma to the backward savages. The missionary may learn that the naive native believes that the mountain god brings the blessed rain to the jungle. The missionary , without reflection, just knows that this notion is nonsense. He doesn’t even stop to consider it. He is too busy trying to couch scriptures in the native tongue.

And yet, it does not take much thought to realize that mountains impose a barrier to wind, causing updrafts which carry moisture laden clouds high where they will cool and drop the moisture that they contained in the form of rain. So the native “superstition” which seemed so quaint to the missionary held some nuggets of good sense.

It is hard for me to be too hard on the missionaries though, since I recognize that although I am a heretic (some have said a damnable heresiarch) I do advocate a certain open-mindedness with regard to science, philosophy and religion, and sometimes do so with considerable zeal.

One of the reasons missionaries go to strange lands to convert the primitives is that it is so practical. It works so well. They DO achieve significant numbers of converts. The primitives are at a considerable disadvantage, economically, educationally, socially. They are generally second-class in their own minds, and in the missionary’s mind, though he would rarely admit it.

This is what Sunday School is all about as well. Taking advantage of a helpless, powerless and comparatively inexperienced and credulous captive audience; using exceedingly powerful propaganda tools to persuade the little tykes before they are able to defend themselves with any sophistication at all. Young children should not be programmed with religious dogma in the absence of other balancing ideas. We are hardly conscious of this insidious missionary behavior, taking place in our churches continuously. We should be much more conscious of this kind of conditioning.

On the other side of the world in a whole slew of different countries Maddrassa schools do precisely the same sort of conditioning of millions of children who are not able to separate dogma and political propaganda from fact. We have ignored this terroristic tool for decades. Even our allies in the region have these schools operating in large numbers. A rather intractable problem. Any ideas?