# Missionaires to majority Christian nations, why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 27, 2012, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974 "2012-09-27T05:40:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/1 "2012-09-27T05:40:06Z")
What is the point of sending missionaries to spread Christianity in countries where a majority of people are already some flavor of it? [http://missiontrips.com/main/index.php?option=com\_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=87](http://missiontrips.com/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=87) > [@](#): > > Trinidad is our premier country for mission trips! It is the best trip for first time mission teams as they speak English and the people are very friendly. > **[Religion in Trinidad and Tobago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Trinidad_and_Tobago)** > > .mw-parser-output .smooth-pie{display:none;position:relative;width:100px;height:100px;border-radius:50%;background-color:#333;color:black;border:1px solid black}.mw-parser-output .smooth-pie div{position:absolute;transform-origin:left bottom;background-color:#655;color:black;top:0;left:50%;width:50%;height:50%;border-radius:0 500%0 0}.mw-parser-output .smooth-pie div.pie50{transform-origin:left center;height:100%;border-radius:0 100%100%0/50%}.mw-parser-output .smooth-pie .pie12-5{clip-path:poly... > [@](#): > > According to the 2000 Census, 29.6% of the population was Roman Catholic, 34.3% Protestant (including 8.9% Anglican, 7.8% Pentecostal, 4.5% Seventh-day Adventist, 3.8% Presbyterian or Congregational, 8.2% Baptist, and 1.1% Methodist), 25.6% Hindu, and 6.6% Muslim. A small number of individuals subscribed to traditional Caribbean religions with African roots, such as the Spiritual Baptists (sometimes called Shouter Baptists); and the Orisha, 0.1 percent. The smaller groups were Jehovah’s Witnesses (1.8 percent) and unaffiliated (2.2 percent). There is also a small, but active, Jewish community on the island. 😕 There are so many missionaries here, Mormons are the most visible because of the uniform and fact they work in two and on any random day in any area you’ll see them and others. Are these basically glorified vacations for christian youth? ---
**Author:** ![Silophant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Silophant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silophant)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/2 "2012-09-27T05:51:59Z")
Well, Mormons, at least, proselytize to any and every non-Mormon. Presumably other Protestant groups do the same. Certainly, as a Catholic, I’ve been proselytized at by several different groups in my life. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/3 "2012-09-27T05:58:15Z")
> [@Silophant](#): > > Well, Mormons, at least, proselytize to any and every non-Mormon. Presumably other Protestant groups do the same. Certainly, as a Catholic, I’ve been proselytized at by several different groups in my life. Local Christians don’t seem to have any trouble in the proselytizing department. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/4 "2012-09-27T05:58:15Z")
There are many flavors of Christianity, and each one considers all the others as wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/5 "2012-09-27T06:02:36Z")
Some go not so much to proselytize but to do charity work as well. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/6 "2012-09-27T06:07:55Z")
You’re converting people from other sects and trying to keep the people who currently identify with your sect from being courted away by the other ones. The humanitarian aims aren’t all window-dressing either. Although they like to glorify the rare instances where they actually do convert non-Christians, the American missionary tradition has always been mostly sectarian. See for example the huge numbers of American protestant missionaries who swarmed into the Philippines and the other predominantly Catholic colonies taken after the Spanish-American war. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/7 "2012-09-27T06:12:24Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Are these basically glorified vacations for christian youth? Well, sometimes, yes. There are Christians who bemoan this, and mock this kind of work that (at best) serves as an object lesson for the rich white Christian kid (Look how bad those people have it! Aren’t you lucky? Don’t you feel like you should help them?) and are at worst an expensive business extracting money from rich white Christians who are on vacation. Some of the kids who go on mission trips are actively using their parents to get a vacation, others are genuinely devout and want to help, and most are somewhere in between. And secondly, I think you underestimate factionalism and division among Christians. Many Protestants believe that Catholics aren’t Christian, and are thereby fair targets for evangelism. There are usually well intentioned; e.g. “Those poor Catholics have no idea that by venerating saints, they’re actually worshiping demons!” Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses regard every who isn’t a part of their sect to be unsaved and in need of conversion. I have an aunt and uncle who went on a JW mission to Belize for a year or so. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/8 "2012-09-27T06:13:26Z")
But the stuff they hand out is very basic “do you know a man named Jesus?” type stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/9 "2012-09-27T07:14:01Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > There are many flavors of Christianity, and each one considers all the others as wrong. As this is GQ, I’m going to argue that this is not really true - at least not when stated as baldly and universally as this. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/10 "2012-09-27T07:24:38Z")
For the RCC, in many cases the mission of the “missionaries” isn’t conversion, it’s service to populations in bad situations, but there are funds and resources earmarked for missions which are not available for non-mission situations: for example, by calling the free schools around favelas “missions”, they get to draw from the “mission” funds and get a different kind of resources than non-mission schools. Also, there are many things which are “pre-approved” in a missionary situation but not in general. For example, in mission areas there’s much more use made of catechists; the catechists don’t just teach sunday school but perform many other community outreach activities, most of which are not religious in nature. My cousin went to Venezuela “for a year” as a secular missionary wondering what use would a psychologist be there; she came back 11 years later with an adopted son and having spent uncountable hours helping people register their very existence with the government, getting kids to school, getting people to use the medical resources at their disposal… in other words, social work galore. We jokingly tell her that it was her who got Chávez elected, since so many of his votes come from the poorest people - those poorest people who thought that (real example) they could not register the birth of their children (or, indeed, the parents’ own existence) because the birth registry forms said “name of wife” and “name of husband” and they weren’t married - why not? Because the parents of one of them weren’t married. Why not? Because one set of grandparents hadn’t been… ---
**Author:** ![Donnerwetter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Donnerwetter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donnerwetter)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/11 "2012-09-27T08:04:39Z")
For some of the Western European countries, it can be said that these are in reality only nominally Christian. There may be millions of registered church members, but many rarely or never attend services and are more or less functional agnostics or even atheists. In Germany for instance, even the head of the largest mainstream Protestant denomination, the Evangelic Church in Germany (which is seen by critics as highly secularized anyway) came to the conclusion some years ago that Germany these days is missionary territory. In the German Catholic Church, a significant number of priests originally come from Poland oder even the third world. On the other hand, there is a rapidly growing Muslim population who are for the most part steadfast believers. ---
**Author:** ![listedmia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@listedmia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/listedmia)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/12 "2012-09-27T10:57:53Z")
We get a lot of missionaries from other parts of the country here in New Orleans. The vast majority of the people who live here are at least nominally Christian. Seems to be for several reasons: The population is about 64% Roman Catholic, who are considered fair game for conversion by Protestant churches (as stated by appleciders). Hurricane Katrina had a lasting impact, and volunteers still come down to “help” build houses. (There’s a debate in the construction business over whether this does more harm than good.) It legitimately is a very poor and violent city. Over 30% of people are below the poverty line and we always have one of the highest murder rates. Volunteers are actually needed.(I have doubts over whether some random congregation from Iowa is really equipped to help with these long-term social problems though…) It has a reputation for licentiousness and general debauchery. This is the big one, especially during Mardi Gras. Sheltered kids from the sticks get to go on a mission trip where they hang out on Bourbon Street all night. They always look like they’re having fun even if they’re just handing out leaflets. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/13 "2012-09-27T10:59:42Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > Well, sometimes, yes. There are Christians who bemoan this, and mock this kind of work that (at best) serves as an object lesson for the rich white Christian kid (Look how bad those people have it! Aren’t you lucky? Don’t you feel like you should help them?) and are at worst an expensive business extracting money from rich white Christians who are on vacation. Some of the kids who go on mission trips are actively using their parents to get a vacation, others are genuinely devout and want to help, and most are somewhere in between. > > And secondly, I think you underestimate factionalism and division among Christians. Many Protestants believe that Catholics aren’t Christian, and are thereby fair targets for evangelism. There are usually well intentioned; e.g. “Those poor Catholics have no idea that by venerating saints, they’re actually worshiping demons!” Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses regard every who isn’t a part of their sect to be unsaved and in need of conversion. I have an aunt and uncle who went on a JW mission to Belize for a year or so. I am not Christian, but I am amazed that people who take the Bible as the word of God, or inspired by God, do not seem to know that the Roman and Orthodox bishops back in the 300’s at Constantine’s suggestion decided what was God’s word, and what was inspired by God. Apparently they don’t realize that they are in reality taking those bishops words and beliefs as Gods! ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/14 "2012-09-27T11:05:17Z")
Mormons go everywhere, although as the numbers are declining as a percentage of the membership and as Western US members (who supply most of the missionaries) are seeing declining birth rate, they are concentrating more in the US where they don’t face as dismal retention rates. For Mormon missionaries, (I went on one) it was pretty hard work. We did missionary activities six days a week with only Mondays off. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/15 "2012-09-27T11:15:40Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I am not Christian, but I am amazed that people who take the Bible as the word of God, or inspired by God, do not seem to know that the Roman and Orthodox bishops back in the 300’s at Constantine’s suggestion decided what was God’s word, and what was inspired by God. Apparently they don’t realize that they are in reality taking those bishops words and beliefs as Gods! Nothing odd about that. Men have always decided what was the word of God, that’s how it works. How else could it? Even if you stick to the Bible itself it’s open to about a million interpretations. Is God going to tell them which interpretation is correct? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/16 "2012-09-27T13:03:54Z")
I met some in Haiti getting ready for their mission to the US. Missionaries are biblically guided by God to go where He sends for His purpose, Paul being a leading example of this. So with that reasoning the answer is because God is sending them. And there is a pretty large difference between cultural christianity and living for Christ. The christian nations you elude to in the OP may have more to do with some flavor of cultural christianity then actually devoting one’s life to Jesus. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/17 "2012-09-27T13:09:10Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > I met some in Haiti getting ready for their mission to the US. Missionaries are biblically guided by God to go where He sends for His purpose, Paul being a leading example of this. So with that reasoning the answer is because God is sending them. > > And there is a pretty large difference between cultural christianity and living for Christ. The christian nations you elude to in the OP may have more to do with some flavor of cultural christianity then actually devoting one’s life to Jesus. “Living for Christ” is nothing more than another name for your own cultural Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/18 "2012-09-27T14:47:15Z")
It looks to me like your own link goes a long way toward answering your questions. > [@](#): > > Teams can be involved in Evangelism in the Hindu and Muslim areas, street evangelism, evangelism in the prisons, hospitals and market places. There’s also indoor and outdoor crusades, house to house ministries, construction teams to build churches, clinics, orphanages, etc. We also have medical outreach teams and youth outreach teams. > > Your team will also spend a day at Maracas Bay, a beautiful beach on the north cost of Trinidad along with a shopping / sight seeing trip on the way back from the beach. Your team will also be able to tour the natural pitch lake and see an active mud volcano. All of this is included in the total trip cost. So, it sounds to me like it’s at least partly for the benefit of the people making the trip. A “glorified vacation,” perhaps, but one with a greater chance for benefitting both the “missionaries” and the people they visit, than a week spent drinking and lying around on the beach in Florida. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/19 "2012-09-27T15:26:04Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > There are many flavors of Christianity, and each one considers all the others as wrong. No they don’t. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2012, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974/20 "2012-09-27T15:28:00Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses regard every who isn’t a part of their sect to be unsaved and in need of conversion. Mormons don’t believe that everyone else is “unsaved.” Also, Mormons have both proselytizing missions and service missions. I’m fairly certain that other denominations have both types of missions, too. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/missionaires-to-majority-christian-nations-why/635974.md?page=2)