I think evangelism is a problem whether you're trying to prove things for your one god or prove there is none at all. I have a friend who worked for a non-profit in Cambodia who told me a horror story that encapsulates a lot of why missionary/evangelist work abroad worries me. The jist of the story is that in order to help people help themselves, they have to be the ones taking the action. They have to decide for themselves how they want to run things, and that is the only way they will lift themselves out of cycles of poverty and chaos. However, when their collective decision runs up against a belief system of a religious charity, the religious charity tells them no, they can't do as they have decided and they don't. They give in. Which leaves them much as they are.
Now, these religiously-based nonprofits do great work, but if their religion dictates anything, it defeats the attempt to have the people exercise their own will. If they come to like Jesus from the example of the missionaries, fine; if they pray every morning because the head of the nonprofit says they have to even if they don't want to, that's not okay. What these evangelists have to remember is that they control money that the people they're helping have no concept of--evangelism is very much a prerogative of the rich even if the people doing it aren't individually wealthy--and are desperately dependent on. They are not going to challenge what the missionaries say if there's a threat they could be left with nothing, and so long as that is the case--so long as the purse has strings still attached--they can't really help themselves.
This is true of a lot of charity work--do it the way we say or else--but government nonprofits being funded or not is a political issue that people can find out about. Religious organizations can keep their decision making almost entirely private. Secular nonprofits have no ready-built network of contributing believers, so they have to scrape by on every penny they can collect, which leads them towards full disclosure as well. Missionaries and evangelists also make no bones that they are out for converts, period. Yes, we want to help, but we also want you in our club. Plenty are okay with still helping even if the people they help don't want in, and bless them, but these people seem to be the exception rather than the rule, especially when missionaries prize converts so highly.
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Now, these religiously-based nonprofits do great work, but if their religion dictates anything, it defeats the attempt to have the people exercise their own will. If they come to like Jesus from the example of the missionaries, fine; if they pray every morning because the head of the nonprofit says they have to even if they don't want to, that's not okay. What these evangelists have to remember is that they control money that the people they're helping have no concept of--evangelism is very much a prerogative of the rich even if the people doing it aren't individually wealthy--and are desperately dependent on. They are not going to challenge what the missionaries say if there's a threat they could be left with nothing, and so long as that is the case--so long as the purse has strings still attached--they can't really help themselves.
This is true of a lot of charity work--do it the way we say or else--but government nonprofits being funded or not is a political issue that people can find out about. Religious organizations can keep their decision making almost entirely private. Secular nonprofits have no ready-built network of contributing believers, so they have to scrape by on every penny they can collect, which leads them towards full disclosure as well. Missionaries and evangelists also make no bones that they are out for converts, period. Yes, we want to help, but we also want you in our club. Plenty are okay with still helping even if the people they help don't want in, and bless them, but these people seem to be the exception rather than the rule, especially when missionaries prize converts so highly.
Just my $0.02.