"Missionary Conquest"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the disastrous affects of missionary work on the demography and population of Native Americans by analyzing Tinker's book. It explains how the book illustrates the dark side of missionary work and the damage that can and has been done to Native American cultures and peoples as a result of the inherent coupling of colonialism/ethnocentrism and religion.

From the Paper:

"From the beginning of the book, Tinker makes it clear that his main point in writing Missionary Conquest is "that the Christian missionaries of all denominations working among the American Indian nations were partners in Genocide" (Tinker, 1993: 4). Of course, this assertion is no small thing. The term "genocide" is hardly a trifling term especially when coupled with an institution as supposedly benevolent (to those who support its existence) as Christian mission work. Indeed, Tinker mentions several times throughout the book the supposed "good intentions" of the very genocidal missionaries he discusses missionaries that, despite the very real damage they helped perpetrate against an entire people, are on the verge of "canonization:""

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