as my Thou would avoid reducing a human being to an It.20 Since I and You (or other) share the most basic humanity, “we” are equally entitled to life and dignity without discrimination. On the one hand, Buber’s observation confronts head-on the objectification of people; on the other hand, Buber emphasizes the importance of mutual respect for the sake of building healthy relationships. His idea discreetly works to alter the way we deal with human beings who are different from us.
Man speaks in many tongues—tongues of language, of art, of action—but the spirit is one. . . . In truth language does not reside in man but man stands in language and speaks out of it—so it is with all words, all spirit. . . . Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You. He is able to do that when he enters into this relation with his whole being.21
There are however questions to ask. If “relation is mutual”22 in its fundamental nature as Buber argues, how does encountering other civilizations in the so-called mission fields easily result in putting people into categories? The giver-receiver relation has proved to be an antithesis of the I-Thou concept. We form unity by giving the receiver a label of “other.” We form barriers between us and them, which allow us to claim that we are good and they are bad. These barriers are human constructs. While Buber’s I-Thou concept offers rich analytical possibilities of understanding human relationships, the binary between giver and receiver in the context of Christian mission persists. Why is the ideal form of relationships, as I-Thou, not realized to its fullest? What obstructs the disposition of I-Thou relation from happening thoroughly? I do not completely rule out Buber’s observation, for precisely Buber points out that self is where I am speaking from; a self-centric vantage point easily subjugates another I as an object. Buber’s argument in human relations is valuable, but it does not always guarantee mutuality in direct relationship with others. It does not specifically explain to us how we communicate with the other through our daily social interactions. The operations of Christian mission are far more complex than that. The problem of relational disorder in Christian mission exposes deeper issues in epistemological principles, theological orientation and praxis. We need more than metaphysical knowledge to address the ontological problem present in the civilizing mission.
It is time to stop avoiding the elephant in the room; it is time to address the recurring problem of power differential in the Christian missionary movement. That power, embodied in the form of discourses, easily distorted and falsified the value of other cultures and religions. The examination of how mission discourses function is the order of the day, in particular, how that accelerates the prioritization of the negative in binary opposites used for evangelistic purposes. The number of publications with the term “mission discourses” included in their titles is getting more accessible; however, the work that analyses—implicitly and explicitly—relations between mission discourses and the construction of otherness is scattered. In reviewing literature that focuses on the link between language and missionary work, Esme Cleall’s analysis of the discourse of difference is particularly useful. In Missionary Discourses of Difference, Cleall asserts that “difference” is an essential component in any mission discourse. The concept of difference, as Cleall explains, is “the practice of making ‘like’ from ‘unlike,’ a way of positioning things, people and concepts relationality.”23 Putting it in another way, the sustainability of the mission enterprise depends very much on how difference is articulated.
After examining missionary writings of the London Missionary Society (LMS), Cleall argues that “difference” was utilized to construct binary oppositions. For instance, the British Empire was associated with light whereas the rest of the world dark.24 The portrayal of opposing images not only necessitates the Empire’s civilizing mission, but also consolidates the creation of self-identity.25 Cleall also provided convincing evidence of the connection between the concept of difference and mission discourses by contesting the legitimization of colonial thinking in missionary activities peculiarly in the areas of home-making, sickness and racialization within the “heathen” land. Her work seriously challenges conventional mission studies that have shown an inclination to self-glorify past achievements.
Similar to Cleall’s research focus, Webb Keane questions the epistemological privilege of the church over human value. Keane’s critique of missionary activity as a form of cultural aggression has taken a new twist on the subject of Christian mission. The entire Christian missionary movement is contingent on “certain semiotic forms and ideologies.” In traversing the perimeter of missionary encounters, Keane observes that
The globalization of Protestant Christianity was facilitated by the development of certain semiotic forms and ideologies. Some of these have become inseparable from even the purportedly secular narratives of modernity. . . . The particular forms taken by colonialism’s long-term influence in many parts of the postcolonial world are surely marked, in some way, by missionaries’ moral impetus to improve the world.26
Language is not innocent. The way that specific language is used, a statement made and a story told is all calculated and manipulated. The categories of modern/backward, cultured/barbaric, and so forth are implicated and constructed for the production of cultural representations that further condones binary oppositions against the other.
Unlike Cleall, Keane pointed out the narrative of modernity has influenced the life of both converts and nonconverts. As soon as the converts inherit the legacy of the missionary culture, they will pass on the imported cultural practice to his or her own people.27 Keane insisted that new problems in the local church probably resulted from “the same fundamental problems.”28 More significantly, Keane’s observation has affirmed that identity is fluid. Because of its fluidity, identity is not singular. Under the canopy of hybridized identities, local converts could turn out to assume the role of the former missionary. Indeed over the last hundred years, Christianity has experienced variations and reversals in its demographics. Everyone is overjoyed with the profound shift of the gravity of Christianity to the South. But no one would want to see churches in the South “repeat” the missionary practice of the West in the “heathen land.” The word “repeat” suggests a continuation of unchecked mission discourses used for problematizing otherness, recruiting missionaries, securing funds and other related missionary activities. The same old strategy of condemning people other than Christian is unfortunately prevalent and it actually undergirds the mission agenda of many churches in East Asia. The weight of misrepresentation of the other takes place upon missionary encounter. Christians set up boundaries against non-Christians. The us versus them is not just a truism, but an ideology that excludes.
The Christian Missionary Movement as a Constructed Discourse
Discourses on the mission of God have been constantly misused to do harm to the other time and again. From the crusaders’ intolerance “in the name of God” to heathen conversion “for the kingdom of God,” the longstanding hostility to the other or simply xenophobia has not been removed from public discourses on the other. There is every reason to believe that the entire Christian missionary movement is something other than a sheer venture of holiness. The kind of violence done to non-Christians and people of different religious traditions not only exposes a problematic reading of the mission of God, but also creates a “reality” justifying the continual subjugation of the other. The reality of Christian mission is evidently operating within the framework of social construction.
The idea of a socially constructed reality is not new. Since the 1960s, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann have broadened the scope of sociology of religion by connecting knowledge with reality. In their propositions, human knowledge comes into existence from the interactions with social conditions. The knowledge inherited from that will construct what has been known as our “reality.” Berger and Luckmann claim, “Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality.”29 The social reality is internalized into ourselves through human activity, and the externalized human activity becomes objective that makes the reality independent from us yet allows us to share that with other individuals.30 The idea of the socially constructed reality can help us understand the operation of religion. Says
