A Moratorium on Missionaries?

Gerald H. Anderson
An African church leader recently laid before the World and U.S.
National Councils of Churches a proposal that there be a moratorium
on sending and receiving money and missionary personnel. John Gatu,
general secretary of the Presbyterian Church in East Africa, said that
their continuing sense of dependence on and domination by foreign
church groups inhibits many churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America
from development in response to God’s mission. ". . . [Our] present
problems," he explained, "can only be solved if all missionaries can be
withdrawn in order to allow a period of not less than five years for
each side to rethink and formulate what is going to be their future
relationship. . . . The churches of the Third World must be allowed to
find their own identity, and the continuation of the present missionary
movement is a hindrance to this selfhood of the church."

However shocking this proposal may seem, it is imperative that

Christians in Europe and North America face the issue squarely -- for
one reason, because it will probably be a major item for discussion on
the agenda of virtually every Protestant mission board and society that
is related to the ecumenical movement; for another, because the
feelings voiced by Mr. Gatu are shared by a number of church leaders
in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as in Europe and the United
States.

Thus Emerito P. Nacpil, president of Union Theological Seminary near

Manila, Philippines, told an assembly of church leaders and
missionaries gathered in Asia in 1971 that under present conditions a
partnership between Asian and Western churches "can only be a
partnership between the weak and the strong. And that means the
continued dependence of the weak upon the strong and the continued
dominance of the strong over the weak." The missionary today, he
said, is a symbol of the universality of Western imperialism among the
rising generations of the Third World. [Therefore I believe that the
present structure of modern missions is dead. And . . . we ought . . .
to eulogize it and then bury it . . . In other words, the most missionary
service a missionary under the present system can do today in Asia is
to go home.

Again, Father Paul Verghese, a former associate general secretary of

the World Council of Churches and now principal of an Orthodox
theological seminary in India, writes from that country:

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Today it is economic imperialism or neocolonialism that is the pattern
of missions. Relief agencies and mission boards control the younger
churches through purse strings. Foreign finances, ideas and personnel
still dominate the younger churches and stifle their spontaneous
growth. . . . So now I say, The mission of the church is the greatest
enemy of the gospel."

A third voice in harmony with Mr. Gatu’s is that of José Miguez-Bonino,

dean of Union Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Recently addressing a group in the United States, Dr. Miguez said:

We in the younger churches have to learn the discipline of freedom to

accept and to refuse, to place resources at the service of mission
rather than to have mission patterned by resources. . . . We cannot for
the love of our brethren or for the love of Cod let anybody or anything
stand in the way of our taking on our own shoulders our responsibility.
If, in order to do that, we must say to you, our friends, Stay home,"
we will do so because before God we have this grave responsibility of
our integrity.

I
The first thing to be said about this growing sentiment in Third World
churches is that it should be seen as a sign of the world church’s
vitality. It is an indication that the "younger churches" have come of
age. And the leaders of those churches are ready and able to articulate
what this new sense of strength and self-confidence implies with
regard to the traditional structures of relationship to the churches of
the West, The challenge they pose is the fruit of our labors in world
mission over the past 180 years.

Second, the basic issue in the moratorium proposal is integrity -- for

both sides. On the part of the Third World churches it is a question of
authority and control as they seek to establish and express their own
identity. On the part of the churches in Europe and North America it is
a question of accountability and faithfulness to the mandate for world
mission inherent in the gospel. Therefore the relation between
selfhood and universality, while crucial, should not imply contrast or
opposition, for a church ought to be both local and universal.

A recent study of this problem, carried out by George A. Hood for the
Conference of British Missionary Societies and titled In Whole and in
Part, suggests that a better formulation of the issue would be: How

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may the interdependence of the church in mission be expressed
throughout the world and in every place? Hood reaches the conclusion
that the clearest expression of interdependence across the whole
spectrum of the church’s life is found in giving and receiving." Indeed,
he says, "the greatest threat to interdependence is self-sufficiency. . .
. Some parts of the church are clearly being impoverished by feeling
unable to give and others by their inability to receive." The most
important implication of these facts for mission boards is that they
need "to make the ideas of wholeness, interdependence, mutuality,
more central."

Similarly, the WCC’s 1973 Bangkok Conference on "Salvation Today"

said (report of Section III) that "the whole debate on the moratorium
springs from our failure to relate to one another in a way which does
not dehumanize," and that "in some situations the moratorium
proposal, painful though it may be for both sides, may be the best
means of resolving a present dilemma and advancing the mission of
Christ."

II
There are indeed situations in which withdrawal of missionaries may
be in the best interests of the Christian mission -- for instance, where
the sociopolitical setup of a particular country or area is utterly
contrary to the gospel and where the established church is identified
with the status quo. It was a situation of that kind that, in 1971, led
the White Fathers (a Roman Catholic mission society founded in 1868
and known officially as the Missionaries of Africa) to withdraw all their
personnel from Mozambique. The Vatican-Portuguese Missionary
Accord has aligned the Roman Catholic Church and its local hierarchy
with the colonial regime in that country, and when all positive efforts
of the White Fathers failed to end the flagrant injustices visited on
blacks in Mozambique, they decided, according to one report, that
"they had to withdraw so as not to allow themselves to be considered
partners of the church-state collusion." While other mission societies
operating in Mozambique have chosen to continue their witness there
by a silent presence, the controversial decision of the White Fathers
has been widely heralded as "an act of authentic Christian witness in
the face of difficult options."

It was a different motive that, in 1969, prompted the unilateral

decision of Methodist missionaries in Uruguay to withdraw for at least
one year. They viewed their action as "a vote of confidence for the

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national church in its effort to work out a new life" -- that is, as a way
of supporting the indigenous church. Their voluntary withdrawal, they
believed, would free the church of Uruguay to establish its own
structures and to lay down the conditions under which whatever
missionaries it invited to come back would be obliged to serve. (Thus
far the Uruguayan church has invited only one missionary couple to
return.) This move of the Methodists, like that of the White Fathers,
has proved controversial. Some call it a bold act of witness, others see
it as a new form of paternalism, this time telling the national church
what it does not need.

These, however, were limited moves. The moratorium proposed by

Gatu and Nacpil is much more far-reaching. They are talking about all
missionaries under the present structures of sending and receiving.
Surely their approach is too shortsighted and simplistic for an
exceedingly complex set of historical circumstances. We cannot
responsibly solve the accumulated problems of nearly 200 years of
missionary relationships by suddenly going into isolation; nor will the
New Testament allow us to do so.

III
In the first place, so sweeping a moratorium would promote the
domestication of the churches in their respective cultures, and this in
turn would promote the further encroachment on them of tribal
religion. Already cultural paganism infests the churches in most areas
of the world -- nowhere more so than around the North Atlantic basin.
To insulate them further, as the moratorium would do, could only
encourage this pagan trend. The fact is that the "foreign" missionary
presence in the life of any church should serve as a particular reminder
of the "alien" nature of the gospel to every nation and culture.
Unquestionably we in Europe and North America need this reminder
especially. But churches in other parts of the world are not immune to
some of the same temptations we face in the West.

In the second place, if we truly believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and
Savior of all humankind, we must consider the effect of the proposed
moratorium on the evangelization of the vast multitudes of non-
Christians throughout the world, particularly in countries where the
national churches represent but a tiny fraction of the population. One
thinks immediately, for instance, of India’s 548 million people, with
Christians numbering only 14.2 million or 2.6 per cent; of Pakistan’s
43 million, with 335,000 or .8 per cent Christians; and of Bangladesh’s

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72 million, with 216,000 or .3 per cent Christians. In these and many
other countries, the population increases each year by more than their
total Christian community. Yet the moratorium would serve to
immobilize the churches of the West in relation to mission in these
areas. It would limit us to mission where we are -- an altogether
unbiblical concept -- and negate the concept of mission as the whole
church bringing the whole gospel to the whole world.

In view of the enormous need and opportunity for missionary witness

and service in all six continents, it is appalling that we of the West
presently make so small a part of our resources available for this
purpose. The mainline ecumenical denominations are particularly
remiss in this respect. Thus the 11-million-member United Methodist
Church -- the largest denomination in the National Council of Churches
-- has seen a decline of missionaries serving overseas from 1,450 in
1968 to 824 scheduled for 1974; and of every dollar given to that
church, only 1.1 cents actually goes for work outside the U.S. Again,
the Missionary Orientation Center once operated at Stony Point, New
York, by five of the major Protestant mission boards has now closed
because not enough missionaries are being sent overseas to maintain
it. And the number of U.S. Catholic missionaries serving abroad is the
lowest in ten years, down from a high of 9,655 in 1969 to 7,649 in
1972.

By contrast, many conservative evangelical Protestant groups are

increasing their overseas mission work. The Christian and Missionary
Alliance, for instance, with only 92,000 members in the U.S. now has
893 missionaries overseas, and of every dollar given it for work
beyond the local church, 85 cents goes toward overseas missions.

IV
I cannot subscribe to the so-called "mystical doctrine of salt water" --
the idea that being transported over salt water, the more of it the
better, is what constitutes missionary service. Neither do I think that
more missionaries mean more mission." I maintain, however, that
men and women sent to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in cross-
cultural situations are integral to the mission established in the
incarnation. I agree wholeheartedly with the policy summed up by one
mission agency in a recent working paper:

We wish to affirm the validity of the missionary presence as an

essential part of the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ is

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communicated through persons and becomes evident through the
interaction between persons. We believe the place of persons at the
heart of mission to be an abiding reality; We also wish to affirm the
validity of the missionary presence as essential to our understanding
of the universality of the church.

If the participation of persons in world mission is lacking or is limited

by arbitrary rules, all areas of the church’s life will suffer. In point here
is R. Pierce Beaver’s recent warning:

. . . one front of mission cannot be neglected or denied without

adverse effect on other fronts; and already the domestic agencies of
the churches are being afflicted with blight and malnutrition. The
mission is one, and it is worldwide. . . The sending mission of discipling
the nations to the ends of the earth is always the spiritual
thermometer which measures the faith of the Christian community.

This is not to suggest that the styles and structures of missionary

involvement should be static. The WCC’s Bangkok Conference cited
above rightly urged missionary agencies to "examine critically their
involvement as part of patterns of political and economic domination,
and to re-evaluate the role of personnel and finance at their disposal in
the light of that examination."

Yet the need to review and re-evaluate present structures and

strategies does not suspend the Christian mandate for world mission --
not if we see "the missionary presence as an essential part of the
gospel." Else we would be guilty of sub-mission. As the Bangkok
Conference said (Section III):

What we must seek is . . . a mature relationship between churches.

Basic to such a relationship is mutual commitment to participate in
Christ’s mission in the world. A precondition for this is that each
church involved in the relationship should have a clear realization of its
own identity. This cannot be found in isolation, however, for it is only
in relationship with others that we discover ourselves.

Actually, the overwhelming weight of opinion in the Third World, and in

the "First" World too; is very much on the side of continued missionary
presence. Even Mr. Gatu admits that "not many" African church
leaders agree with his moratorium proposal. Nor do leaders of
"younger churches" elsewhere. Recently, for instance, the United
Church Board for World Ministries indicated to the Kyodan (the United
Church of Christ in Japan) that owing to budgetary stringencies, it
might have to withdraw some missionaries. The response of the

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Japanese was that they would undertake to raise enough money to
keep the missionaries, because -- as they said -- they felt that in their
situation the foreign missionary presence was essential to the integrity
of the gospel and of the church. This past year, in fact, the Kyodan
raised about $100,000 for this purpose.

V
Finally, we must assess the moratorium proposal in the light of the
increasingly vital internationalization of the missionary enterprise.
Today, the Third World is not only sending missionaries to the Third
World; it is also thinking in terms of mission to America and mission to
Europe -- thrusts that mission boards and the World Council of
Churches are working hard to effectuate. A recently published research
report, Missions from the Third World (available from William Carey
Library, 533 Hermosa Street, South Pasadena, Calif. 91030), reveals
that currently at least 209 Protestant agencies in the Third World are
sending out 3,411 missionaries. This global inter-involvement in
mission, going beyond traditional relationships and patterns for
decision-making and exchange of personnel, holds enormous promise
for the future.

The new era in world mission challenges all churches to manifest the
universality of the ecclesia by sharing resources in the common task of
expressing the redemptive action of God, in Christ. But, as the United
Methodist Board of Global Ministries says, meeting that challenge will
require of us more total commitment and wholeness of vision, greater
intentionality and receptivity, and more serious and joyous
international sharing and interdependence than we have yet known."

Dr. Anderson, senior research associate in the southeast Asia Program

at Cornell University, is president of the American Society of
Missiology.

Copyright 1974 CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Reproduced by permission from

the January 16, 1974 issue of the CHRISTIAN CENTURY.
Subscriptions: $49/year from P.O. Box 378, Mt. Morris, IL 61054. 1-
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