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.

The language of missionaries – from 16th Century to the age of Internet

Hindus are in darkness, Hindus are primitive, Hinduism is Satanism, Hindus worship false gods, Hindus worship devils.  So Hindus need to see the ‘light’, they need to hear the Gospel, their souls have to be  'saved' and 'harvested', they need to accept the one and only true God Jesus – This is the language used by missionaries centuries ago and remarkably the language remains the same till today as we will see by the end of this post.

Even though different denominations in Christianity - Catholic, Protestant, Mormon etc., - differ on some fundamentals of Christianity, the language and fanaticism with which they denounce Hinduism and other non-Abrahamic religions and the verve with which they try to convert 'others' is the same.

Even though the language used to describe Hindus/Hinduism remains the same from the earlier days of Christianity, let us start from the 16th century. Let us look at a couple of descriptions from 16th century and 20th century and we will see how it remains the same today in the age of Internet. 

16^th Century – St. Fancies Xavier about Hindus

Francis Xavier came to India in 16^th century to convert Indians to Christianity. In 1543 AD, from India, he wrote a letter to the Society of Jesus at Rome. He talks about false gods, Infidels, heathens, perversity and wickedness of Brahmins. Francis Xavier mainly targeted children. Then

Their[The new converted childrens’]  hatred for idolatry is marvellous. They get into feuds with the heathen about it, and whenever their own parents practise it, they reproach them and come off to tell me at once. Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship, I go to the place with a large band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse than he has lately received of honor and worship from their parents, relations, and acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about, and in short heap on them every possible outrage.[Emphasis added]

That’s right. He takes the children to Hindu places of worship and then takes joy watching the newly converted children insult, trample and outrage the idols(We will see in a future post how even current day missionaries prey on children.) St. Xavier continues...

The heathen inhabitants of the country are commonly ignorant of letters, but by no means ignorant of wickedness.[Emphasis added]

…for I could not but grieve intensely at the thought of the devils being worshipped instead of God by these blind heathen, and I asked them to listen to me in turn[Emphasis added]

In a letter written to the King of Portugal n 1545, Francis Xavier requested for Goan Inquisition. Of course Francis Xavier was given sainthood by Catholic Church in 1622 and many colleges in India were named after him.

20^th Century - a video showing the mind of a missionary

 There is a controversial missionary group in the US called
Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, also knows as Free Love Ministries. This group was featured in the National Geographic documentary 'I escaped from a cult'. The controversial nature of this group and a lawsuit by an ex-member of the group is the focus of the documentary. One thing that is not mentioned or discussed in the documentary and anywhere else is this group did missionary activities and tried to build an "army" in Philippines, Nepal and India. They have a video on their website which shows visuals of their visit to Kakinada, Andhra Pradsh, India and Nepal in 1980s with commentary from Lila Green of the group. The funny-looking military-style organization is partially inspired by Salvation Army. If you take out the funny looking military dresses, the remarkable thing is the language used for Hindus/Hinduism/Buddhism and Indian/Nepali culture is the same as that of St. Xavier. The language is same as that of 'ordinary' missionaries who consider this group cultish. The language does not deviate even a bit from that of St. Xavier and today's missionaries.  If there is one video which shows the mindset of a missionary, this is it. Watch the video and decide yourself. Below are some highlights from the video(Please see the description of the video in Vimeo for more  of such highlights.)

1:43 - people bound by heathen darkness, still steeped in idolatry
6:50 - mini idols, or should I say demons which make up the Hindu belief system.
10:15 - India is a primitive land
15:52 - We've launched another onslaught/attack on Satan's territory
17:14 - whatever way, however we must do it that we must free the captives of the devil because at one time everyone of us was a captive of the devil[Lila Green and James Green converted to Christianity in 1971.]
27:16 - with Free Love Ministries India's supply of literature, the campaign goes on against sin, against evil, against idolatry, for India is a nation steeped in idolatry and heathen gods and people spend countless hours and rituals in worship of dead idols
30:29 - [the new converts] are now truly serving the loving God.....God has saved them from Hinduism and their traditions [Pastor Papa Rao] 
59:21 - .. idols .... not borne of Heaven but they are from the pits of Hell itself.

Isn't it clear that the language used by a cultish missionary group is the same as that of St. Francis Xavier?

Let us move on to the age of Internet.

The age of Internet

Ruth Malhotra, a Christian evangelist, works for Ravi Zacharias, an influential evangelist operating organizations worth millions. See the below Facebook posts by her in 2013. She feels sad and tears roll down your eyes because people in India are happily celebrating Diwali. She took students to a temple in Georgia and see the her thoughts yourself. See the quote around the word 'sacred' and the hashtag 'darknesstolight'. I wonder what she had told the students about Hinduism.

Some comments from Instagram from some American evangelicals during their mission trips to India and Nepal.

Stephen Baldwin, actor  and brother of Alec Baldwin, is an evangelist who was on a missionary trip in India recently(A detailed post on him in future.) He posted this on his Instagram. In the video, people are happily celebrating Navratri and see our missionary's unhappiness with that.

 
Let us watch the trailer for a movie made by an evangelical group.

Let us see some tweets by the missionaries

A zillion links could be posted to show the ignorance and bigotry of the missionaries but this blog will be cluttered if all such links are posted. 

Summary

There is no new information in this post. This blog post is just to show the hateful language used by missionaries to denounce Indian religions and India has not changed over the centuries (This does not mean they leave fellow Abrahamic religions - Islam, Judaism alone, though the language used to denigrate them is different.) They feel sad even if Hindus happily celebrate their own festivals like Diwali, Navratri or Ganesh Chathurthi.  It would be naive to think that this bigotry is shared by only foreign evangelicals. Benjamin R Ross, a Tamil evangelical, snaps at some guy for his profile picture and asks "Are you an Idol worshiper?". 

When Hindus are "healed" and idols burned, it is uplifting news for our evangelical. St. Francis Xavier would be so proud of him.