One of the things I get asked about the most (not just online but also at in-person speaking engagements) is what it looks like for us to decolonize Christian (specifically, evangelical) missions work. The first step to this decolonizing work is to reckon with the damaging impact of western evangelical missions - not just on the Global South but also on the western church.
Dr. Holly Berkley Fletcher (author of The Missionary Kids) speaks and writes from the perspective of a historian, essayist, and former intelligence analyst. She was raised in Kenya by missionary parents. She earned a PhD in American history and taught in universities for several years before being hired as an Africa analyst by the Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked for nineteen years. She writes the Substack A Zebra Without Stripes.
Her award-winning book, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking The Myths of White Evangelicalism is a truly excellent read and I’ll be including it as a recommended reading in my Jesus, Justice & Empire course at St. Stephen’s University this summer. You can get your copy here or wherever you buy your books / audiobooks!
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As sidekicks to their parents’ and churches’ ambitions, missionary kids (MKs) face questions many white Christians eventually ask: about God’s calling, sacrifice, faith, privilege, racism, abuse, and what belonging means. In The Missionary Kids, Fletcher reveals how MKs have intimate access to the movement’s logic, longings, and ideals.
With penetrating research, sly wit, and an empathic gaze, Fletcher lays bare complicated emotions and troublesome truths. She investigates how calling, multiculturalism, saints, and indispensability can distract white American Christians from their own tradition’s sins and failures. Drawing on her experience as a Southern Baptist MK in Kenya, on conversations with other missionary kids, and on the work of psychologists, historians, missiologists, and researchers, Fletcher paints an intricate portrait of family life on the front lines of the missionary movement. From boarding school to war zones, and from sexual assault by adult missionaries to fending for themselves so as not to distract from the work of the Lord, MKs bear the weight of their parents’ choices and their churches’ ideals. Fletcher delves into the “missionary industrial complex” that shapes the lives of missionary families, listening to MKs speak of the vexing, wordless longing for the places they’ve lived.
For many years, few people sought out MKs’ real voices. God had called their parents to do great things, so the kids were beside the point. But the children of missionaries are beneficiaries of evangelicalism’s rewards and victims of its failings.
