It’s summer time, which for a teacher means a much needed break from hellion students and grading. There are many overlapping conversations at the cafe I frequent and one that has stood out is between three people talking about their summer plans. One person said that he is going on a mission trip. The announcement was met with praise from the other two, but I winced. I was relieved when he stated that the trip is to Detroit but now I am reminded of my issue missions as a whole.
Growing up, summer time going on a missions trip with Global Expeditions. I thoroughly enjoyed my many trips, but looking back it seems weird to proselytize to the Catholics in Mexico and Panama. Imagine going to Muncie Indiana, a place already rife with Christianity, to convert the youth to Jesus. Does Muncie even need these trips? On the other hand, my Spanish skills improved exponentially with each trip and that has been helpful to this day. I also helped families with household chores and provided babysitting services via vacation bible schools, fairly benign overall, right?
Missions were really important to me in high school. I was inspired by dc Talk’s Jesus Freak book when I was a freshman and I felt the call to be a martyr, something Teen Mania has taught about. I dreamed of being a missionary using the Honor Academy as a stepping stone to realize that dream. Ironically, my plans changed after one of the Vision LTEs at the HA and I instead went to college.
Some time later, I got involved with social justice activism and learned about colonialism. From there, I started questioning the ethics behind mission trips, both in the short and long-term. Some schools of thought would accuse missionary work of contributing to colonialism. (Teen Vogue, of all places, has a nifty primer on colonialism for you to peruse if you are unfamiliar with this term.)
A stark example of missions as a tool for colonialism is the country of Uganda. They recently decided to uphold their Anti-Homosexuality Act from 2023, but the anti-queer sentiments behind this law spans decades. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:
Data from OpenDemocracy shows that from 2007 to 2020, over 20 US evangelical groups spent at least $54 million in Africa “to influence laws, policies, and public opinion against sexual and reproductive rights.” Nearly half of that figure was spent in Uganda.
The Unholy Relationship Between Uganda’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Law and US Evangelicalism
This “unholy relationship” is really intriguing. You want to know what else happened in Uganda during this time frame? In 2009, a similar anti-LGBT law was drafted while in the same year Teen Mania held a BattleCry event there. The BattleCry happened after the law was first written, it would not pass until 2014, so I’m not saying that TM is the sole cause behind this legislation. However, we should recognize that these evil anti-gay laws were fostered by religious extremism from the US, Teen Mania included.
So missions may not be good across borders, but what about domestic trips? Is Detroit Joe from the coffee shop eliciting damaging doctrine? Hopefully not. I think the bigger questions are why is a particular group going on this trip and what will they be doing? These questions apply to domestic and international trips. I went to Panama to convert Catholics to Protestant Jesus using the guises of VBS, weird “plays,” and helping with laundry. There was definitely an air of White Saviorism™ behind my trips. I went confident in the idea that I, a white teen from a 1st world nation, knew better than an adult from a 3rd world nation. But Detroit Joe is going to Midwest USA, perhaps one of the most Christian places in the world. Is there a lot of havoc being wrought by Detroit Joe and his group of teenagers? Will they be participating in colonialism? Perhaps no on both accounts.
Some groups build schools and houses while others help provide medical care, leaps and bounds better than the activities I did. If they also went out of humility instead of the pride I had, then I don’t see much of a problem with mission trips. However, I question the validity of any mission trip as I doubt they are completely innocent. There are plenty of secular organizations that stick to altruism without the thinly-veiled evangelism. This atheist would be ministered to more by a few Christians travelling with Habitat for Humanity and simply building a house vs learning a dance routine to use as a springboard for talking about Jesus. This is best summarized by this comic:
