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Try as they might to blend with the local population and to adapt the Christian message to their ways, the visitors inevitably bring Western values with them. For instance, missionaries in Asia expect newly baptized Christians to take personal blame for their actions; that is not an easy lesson for people raised in neo-Confucian societies that emphasize group responsibility. New Christians, whose cultures have taught them to mask emotions or express them indirectly, have difficulty accepting the evangelical emphasis on a public affirmation of faith.
The new ways and the old often mix badly. The faith of some recently established congregations in rural Thailand tends to waver if prayers go unanswered. At the Ban Ti Christian Church north of Lamphun, a large blackboard hangs on the wall behind the pulpit. Prayers for rain, a speedy harvest and painless cures for various maladies are recorded every Sunday, then checked off the following week against the results.
This kind of pragmatic approach to Christianity does not surprise Rubem Alvez, one of Brazil's leading liberal Protestant thinkers. He argues that missionaries from the West, and especially from the U.S., bring with them an implicit promise: "Be converted to Protestantism, and you will become like the affluent nations of the world."
Among non-Christians, the most serious criticism of missionaries is that, just as in the past, they are changing religious ways of life for whole societies. Says Saeng Channgarm, a professor at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, a Buddhist and a respected analyst of his society: "Even though we are very much Westernized nowadays, our Buddhist culture keeps us uniquely Thai. When a Thai becomes Christian, the country loses a unit of its spiritual power. If the entire country became Christian, it would no longer be Thailand."
In their defense, conservative Protestants acknowledge they are trying to win converts, but say they are simply offering a choice, and point out that those who change their religions do so freely and happily. The Morses, for example, have never put pressure to convert on students who stay at their hostel in Chiang Mai. "By the time they leave," says young Bob Morse, "they know what the Bible says and can make their own decision."
Sweeping the debate over conversions aside, the Rev. Willie Cilliers, secretary for missions of the black Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, argues that the true role of the missionary is simply to reach out to the poor, in imitation of Jesus. Says he: "We have a message to proclaim: that from a Christian perspective it is the weak in society who have the first priority. That is what the Christian message is about—reaching out to the weak."
It is 4:30 a.m. in Cairo when Sister Emmanuelle, 74, awakens in her hut with its dirt floor and gaping hole in the roof. After washing in a bucket, she sets out on a two-mile walk to attend Mass at the nearest church. She is clad in a white smock and a necklace