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Please explain to me how the fact that he happens to be American is proven to be causal here? I guess you make a good point. After all, the missionaries who c
by JPKab 8y ago
Please explain to me how the fact that he happens to be American is proven to be causal here?
I guess you make a good point. After all, the missionaries who converted indigenous populations all over the world were all from the USA. Oh wait, no. The vast majority of the Christian missions were founded by Europeans. Arabs converted millions to Islam hundreds of years ago.
But yeah, they were all infected with American arrogance.
- kapauldo 8y agoLet's agree on the Christian arrogance then
- facistsSuck 8y agoGreat point. Nowadays if you dare to criticize evils done by people in the name of Islam, you will be called islamophobic and racist.
- monocasa 8y agoAs someone from the deep south (the largest baptist church in America was walking distance from my house as a kid) there's a huge push for third world mission work among evangelicals. The only reason why you don't see the focus on explicit conversion is that they don't feel like there's many pagans left to convert. For an example of the US evangelical effect on the third world: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/how-uganda-was-seduced-by-anti-gay-conservative-evangelicals-9193593.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/how-uganda-w...
- JPKab 8y agoI'm fully aware of the push for missionary work by US evangelical churches. Is it arrogance? Is it American arrogance more specifically? As someone who is borderline atheist, but grew up in a religious household, I don't think it's arrogance of any form. I think that these people truly believe that they are saving people from a bad afterlife. You can certainly call that delusional. Just not sure it's arrogance.
- monocasa 8y agoI think the entire idea of going half way around the planet to tell a bunch of people how they're doing life wrong without putting any effort into understanding why they don't already agree with you (aka nearly all mission work) is the epitome of arrogance.
- malmsteen 8y agoI think he implies americans are more stupid than europeans nowadays #trump #mormons #altright #bigots. We dont really have that in europe Edit: "some" americans of course.
- monocasa 8y agoY'all have plenty of crazy far right populism gaining steam between AfD, Golden Dawn, Front National, etc.
- kbutler 8y agoThat's right, anti-immigration sentiment, nationalists, and neo-nazis are unique to the US. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/09/10/right-wing-anti-immigrant-parties-continue-to-receive-support-in-europe https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/09/10/right-wi... Brexit, chemnitz riots - those are all American...
- malmsteen 8y agoNo but evangelism is (nowadays)
- starbeast 8y agoWell, wide eyed 'convert heathen!' zeal became pretty unfashionable in much of Europe for a bit, so most of the serious missionaries left for the Americas. American arrogance is really only European arrogance that has been left on the stove to brew for a bit longer.
- flocial 8y agoAmerica was simply late to the party but there is a long history of American missionaries carrying on the tradition. Hawaii wouldn't be a state if it wasn't for American missionaries.
- wpietri 8y agoProven to be causal? Like we'd clone 1000 John Allen Chaus, raise them around the globe, and see how many of them do something fatally arrogant relating to overseas travel? As an American who has lived on 4 continents, I can confirm that American tourists quite often live up to the stereotype. I have a variety of painful memories of times I've had to intervene and explain things and/or translate for aggressively clueless Americans. Many travelers are great, of course. But I still think the stereotype is justified. It makes sense, I guess. We grow up in a country big enough that we can travel widely without learning another language or learning much about dealing with different customs. And our wealth and our culture of American exceptionalism make it easy for us to spin the globe, plop a finger down, and expect that we can go there and do as we please. Often it works, even if it does rub the locals the wrong way. And sometimes, as here, it doesn't work at all.
- WkndTriathlete 8y ago> But I still think the stereotype is justified. It is, but in my experience (cruise from Venice -> Greece and back last summer) that stereotype applies to every culture. Americans just happen to be louder at it.
- JPKab 8y agoA very snide remark you start with, not realizing you are proving my point. He made a statement that is a sweeping generalization that isn't even provable. Your anecdotal experiences on 4 continents are again, just that. Anecdotes. The American travelers you didn't notice, and therefore don't remember, aren't included in your confirmation bias fueled reasoning.
- wpietri 8y agoRight. Everybody understands that not every topic is in practice approachable with the sort of level of rigor we use in, say, particle physics. But we are still people who have to live in the world. So everyone has a variety of heuristics they use to deal with topics that are not as tractable. That includes you, of course. What studies do you have that show that demanding proof of causality in casual conversation is effective in improving the discourse? None, I'm guessing. But here you are doing it.
- wwweston 8y agoAmericans certainly aren't the source of arrogance nor its sole practitioners. But the phrase "American exceptionalism" is a thing for a reason. And if other societies through history may also have indulged in similar thinking, it functions more to demonstrate how a comparable place in the world can present comparable temptations more than it serves to refute the existence or problems of exceptionalist thinking among Americans. Religious fervor may, of course, play a greater role (something I'm personally acquainted with as someone who was also involved in evangelism once). The combination of background cultural exceptionalism doesn't help, though.