In Africa, the missionary tables have turned

African Anglicans are imposing on the West, not the other way around.

from the March 1, 2007 edition

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"We questioned what right we have to intervene in the education of people of another culture, and what our motives are in desiring to intervene," wrote two Catholic missionaries in 1973, whose letters I unearthed during research for my recent book on America's overseas teachers.

"Do we want to 'domesticate' the people in one way or another, make them like us, convince them to adopt our culture?"

The question contained its own answer. To shed their ethnocentric baggage, indeed, liberal Americans increasingly abandoned the term "missionary" itself. One mission renamed its project "overseas service"; other missionaries simply called themselves volunteers, echoing the Peace Corps and other secular agencies. "The very word 'missionary' calls up notions of superiority," explained another missionary who appears in my book.

And in an era of culture, that was the one thing nobody wanted to be. Into this breach stepped a confident new generation of conservative missionaries, seeking to convert new souls to Christ. Conversant with African history and traditions, they did their best to couch their message in culturally appropriate terms. But they never wavered from the message itself: Jesus is Lord and Scripture is literal Truth.

Today, scholars estimate that between 80 and 90 percent of Westerners who call themselves "missionaries" hail from a conservative or evangelical church. And they have done their job well. That's why African Christians stand so far to the right of their brethren in the West, on a host of religious and cultural questions: abortion, gay rights, female priest ordination, and more.

And that's why they're starting to evangelize the West, to the chagrin of many. The battle inside the Anglican Communion is only the first of many struggles that we can expect in the next few years, pitting conservatives from the developing world against liberals in the West.

For almost half a millennium, many Christians from the West told the rest of the globe how to think, behave, and believe. Now, for the first time, they are becoming the target – not the source – of missionary efforts. For liberals, especially, it might take some getting used to.

• Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century." This piece first appeared in the New York Post.

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