Why do we still assume that churches collecting money with the express aim of spreading Christianity among the “less developed” people are being “charitable” and are deserving of special status? Are these people asking to be taught about baby Jesus and sin? Wouldn't they prefer to learn to read and write their local languages, mathematics, science and engineering rather than foreign theology?

“What did you learn in the white-man's school? How to make a truck? How to fly a helicopter? How to build a ship? How to grow the white man's crops? The Colonel's secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices? Did they tell you the things we could trade with them?”

“I'm not sure, just some songs about some man nailed to some pieces of wood. Perhaps the good stuff comes later? Nothing of any use so far. They haven't told us about what they would like us to do, they don't seem to care what we do, only what we say we believe.”

Why do we continue to allow religious people to call their missionary work charitable? The reality is that it is simply indoctrination, and uninvited indoctrination at that. If the material they were passing on was propaganda of a political nature their work would be treated very differently. How much spare change would be contributed to a box marked “For spreading communist ideas in underdeveloped countries”? What is the difference? There are people who do good work overseas, who help people to be part of the modern world, and there are missionaries who help to make people feel they are sinners and permanently inferior to the people in the west.

Indoctrination of children is not a charitable act. It is a policy of systematic denigration of their culture and beliefs and the force-feeding of Christian ideology. It is un-called for. How many times have native tribes asked to be taught about baby Jesus and the white-man's superstitions? What they really want to know is how to have an advanced material culture, trade, medicine and engineering. What they get is happy-clappy Jesus freaks telling them they are sinners and are going to fry in hell unless they believe the white man's voodoo. They go along with it and listen to the religion because they can see how it works, the white man isn't going to teach them anything useful until they sing about the man on the cross.

If you were an Amazonian Indian in the Brazilian rain-forest in a loin cloth what would you want charitably funded teachers to teach you? How to read and write Portuguese, how to read and write your own language, mathematics, chemistry, biology and physics or how much Jesus loves you and why your tribe are evil hell-bound heathens?

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

— Bishop Desmond Tutu

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