text: Carla Wight: Religious missionaries are not necessarily “selfless.“ Chris Thompson owes no apologies for his amazingly candid article on religious missionaries (“Why Short-Term Mission Trips May Do More Harm Than Good”). The main purpose of Christian missions and missionaries is to spread a particular religious schism…often using young people such as your “St. John United Methodist Church mission trip to South Africa at the end of May.”
  I’ve had first-hand experience with missionaries when I worked on Indian lands in Arizona. Missionary activities both “short-term” and long-term…can, and are often intended, to destroy families, communities and culture. Missionaries pick on cultures already rendered weak and dispossessed by military and/or economic dominance. Mr. Thompson also pointed out the absurdity and evil of other Christians directly missionizing Russian Orthodox (read: Native) adherents. Called “stealing sheep.”