Peterson1

Celeste Peterson

Dr. Martino

SRT 340 01

7 November 2018

The Mission

Christian Missionary work is a tale as old as time, as from the time Jesus began spreading

the Good News, followers of Jesus sought and still seek to do the same thing. Christian missions

seek to convert a group of non-Christians into Christians after teaching them about the way of

the religion. There are various different approaches to Missionary Work, including the way the

Jesuits approached it. The Jesuit approach to Missionary Work is depicted in the film The

Mission, where the Jesuits sought to bring Christianity to the Guaraní people in South America.

A defining characteristic of their approach was the fact that they looked at the Indians as people,

and let them retain much of their own identity (like their clothing and their language), whereas

some Christian Missionary Work focused on taking away indigenous people’s identities and

rather just wanted to make them blind followers of Christ. Unfortunately, the Jesuits’ work in

The Mission was nearly destroyed by European Colonialism when the Spanish and Portuguese

government insisted that the Guaranís were not people but animals who would not be able to

receive salvation. This disregard for humanity was a common theme in Colonialism, but that

does not mean that the Missionary Work was for nothing.

As the opening scenes in The Mission played out, with the death of an apparent Christian

on a cross, my thoughts quickly became accusatory of the Guaranís, who had clearly just killed

this Christian. I thought that those people must have been savages who did not understand God’s

grace, and did not appear to deserve it either. Nonetheless, I still felt a little bit apprehensive
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about Father Gabriel’s mission to “make Christians out of these people”, not necessarily for fear

of his safety, but due to the fact that his mission would entail a group of white men coming in to

impress their own ideas on values on this indigenous group of people. I began thinking back to

the concept of “white man’s burden” and pondered that maybe these Indians did not need, and

definitely did not want whatever the white man was bringing, and perhaps they were functioning

just fine without Christianity (although I realize this is not the proper stance a Christian like

myself should take). At the same time, I did think that obviously, these people needed God, as

they appeared to truly be living very violent lives, and I know that that is not what God intended.

God, and true Christians would want for these people to come to know and believe in the

religion, so I did lean a little more on the side of supporting the mission.

As someone who supported the mission and the spreading of the Good News, I had not

thought a whole lot about the problems that it might cause for the Guaranís. As Jeff Guhin

pointed out, “interactions with other cultures are nearly always rooted in historical inequalities

that make us muchless able to make a difference –and much more able to add to the problems –

than we might like to believe.” (Guhin, p. 2) So what does this mean for Christian Missions?

Well, Guhin is insinuating that although we may have the best of intentions, our medaling with

other cultures is likely to cause more pain than it is worth. Jeff went on to elaborate and share an

example of this from the film, the very last scene where we see a small group of Guaraní

children, the only ones not murdered in the massacre, float away down the river, all the while

hearing that “the spirit of the dead will survive in the memory of the living.” As Jeff points out,

that is not true, as so many of the dead are simply gone, never to be remembered, all because of

us (Christians and those who seek to change another culture). When the idea of missionary work

is presented through Jeff Guhin’s lens, my perspective is certainly changed, as I know that above
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all else, followers of Christ should want nothing less than the wellbeing of all people, and if

impressing our religion on people will ultimately lead to their demise, we should absolutely not

be doing it.

On the other hand, who is to say that Christians can ever plan or anticipate to have a

negative impact on the people they aspire to convert? Although it may have ended horribly, I do

believe that the Jesuits in The Mission truly did have the best intentions and went about the

mission in the best way possible. Father Gabriel and the other priests with him took the time to

learn the Guaranís’ language and culture, rather than forcing them to speak and act in the same

way as the Europeans, which I think is a far more productive approach to missionizing than

forcing a new language and culture upon people. Furthermore, the Jesuits did so very peacefully

and acted as equals with the indigenous people, working together to build a community and a

worship place. I feel as though the most striking influence imparted to the Guaranís was the gift

of worship hymns, as I think that the community singing and worshipping together not only

brings people together, but also brings them closer to God.

As is mentioned above, the Jesuits chose to missionize in a way that did not take the

Guaraní culture away from the Guaraní people. Father Gabriel and the priests learned the

language and the culture and did not demand that the Guaranís change, which was evident in the

masses spoken in the Guaraní language and even the clothing that the Guaranís wore, clothing

that was not removed or changed by the Jesuits. This idea of taking up another culture while

spreading Christianity, rather than coming in with a steel boot crushing indigenous people and

their cultures was exemplified in real life by Matteo Ricci’s missionary efforts in China. Jesuit

leaders concurred “that a colonial mentality would not work in a culture as sophisticated as

China’s” and that the church would have to be Chinese in China (Clarke, p. 2). It was important
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that the missionaries learn the local culture, and Ricci did just that. He was more than fluent in

the language and was able to freely communicate to the people, which allowed him to spread the

Jesuits’ work to everyone, including scholar-officials. Had Matteo Ricci, and other Jesuits, gone

to China with the hope of crushing the Chinese culture and forcing a new one on the Chinese

people, Christianity would not have been able to spread as it did.

As I mentioned above, the Jesuits did not use a colonial mentality to bring Christianity to

the Guaranís; however, these indigenous people did feel the pain of colonialism brought about by

the Spanish and Portuguese governments. During the film, Don Cabeza and Don Hontar, men

who served as government officials, made comments that the “natives should be subdued by the

sword” and that the Guaranís did not possess the spirituality required to receive salvation, as they

were animals. I was obviously very taken aback by both of these comments, as each comment

showed a complete disregard for human life. It was hard to hear these comments after watching

the development of the Guaraní people in their spiritual journey, as they were really no different

than the Spanish or Portuguese people. After watching the way that the Guaranís lived, including

how they worshipped, worked together, and “played” it was almost incomprehensible that

someone could look at them and not see a human. Essentially, I could not have disagreed more

with either of the statements that the apparently ignorant men made, and I wish that they would

have taken the time to really observe and get to know the Guaraní people, as I am sure that they

would not have had those same thoughts.

Obviously, the Spanish and Portuguese fully intended on colonizing the Guaranís, and

they did not want what was best for the indigenous people; their version of colonialism involved

slavery, injustice, and dehumanization. This is the type of colonialism that I am familiar with, I

had never really had a positive connotation of colonialism, I always thought of a powerhouse
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country coming into a developing country and ruling with an iron first. However, Jeff Guhin

points out in his article that the Jesuits were colonizing the Guaranís, but in a different way, by

bringing a European church to them, introducing European farming and European songs,

worshiping a European God, all the while still looking at the Guaraní people as their neighbors

with an inherent worth. Unfortunately, while this colonialism did not strip the indigenous people

of their own identity, it still brought about unfortunate consequences. As Guhin points out,

“we’re never going to clean up this mess,” but surely, we can work harder to repair the pain

brought about by European Colonialism in developing nations. (Guhin, p. 4)

After watching The Mission, we can have a deeper understanding of the Christian

Missionary Enterprise, the Jesuit Approach to Missionary Work, and European Colonialism. We

see the profound effects of missionary work and colonialism. Based off of the film, one can

agree that the Jesuit approach to missionary work had mostly positive effects on the Guaraní

people, as it allowed them to maintain their own identities and cultures while also being

introduced to Christianity. Unfortunately, we saw the devastating effects of Colonialism, as

nearly an entire group of people were wiped out. At the end of the film, we are left with a sense

of hope, as a small group of Guaraní children are filmed after the massacre, heading down the

river, likely with the hope of finding peace and safety amidst the chaos.