Either way, the ambitions of the missionary movement were inextricably linked with those of empire: In the words of a triumphalist hymn, From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain, / They call us to deliver their land from error’s chain.īetween the world wars, a call had gone out to evangelize the world in one generation, and it set fire to small-town churches. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some missionaries from America believed it was their duty to rescue the foreign poor from hunger and illness others focused on winning souls for Jesus. Today’s struggles between liberal, ecumenical Christians and fundamentalist evangelicals played out as well in my grandparents’ times, as they had for generations before. My father had been born in the mountain provinces of Burma to American Baptists, and my mother carried in a laundry hamper across the ocean to Baghdad, as part of the United Mission in Mesopotamia. Like my father, she was the child of ministers and missionaries, descended from long lines of preachers, evangelists, and soldiers of the Lord. My mother nursed a grudge against Christianity for more than fifty years. (And vice versa!) It's a thought that I've been mulling over all summer, and it's helping me be less reticent expressing my beliefs around those with more conservative views (Pretty much everyone.) Read more What I appreciated most about this book was the author's meditations on what it means to "be the body of Christ," and sharing in that call with those whose religious beliefs differed significantly from hers. Which leads her to setting up a weekly food bank in the church, and then to helping others in the city start new food banks as well, challenging her congregation, those in her neighborhood, and even those who visit the food bank to expand their ideas of community, service, and comfort.
She becomes filled with the idea of "sharing the body," which for her becomes a command to feed the people. This is the story of unlikely conversion: A radical lesbian activist, who spend much of her youth involved in people's uprisings in Mexico & Central America, one day walks into a church, receives communion, and is transformed.
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