Letters to the Editor

Magazine article exhibits ignorance toward religious beliefs and practices

As someone who is neither Christian nor Hindu, I still found the article in the 'Prince' Magazine on Mother Teresa deeply disturbing. It articulates a viewpoint that is well-intentioned, and while his objections to evangelical imperialism are well-substantiated, his conflation of this concern with an anti-Christian bias renders his article as intolerant as the missionaries he accuses.

The description of missionaries as know-nothing zealots is often true, but generalizing this description to all missionaries overstates the point. The article lumps together the stances of "Catholics, Protestants, [and] Baptists" to form a mythical image of the "multinational conversion machine." Consequently it assumes a) the Pope speaks for all Christians, and b) all Catholics agree with the Pope. Both assumptions are flawed, and accepting one leader's intolerance as representative of an entire religion is naive at best.

Additionally, the article neglects to investigate what Christian baptism actually means. Christian baptism is an act accompanying conversion of the heart and profession of faith; the ritual and "magic words" do not "make" a Christian. This is a crucial point the article overlooks as it succumbs to its own accusations of ignorance, at least with respect to Christianity.

Certainly, the Christian church often finds itself at odds with democratic ideals. Hinduism, however, furnishes a doctrine supporting the caste system, in which there is little to no social mobility. When a society classifies a group of people as untouchable, can we speak of that society as tolerant or fostering human rights? Mother Teresa and her fellow nuns, on the other hand, helped people whom nobody else would, least of all the social system that had deemed them "untouchable." In a world whose inhabitants lived in pain, suffering and want, these women came to make a difference.

If Mother Teresa had claimed she was leading a public health movement, the article's objections to her not building "the finest hospital in the Third World" might stick. However, Mother Teresa wasn't a public health activist — she was a nun, and she did what nuns do: minister to the poor, sick and dying, and spread Christ's Word. That's it.

It is infuriating to have one's worldview invalidated by a group ignorant of one's cultural situation, and many missionaries have been guilty of this. Additionally, the Western media has wrongly portrayed non-Christian faiths as fundamentalist, and this continues to be problematic. These are legitimate concerns. And while some may disagree with Mother Teresa's ideology, the article's means for articulating these concerns are wholly inappropriate, and his conflation of several key issues undermines his argument.

The article's excoriation of evangelism in India reveals its own intolerance, and the inclusion of this article in a publication established as a forum for thoughtful discussion saddens and disturbs me. One must question not only the piece's journalistic integrity but also the motivations of an editorial staff that would include a protracted, sensationalist editorial as its cover article. Paul Deeringer '01