03 April 2014, The Tablet

The Missionaries: God against the Indians

by Norman Lewis

Righteous, not right

 
Reviewed by Selina O’GradyELAND, 205pp, £12.99Tablet bookshop price £11.70              Tel 01420 592974This almost unbearable account of the treatment inflicted on the forest Indians of Latin America by fundamentalist Christian missionaries leads inexorably to the uncomfortable conclusion that Christianity and imperialism will be bedfellows for as long as Christians believe they and they alone possess the absolute truth. Since the 1960s Catholic missionaries have become increasingly wary about imposing alien beliefs and practices on other cultures; now it is North American Protestant evangelicals who often serve as the foot-soldiers to the economic imperialists and, according to some accounts, to the CIA.
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