The Missionary Kids Quotes

“American Christians need to imagine that God has never needed America, and God doesn't need them. In many ways, they have waved God off and told him to move on, even as they try to keep him on a leash.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“[W]hether voting for a wannabe authoritarian because he will defend Christian interests, quietly cheering for people storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn democracy, insisting on a rigid doctrine of theological certainty, shutting down alternate views and voices, putting mission above people, idolizing heroic calling over everyday faithfulness, or using power to maintain ownership of the gospel, American evangelicals, in their intense need for control, demonstrate a fair amount of fear.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“Most white American evangelicals conceive of themselves as a group of warriors for God, fighting against the forces of evil ‘out there’ (look at the amount of energy spent on the culture wars). There is little room in this framework for the existence of abusers ‘in here’ and certainly not for the concept of systemic abuse, which could strike at the heart of one's faith and doctrine.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“An overemphasis on control is just one feature of the ‘collective narcissism’ Verhaagen identifies in evangelical culture. Evangelicalism attracts individual narcissists looking for a compliant power base; it also promotes a group culture of narcissism through a belief system that tells adherents they are special, chosen, enlightened, and heroic.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“The media is flooded with stories illustrating the unhappy marriage between patriarchy and abuse in evangelicalism. ...

But patriarchy is just one piece of the puzzle, in some ways more of a manifestation than a driver. Patriarchy is what psychologist Dave Verhaagen, an evangelical Christian himself, identifies as a response to deep seated anxiety and fear that, according to data he has analyzed, pervades evangelical culture and leads to an overemphasis on control and unquestioned authority.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“Whatever people around the world learn from missionaries, whatever elements of American Christianity they keep, and whatever the missionaries themselves bring or take away, one thing is clear: the American church has been less affected and less enlightened by those on the receiving end of its missionary endeavor, or even by their own missionaries, then one might hope. Too often missions are less a relationship that challenges and matures the American church and more a pleasing product to consume, a beautiful reflection upon which to gaze.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“At this point, an argument can be made that American evangelicalism is global evangelicalism — that it has been so woven into the fabric of so many cultures around the world that it has become self-perpetuating, like pizza in American cuisine or eucalyptus trees in South African landscapes.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“At this point, an argument can be made that American evangelicalism is global evangelicalism dash that it has been so woven into the fabric of so many cultures around the world that it has become self-perpetuating, like pizza in American cuisine or eucalyptus trees in South African landscapes.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“The manipulation of the evangelical cultures and faith by corrupt, authoritarian political leaders is another resemblance [between American evangelicalism and evangelicalism elsewhere]. As it has been in the United States, the evangelical emphasis on personal faith and social order is a convenient device for leaders around the world who seek to duck accountability, shore up their authority, and distract from the roots of social problems.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“The more recent, extra-biblical detours of white American evangelicalism have also had an echo overseas. Vaccine skepticism and broad suspicion of science, xenophobia, openness to theocratic government, belief in Q Anon conspiracies, and even love of Donald Trump are visible in evangelical cultures around the world.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“More importantly, global evangelical theology is largely based on a doctrine of individual salvation and transformation, a message central to the American movement. … There may be an even more stark financial appeal to the prosperity gospel in some evangelical movements outside the United States. But the general promise of faith yielding success pervades American evangelicalism. The critique of wealth and the love of money — a major biblical theme, about which Jesus had much to say — is similarly deep prioritized in both American and much of global evangelical Christianity. Instead, focus on sexual morality is central, as is the tendency for that to bleed into the control and subjugation of women, hypermasculinity, and the targeting of the LGBTQ community, especially in contexts with weaker human rights protections than in the United States.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“I can't help but wonder what the United States would be like if white Christians had devoted even a tenth of the money, effort, sacrifice, and prayer toward efforts for racial equality, repair, true justice, and reconciliation as they have chasing dreams of spiritual heroism and cleansing themselves in the warm, inviting waters of other cultural contexts.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“Survey data from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows an abundance of white evangelical self-deception; PRRI found that white evangelicals rate themselves highly in having ‘warm feelings’ toward Black Americans even while they hold the most objectively racist views of any category of Americans.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“As it has evolved out of southern Christianity, evangelical theology’s emphasis on individual conversion and faith deftly dispenses with issues of race with claims that racism is an expression of personal sin. The aim of color blindness — I see people, not color — shuts down any conversation around race, the Black experience, and white evangelicals’ appallingly poor track record by implying that anyone who brings it up is perpetuating the problem and failing to forgive.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“In other words, missions allowed white evangelicals to act out a kind of racial enlightenment in a way that didn't impact their own lives.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“And more broadly, white evangelicals like to think of themselves as the most theologically and doctrinally correct of all Christians. Wading into the costly, arduous work of racial reconciliation and justice with people of color at home, who aren't letting them off the hook, might force them to reckon with the truth that the white evangelical tradition has been repeatedly and grievously wrong at every single turn on issues of race (and possibly on other matters of consequence as well).”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“White American Christians have thrown themselves into evangelism and humanitarianism among non-white people overseas, while trying to avoid the less heroic task of confronting their own responsibility for and complicity in the United States’ horrific racial past.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“In his recent book, Dave Verhagen shares research indicating that the white American evangelical subculture as it currently exists attracts a higher-than-average number of people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists have an inflated sense of self that overcompensates for and masks a fear of introspection and an unconscious shame over weakness and failure. He finds that American culture in general is highly narcissistic, but that white evangelicals supercharge it with a sense of spiritual importance, goodness, and, via a theology of certainty, rightness. American evangelicals are heavily, cosmically, existentially invested in being right, being special, and following a divine plan to save the world.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“More generally, missions have been a key part of American Christians’ since of greatness, as if Jesus didn't really reign until we came on the scene, as if our way of being Christian is the long-delayed ultimate version. This belief has created a culture so convinced of its own rightness that it has left little space for self-reflection, even when proven to be catastrophically wrong.

One is left wondering, "Whatever did the Lord do before there were American Christians?”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“You should never invite a historian to your myth celebrations; we will ruin them every single time.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“I don't think it's any coincidence that the largest, most successful missionary enterprise in the history of the world — the Southern Baptist Convention’s missions arm, the International Mission Board (IMB) — was built by a church founded to defend slavery. And Southern Baptists began this endeavor not many repentant years later but WHILE IT WAS STILL DOING THAT. I mean, those folks must have been unparalleled moral acrobats, the Mary Lou Rettons of the Hypocrisy Olympics. If you were a nineteenth-century white Southern Baptist, or even a twenty-first-century one, it was — and still is — a whole lot more satisfying to go to Africa to preach the gospel to Black people than to live out the gospel among Black people at home — people who, with good cause, are not terribly impressed with white American Christianity.”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism

“Myth is a cognitive shortcut,”
― Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism