Mr. Dawson makes an important point with some unfortunately defective thinking. We agree that since the 1960s Presbyterians have preferred “fraternal worker” to “missionary.” Lest we continue to misunderstand the history he cites, we quote him: Presbyterians are far more influenced in their thinking about missionaries by James Michener’s Hawaii and Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible than they are by mission education provided by the PC(USA). … Maybe we should listen to international partners such as world-renowned missiologist Lamin Sanneh who 20 years ago labeled this lack of nerve “the western missionary guilt complex.” Have missionaries been paternalistic? … Yes (with emphasis)… . (emphasis added). Dawson then tells us that they only did what was culturally right at that time. … He claims that Robert D. Woodberry … considers this a “knee-jerk, emotional, negative reaction to ‘missionary’ ” and calls it “ill-founded.” This strikes me as a reactionary evaluation of our recent past as if we made a big mistake in the 1960s change in terminology. I do not agree! That was an insightful and timely decision in our church to claim the new understandings emerging even then. The new world recognized in 1956 at a meeting in Lake Mohonk, N.Y., that in our western colonial period we did behave paternalistically often. Mr. Dawson agrees, but draws no inference from this fact. The change in name was a public recognition that contributed to the education of Presbyterians about the new age we were rapidly entering. Let us not forget that we had only left American isolationism behind a few years before, and there were well-financed forces working hard in our church to drag us back into that past. Dawson tells us that after 50 years “some of the paradigms to which we cling from that era have not worn well.” I suggest that what has not worn well is the old paradigm that we replaced in 1956 and the years following. We now live in the world which the 1956 conference recognized had already emerged. A new generation of human beings in our mission fields living in a new world needed to be affirmed in their newly emerging humanity. It is, nonetheless, entirely acceptable to rejuvenate the old word “missionary” in 2008. … But in reclaiming this good word, we must not be trapped into the old mode of criticism of those before us who moved us forward by their courageous actions in our behalf. Today, thank God, we have the gift of looking at the past with appreciation for its contributions to our culture and do not any longer find it necessary to throw stones at the object of our present critique. It is surely to be welcomed in the Christian community that interest in “sending” is renewed. We need to expand our communication with communities around the world some of whom come to share our faith. And we should be eternally grateful for those in our recent past who saw our previous errors and took strong and effective steps to correct our approach to “sending.” And we should, though I see no hint of recognition in Mr. Dawson’s discussion, we should be sending missionaries with a much examined and critiqued role in their assignments. … The word “missionary” was indeed offensive fifty years ago. It was clearly and unequivocally paternalistic. It reflected the recent past colonial period. We need not be defensive either about that past — it is past — but we must be careful not to slip back into discredited patterns of mission which with use of the honored language we once held high. … John Kuckuk, H.R. Columbus, Ohio
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