Missionaries v. Barbie Savior

Laderman drew undeniable similarities between European, Christian settlers conquest to “save” the Native Americans/American Indians, meaning convert them from their native religions to Christianity, and the same which happened to the natives in Hawai’i. Laderman explained that in both what is the continental US now and Hawai’i, the natives “were assumed by the white invaders to be racial inferiors.” As a result, Laderman detailed that “The Americans thus set out to racially uplift the savages in their midst. This meant an effort to eradicate those cultural traditions that were a presumed mark of indigenous barbarism and replace them with Christianity” (Laderman, 11).

As Laderman continued to describe the similarities between the forced christianization of the American Indians and the native Hawaiians, I could not help but notice the similarities between these and the current popular Christian missionary trips to various countries in Africa and South America that many of my friends and acquaintances from high school have gone on. The white savior complex is just as relevant now in many missionary trips to Africa and South America as it was when American missionaries sought to “save” the natives with Christianity.

The “help” these missionaries provided was self-serving in an economic and moral sense Laderman explained. In the moral sense of self-service, the same is true for the mission trips taken by American teens to spread Christianity in distant countries. Many of those I know who have taken these trips, go to build a church, school, or teach English for a week or so. Then they return to America and feel a sense of accomplishment for their “service.” Not only are the individuals attending these trips untrained in building, or teaching, as many of them lack a high school diploma, but I feel as though they are also willfully ignoring the enormous cost of their trip and how that money could be spent in a more beneficial way for the people they are trying to help. For example, many people around the globe struggle to find clean drinking water, so contributing to the building of a well might be a more appropriate use of that money. While I think the self-serving nature of missionaries today is far less obvious (I think many of those who I know who have taken these trips are themselves unaware of the self-serving aspect of their service) than that of the missionaries described by Laderman, I think it is still a relevant aspect which drew me to this comparison.

Last year, I came across the @barbiesavior Instagram account through a friend who feels similarly to myself about the Christian mission trips taken by so many teenagers we know. While this satirical account does over-exaggerate the self-serving nature of today’s teen missionaries, I feel as though the @barbiesavior account at the same time does a nice job of manifesting the well-meaning nature of these trips.


Barbie Savior Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/barbiesavior/?hl=en