[Warning: This topic covers a variety of darker themes involving oppression and abuse]
In November 2018, 26-year-old American evangelical missionary John Allen Chau traveled to North Sentinel Island in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands with the intention to 'declare Jesus' to the Sentinelese. He knew that the Sentinelese were among the world's most isolated Indigenous peoples. He knew that Indian law prohibited outsiders from entering the island. He knew that previous attempts at contact had been met with hostility. He knew that the Sentinelese had repeatedly demonstrated that they did not want outsiders approaching them.
He went anyway.
It was this choice which cost John Allen Chau his life, purportedly struck by a volley of arrows on or around November 16th, 2018.
Christian apologists have tried to paint this as a story about a brave missionary sacrificing himself to bring Christianity to people who had never heard the Gospel.
What it actually is, is a story about a man who placed his own religious convictions above the expressed wishes, legal protections, physical safety, and cultural autonomy of another people, and who potentially exposed an extraordinarily vulnerable population to diseases against which they might have little or no immunity.
One sneeze, and an entire tribe could have been erased. Of course, to the mind of the most devout Christians, such a cost would be worth it, as their 'immortal souls' require 'saving' by hearing the 'good word.' It's this particular expression of the religion where you see its most virulent anti-life qualities on show. In their minds, wiping out every last family on the island is outweighed by telling them about Jesus. As Chau himself wrote:
"This is not a pointless thing. The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand and I can't wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language, as Revelations 7:9-10 states."
Now, for those not aware, North Sentinel Island and its surrounding waters form a protected tribal reserve under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956. Entry without authorization is illegal for Indians and foreigners alike; the Indian government maintains an "eyes-on, hands-off" policy precisely to shield the Sentinelese--a small hunter-gatherer group estimated at perhaps 50–150 people--from outsiders.
Chau knowingly violated this. He entered on a tourist visa while concealing his true purpose, bribed fishermen (who were later arrested and charged), and approached under darkness to evade patrols. Authorities correctly treated him as an illegal intruder, not a tourist.
Again, the most immediate and severe failing was the existential biological risk Chau posed. Isolated populations like the Sentinelese lack immunity to common pathogens (influenza, measles, the common cold, and others). Historical contact with other Andaman groups--the Great Andamanese, Onge, and Jarawa--produced sharp population collapses through introduced disease, land pressure, and social disruption.
Chau also ignored the Sentinelese's unambiguous rejection of contact. The tribe has a long, consistent record of repelling outsiders with arrows and hostility, even famously firing arrows at a helicopter passing over in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. During Chau's own visits, they shouted, chased him, and on one occasion shot an arrow that pierced his waterproof Bible. These were not ambiguous cultural misunderstandings, but rather repeated, forceful signals to leave. He kept returning regardless.
Respect for autonomy and consent is foundational: a people who have chosen isolation for generations, and who actively defend it, have the right to be left alone. Framing their island as "Satan's last stronghold" and their lives as spiritual darkness requiring his intervention is classic cultural Christian imperialism. It's recasting another society's existence as a problem to be solved by the spreading of the Gospel.
His methods compounded the ethical failures. He went alone, without language skills adequate for meaningful communication, relying on shouting phrases like "My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you" and offering fish, a soccer ball, scissors, and safety pins.
To repeat: Chau was not only risking his own life. He was introducing risk to an entire population that had not consented to it, and had plainly done everything in their power to make it clear he was not welcome. Who gave Chau the authority to decide that the Sentinelese needed Christianity badly enough to justify violating their wishes?
Indigenous peoples were frequently described as primitive, heathen, pagan, savage, lost or spiritually deficient. Their existing religions were treated as obstacles to be overcome rather than belief systems belonging to autonomous communities. So very little is known about these people. In terms of their culture or beliefs, it's practically nothing. And yet, to Christians like Chau, that's enough to determine these people 'Satanic' and in need of 'saving'.
Chau's ultimate fate, in their mind, only proved their point. The evil heathens had made a martyr out of someone simply trying to spread Christianity. View it through the eyes of the Sentinelese however. A strange man arrives on your island, does not leave when gestured to, and presents an unknown threat to your family and world.
All Nations, the evangelical organization that trained Chau, indeed described him as just that: a martyr. The "privilege of sharing the gospel has often involved great cost", Dr Mary Ho, the organization's leader, said in a statement. "We pray that John's sacrificial efforts will bear eternal fruit in due season."
Further, some of his family appeared to have been members of the Assemblies of God, an international Pentecostal church whose members sometimes speak in tongues, so it's not exactly a stretch of the imagination to wonder how Chau ended up with this mindset. Dr Patrick Chau, his father--and a man with Confucian sympathies--blamed evangelicals' "extreme Christianity" for pushing his child to what he described as a "not unexpected end", and he referred with alleged bitterness to the Jesus' "Great Commission", his supposed command that Christians spread the gospel to all peoples of the world.
Most Zevists are acutely aware of the damage this mentality has done to the ancient world. Perhaps less are aware of the continued damage still perpetuated in the modern world. John Allen Chau is hardly an isolated incident, which is precisely the focus of this article.
Several well-documented historical and modern cases involve Christian missionaries in actions widely regarded as harmful, unethical, or abusive. These often intersected with colonialism, cultural suppression, forced assimilation, sexual abuse, and other forms of exploitation.
I will provide but a few.
Canadian and U.S. Residential/Boarding Schools
According to the account of one Katherine Mendez (who began attending the school in 1966) Jesuit priest John J. Morse would summon her to his office under the pretense of discipline. She said that he forced her to sit on his lap, spanked her and sexually assaulted her. She also described being threatened with consequences if she disclosed what was happening.
Morse would allegedly invite groups of girls to his office for what were presented as pleasant social occasions. He allegedly provided them with hot chocolate, candy and television, and would apparently then place individual girls on his lap and sexually abuse them.
Former students came to refer to these occasions as "movie nights."
The similarities between survivors' accounts became particularly significant to the lawyers investigating the school. They were not simply recounting vaguely similar memories decades later; they described a recurring pattern involving the same priest, the same office and substantially similar methods of gaining access to children.
The lawyers ultimately gathered evidence indicating that Morse had abused approximately 60 boys and girls between the ages of five and fifteen. They also identified approximately a dozen other priests at St. Mary's who were accused of abusing children from the 1940s into the 1970s.
The Post's analysis found that abuse at St. Mary's extended for 26 consecutive years beginning in 1948.
Another recurring theme is the difficulty survivors faced in reporting what happened to them. The children were dealing with adults who possessed enormous authority over them. Priests and nuns were not simply teachers or employees. They were religious figures who were frequently presented as moral and spiritual authorities. Several survivors therefore described an additional psychological barrier: the possibility that reporting a priest could effectively mean accusing someone whom they had been taught to regard as a representative of God. One lawyer involved in the St. Mary's cases described the situation as being almost equivalent, from the child's perspective, to accusing God himself.
One survivor, Matthew War Bonnet, described being sent to St. Francis Indian Mission School in South Dakota when he was six. He recalled severe physical punishment and displayed replicas of instruments used to beat children. He described one rope as the "Jesus rope." This is not someone who was flogged in the ancient past. This is someone still alive today as of the time of writing.
New Tribes Mission (now Ethnos360) Abuses
New Tribes Mission (NTM), founded in the United States in 1942 and later renamed Ethnos360, built its identity around an uncompromising missionary ambition: to bring evangelical Christianity to some of the world's most isolated Indigenous peoples. Its early public rhetoric emphasized sacrifice, danger and determination, declaring that missionaries would "hazard our lives" until they had reached the "last tribe." Over the following decades, NTM established missions and schools across Latin America, Africa and Asia, including communities that had little previous contact with outsiders, much akin to the Sentinelese.
The missionary enterprise, however, has also left a deeply troubling record. Accounts from former missionary children describe sexual abuse occurring inside NTM's boarding-school system, followed by institutional failures and efforts to keep allegations quiet. At the same time, critics of NTM's work among Indigenous peoples have documented cases in which missionary activity exposed isolated communities to deadly diseases, disrupted traditional social structures, facilitated forced contact and settlement, and treated Indigenous religions and cultures as obstacles to be eradicated rather than traditions to be respected. Taken together, these accounts depict an organization in which an intense commitment to evangelization could take precedence over the safety, autonomy and cultural survival of the people it claimed to serve.
One of the central issues raised by NBC News (article linked below) concerns the children of NTM missionaries themselves. Because missionary parents could spend extended periods working in remote areas, their children were frequently placed in NTM boarding schools. Facilities existed in countries including the Philippines, Senegal and Brazil, where children were supervised by other missionaries serving as "dorm parents." Their days were structured around the religious life of the mission: evening Bible readings, prayers and devotional sessions were part of the routine before children were sent to bed.
For some children, these schools were not safe environments. NBC News interviewed more than half a dozen former students who said they had been sexually abused by NTM staff members during the 1980s and 1990s. Five women eventually appeared publicly on NBC's Today program in 2019 to describe what they had experienced. Several said they were only children when the abuse began, including girls as young as six.
At the Fanda boarding school in Senegal, former students described abuse by missionary David Brooks. Bonnie Cheshire said the abuse began when she was seven years old and continued for approximately two years. Kari Mikitson said Brooks began abusing her when she was eight and continued for about a year. According to the survivors, the abuse frequently took place at night, when children were in their beds and vulnerable. Brooks allegedly presented the encounters as secrets that the children were not supposed to reveal.
A similar pattern was described at NTM's Aritao boarding school in the Philippines. Joy Drake said that she was nine when a dorm father began touching her at night. Another former student described a staff member watching girls undress. Kelly Emory provided an especially disturbing account, alleging that her father, Les Emory, sexually abused her beginning when she was six and that she was forced to remain in the same room while he abused other girls. She later described the experience as a form of "hell" that continued to affect her into adulthood.
The circumstances of the schools made children especially dependent upon the adults responsible for them. Their parents were often physically absent because of missionary work, while the dorm parents were simultaneously their guardians, religious authorities and members of the same tightly knit missionary community. That concentration of authority created an environment in which an abusive adult could exploit the child's dependence while presenting himself as a trusted Christian caretaker. NBC's reporting also cited child-abuse specialist Boz Tchividjian, who argued that mission organizations can be particularly attractive environments for sexual offenders because they may involve vulnerable populations, staff shortages and limited external accountability.
The allegations were not limited to individual acts of abuse. The survivors interviewed by NBC described a broader culture in which children were discouraged from speaking openly about anything that might damage the mission or its religious work.
Mikitson described the culture succinctly: children had been taught not to gossip and not to speak about things that did not "edify." In practice, survivors said, that mentality made it extremely difficult for abused children to report what was happening. Some feared that speaking out would damage their parents' missionary careers. Others were told that exposing abuse could result in missionaries being imprisoned overseas or could interfere with the conversion of Indigenous people whose souls, they had been taught, depended upon the mission's continued presence.
Kelly Emory's account illustrates the consequences. After years of alleged abuse, she finally disclosed what had happened when she was fifteen and experiencing serious emotional distress. According to her account, NTM leaders investigated her allegations but told her she had a responsibility to protect her family and her father. Her family was subsequently removed from the Philippines and sent to Missouri for counseling. The allegations were therefore treated within the mission rather than immediately becoming a matter for secular law enforcement.
The NBC investigation also uncovered a 1992 NTM field-committee policy concerning child sexual abuse. According to the document obtained by investigators, different types of sexual misconduct were treated differently, and the policy explicitly stated that abuse occurring in the field did not necessarily have to be reported to Senegalese or American authorities. Instead, the mission was to investigate the matter itself, partly because failing to do so could be damaging to the organization. The policy also contemplated the possibility that certain offenders could eventually be considered for ministry again.
Because much of the alleged abuse occurred overseas and was not reported to authorities at the time, many of the accused men were never criminally prosecuted. NBC News found that accused perpetrators were living freely in the United States decades after the alleged abuse. One of them was living in Georgia and had even preached sermons at a local church.
The abuse of missionary children is only one part of the controversy surrounding NTM. Survival International places it within a much broader history of missionary intervention among Indigenous peoples.
NTM's fundamental goal was not simply to provide education, medicine or humanitarian assistance. Evangelization was at the center of its mission. Survival International points to the organization's own historic rhetoric, which celebrated reaching peoples regardless of how remote they were. In practice, that emphasis sometimes brought missionaries into direct conflict with Indigenous autonomy, particularly where people had chosen to remain isolated from outsiders.
This has been especially controversial in the Amazon. Survival International argues that isolated peoples face extraordinary risks from outside contact because they--as made apparent earlier--may lack immunity to diseases common elsewhere. The organization cites the example of the Yanomami, where a measles outbreak followed the arrival of an NTM missionary's daughter at a mission camp in 1967. Survival reports that 165 Yanomami became infected and 17 died. It also points to the Zo'é of northern Brazil, where an NTM contact in the late 1980s was followed by outbreaks of flu and malaria; Survival states that approximately one-quarter of the Zo'é population died from disease during the relevant period.
Survival International also alleges that NTM missionaries have contributed to the disruption of Indigenous political and social structures. Indigenous leaders quoted by the organization describe missionaries as undermining traditional customs, discouraging Indigenous religious practices and encouraging younger people to regard aspects of their own culture as sinful or demonic. The accusations are particularly serious because they concern not merely individual prejudice but a missionary system whose declared objective was to replace Indigenous religious beliefs with evangelical Christianity.
Among the most serious accusations in Survival International's account concern the Ayoreo people of Paraguay. Survival describes NTM missionaries as having helped organize "manhunts" in 1979 and 1986 aimed at locating and forcibly contacting uncontacted Ayoreo groups. The encounters resulted in deaths, while many others reportedly died later from diseases introduced through contact.
The conditions surrounding some of these contacts were described in horrifying terms by observers. Writer Norman Lewis visited an NTM camp for recently contacted Aché people in 1975 and described the experience as among the most disturbing of his life, recounting severely malnourished people, untreated injuries and children left in appalling conditions. A later account from the late 1970s similarly described Ayoreo survivors of a manhunt suffering from injuries and illness at an NTM base. One man captured during a manhunt, Eode, reportedly died only days after reaching the mission base.
The recklessness of this approach came to a boiling point in Brazil, where government policy for decades has generally emphasized protecting isolated peoples by avoiding deliberate contact. Survival International reports that NTM leadership opposed this approach and advocated a policy under which missionaries should be able to approach isolated communities. The organization also reports that NTM-linked missionary Ricardo Lopes Dias previously worked in the Javari Valley, an area containing the world's largest concentration of uncontacted Indigenous peoples, and later became involved in Brazil's governmental apparatus dealing with isolated tribes. His appointment generated substantial opposition from Indigenous organizations and human-rights campaigners.
Another recurring theme in Survival International's account is the language NTM and some of its missionaries used when describing Indigenous cultures.
Historic NTM publications and statements are cited as describing Indigenous peoples in explicitly derogatory terms and portraying their religions as manifestations of Satanic influence. Survival International reports that missionaries sometimes characterized Indigenous peoples as "savages" and represented traditional spiritual practices as witchcraft or devil worship.
Such beliefs were not merely abstract theological propositions. They had practical consequences. If an Indigenous religion was understood not as a legitimate worldview but as evidence of demonic influence, then replacing it with Christianity could be regarded as an act of rescue rather than cultural destruction. Traditional ceremonies, medicines, intoxicants, hunting customs or systems of social organization could consequently be treated as sinful practices that needed to disappear, never mind the fact that some of these customs were simply the realities of living off the land.
This worldview can create a particularly dangerous form of paternalism. Missionaries may sincerely believe that they are improving Indigenous lives while simultaneously dismissing Indigenous peoples' own understanding of what constitutes a good life. The more absolute the missionary's certainty becomes, the easier it is for consent to become secondary: conversion is no longer something a community must freely choose but a goal the missionary feels morally obligated to achieve.
Honoré Laval in French Polynesia
Honoré Laval (1808–1880), a French Picpus missionary, played a central role in the rapid Christianization of the Mangareva (Gambier Islands) people starting in 1834. Working with François Caret (a notable French Catholic Priest part of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary) and others, he oversaw mass conversions, the systematic dismantling of traditional religious and cultural practices, and the establishment of a mission-dominated theocratic order that lasted until his removal in 1871.
The Gambier Islands, in southeastern French Polynesia, had a hierarchical Polynesian society with marae (sacred temple platforms), wooden idols, traditional religious specialists, oral genealogies, tattoos, dances, music, and customary social and sexual practices. Earlier European contacts (including explorers and traders) had already introduced diseases and some disruption. When Laval and Caret arrived in August 1834 (initially on Akamaru and Aukena), the population was estimated in the range of roughly 1,000–several thousand, with accounts varying.
Conversion accelerated after the missionaries gained influence with key figures, including the high chief/king Maputeoa (baptized Gregory/Gregorio in 1836, along with many others) and his uncle Matua. Traditional sites and objects were targeted: marae were dismantled or repurposed, stone images of gods were shattered, and wooden idols and cult objects were burned--Laval himself reported destroying dozens in a single day. Traditional temples were replaced by Christian churches and shrines.
Under Laval's growing authority, a theocratic system emerged. Missionaries, in alliance with converted chiefs, forcibly directed spiritual, social, moral, and economic life. A strict moral code was enforced via native police or agents: traditional dress was replaced by modest European-style clothing; tattoos, dances, music, flowers in the hair, certain festivals, and pre-Christian oral performances were all prohibited or heavily restricted; Christian marriage was imposed; and infractions could bring fines, imprisonment, or other punishments. Forced labor supported a massive building campaign of more than 100 coral-and-stone Christian religious buildings. It was the mind of the Christians of the era that the Pagan Polynesians were lazy idle enjoyers of their island paradises, and thus must be forced to adhere to a work ethic put upon them by the mission.
Contemporary and later accounts describe this as a paternalistic or dictatorial theocracy comparable to Jesuit despots elsewhere. Laval referred to the islanders as his "children" and exercised de facto temporal as well as spiritual power, particularly after Maputeoa's death in 1857 when the queen-regent remained under strong mission influence. Critics (traders, some French officials, and pamphlets such as those linked to Louis Jacolliot) accused the regime of oppression, monopoly control of resources, harsh enforcement, and contributing to demographic collapse.
Population indeed fell sharply over the decades--variously estimated from several thousand to but a few hundred by the later 19th century--attributed to introduced diseases (tuberculosis and others), forced labor and lifestyle changes, unaccustomed clothing and stone housing, disruptions to traditional practices, emigration, and possible despair or sterility in monastic institutions. Once where the native women would swim freely in the sea dressed as minimally as they always had, it was Laval's intention that they instead aimlessly mill about the convents dressed as nuns, given he saw women as especially vulnerable to the lewd temptations of the Devil.
Laval's religious tyranny finally came to an end in 1871, after a traveling merchant conducting business in the islands was horrified by the conditions he encountered. He secretly sent word to the governor in Tahiti, reporting the isolated and authoritarian regime maintained by the priest. A special French envoy was subsequently dispatched to Mangareva and liberated the islanders. According to the account, two young native boys emerged from Laval's overcrowded prison, claiming that they had been imprisoned on the priest's orders for the supposed offense of giggling during Mass.
Undoubtedly, it was the situation in Polynesia large which Mark Twain derided on his lecture tour 1869, famously noting that the people of the Sandwich Islands were 'civilized' from 400,000 down to 50,000, with him remarking with dark humor that "it is proposed to send a few more missionaries and finish them".
If you are well-familiarized with our Liturgical terms, you'll recognize many of the Pathologies among these stories. Birburim. Sahiburah. Varvarim. Epistemot. Again, these are not institutions from the far flung ancient world, but organizations that still exist today in the modern one. The point here, was ultimately to demonstrate the fact that the work of the Yehuborim continues as it always had. The perception we are given of Christianity in the modern world is heavily sanitized, but in the third world, recent history and the present still bear the mark of atrocities wrought by the Missionaries claiming they are a great force of salvation.
"To my mind the Christian missionary is easily the most criminal criminal that exists on the planet, & the lowest down in the scale of malefactors." - Mark Twain
Sources:
Man killed on remote Indian island tried to 'declare Jesus' to tribe - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/22/john-allen-chau-man-killed-by-tribe-north-sentinel-island-declare-jesus
The life and death of John Chau, the man who tried to convert his killers - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/03/john-chau-christian-missionary-death-sentinelese
Inside the Story of John Allen Chau's Ill-Fated Trip to a Remote Island - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/inside-story-john-allen-chaus-ill-fated-trip-remote-island-180970971/
Native American children endured years of sexual abuse at boarding schools - https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/sexual-abuse-native-american-boarding-schools/
Ungodly abuse: The lasting torment of the New Tribes missionary kids - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/religion/ungodly-abuse-lasting-torment-new-tribes-missionary-kids-n967191
Hawai'i (Mark Twain's Time in Hawai'i) https://marktwainstudies.com/hawaii-mark-twains-time-in-hawaii/
Hodeé, Paul. "Catholic Influence in the Islands", Tahiti 1834-1984
Clifford Gessler, The Leaning Wind, 1943