Book Review ~ The Missionary Myth - Through the Eyes of a Missionary Kid

Reviewed by Dee Ann Miller, Advisory Member of MKSN
http://www.takecourage.org, and Author of How Little We Knew (a book about collusion with mission field abuses)

Vivian Palmer Harvey is on a mission. She wants to keep people out of hell. A man-made hell, that is, created when parents bow to the mandates of mission agencies that seem to have little regard for the emotional well-being of both parents and children, especially when young children are required to leave home for long periods of time in order to attend boarding schools.

Presenting her case requires that she debunk a myth about evangelical missions: Children are resilient, which is what parents seeking appointment are likely to be told by mission board leaders. The myth continues: Children need direction and firm guidance, a good education, and basic food and shelter--all which can be provided by anyone. No need for them to get in the way of their parents' greatest calling. That calling for missionaries is to "spread the gospel," often known as the ABC's of salvation. Teaching the literal ABC's to their offspring is a job best done by professional teachers, those seeking appointment are told as soon as questions are raised about how mission life may impact their children.

Much of this writer's plea simply unfolds as she tells her own heart-wrenching story of being sent away to a school 1000 miles from her parents for nine months at a time, despite her desperate protests, starting at age five!!! It's a story similar to many others I've heard as a writer who has been working to confront the apathy that still abounds in regard to the abuse of children, youth, and sometimes adult women on the mission field. It is not that people don't want to address the problems--they do. Problem is, all too often the "addressing" is aimed at silencing the messengers in some form of "damage control."

As I read this well-organized account and the stories of others in similar circumstances, I was transported back to an evening in 1986, when I had the privilege of providing care for about a dozen little girls, in their first three years of school, at the boarding school where my own children attended high school in Kenya. The house-parents for the little girls were taking an evening off. The little girls were delightful and appeared to be happy
that evening. After an evening of play and popping corn, I began reading their bedtime stories. As they snuggled closely together like a huge litter of puppies, the weight of their little bodies felt like warm lead! Yet I welcomed the closeness.

Suddenly, I found myself fighting back unwelcome tears! By the time I'd reached for the second book, the tears were flowing quite freely. Yet I dared not explain the mystery to the little girls who appeared to be so puzzled, yet never verbalized their astonishment at my odd behavior. I kept smiling, as a read, feeling an odd mixture of joy and deep sadness. How could I tell them that I was weeping for them and for their mothers who
had missed out on so many joys that I had known so well when my own children were that age?

Later, a harder cry would come when I didn't have to worry about the little girls' reaction, after going from bed to bed in the large room filled with cots, as I tucked them in. In shock, I made note of the stark appearance of their sleeping room, void of any décor resembling a children's room. It looked like what I'd seen in movies, when an orphanage was the setting from a story fifty years earlier!

I wondered how the parents could even function with their children so far away for so many years. It was almost more than I could bear to have my own children away, even as teens. Earlier, when I'd asked one of the parents how she could possibly "make the sacrifice" that she was, I was shocked to hear: "Oh, we have no choice!"

In a patriarchal world, authoritarianism and rigidity reign. That's what The Missionary Myth shows most clearly. Indeed, there are many rules and very few choices. Despite claims to the contrary, decisions are made in the service of the most powerful all too often. So much for the least of them!

Perhaps Vivian's parents didn't know that good correspondence material had already been available for decades when they were appointed after World War II to Ivory Coast. Apparently, it wouldn't have mattered if they did know. Questioning authority was out of the question, especially for a woman in that world--it so often still is! Certainly, the widespread information about child abuse, even in stateside schools and other facilities, wasn't even recognized in 1950. Yet one cannot read this account without asking just how parents could deny their own basic parental instincts to protect their children and nurture the bonds that are so needed to allow the personality to develop in a child who knows that she is a treasure to the very people who have brought her into the world! Only through Denial and Delusion.

Today, as a senior citizen, Vivian seems to have resolved many of the questions that plagued her young heart and continued to haunt her far into adulthood. It is an on-going work, demonstrating that children who were not brought up "in the way they ought to go" can sometimes find the grace to make many healthy choices in spite of the past although the past will continue to permeate their inner being more frequently than they may choose.

Vivian gives hope to other MK's who may be wrestling with their own sense of "otherness." She recognizes that each of us have choices. Her conscious choices have shaped the way she has chosen to live her life and raise her own family; the way she has chosen to respond to the past, and the belief system that she now espouses.

While many in the evangelical community will certainly have problems with her assessment of missions, everyone needs to be careful about dismissing what she has to say about what she sees as a second myth: Christians have the responsibility, the myth seems to imply, to show the superiority of God' s chosen people and what those people have come to understand as "God's will." She shows, historically, how this has happened, with the missionary fervor and size of the "troops" growing with the rise of colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century.

Not all missionaries or mission agencies are equal when it comes to destroying the indigenous beliefs of other cultures. This is true even among evangelicals. A distinct split is seen with mainline groups, where the emphasis tends to be on the development and enhanced well-being in truly charitable missions where the main emphasis is a better life before death. However, it is important to understand that all missionary children, no matter the faith tradition of their parents, are especially vulnerable to trauma because of the added stresses and limited choices that mission life affords most of them. Is there hope for change, one may ask?

Personally, as a former missionary who has taken a long, hard look at MK issues and shared many of Vivian's concerns for decades, I believe there is. While I'd like to believe that hope lies in mission boards changing policies regarding the widespread use of mission boarding schools for educating young children, I do not place my greatest hope with the boards. Today, with the worldwide web and the vastly increased research that is readily available to parents, I can only hope that they will be empowered to stand up to abusive policies, questioning and refusing to submit themselves and their families to anything close to the lifestyle of family fragmentation that puts their children at risk and robs parents of the precious opportunities to watch their children blossom daily before their own eyes. Yes, I place my hope in parents finding and heeding, in increasing numbers, articles and books like The Missionary Myth.

Consider The Missionary Myth a Must-Read for every seminary and every mission agency library.

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