As part of my current research, I have been reading the journals of a missionary who worked in an Aboriginal community in North Queensland at the beginning of last century. New to the mission field and newly-married, his diary records the increasing tension between the senior missionary couple, already resident in the community, and him and his wife. Finally, in the entry before his departure to establish a new mission nearby, the missionary records in painful detail his full horror at the situation he has found himself in: the senior missionaries have been repeatedly and brutally beating the Aboriginal children under their care. Through the thin walls of their adjoining houses, the junior missionary and his wife listen to the wails of the children as they are beaten, but believe themselves unable to intervene because of the authority that the senior missionaries have over them.
This is the kind of material that rarely makes it into 'church' history - in fact, standard accounts of this particular mission praise the senior missionary for his industry and piety in conventional terms. Church historians, under the onslaught of the postcolonial critique of missionary endeavours as inherently imperialist, have been generally concerned to defend the virtue of missionaries, and wary of hanging out the church's dirty linen. I think this is short-sighted. Recognising and facing up to the failures of the past seems to me a distinctively Christian duty in history, and one which will be both liberating and instructive. As my title for this post suggests, I believe a charitable but honest and critical study of our common past will allow us to identify and guard against recurrent blindspots in our theology and praxis.
For example, the account of these senior missionaries and their violence pushes us back to our theology of sin. In the Australian context, missionaries were far too often placed in situations where they had extensive authority over vulnerable people and virtually no accountability. At the same time they were poorly supported, profoundly isolated and under incredible stress. The naivety (and racism) that assumed that such situations would not regularly lead to (at best) authoritarianism and (at worst) abuse is simply incredible. But it should shock us into considering the situations today in which we assume that simply because someone is (or claims to be) a Christian, they can safely be given power without accountability. This does not mean that we view those in power - parents, church leaders, missionaries, politicians - with nothing but cynicism. But it does mean that we are not naive about their power or the potential that it creates for evil as much as for good.
History is not a panacea - it cannot show us all our blindspots, as however hard we look we are often still bound by our own agendas and assumptions. But I believe it can recall us to our theology, and force our eyes open to hard truths, helping us to repent of the sins of the past, seek forgiveness and reconciliation, and lead us to find new ways of being church that avoid repeating those sins in the present.
This is the kind of material that rarely makes it into 'church' history - in fact, standard accounts of this particular mission praise the senior missionary for his industry and piety in conventional terms. Church historians, under the onslaught of the postcolonial critique of missionary endeavours as inherently imperialist, have been generally concerned to defend the virtue of missionaries, and wary of hanging out the church's dirty linen. I think this is short-sighted. Recognising and facing up to the failures of the past seems to me a distinctively Christian duty in history, and one which will be both liberating and instructive. As my title for this post suggests, I believe a charitable but honest and critical study of our common past will allow us to identify and guard against recurrent blindspots in our theology and praxis.
For example, the account of these senior missionaries and their violence pushes us back to our theology of sin. In the Australian context, missionaries were far too often placed in situations where they had extensive authority over vulnerable people and virtually no accountability. At the same time they were poorly supported, profoundly isolated and under incredible stress. The naivety (and racism) that assumed that such situations would not regularly lead to (at best) authoritarianism and (at worst) abuse is simply incredible. But it should shock us into considering the situations today in which we assume that simply because someone is (or claims to be) a Christian, they can safely be given power without accountability. This does not mean that we view those in power - parents, church leaders, missionaries, politicians - with nothing but cynicism. But it does mean that we are not naive about their power or the potential that it creates for evil as much as for good.
History is not a panacea - it cannot show us all our blindspots, as however hard we look we are often still bound by our own agendas and assumptions. But I believe it can recall us to our theology, and force our eyes open to hard truths, helping us to repent of the sins of the past, seek forgiveness and reconciliation, and lead us to find new ways of being church that avoid repeating those sins in the present.
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