by Ken Austin
And what better way to plant the seeds of fear in young minds than to be with them for hours every day in the classroom?
Missionaries in the Classroom
Anyone who has taught English in Thailand for a number of years will have, at some point, come across a Christian fundamentalist teacher. Their beliefs are often known to school management before they are hired and sometimes a friendly warning is offered during the interview process. They are cautioned not to turn the classroom into a pulpit for discussing their religion and trying to sign up new recruits. But the warnings rarely succeed completely.
Inevitably, stories filter out of lessons built around Jesus and the benefits of embracing him as a saviour. The most conflicted, confused and vulnerable students have a way of making themselves visible to the fanatics. The fanatics swoop in like shameless salesmen eager to add a couple of notches to their belts, please their superiors and earn a higher rank in their fairy-tale afterlife.
And, in many cases, parents or fellow teachers complain and the missionary moves on, energized at the thought of their persecution and convinced they have made some headway in the struggle to convert the heathens.
They do achieve some long term success in Thai schools though it appears it is restricted to certain types of establishments. I have encountered covert missionaries in universities in Thailand. However, the environment doesn’t seem to be the best one for them to thrive. While there are many young adults in the university setting who are looking for answers on how to proceed in life, colleagues are likely to look with contempt at such efforts to manipulate these youngsters. Administrators are similarly unforgiving. Because of the fact that most of these institutions are not strapped financially and have little trouble finding teachers, such tactics are not usually tolerated.
Language schools which are heavily into marketing their courses are often the place where missionaries are most comfortable practicing their trade. The mantra-like repetition of sales pitches used by the schools aren’t unlike the same type of brainwashing that succeeds in attracting new followers to their cult. If they are punctual and presentable and do a decent job, their occasional in-class sermon probably gets overlooked.
Similarly, poor schools in the countryside that are thankful to have an English speaking foreigner on staff may also turn a blind eye to evangelizing in the classroom.
Still, many organizations that send out successive waves of missionaries recognize that more traditional methods of trying to gain new disciples haven’t always been the most successful.
Tent-making
“Tent-making” is a code word used by missionaries heading overseas to spread the faith and build up membership in their religion. It’s simply a way of saying that they will be less than straightforward in admitting their true intentions when establishing themselves in a foreign country.
They will take on jobs as EFL teachers and make little mention of their true motivations. When pressed, they will likely talk about their beliefs but they will downplay them and deflect any suggestions that they are there solely to seek converts. Of course, they are only interested in making as many contacts as possible and softening up all new acquaintances and students for possible indoctrination.
It is disingenuous at best and brazenly dishonest at worst. But when you are convinced that you are on the side of absolute truth, anything can be rationalized.
And so they seek out the down-trodden, simple-minded and malleable while avoiding the intelligent, cynical and confrontational. This often means staying away from other foreigners who may disagree with their strategies or who are simply interested in an open discussion about the subject.
Many people dismiss the actions of missionaries and claim they are having little effect. I disagree. They are converting a large number of individuals and receiving little scrutiny. The issue is rarely, if ever, raised in the mainstream media and so the scare-mongering, emotional blackmail and other questionable approaches carry on with little resistance.
“OK children, today we’re going to learn about ‘guilt.’ What’s that? You don’t know what guilt is? Well, you will soon enough...”
The Reverend
I met the Reverend on the first day of classes at a university in Songkla in the south of Thailand. The first day of any new academic year was always interesting for the new freaks who would appear out of nowhere. Always validating the long-held truism in the expat community that Thais haven’t got a clue about how to size up foreigners.
The Reverend wore his full preacher’s regalia; all black attire with a white collar. He topped off the ensemble with a long flowing white beard and a staff. Yes, a staff. A long, hand-carved, cherry-wood staff that looked like something Gandolf from Lord of the Rings would carry with him.
The Reverend bounded up to me and pumped my hand and introduced himself. He was from a small town in Alaska. He was in Thailand alone as part of a round-the-world trip that had taken him to Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan, among other destinations. One of my first questions was “Are you working as a preacher while you are here?”
“Why, no,” came the answer. Then why the get-up? He didn’t say much about that though later he would as much as admit that he wore it for the attention it brought him. It was an affectation, pure and simple.
After telling me about himself and his travels, the Reverend and me finished up the rest of the first-day orientation and then had another quick chat before saying goodbye. I had no doubt that we would be seeing a great deal of each other in the coming semester.
The next time that I saw the Reverend, he approached me as if he had never seen me before. No, he did not just forget my name. It seemed as though the entire first meeting and our 15 to 20 minutes of discussion were a blank. This happened another two or three times. It was one of the most surreal things that I have ever experienced. I considered that it might have been the early onset of Alzheimer’s, but he was still relatively young—somewhere in his early 60s.
After the Reverend finally had in his mind who I was, we started to have some interesting conversations. The Rev, as I started to call him, had been travelling around the world for some years. The time he had spent in various locations had sometimes stretched to years at a time. And while he had done some stints preaching in some of those locales, for the most part it seemed he was content to play the celebrity preacher role. Celebrity that is, to the often simple locals who had been converted to Christianity years earlier and had in their minds the image of who should play the role of a benevolent preacher. Someone just like the Reverend.
I noticed that the Revered started to grate on a few of the other teachers at the university. One of them was a barely-concealed missionary who used the classroom as his pulpit. He didn’t like the Reverend’s brand of Christianity. It didn’t seem authentic to him.
One day, a number of teachers were gathered in the communal computer room, where we all spent many hours preparing exams and wasting time surfing the internet. The talk turned to gay marriage and the Reverend expressed his full support for the idea. The little missionary visibly cringed. My view of the Reverend went up a few notches that day. Not because of his opinion on gay marriage and the fact that it generally aligned with my ideas. But because he didn’t pander to anyone who happened to worship the same sky daddy.
A few weeks later, I casually mentioned the Reverend in conversation to the little missionary with the intent of finding out what was behind his contempt. He shook his head in disgust at the thought of the Reverend’s brand of Christianity. That anyone could use this thousands-of-years-old philosophy to justify their choices in life, lead a generally helpful existence, and enjoy themselves along the way seemed to unsettle the little missionary. He didn’t see the irony in the fact that his judgment was completely subjective and his way of spreading the word and leading his life were just as open to criticism.
One day as I chatted to him, the little missionary beamed with unbridled delight and a sense of accomplishment at the fact that he
had quickly converted an attractive woman he had met. He sneered when he talked about her family and how they were upset that she was turning her back on Buddhism.
Months later, the little missionary started growing frustrated with the university because of class sizes that were larger than he had been promised. While that was the ostensible reason, I felt it was more due to the fact that he just hadn’t found fertile ground for turning people on to the omniscient sky daddy he worshipped.
The university catered to sons and daughters of wealthy Thais. And while there were many who were already Christians, the majority were comfortable with their Buddhist beliefs and had no intention of changing. The poor, desperate, and dispossessed appealed more to the little missionary and offered the kind of broken lives that would latch on to anyone or anything that promised better times.
I continued having conversations with the little missionary. He never came right out and stated that he was a full on Christ lover who was dedicated to saving souls, but I knew it and he seemed to know that I knew. He was symbolic of a more circumspect and cautious type of missionary who have become more prevalent in Thailand in recent years. Perhaps due to more straightforward and blunt-speaking people who let missionaries know exactly what they think of them and their manipulative ways.
For a few weeks, the little missionary and myself spent time working at a local factory as part of a contract with the university. We were doing English skills assessments of the workers, and we traveled a few hours each day together in a van supplied by the university. I got the sense that he was going to attempt a mild form of trying to get me interested in his cult. He prodded and probed a few times, and offered up his own dreary conversion story. I listened respectfully only because of the entertainment he was unknowingly providing. I was healthy, happy and a teetotaler to boot—something which he was not; a fact he lamented. I believe it grated on him that I was relatively well-adjusted and exhibited many of the traits that bible beaters said only came with acceptance of their religion.
At about the same, I met yet another missionary associated with the university. He was more open about the whole thing. He worked for some kind of fellowship that ran day camps for young children on the university campus. I met him at one of the campus cafeterias, and he instantly presented himself as a rigid, angry sort who was on the lookout for any signs that I was on the same righteous team as him.
When I did not give him any sign that I was enthralled to a nappy-haired little middle eastern carpenter who lived 2000 years ago, and instead only queried about his group, he grew sullen and non-communicative. However, when I mentioned that there were others I worked with who were Christians, he darkened further. As if he knew instinctively that no one could possibly possess the same understanding and demonstrate the same devotion as him and his fellow sect members.
What an odd, burdensome life he must lead, I thought to myself.
In comparison to the little missionary and the angry puritan at the cafeteria, the Reverend was friendly and lacking that tightly wound quality of someone who was certain they were living amongst heathens who would rot in a pit of fire for all eternity.
The Reverend butted heads with another teacher; a serious, unsmiling South African named Deke. Deke was in his mid-fifties, wore a military-style haircut, and brooked no dissent from his students. While on the surface he was a humourless bastard, Deke was well-liked by his students and was a decent person if you made the effort to get to know him. However, something about the Reverend annoyed him in a visceral way. They taught a number of the same courses and thus were in the same group assigned to develop the related exams and ensure that there was some degree of consistency amongst all the sections.
Deke had spent years as a captain in the army and the regimented approach infiltrated every aspect of his life. Something about the Reverend’s casual style enraged him. A number of teachers saw an epic feud brewing and wished that Deke would play along and wear his old army uniform to school. With the Rev in his preaching garb, it would have been something right out of a professional wrestling script.
I learned that the Rev had been in his past life a salesman. I ribbed him about this, saying that he had all the bullshit professions down pat: salesman, Reverend and now teacher.
As the semester started to wind down, the Revered hinted that he would be moving on during year-end break. I had never seen the Rev out of his getup the during the year I had known him. Not even once did he decide to wear “civilian” clothes to the university. The image was important to him.
I went looking for him on a lazy Friday afternoon near the end of the term. Most teachers had finished for the day or ducked out early after cancelling classes. I walked down the deserted hallway of the fifth floor of the old building where they housed the offices of the foreign instructors. I had walked past the Rev’s office on other Fridays and seen him holding court with students. It pleased him when a student sought out his advice on matters related to the course material or life in general. I was certain he would be in his office today.
I stopped at the door to his office. A wooden door, perhaps decades old, no window to allow someone to peer in before deciding if they wanted to knock. Paper stuck to the wall next to the door. Assignments from the students. The kind of things that you might see on the walls of grade schools back home but that somehow are appropriate from university aged students here. One was titled: Memory Trip to America—and read: “My trip to America was funny. I started to went to the airport with my family on May 14.”
I moved closer to the door to see if I could hear any movement from within. No sounds. Instead of knocking I tried the door knob. I eased the door open and looked inside. A spacious room, larger than necessary for one person. Numerous desks but the Rev was the only teacher assigned to this office. Piles of old papers and books stacked on most of the unused desks and the accompanying musty smell filled the air. The shades were drawn and it was as dark as it could be in the middle of the afternoon.
“Rev?”
I walked into the room and shut the door behind me. I moved toward the back of the room to get a look behind one of those cheap cubicle separators that they use to give some privacy when they want to create semi-private workspaces. I knew the Rev used this cubicle from the times I had been in here before. I saw him sitting behind the desk.
“What’s up Rev?”
I sat down in the chair in front of his desk.
In the dim light of the room I could see the Rev staring blankly through me, not even acknowledging me. No, it wasn’t like he saw me and was ignoring me, he just didn’t see me. He was in some kind of deep reverie. He was wearing his usual black preacher’s outfit. His white collar was off and lying on the desk. His shirt was open at the neck. But his black preacher’s shirt wasn’t pressed and clean like usual. It was rumpled and I could barely make out flecks of white on the front of his shirt. Dandruff from his beard I realized.
“Rev, for fuck’s sake! What the hell is going on?”
He turned his head slowly. His jovial, good-natured schtick was gone.
“Who the hell are you? What is this!” he said.
He was looking at his hands. Clenching and unclenching his fists. Looking up at me with a strange, angry look on his face.
“What is this?!”
“Rev, what the hell? Everything OK?”
I thought he was having some kind of existential melt-down at the age of 63. Perhaps it had finally dawned on him that he had devoted his one existence in all eternity to desperately hoping that upon death his conscious mind would go swirling out of his body to reside in some vague, unspecified location for all eternity. I was hopeful that I could guide him through this bit of nastiness. It must be hard to consider all the wasted years.
The Rev rose out of his seat and leaned forward over the desk so that he was looming over me.
“What is this?!” he shrieked down at me, spray from his mouth blasting me in the face and a line of saliva left hanging as he looked at
me with a mixture of rage and incomprehensible confusion.
He held his clenched right hand up in the air and opened it, releasing a crumpled piece of paper that drifted down and landed on the desk in front of me.
I picked up the piece of paper and straightened it out. Some kind of letter...
Attention: The Reverend,
It has come to our attention that you have violated numerous tenets of the Global Interdenominational Reverends’ Association charter of conduct. It has been brought to our attention that during your time in Thailand, you have: indicated your support for same-sex marriage, worn your preacher’s outfit for personal aggrandizement while failing to preach for a period longer than six months and, stated that it is possible that there is no afterlife
Due to the nature of these serious transgressions, GIRA has ruled that you are no longer in good standing with our organization and therefore, you forfeit all benefits associated with GIRA.
Finally, we order you to immediately stop wearing your preacher’s outfit until such time as you resume regular preaching duties.
Yours in Faith,
The Reverend Damon Shuttlecock, PhD
I must have screwed up my face as I looked at that strange document. I remembered a discussion with the Rev and a number of teachers at school when he had outright admitted that he had no knowledge of whether there truly was an afterlife. He could understand why people doubted such claims though he hoped there was something to it.
I remembered the little missionary sitting in the computer room during that discussion, sullen and annoyed. I knew that he fully believed in an afterlife, and I think that he reiterated that claim on that day. But I recalled thinking that it was odd that he didn’t get involved more in a debate that he must have had strong feelings about.
“This is a real organization?” I asked.
The Rev’s brow furrowed even more and he whipped his head from side to side.