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.