Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Prisoners of a White God ?

When does Christian missionary work become predatory ? Czech anthropologist Tomas Ryska's 2008 film Prisoners of a White God concerns Ryska's troubling findings, from his field work among the Akha mountain people of Southeast Asia. The film, which avoids polemic, describes Christian missionary efforts that according to Ryska's account are destroying Akha culture. Among the accusations Tomas Ryska's low-key but morally engaged and quietly outraged testimony presents are charges that missionaries are using Akha children as plantation slaves, sexually molesting them, and even selling them as sex slaves.

[below: 2008 video documentary by Tomas Ryska, Prisoners of a White God]
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5151512921334112942&hl=en

Here is a description of the film:

.............This documentary explicitly reveals under cover work of missionary agencies and individuals in the destruction of an ethnic group, the Akha people of South East Asia. It is a picture of evil cloaked in righteousness. Evangelical missionaries come with the Good News of the Gospel, and aid for the poverty stricken mountain people. The reality is division, destruction of family core groups, human rights violations, displacement, forced relocation, theft of land, cultural genocide, racism and power of a majority people group over the indigenous group.
It is a picture of hell on earth despite the coming of so-called Good News, and it is enactment and creation of hell on earth for these tribal people. Kidnapped from their villages, children become “orphans” though they have families. They become the employees on the Christian Missionary tea plantations. “There are no employees,” says one man, “we have children.” In one place, 60 children take the role of laborer on the boarding school grounds. Worse, they are sold into slavery and sex trade by missionaries and those among the tribes who are on the take. One missionary states that it would be a terrible revelation if the outside world ever got news of child rape by Christian missionaries. Denial, pretense, and cover-up is necessary for these organizations to continue their work among the People.............

Youth With a Mission, the global behemoth ministry that owns the increasingly notorious "C Street House" which lies at the center of three Republican sex scandals to have emerged during the summer of 2009, is globally one of the most active agents in the global missionary business. YWAM fields over 15,000 missionaries worldwide.

Published in Fall 2008, a USA Today story described Youth With a Mission's newly-launched Brazilian campaign that accuses Amazon indians of practicing widespread infanticide. David Cunningham, son of Youth With a Mission founder Lauren Cunningham, has produced a pseudo-documentary, Hakani, that graphically depicts the alleged practice, which according to USA Today is being show in churches in Brazil and the USA.

According to the USA Today report, YWAM has been active in a recently launched effort to pass Brazilian legislation that would allow governmental or NGO agencies to take children deemed to be "at risk" away from their parents. But Tomas Ryska's documentary Prisoners of a White God raises questions as to whether such a "solution" would in fact be worse for such children than the alleged problem. As USA Today's Dan Harris observes,

.........Brazilian government officials say the missionaries are exaggerating and exploiting the issue to justify their attempts to convert Indians to Christianity, destroying ancient civilizations in the process..............

Youth With a Mission has institutionally backed an ambitious program in which Christians attempt to achieve world domination by gaining control of key government sectors such as government, business, media, education, and finance.

Branded as the 'Seven Mountains Mandate', the 7-M Mandate is being popularized via a multilevel marketing campaign which has been promoted by pastors close to Sarah Palin. YWAM founder Loren Cunningham claims the 7-Mandate idea came to him as a vision from God.

Youth With a Mission has also led the way in the promotion of a new evangelizing technique emphasizing the need to drive out "territorial demons" that the ministry claims afflict much of global humanity.

YWAM's new evangelizing paradigm blames poverty, disease, crime and lack of economic development on the alleged influence of witches, sorcerers, and "territorial" demon spirits that YWAM leaders have claimed in their writing exert a malevolent influence afflicting geographic regions between the 10th and 40th parallel, where the majority of humanity lives and where Christian evangelizing efforts have historically been least successful.

In a Youth With a Mission pamphlet titled `Strongholds of the 10/40 Window', author George Otis Jr. wrote, "spiritual strongholds are invisible structures of thought and authority that are erected through the combined agency of demonic influence and human will. In this sense they are not demons, but places from which demons operate"

YWAM Publishing currently sells a twelve tape audiotape series by Dean Sherman, Dean of the College of Christian Ministries at Youth With A Mission's University of the Nations. As YWAM describes the tape series,

"God has called Christians to overcome the world and drive back the forces of evil and darkness at work within it. Spiritual warfare isn't just casting out demons; it's Spirit-controlled thinking and attitudes. Dean delivers a no-nonsense, both-feet-planted-on-the-ground approach to the unseen world."

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/7/30/94825/0088