Christianity wants to show that it totally rejects abuse and all physical or mental violence, said the director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom of the World Evangelical Alliance, Thomas Schirrmacher (Bonn), on Wednesday evening at the 3rd Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelism in Cape Town.
The coming code of ethics is in favor of mission, however it will condemn all immoral forms, such as psychological pressure or material incentives for people who want to change their religion, said Schirrmacher, who is a sociologist of religion and the Spokesman for Human Rights of the Evangelical Alliance as well as founder of the International Institute for Religious Freedom (2006).
According to statements from the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and the World Evangelical Alliance, such a document will be jointly adopted. The World Evangelical Alliance claims to be a platform worldwide for more than 400 million theologically conservative Christians from more than 120 countries. The World Council of Churches, a coalition of Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox churches, represents more than 500 million Christians. The Vatican represents more than a billion people. The three organizations together represent 97 percent of all Christians.

I studied missiology in grad school at Wheaton College, which is the epitome of the wealthy, white, Western church world. I know the missionary horror stories – the manipulation, the psychological violence, and the utterly un-Christian tactics used to get people to convert. I’ve explored the statistics regarding the high percentages of people with mental disorders who go into mission work. Regardless of the number of great people doing missions, there are also a disturbingly high number of seriously messed up people out there serving as official representatives of Christianity and inflicting serious harm around the world. For a good number of them the harm is justified if the net result is a few more people saved. And for even more of them the mental issues are overlooked because either “the workers are few (and the harvest plentiful) or because of an evangelical belief that psychology is liberal/satanic.

Needless to say, even as a sympathetic insider who has worked within the Christian world much of her adult life and who nearly ended up on the mission field herself, I am well aware of a need for a code of conduct like this. My real question is if establishing such a code would have any effect whatsoever.

The cynical side of me thinks that a code like this would be similar to codes created by most clothing manufacturers. They create these great documents about caring about human rights and high standards for how their workers are treated so that they can show concerned activists their policies, but then they never bother translating these codes into the languages spoken at their factorie. The ideals of the boardroom never actually reach the very workers they claim to protect. I have to wonder if a code of conduct like this would be ratified by these umbrella organizations but never actually reach the in the trenches folks who are expected to abide by it.

Similarly I wonder what the response of many of the very old-school evangelical missions organizations who still operate out of a neo-colonial mindset will be to something that may impede their efforts. I’ve been at enough conferences and training classes on missions to know that something like this can easily be dismissed as a tool of Satan meant to silence the advancement of Christ. Persecution (i.e. people being offended by you) is seen as a badge of honor for many missionaries. There is little conception that the faith they present and how they present it can be toxic. Calling people to love actual people and not just see them as project that must get saved is just not the way things are done.

Yet at the same time there can be power in the symbolic act of creating something like this. I think of how often people express the desire that they wish the Vatican would just take a strong stance against priests who molest children. While such a statement might not change what the priests do, it helps people outside the church see that the church doesn’t support the evil done by its supposed representatives. Missionary work has a sordid history and was for too long the bedfellow of colonialism and racism. Symbolically standing against doing evil in the name of Christ (while perhaps not changing actual practice) will help send the message that the church doesn’t monolithically support immoral manipulation and coercion.

I’m interested to see what becomes of this discussion for a code of conduct, and even more interested to see what impact (if any) it has on the world.

The Parable of the Good Princess

There once was a beautiful Princess. All over the Kingdom the people proclaimed that never before had there ever been a sweeter child. Her smile warmed even the coldest hearts and her laughter had an infectious quality. Every day her mother and father, the king and queen, would instruct her on what the qualities of a good princess were. Soon she knew these qualities by heart. Good Princesses are kind – they always extend grace to the hurting. Good Princesses are strong –they lead the Kingdom into times of peace and plenty. Good Princesses are fair – directing their people with justice. And Good Princesses are courageous – they do not fear making the hard choices to protect the Kingdom.

And so our young princess grew up hearing these qualities repeated to her day after day and she dreamed of the day when she would live up to these hopes and dreams of her parents. She wanted nothing more than to become a good princess and would talk with whoever would listen about what she would do as a good princess. Her parents were proud of her ambition, and everyone commented that yes, she would be the best princess there ever was.

As the years went on, her desire to be a good princess stayed strong. Princes from neighboring Kingdoms would come to ask her hand in marriage, but she would politely turn them down, saying she was still preparing to be the best princess she could be. "Someday my prince will come," she would laugh, "but first I must become a good princess." They would smile and ride away, planning to return in a years time.

As she grew even older, the townspeople who she had charmed with her smiles and laughter remembered her commitment to be a kind and fair princess. They would travel from far away to bring their troubles to her, knowing that a good princess could help them. But as they told her of their plights, she would look at them sadly and apologize, saying, "I’m sorry, I would love to help you, but first I must become a good Princess since those are the sorts of things good Princesses do.” And the townspeople would walk away sad and a bit confused. Soon they stopped coming at all.

As her parents, the King and Queen grew old and infirm, more and more of the official decisions of the Kingdom were presented to the Princess to consider. What treaty to sign with a neighboring kingdom? Where to dig new wells or put in new dams? What merchants were permitted to sell their wares within the walls of the city? But with each decision, the Princess deferred her answer saying, "I wish I knew how to help you, I’m sure I will once I’m a good Princess, but for right now I can’t do anything for you." And she would walk away repeating to herself the qualities of a good Princess – "good princesses are kind, they are strong, they are fair, they are courageous. Someday, I will be a good Princess."

With the death of her parents, many expected her to live up to her lifelong training of being a good princess and bless the kingdom not just with her beauty and laughter, but with her leadership. But on the day of her coronation as Queen, she handed back the crown, saying only a good Princess can become a Queen, and she hoped that one day she would be honored and ready to be able to accept such a role.

Inevitably, the Kingdom started to unravel. Petty disputes became bloody conflicts. Crops dried up and food was scarce
because of lack of available water. Merchants took their goods into other Kingdoms. Raiding parties disregarded long ignored treaties as they encroached upon her borders. The poor starved without a kind hand extending them care. And what was once a Kingdom filled with joy, peace, and prosperity became a home of the desperate trying to simply make it through the day. But the Princess barely noticed so intent was she on becoming a good princess. Nor did she notice when the suitors stopped coming, or the treaties stopped being offered. She didn’t notice that her smile no longer warmed the hearts of her people or her laugh spread joy. She just wanted to be a good Princess.

It was as an old woman on her deathbed, that she finally looked at the small group of castle staff gathered around her that she broke down in tears. “All I wanted my whole life was just to be a good Princess,” she cried, “I knew I could be the best Princess there ever was, but now it’s too late, I will never be a good princess.” No one knew what to say to her, and just let her cry and then breathe her last breath. Upon her death, they all just sighed and quietly left the room wishing that she had actually been a good princess.