The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

Historian Fletcher (Gender and the American Temperance Movement of the Nineteenth Century) incisively explores the dark underbelly of American evangelical missionary work via the experiences of missionaries’ children. Drawing on her own childhood in Kenya and interviews with 80 others who were raised in missionary households, Fletcher depicts a bleak world in which children are subjected to extreme isolation, pressured to subordinate their emotional needs for the sake of their parents’ “divinely-ordained” calling, effectively “bubble-wrapped” from the societies in which they live, and frequently made vulnerable to abuse at the hands of missionary workers who are revered as saintlike. More broadly, the author unpacks how the myths that underlie missionary work—that missionaries are pursuing a divine calling, are saintly, and are advancing an admirable, multicultural Christianity—reinforce in the evangelical imagination a narrative of “the American church’s virtue, rightness, and importance” that distracts from its very real hypocrisies and shortcomings. Fletcher convincingly questions the need for missionary work at all, noting that locals in many now largely converted societies could provide similar services at a fraction of the cost. Robustly researched and sharply analyzed, it’s an illuminating exposé with important implications for evangelical Christianity. (Aug.)