(REVIEW) “The Mission” is a thoughtful, empathetic documentary that explores the growing controversy around Christian missionary work — even if its glaring secular blind spots mean it will challenge religious viewers more than non-religious ones.
One of the interesting things about being a Christian in an age of increasing secularism is that you see things that generally seemed uncontroversial become more and more controversial. One of those things is missionary work. In my Christian culture, although there were always controversies over the right and wrong ways of doing missionary work, the idea that Christians would spread the Gospel – risking death in the process – was considered as good in principle. Even the secularists, even if they thought it wasn’t worth it because they didn’t believe in Christianity, at least understood the logic of it.
One story I heard all the time in sermons, which gives some idea of how we saw things, was about a soldier in World War I or II who ended up being wounded and taken into custody. charged by a random tribe. They asked him if he was a Christian and told him that they had been converted to Christianity by missionaries. He said that in our country, no one believed in Christianity anymore. The tribe replied that it was a good thing for him that this tribe had converted because they were cannibals.
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But the shift in how the culture views missionary work became more visible in 2018, when the events were chronicled in the new National Geographic documentary “The Mission.” In it, a young American missionary, John Chau, was killed by arrows while trying to contact one of the world’s most isolated indigenous peoples on the isolated North Sentinel Island. From there, the Christian and secular worlds clashed over the ethics of missionary work, with many non-religious people showing both moral outrage and bewilderment as to why anyone would risk their life to impose his moral values to a people who clearly did not want them. .
“The Mission,” from Emmy-winning directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss (“Boys State”) with Oscar-winning producer Simon Chinn and Emmy-winning producer Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox, uses exclusive interviews with experts and members of the family (plus exclusive looks at Chau’s secret plans, personal diaries, and video archives) to examine his motivations and understanding of what he was doing. It also reveals his own father’s grief over Chau’s life choices and his untimely death.
“So many things right off the bat, reading the news, I think, captivated us,” McBaine said of the project. “Not just because it was extraordinary that there was still a tribe that had so little contact and was still a hunter-gatherer tribe. But it also felt a bit like a throwback, but it was 2018. So it was also a story that seemed to captivate both religious and secular communities. And there are so few stories that really get these two groups debating and talking to each other. And this space is really interesting for us.
Even though the directors have a religious background, or perhaps because of it, they have always been fascinated by understanding religious people. McBaine and Moss also participated in the acclaimed documentary “The Overnighters,” about a Lutheran pastor who opens a church to help and house men seeking work in the oil fields of North Dakota.
“I think we always make films with the aim of understanding the world we live in.” » Moss said. “And there are a lot of questions and mysteries. And I think that motivation is a path to explore. And because we were not raised in the Church, and I recognize the power of faith in our world and its influence on our culture, our politics, and the individual choices people make in their lives. And I think I just want to know more about it.
One area where the documentary deserves some kudos is in giving both voices of missionary work and skeptics time to speak. They interview supporters of missionary work and its detractors to argue the pros and cons of going on a mission to convert people. This is the kind of back and forth I would have liked to see in Angel Studios’ (otherwise excellent) near-death experience pro film. “After death”. They ask powerful questions: whether missionary work involves arrogant assumptions of cultural superiority, whether people should have the right to refuse contact with others, but also whether they should not have the opportunity to hear talk about Jesus if they wish.
One of the most moving aspects of the film is featuring the voices of Jonathan and his father Patrick Chau in parallel. Looking through Jonathan’s journals during the mission and his father’s writings about his son’s mission, we see how both men viewed the situation.
Despite the obvious and admirable attempt at honest inquiry, clerics will discover obvious biases and blind spots that go unresolved and hinder exploration of the subject. Certainly much more time is given to the skeptics of missionary work than to its supporters. Although the documentary does a better job than “After Death” of featuring all the voices that disagree with each other, the film still tilts the length heavily in favor of voices skeptical of each other. missionary work. When it comes to John and his father, things are pretty balanced, but when it comes to the experts, it’s decidedly unbalanced.
For example, some of the film’s criticisms of missionary work are based on radical moral principles that most people would not apply to any other similar context. It’s easy to ask, “What right do we have to present our values to these people?” when you talk about Jesus, but what if you said the same thing by introducing your values in terms of feminism, LGBTQ rights or anti-racism? Would they also say the same thing about these topics?
Additionally, the documentary takes a very harsh stance that it is immoral to go to a country where you are not invited for a group of people who I assume are not Trump supporters. Would they take such a hard line on immigration, for example, or would they see it as more nuanced? It is not that these views cannot be reconciled, but the fact that these issues are never addressed appears to be a major blind spot that unfairly tilts the debate in favor of the anti-missionary approach.
For the filmmakers, Dan Everett was the interview that revealed the story of “The Mission” more than any other. Everett did missionary work in a tribal community for years, only to feel like his work was a failure and ultimately abandon his faith. To them, he was a man who could understand both perspectives because he had both.
“(Everett was) someone who was a lot like John as a young man,” McBaine said. “I was a missionary in the Amazon and I worked hard and I was able to talk about that experience, I had this overwhelming experience of losing faith and coming to think about one’s actions as a man older and perhaps recognize the consequences and costs of his actions and his youth. impulse. And I think a lot of this film is about giving the perspective of people who have gone through versions of the adventure that John went through, but who have grown up and are more wise and no longer see themselves as the center of the story or the hero of the story. journey, but is actually part of a much larger and more complex mosaic of our world.
Of course, most Christians who listen to Everett speak throughout the film, far from seeing him as someone who provides insight into the film, will find what they see as numerous gaps in his reasoning. Was his faith broken by being pointed out to him that he had never personally seen Jesus perform a miracle? Really? And in the same way that he and other guests psychologize the missionaries’ beliefs based on the need for meaning, Christians will likely psychologize that his ultimate rejection of God is based on frustration at having given him so much and not seeing the fruits of his labor.
Despite this, it’s clear that the filmmakers are really trying to empathize and understand how they’re not so different from the religious people they’re trying to understand. Their commitment to self-awareness leads them to see – quite admirably – that while Christians’ belief in missionary work is important to them, secular society also tells stories that shape their view of the world. They point out that the story that “we are civilized and we bring civilization to uncivilized people” was a secular Western concept that also shaped their worldview.
“As different as John is from us in his journey, we actually located points of connection,” Moss said. “Several important points of connection in the other types of stories that he approached beyond the Scriptures that influenced him so much, Tintin, Robinson Crusoe. These are stories that we shared as children, that we loved and were captivated by. And I have also shaped our worldview and the way we think about indigenous communities. National Geographic in particular as well. John read, we read, we still read.
Ultimately, “The Mission” is a courageous and well-intentioned attempt to tackle an important topic, held back by “not knowing what they don’t know” about their own prejudices, much like some missionaries of the past. Hopefully, filmmakers and audiences will use this film as a conversation starter rather than an ending. If they do, the world will be a better place.
“The Mission” is available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
