Missionaries and Colonials in the Sixteenth Century

Extract

Probably no issue is more important for the Christian Church than that created by cultural contact. The problems raised are tragic and difficult; the prejudices created have led to misery, injustice and fraud, dishonesty and cruelty on a gigantic scale. Wellmeaning and gentle individuals have been, and are, transformed by social and cultural pressures into overlords and oppressors. Bad history, bad anthropology, bad biology have been, and are, invoked to mask the real issues involved. Very few people can bear to consider themselves exploiters, or are so far devoid of good sense as seriously to consider themselves a better kind of person than other people. Yet given a commercial issue, some point of security or prestige, and at once our real feelings hide themselves under noble-sounding verbiage. It used to be the white man’s burden, then it was the development of colonial areas, so successful have we been in hiding from ourselves that it is with surprise that we discover that colonialism is a bad word, and the honour of white men very comic.

It may be that our materialistic folly or criminal blindness have closed the East and Africa to the effective preaching of the Gospel for generations; before the rising tide of rejection and protest we may be able to do nothing save accept the judgment of God; but that at least we must do, and so doing clarify our minds and reform our activity.

In helping us to do this Professor Hawke’s book is a tract for the times.