American Missionary Killed by Indigenous Tribe

[Petronella]

8 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

I was so not surprised to see in the NYT article that he was the product of a Christian high school. Because, of course he was. 

And he sat through chapel services where 30-something youth pastors dressed like teenage hipsters from the last decade told him that he had to have a "big dream" and a "big vision" of "changing the world for God" and that if would just find that vision, God would "use him" to "do great things". He was told to "be on fire" because aspiring to be a good person and be good at a job and have a good marriage and maybe raise good children is just doing "small things" and God "equipped" him to "do big things". 

Then he went to Bible class and watched a video series on the great and Godly martyr Jim Elliott and had to read books written by his widow and there was his "big thing". He just had to figure out where to go to do it. 

Enter the helpful mission organizations like the one that had their pamphlets in the hall a couple times of year. They gave him that map with the "10-40 Window". Unlike my students in the mid to late 90s, he had the internet so he could research all those places and find the perfect one. 

Then he could stand up in chapel when he was a senior and talk about how God was calling him to be a missionary to unreached people and  he found the one when God led him to search for one online (though he apparently never said which one specifically). And his teachers patted him on the back and his classmates were humbled because they really just wanted to graduate and go to college and have a kind of normal life---they were only dreaming "small things". He might have even won whatever the school's version of the "best Christian" award was. (Ours was the "Eagle trophy"). 

I saw it a million times. But the best any kids ever actually did was go on a couple of summer trips to Catholic countries or be missionaries in places not in need of missionaries like Italy and The Netherlands where they lead a pretty easy life. And several of the best Christian award winners aren't evangelicals or Christians at all anymore. 

This is an exquisite description.

I've always been idealist and that can lead to some terrific achievements and fascinating experiences. But it can also be misused by me and manipulated by others. Unbridled idealism can go to some very bad ends.

 

 

[louisa05]

1 hour ago, Petronella said:

This is an exquisite description.

I've always been idealist and that can lead to some terrific achievements and fascinating experiences. But it can also be misused by me and manipulated by others. Unbridled idealism can go to some very bad ends.

 

 

Thank you. But I wish it wasn't. I wish I didn't know it and I wish it didn't happen to idealistic teenagers the way it does. 

I have never seen manipulation of emotions and ideals or guilt tripping anywhere that rivals Christian school chapel speakers. 

[Petronella]

3 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

Thank you. But I wish it wasn't. I wish I didn't know it and I wish it didn't happen to idealistic teenagers the way it does. 

I have never seen manipulation of emotions and ideals or guilt tripping anywhere that rivals Christian school chapel speakers. 

I'm grateful that when I was part of a pretty intense church I was also part of an intense secular university program. All the duelling ideals kind of balanced each other out much of the time.

Now I'm in a much more moderate church. (And now part of a different intense, secular university.)

I've never thought about how overwhelming it must be when church and school are one and the same. That must be a head-trip. Those poor kids.

[DarkAnts]

This is an ok article about his actions.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c04515ee4b04fb211694031/amp

[stylites]

I apologise if this has been covered already; but from the context of his internet presence he looked like the kind of person who has settled into travelling and adventuring and getting unique experiences (nothing wrong with that in itself), and the main reason he died this way rather than say - base jumping - was because of the mileau in which he grew up.

For that reason I have a hard time thinking of him as a 'missionary', anymore than I would think of someone who died in the Borneo jungle because they had travelled there to see an endangered snake as a 'naturalist'.

Of course the standard hagiography has taken over at this point - because evangelicalism depends on it and it is easy to market.

[samurai_sarah]

On 12/1/2018 at 8:08 PM, turquoise said:

Interesting article in the New York Times. Among other highlights, he participated in a "training exercise" in Kansas, organized by All Nations, that consisted of him going into a fake "village." Jim Elliot was one of his heroes. A friend says Chau knew what he was doing was illegal and dangerous, but he was determined. It sounds like he was very naive.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/world/asia/john-chau-andaman-missionary.html

Thanks for the article! Interesting read!

The training camp sounds absolutely silly. You can't replicate such a situation in a mock village, set up by missionaries, who are just play-acting. In this kind of role-play, of course it always ends well, because the actors are pre-destined to come around. They know they're acting, they have no investment in actually defending themselves, and no concept of how a certain people understands itself and outsiders. So, it's just silly.

A better idea would have been to get a would-be-missionary to try converting me, by breaking into my home, while sporting a stinking cold and shouting at me in Swahili. That would have given them a taste for how seriously annoyed and hostile people can get! Mate, you're illegally in my home, shouting at me in a language I don't understand! I would feel very justified using my wooden Kendo sword to defend myself and my home, before calling the police.

In effect, Chau did just that. Only the Sentinelese are their own police-force and border patrols, and they enforce their rules themselves. Chau didn't only break Indian law, but also the rules the Sentinelese have for people trespassing on their island.

And then, there's another thing that struck me about the article, which ties in with this. If in my above scenario, a would-be-missionary actually did that, and got apprehended by the police in the UK, the police would be able to figure out the language and get an interpreter.

However, the article says that even people from neighbouring islands don't understand the language. Interesting, isn't it? If you have long-standing contact with neighbours, no matter how minor, you usually end up being able to communicate with them somehow. Even if it's just to say "we come in peace". That isn't the case here. To me, that seems to indicate that the people of North Sentinel island have been in isolation for a very long time. Long enough for their language to be absolutely unintelligible to the nearest neighbours.

Granted their boats don't lend themselves to going out on the high seas, but the fact that they have made no attempt to change that appears to be indicative that they were never particularly interested in the rest of the world! Other island people all over the world have developed sea-worthy vessels, allowing them to cover great distances, but the Sentinelese haven't. At one point, they must have had seaworthy vessels to get to the island in the first place though.

The only way to find out a bit more about when contact stopped would be via linguistics and etymology, but any kind of contact has to be on their terms. So, all of this is conjecture. It's interesting to speculate, but unless they make contact ON THEIR OWN TERMS, we will never know. 

 

[Palimpsest]

2 hours ago, samurai_sarah said:

The training camp sounds absolutely silly. You can't replicate such a situation in a mock village, set up by missionaries, who are just play-acting. In this kind of role-play, of course it always ends well, because the actors are pre-destined to come around. They know they're acting, they have no investment in actually defending themselves, and no concept of how a certain people understands itself and outsiders. So, it's just silly.

A bit of cosplay as preparation and training to invade North Sentinel island is incredibly silly.  All Nations is frantically defending the indefensible and looking more ridiculous by the minute

This is even sillier than the missionary "bootcamp" that John Shrader and David Rea went to train at before they hoofed off to Zambia to convert Christians to the Right Kind of Christianity.  For people who don't follow Shrader, he claims to be an Unaffiliated Biblical Historic Baptist - and is so special that not even other American Fundie Baptist missionaries agree with his beliefs. 

IIRC, Shrader and Rea wasted a couple of hours trying to chase down a domesticated pig to slaughter and butcher.  Far more for kicks than for practicality.  The half-wits didn't realise that they could buy plastic wrapped pork chops at Walmart in Lusaka.  It might have been more useful to have learned how to wring the neck of a chicken - after they had a class on keeping a coop full of chickens alive.  John's chickens all died from some mysterious disease.

5 hours ago, DarkAnts said:

This is an ok article about his actions.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c04515ee4b04fb211694031/amp

I think is is a pretty good article overall.  It is written from a Christian point of view, which may speak to the misguided people who want Chau to be a martyr.

I agree with the bolded.  Also that shaking the dust off your sandals and moving on when people don't want to hear your message is in the Bible too!

Quote

 

The questions are not about his intentions. People who are considerate, kind, thoughtful and Christian can cause massive harm even with the best of intentions. From the hundreds of thousands of Americans who go on missions to Africa and effectively try to overhaul culture in the name of love, to individuals like Joshua Harris who championed purity culture by shaming and oversimplifying relationships in his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, this narrative isn’t new.

The true issue is the presumption that acting out a supposedly noble, charitable cause also renders one inherently innocent of any wrongdoing. This assumption of innocence is not neutral and stems from a Western-centric notion that globalization is a net positive for all people, regardless of their consent.  

Christians have historically been the great violators of consent through colonial practices, purity culture and rampant misogyny. Evangelicals often see any resistance or disagreement with their belief system as a spiritual battle that they need to persist in fighting against. This assumption is dangerous because it creates a “no must mean a divine yes” if the missionary feels a strong enough call.

 

 

Edited December 3, 2018 by Palimpsest

[Terrie]

Some critique from Evangelicals: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/world/asia/john-chau-missionary-evangelical.html

I'm actually a little suprised. Wheaton is an extremely conservative/fundie type school. It was only in 2003 that they allowed professors to drink in the privacy of their own home. 

[luv2laugh]

New interview with T.N. Pandit who made successful contact with the Sentinelese.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-46350130

Edited December 3, 2018 by luv2laugh

[samurai_sarah]

20 minutes ago, luv2laugh said:

New interview with T.N. Pandit who made contact with the Sentinelese.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-46350130

Thank you for an interesting article. And a good argument for why they should be left alone!

[Coconutwater]

It seems he was raised in a secular environment from what I’ve read. His father said he was in the dark about most things going on. I wonder if he decided to go fundamentalist? My brother had a friend on his college football team that got sucked into fundamentalism after graduation (it is a secular college) 

[Briefly]

3 hours ago, Terrie said:

Some critique from Evangelicals: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/world/asia/john-chau-missionary-evangelical.html

I'm actually a little suprised. Wheaton is an extremely conservative/fundie type school. It was only in 2003 that they allowed professors to drink in the privacy of their own home. 

From the article, which was thorough by the way:

Pam Arlund, the director of training for All Nations, the missionary group that Mr. Chau trained with, said she had worked with him before his journey to the island. While All Nations did not offer logistical support to get him there, it offered linguistics training and spiritual support, she said.

“We made it very clear the scope of the help that we could give him,” she said.

Ms. Arlund said she felt that Mr. Chau had the appropriate preparation for his journey through his linguistics, wilderness and emergency first-aid training. She cited his numerous vaccinations and self-imposed quarantine ahead of his trip as a sign that he was considering the concerns of the tribe.

“John was not reckless or extreme at all, and he had put together a very responsible plan,” she said. “He had counted the costs and knew that he might lose his life. But he had also put plans in place to protect the North Sentinelese. That’s because he loved them.”

 

I italicized the part from the article.  It makes it very clear that All Nations sees nothing wrong with is actions and is not going to admit culpability.  They will never admit that they are wrong.  I see them using this to further their own agenda, and encourage others.

[DarkAnts]

He wasted so much money that could have gone to actually helping people in the US like: food, clothing, medical care exc. 

[hoipolloi]

5 hours ago, Briefly said:

It makes it very clear that All Nations sees nothing wrong with is actions and is not going to admit culpability.

Yes, and if you go to their Facebook page, they've obviously been deleting or hiding any negative comments on Chau & related issues, leaving only the posts by leg-humpers.

[Mar]

16 hours ago, DarkAnts said:

This is an ok article about his actions.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5c04515ee4b04fb211694031/amp

Thanks for this article! I couldn’t agree more especially with this part: (putting in under a spoiler because it’s long)

 

Spoiler

Chau took a spear through his Bible, not as a “no” to accept, but seemingly as a challenge to overcome. His apparent operating assumption (though it’s hard to know what he was thinking beyond what his diary says) was that it was his eternal responsibility to Christianize the Sentinelese for the sake of their “eternal lives.”

When coupled with talk about eternity and moral responsibility, consent seems like a small thing. But Jesus didn’t seem to think so.

In fact, members of the Acts church, the earliest church community following Jesus, regularly met resistance and hostility from communities. When they did (other than in cases of systemic oppression in centers of power), they left and listened to the people whom they were evangelizing to.

Jesus himself told his disciples to offer healing to the kingdom, but if people said no, to shake the dust of their feet and move on to places where they were received.

Christians in the midst of largely white Western evangelicalism seem so afraid of the modern construction of hell that they will invoke more urgency than the incarnate God did and justify it by calling it love. While Chau himself was not white, he reflected white evangelical approaches to missions.

The call of Jesus wasn’t to Christianize the world and to violate people’s agency. It was to love others. 

In reality, though, love isn’t defined by what we think is loving to a community, but how they themselves receive love. In the case of the Sentinelese people, Chau did not love them; he invaded them. To love them would be to respect their wishes to be left alone, to heed the stories of people before him, not the strength of his sense of call.

So once again, here’s a fundie not following the actual Jesus from the Bible but his own made up version (or version that his community made up). Jesus would have moved on and not continued to try establishing contact.

As a Christian myself I‘ve always found the concept of missions to feel extremely uncomfortable, akward and wrong. I have come to believe that the following quote from the article is true: 

The call of Jesus wasn’t to Christianize the world and to violate people’s agency. It was to love others. 

This is not only so much better for the world, it also gives me a lot of freedom. I don’t have to try to awkwardly bring up Jesus in random conversations because it is not my job to make someone believe in him (not that that is possible anyway). Instead I’m called to love people. I don’t always do a pretty good job (let’s face it, it can be hard and I’m far from perfect), but I think it’s a great goal to aspire to. Of course (quote from the article again) love isn’t defined by what we think is loving to a community, but how they themselves receive love. In the case of the Sentinelese people, Chau did not love them; he invaded them. To love them would be to respect their wishes to be left alone, to heed the stories of people before him, not the strength of his sense of call.

Edited December 4, 2018 by Mar

[nastyhobbitses]

The quote "no must mean a divine yes" explains so goddamn much. 

Also, All Nations, "he loved them" will never, ever be enough. If you really loved the Sentinelese people, you would RESPECT them. You would respect their wishes to be left to their own devices, to protect themselves, to live their lives as they choose. John did not respect them. He saw them as, I think quite literally, a conquest. All those other kids are so lame, just going to Italy to harass Catholic Italians about Jesus in between taking cutesy Instagram photos and roundly denying any imbibing of alcohol (but let's be real here). But me? I'M going to go convert the dangerous primitive benighted savages! I'm so much cooler and holier than all of them! He didn't care about their wellbeing, or respect their culture and way of life. He didn't love them. He saw them as prizes to be won, a conquest to be had, a selfie to be taken. That isn't love. 

I've run into this warped idea of "love" with street evangelists in my own experience. When I responded to "have you heard the good news" with "yeah, but I'm good staying Jewish", I got "Oh, we LOVE Jews!" Asking why, if he loved me so much, he was trying to make me not Jewish anymore didn't get much of a response. 

[Petronella]

2 hours ago, nastyhobbitses said:

The quote "no must mean a divine yes" explains so goddamn much. 

I'm usually good at parsing evangelical, but I admit I don't get this one. Can you explain what they mean by it?

[Rik_Bik]

What linguistic support could they provide when no one outside of that island speaks the language, and it is a language isolate? Sounds like a bunch of bs. 

[refugee]

10 hours ago, Petronella said:

I'm usually good at parsing evangelical, but I admit I don't get this one. Can you explain what they mean by it?

Sounds similar to a date rapist I unfriended (70s-style) in college. His philosophy seemed to be “no means yes”. Am very thankful for the roommate I had at the time showing up unexpectedly.

And for some strange reason “Sadder but wiser girl” from The Music Man (catchy music, terrible story) is running in my head now...

[Mar]

9 hours ago, Rik_Bik said:

What linguistic support could they provide when no one outside of that island speaks the language, and it is a language isolate? Sounds like a bunch of bs. 

Exactly. And what did he do with all this linguistic expertise he supposedly had? He showed up and yelled at them in English. ?‍♀️ In one of the articles someone linked to somewhere in the beginning of the thread it also said that when they shouted back at him he tried to imitate what they were saying. Why in the world would anyone do that? If someone started imitating what I was saying I would A think that person was mocking me or B think that person was not very bright. I would definitely NOT think “oh what a nice guy, trying to learn our language and be our friend, let’s invite him onto our island.“ How can anyone think this is a good idea??

[Georgiana]

30 minutes ago, Mar said:

How can anyone think this is a good idea??

When you're wearing rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.

This guy was looking at everything through the rose colored glasses of the missionary dream he was sold.  While we see red flags everywhere, his perspective was such that they all probably just looked like pennants cheering him on.  That's the power of brainwashing: done correctly, you can make people read signs to stop or slow down as encouragement to continue.  It's a strategy used everywhere from MLMs to Religious Cults.  

[Briefly]

18 hours ago, Mar said:

The call of Jesus wasn’t to Christianize the world and to violate people’s agency. It was to love others. 

This is not only so much better for the world, it also gives me a lot of freedom. I don’t have to try to awkwardly bring up Jesus in random conversations because it is not my job to make someone believe in him (not that that is possible anyway). Instead I’m called to love people. I don’t always do a pretty good job (let’s face it, it can be hard and I’m far from perfect), but I think it’s a great goal to aspire to. Of course (quote from the article again) love isn’t defined by what we think is loving to a community, but how they themselves receive love. In the case of the Sentinelese people, Chau did not love them; he invaded them. To love them would be to respect their wishes to be left alone, to heed the stories of people before him, not the strength of his sense of call.

That is pretty much how I've always felt, we are to love others and be kind, treat each other nicely and with respect. But that wouldn't fit the opinion/needs of the rabid evangelists or missionary groups like All Nations.  They often think that they are the only ones who interpret the Bible the right way, their church is the only one, etc.

And yes, it is hard to love some people!

[katilac]

19 hours ago, nastyhobbitses said:

Also, All Nations, "he loved them" will never, ever be enough.  

It's a classic abuser response. 

OJ Simpson said, in regards to the killing of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, "Let's say I committed this crime. Even if I did do this, it would have to have been because I loved her very much, right?"

[FullOfGravy]

On 12/4/2018 at 5:12 AM, Rik_Bik said:

What linguistic support could they provide when no one outside of that island speaks the language, and it is a language isolate? Sounds like a bunch of bs. 

They certainly couldn't teach him Sentinelese, or even a related language, but for someone with plans like Chau's, studying linguistics does make sense.  Learning how linguists record and analyze languages, learning some of the basic structures of human language, learning how second-language acquisition works - all would be helpful for a missionary who planned to just show up and try to communicate (not that it's a good idea to do that, but, you know, if you were going to do it anyway).

However - I'm a Canadian linguist, reasonably aware of the linguistics departments and programs to be found in Canada, and I'd never heard of the institute Chau attended.  Looking it up, it's run by Trinity Western, which earns it some side-eye from me to begin with.  It looks like a pretty weak foundation for anyone planning an actual career as a linguist, but their courses do seem very geared towards missionary training, so I can see the appeal for someone like Chau.

However the Second - I've spent years studying linguistics and languages.  Admittedly, I haven't focused on documentation and Bible translation into a language entirely new to me, but I do have a fair bit of experience recording and analyzing language data.  I teach linguistics, and I work with a lot of students in an ESL program.  I'm confident in saying that I'm more prepared than Chau, who apparently spent one summer studying linguistics, to be dropped into a situation where I know nothing of the local language... but that doesn't mean I'm actually qualified for that kind of thing.

Also, Chau reported that as he approached the Sentinelese, he was calling out in English, something like "My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you," and singing hymns at them.  Which is remarkably stupid, and tells me that even if he did learn something at that linguistics institute, he completely failed to apply it to his own situation.

Tl;dr - linguistics training would be a good idea for someone with Chau's ambitions, but he didn't get enough of it, and didn't use what he did get.

[EowynW]

On 12/2/2018 at 4:13 PM, louisa05 said:

Thank you. But I wish it wasn't. I wish I didn't know it and I wish it didn't happen to idealistic teenagers the way it does. 

I have never seen manipulation of emotions and ideals or guilt tripping anywhere that rivals Christian school chapel speakers. 

The monthly teen youth fellowships were pretty bad. And the fundie church camp my former church attends was so ick. Just thinking about those services makes me anxious.