A simple search on social media shows that a lot of Christians in the US - both teens and adults - want to go to mission trips to India. A lot of American missionaries come to India every year because there are a lot of people to be converted. For teens, it is like a summer trip and this is a great adventure for them. The teens often come in groups in summer and sometimes accompanied by adults. The adults sometimes come alone and sometimes in groups. Some adults are full-time missionaries and/or pastors in local churches in the US. Some take time off from work to go on these mission trips. Fundamentalism is what drives them. Every one in India has to converted to Christianity.
What is a mission trip?
A mission trip is a client visit in the soul harvesting business. The clients want to see the huge number of souls being harvested. India is a huge harvest field for the missionaries. So they want to see the action live. A vendor NGO makes the arrangements for different activities. For example, this recent mission trip was coordinated by this missionary organization in Andhra Pradesh. They plant churches, train local church planters, missionaries. They call it 'leadership training'. One guy is considered a hero because he planted 30,000 churches in North India. They even baptize the new converts. They cover all aspects of conversion. This fundamentalist even wants to target Israeli tourists in Goa(See the comment by Jim Christie.) No one has a right to be left alone, according to our missionaries.
Why is India special?
India is special because there are lot of non-Christians to be converted in India. Joshua Project is a huge project which profiled a lot of "people groups" in the world where there are not a lot of Christians. You see missionaries, both foreign and Indian, using phrases from Joshua Project: 10/40 window, 500,000 'unreached' villages etc., Read my earlier post to see why India is special in this 10/40 window. Foreigners send massive amounts of money to India for conversions. They want to see with their own eyes the massive conversions going on in India. So they come to India on mission trips.
Lies, Illegality and the bogus persecution narrative
India gives missionary visas for missionary activities. But people come to mission trips on a tourist visa. It is illegal to do missionary activity on a tourist visa. Go to twitter and ask them yourself. Most will not answer and some twitter handles may go into protected mode. Honesty is not a priority in missionary activities. Some people confirm they are coming on a tourist visa. There are missionary websites telling how to lie in visa applications. I am not going into this bureaucratic issue of visas. If someone wants to do something illegal, they will find loopholes in the system anyway. The point is not about lies in visa applications or at immigration checks at airports. The missionaries tell more lies about it and build a bogus persecution narrative. If you see these missionaries when they are on these trips, they simply say they are in a certain part of India. They never tell the precise location even when a schoolmate asks them. The reason they say is their security. I doubt that is the case. They do not tell that they are doing illegal missionary activities on a tourist visa. In Feb 2014, a guy named David Grant was arrested for such illegal activity. This is how the missionaries built a persecution narrative around that news. The guy was arrested for visa fraud and the missionary narrative says he was arrested for simply preaching the gospel. This bogus narrative of persecution is a constant in missionary propaganda.
Ignorance fueled by hate
The missionaries use the usual hateful language. They cannot even enjoy the beauty of nature without thinking about 'darkness' of India. They lack even basic common sense. Thisguy was on a mission trip recently and says he is in "spiritually dark India." This schoolgirl wants to go on the mission trip to help Dalits because "dalits aren't even recognized as citizens by [Indian] govt." See these two guys talking to each other(One of the guys is involved with Harvest India which was discussed here.) A guy named Charles Rich Jr comes regularly to India for these conversion trips. Also his wife got medical treatment in Bengaluru recently. When another American tweeted something, he said "radical Hindus are MORE dangerous than Al-Q." See the word MORE in caps. Apparently people responsible for 9/11 attacks are less dangerous than radical Hindus. I asked him why he thinks so and where he gets the information. He never responded and deleted the tweets later. Honesty is not a top priority for missionaries. Missionaries thrive on hating other religions and promoting this hate, on ignorance of fellow missionaries and building bogus persecution narratives. They teach Creationism to kids. They claim miracles. These people are routinely mocked in the USA for their fundamentalism.
Aggression
Not only they hate 'other', traditions, the missionaries are aggressive. See this guy taking pride in preaching the gospel on a temple door mat. This is not a one-off case. See some other examples here, here, here. I doubt whether the people these missionaries are preaching understand what they are trying to do. Are the missionaries taking advantage of gullible Hindus?
Mini industry
Mission trips form a mini-industry within the multi-billion dollar soul harvesting industry. There are companies which sell packages for these trips like a tourism package(I am not giving the links because I don't want to give advertisement for their business. Even if a missionary reads this blog, I highly doubt he/she reflects upon the questions raised in this blog.) There are websites which prepare you for the mission trips. There are websites which tell you how to raise funds for air tickets etc., There are websites which tell you how to maximize your time during your trip(i.e, preach as many people as possible.) There are websites which connect you to Indian evangelical NGOs. There are even Christian universities which offer courses on mission trips. It is like a doing practicals in a laboratory after studying theory.
Summary
Next time you see some Americans in a remote village in India, do not assume they are tourists. Do you think people who hardly go out of the Bible Belt go visit remote Indian villages for pleasure? What happens when you do not understand what the mission trips are? A Hindu would donate money to the mission trip to convert other Hindus.
Note: I focused on mission trips by Americans in this post because the highest donations
for Christian conversion from the USA. Similarly people from UK,
Germany, Norway etc., come to India on these mission trips.
(Throughout this blog whenever Hinduism is referred, you can replace it with any Dharmic tradition. The word 'Christianity' in all the posts in this blog refers to the fundamentalist Christianity. This is the form of Christianity spread by missionaries, both foreign and Indian, in India.) After returning from the USA, Swami Vivekananda asked What have Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus 'vile', and
'wretches', and the most horrible devils on earth? We will find out the reason for the abusive language and hate propaganda peddled by Christian evangelists. People who follow the missionary activities know the reason for this hateful language. This post just to familiarize the reasons to those who have just begun to understand the missionary activities.
Are all religions same? - Exclusivism of Christianity
Hinduism(and
other Dharmic traditions) does not have the concept of eternal sin and
salvation and talk about different paths to find the Truth. There is no concept of "only Hinduism is true and other religions are false." in Hindu traditions. Abrahamic religions have exclusivist claims. As Christian fundamentalism/evangelism is the focus of this blog, we will focus only on Christianity. Most denominations of Christianity have an exclusivist claim that people can be saved only by accepting Jesus, the Son of God, as the Savior of human race. Jesus is the one and only truth - one and only light. You have to have faith in this claim in order be a Christian(exception: minor denominations like Unitarianism.) This is the truth as the Christian evangelist sees it. So there is only one way to go to heaven. Even if you do not want to go to heaven, the missionary wants to send you to heaven, hence the pestering. For an interesting
take on this difference between Hinduism and Christianity(and other
Abrahamic faiths), you can read Rajiv Malhotra's Being Different.
Hindus have no right to be left alone
A Christian evangelist wants to spread this "good news" that Jesus, the son of God, sacrificed for our sins. The evangelist wants us to accept this and only this - there is no alternative for this, according to our evangelist. A Hindu might say "Ok, boss, I respect your position and find salvation as you please but let me go on my way of Dharma." The Christian missionary would not accept it. You have to accept the truth as the missionary sees it. The missionary would not settle for anything different. This is the key. Until
then, Hindus are not 'saved', Hindus are in 'darkness' and have to see
the 'light', Hindus do not worship the real God, Hindus go to hell,
Hindus do not know the 'truth'. This is the source of hateful language for Hindus and Hinduism. So Christian evangelists pester non-Christians like Hindus to accept the truth as the Christian sees it. Hindus cannot be left alone in 'darkness'. The missionary has the burden of showing the 'light' to Hindus. Such is their dogma that the missionaries do not even realize they are insulting other living traditions when they talk about 'showing light to Hindus.' The missionaries feel sad even if Hindus happily celebrate festivals.
Do an experiment
If
you do not believe what is written above, do this experiment. Do a
search on Twitter for "mission trip India" (Mission trips are explained here. An example of a mission trip.) for people
coming on missionary activities to India. All these people going on
mission trips are going on trips to convert people to Christianity. Ask
them about this exclusivist claim. Ask them whether you go to hell or
what happens if you don't accept Jesus as the ultimate savior. Many won't
respond as they are not open to dialog. If at all they respond, they say "yes, you will go to hell". I
asked many such missionaries who come to India on mission trips. A couple responded andthey confirm their dogma.
Why Hindus are prime targets in the numbers game
Missionary activity is as old as Christianity. Missionary activity in India also goes back to centuries but this activity has exploded in recent times. It is all about numbers. More numbers have to be brought into the Kingdom of God. They have run out of people to convert in Europe and North America. So ambitious projects like Joshua Project are commissioned to profile 'unreached'(i.e, non-Christian) people. So it was figured out that there were a lot of people in the 10/40 window who are non-Christians and these people are profiled. Their languages, social mores, worship methods etc., are profiled to facilitate conversions. Profiling of totally different cultures leads to stereotypes when the profiler is alien to the native cultures and especially the aim of the profiler is not benign and to transform the religion and culture of the people being profiled. Some of the common utterances by missionaries on traditional media and social media are "there are 5,00,000 villages in India which have never heard of Jesus and are in darkness", "there are a billion people yet to see the light." All these numbers come form ambitious projects like Joshua Project. Why Hindus? In the 10/40 window, the non-Christian groups to be converted are in India, China, African countries, Muslim countries Saudi Arabia, Buddhist countries like Thailand. Though they do conversions in countries like China, Iran(see here), a lot of countries in this list have restrictions on missionary activities and some countries in this window out-rightly banned conversion activities. So who is left? India and some African countries. India has a billion Hindus, and that is a huger number to be brought into Kingdom of God. And India provides the right to propagate religions. This right is abused a lot which will further explore in this blog. Huge numbers and constitutional right to propagate - what else do we need to conquer the market? This needs to be repeated: it is a numbers game and the market is "ripe for harvest".Market here is market in economics. Here is a Catholic news source said in March 2014. See the quotes around the words 'market share' as if they did not believe in numbers game and immediately the expressed wish for increase in the number of Catholics in India to 26 million by 2050. During the 20th century Catholicism grew from 1.2 percent to 3 percent
of Asia’s overall population, meaning the church more than doubled its
“market share.” The number of Catholics in India alone went from under
two million to 17 million, and should reach 26 million by 2050. It's all about numbers. The Pope of Catholic Church himself expressed the wish convert the whole of Asia in this millennium. The same wish is expressed by missionaries from every major denomination of Christianity.
Summary
Swami Vivekananda asked American missionaries in Detroit in 1894: You train and educate and pay men to do what? To come over to my country to curse and abuse all my forefathers, my religion and everything. They walk near a temple and say and say, "you idolators, you will go to hell." The dogma, the fanaticism, the hate speech, sinister methods have not changed at all. Here is Joey, an American church planter who was on a conversion trip in 2009 to Dharamsala, India, about India and Dharmic religions(In the video, Himachal mountains; see the full video and this writeup to see what they did in India) For so long in these mountains, God has not been glorified. For thousands of years, it's been pent up with sinful people and idols, idol worship and singing to idols. And God's worship has been literally robbed from this place.
