Fundamentalism, Hatred and Aggression - a trip by YWAM Orlando group

Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is a massive missionary organization started in USA and now spans across continents. It has huge presence in India also. YWAM trains young missionaries like the Bible School in the previous post. They have Discipleship Training School(DTS) and offer "courses" in Summer, Spring, Fall and Winter. The trained missionaries go out in the world and do conversions. Every year a lot of Americans come to India on mission trips from different branches of YWAM USA(Though they use the word 'outreach', it is the same as a mission trip). India is a hot destination for missionaries. This is the pattern for a lot of young missionaries: "Graduate" from a Bible School like YWAM, raise funds for travel, come to India, preach gospel and convert in a deceptive way(morally and legally), spread hatred that Hinduism is a false religion, express solidarity with Indian missionaries(who get funds from countries like USA), go to USA and brag about how many accepted Christ. They are called heroes by friends and relatives..

A group from DTS Fall program, YWAM Orlando  came to India on a mission trip early this year. The group comprised Joshua Miller, Hannah Willis, Courtney Hellman, Courtney Ryan, Maryrose Herr, Whitney Biggers, Hannah Kay, Emma Farr, Anna Slim, Ally Summers and Kristine Ranie (Kristine is American of Indian heritage.) They preached gospel and did conversions in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

Hosts in India

Mahesh Nathan who works for World Vision India and his wife Beena Nathan hosted this group in West Bengal and were "taught so much". I am not sure what they were "taught". There were hosted by others also. In Tamil Nadu, they were hosted by Chandra Bose Govindan who works for YWAM. 

I explored onsite-offshore model of missionary organizations here. Many foreign missionary organizations have their own subsidiaries like Gospel for Asia, World Vision or YWAM. And they partner with other missionary NGOs and churches locally. Their reach, influence, network and PR management would put MNCs to shame. Also World Vision works as a liaison in many govt programs in India. If a foreign missionary wants to to come to India and see the conversions for himself/herself, there is no dearth of Indian hosts.

Prayer Walk at temples

Joshua Miller posted on Facebook in Feb 2014, "we will be doing prayer walks at the local temples". Here is his "prayer walk". Here is his team visiting Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple. See the hatred for yourself. 

The guy does not even have the heart to appreciate the beautiful artwork in the temple (See how he pauses before saying "exciting"). It does not matter whether a Christian fundamentalist appreciates art or not. See how he is condemning Hinduism and Hindus. As I repeat so many times, this hatred is a key thing in conversions in India. They spread this hate. This is the key. 

Here is Joshua Miller and team doing another "prayer walk" at a temple in Durgapur, West Bengal.

Visiting a village and praying Christian songs with school kids

The team also a visited a village. In this video, Joshua Miller claims they were not allowed to do missionary activity in this village but they went anyway. They went to the village school and sang Christian songs with the school kids.

So when you are a "tourist" in a country and the hosts specifically say they do not want to be converted, why can't you leave them alone?

Aggression, Hatred, Denouncing other religions

Aggression, spewing venom is common in missionary activities. The focus of this post is YWAM. This aggression shown by Joshua Miller team is not a one-off case. This is the norm. See what Jason Nettles from YWAM Orlando did last year. Here is Elisa Dawson, from YWAM Orlando, after serving a crippled person, on how she converted him using a Hindu translator. You must watch this. To convert, you have to denounce Hinduism and "cast away other gods"

Here is another YWAM team preaching near Buddha Stupa, Nepal and wanted to preach inside Swayambhu Temple but did not do it to avoid attention.

Summary

A lot of young people, often without proper education, go to Bible schools, Discipleship programs in USA, UK etc., and come to India to convert people by applying what they learn in their "courses". As you are reading this, there are a lot of YWAM groups raising funds for India trips. Their hatred and fundamentalism is astounding. If you try to raise objections to their hatred, they cry persecution, they say their religious freedom is being violated. Damning other people's religions, traditions and spreading this hatred is their definition of religious freedom. They will not rest until the whole world is converted. They get very good support from Indian evangelical NGOs which are in turn massively funded by foreigners. Mahesh Nathan of World Vision hosted Joshua Miller's team and "taught" stuff. When Joshua Miller posted about the re-conversion of some tribal people to Hinduism, Mahesh Nathan says "Discipleship". Yeah right, we need discipleship like it is demonstrated above. Here is Beena Nathan's comment on Joshua Miller's video, though there is no commentary by Joshua Miller on the video Beena Nathan commented. Of course, Joshua Miller is planning to travel again to India and Mahesh Nathan is eager is to welcome him.

More importantly there are a lot of discipleship schools like YWAM in India, most of which have sprung up in the last decade. Many of them are run by foreigners themselves. Bible Colleges run by Indians are funded by foreigners. See this video and the guy gives the numbers in dollars to foreign clients. Many evangelical NGOs like Harvest India run Bible Colleges. Graduates of these Bible Colleges  become pastors, church planters etc., Fundamentalism that non-Christian religions are false and other traditions are false lead to nothing but hate. These colleges work as hate-factories. We will see about these Indian Bible Colleges in a future post.

Mission Trip - an example of the predatory activity

Gospel Grace Mission is based in Yeshwanthpur, Bengaluru. It regularly receives foreign funding according to Govt. of India. This organization is in the usual onsite-offshore model of Christian conversion business. Pastor Morris Paul of this offshore organization hosted some American Missionaries recently. Slavic Missionary Bible School(SMBS) is based in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. SMBS offers a five-month "course". After "graduating" from the "course", Andrey Mikhov, Elina Sushchik, Elena Parhomchuk, Angelina Gorkovchenko, Alina Borishkevich, Sergey Cherneychuk and Joseph Titenok from SMBS came to Bengaluru in July 2014. As you can see from their last names, all of them have Slavic roots. The Indian pastor Morris Paul's wife is Oksana Arthur Paul. You don't need to try hard to find out the connections between the foreign clients and Indian vendors but that is not the point of this post. We will see what the American/Slavic missionaries did in this mission trip and we will see who the "lab rats" were on whom they applied what they learned in the "course".

We are not converting, we are just preaching the Gospel

On July 16, 2014,  Joseph Titenok from the SMBS team posted this on twitter

When people asked him what damage he was doing, he said it was just slang and deleted the tweet. I asked him whether he was in India to convert people and whether he was anxious about other religions. Importantly I asked whether he was targeting kids. 

 He did not answer about kids. He said he was concentrating only on 900 people. He said he was not converting but just offering gospel and people come and take as they please. This is the standard missionary lie. I repeat on this blog many times: Honesty is not a priority for Christian missionaries.

Teaching Bible to kids from Hindu and Muslim families 

On July 8, 2014, SMBS Team posted this on their facebook page :

We have been given an amazing opportunity to go into one public school and spend two hours a day and two days a week with the children. The children are all from Muslim and Hindu families. We met with the principal who started the school and is a Christian. We introduced ourselves today, shared a short word and sang with them.

They got access to the school because the principal was a Christian. What did they share with the children? Some Creationist and other stories from Bible. This is during regular school hours. Watch the video:

This is just a brief video.They claimed they spent hours and hours with these children. What else did they teach the kids? Teaching Creationism in highly controversial in USA and these guys here have a free pass in India. Did they even take permission from parents of the kids?

Not just these kids, they preached gospel, taught Creationism to some other kids not affiliated to any church. 

Elina Sushchik from the group wrote on her Facebook page on July 11, 2014:

Thursday and Friday afternoon we went to a local school filled with 600 students and had the opportunity to teach and witness to them!

Ha! Witness to kids.

So little kids are making the decisions as they please and accepting Jesus as the only true God, like Joseph Titenok claimed above?

Bogus persecution narrative

Now it is clear that these missionaries preyed upon innocent kids in this trip and preached a lot of stuff. Also Elina Sushchik says 

       I'm astonished at how friendly and open all the people are.

When someone questioned Joseph Titenok's dogma and doubted his intentions, he asked " why Christianity is most hated" and said "he could get killed."

 This bogus persecution narrative is a big weapon in Christian conversions. Such fake narratives are built and fake victim-hood stories are peddled to further missionary agendas. Let us see some violations by Joseph Titenok:

1)Doing missionary activities on a tourist visa - illegal

2)Preying upon little kids - need we say anything? Was there consent from the parents of the kids?

3)Teaching Creationism in a school - This is not even permitted in most public schools in the US.

As of August 31, the guy is still in India. Is there any country in the world, apart from India, which  gives such freedom to the missionary predators? Simply questioning his dogma and motives makes him think of himself as a victim, as a martyr. Like I mentioned in the previous post on mission trips, these missionaries go back to USA and peddle fake persecution stories.

So the missionary does not want to to be questioned. He even preys upon little kids but does not want anyone to question him. What is the definition of freedom for this fake victim?

Summary

 

The readers of this blog might get bored but I repeat this again and again in this blog because this needs to be repeated: Lies, deceit, propaganda, illegal activities, peddling fake victim-hood stories, hating other religions, spreading this hatred - this is the core of missionary activity. The foreign missionaries - clients of Indian evangelical NGOs -  come and go as they please. They prey upon innocent people, primarily children. Targeting children is the norm. The reason for targeting children is explained by another missionary. Peddling dogma is a one-way street. Anyone questioning them is simply infringing on their God-given right to convert other people. They are not open to dialogue. Try interacting with missionaries(If you want to interact with them, I will provide a ton of missionary Twitter handles.) Even though Joseph Titenok responded initially, he protected his tweets now. Usually after completing a mission trip, these foreign missionaries gloat on social media or during Sunday church service how many people were taught gospel and how many came to Christ i.e, how many were converted during their mission trip. You would see other evangelical Christians in USA praising these missionaries for braving to go to a third-world country and preaching gospel. Yeah, preying upon children or preaching gospel in a remote country is their great adventure. As the mission trip discussed above concluded recently, we might see blogs about their "success" in future. Elina Sushchik mentioned about preaching to 600 school children and Joseph Titenok mentioned the number 900. It is all about numbers in the conversion business.

Note: Thanks to sighbaboo for pointing out about this mission trip to Bengaluru. Follow his excellent Twitter handle if you are interested in Christian conversions in India.