More on Missionary John Allen Chau: "You Go on a Beach, You Throw a Fish at Some People, You Holler at Them" — This Is Missionizing?

Several days ago, I posted some reflections about the story of American Christian missionary John Allen Chau, who was killed by the Sentinelese recently after he insisted on going to North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal to missionize them, though he had been warned that doing so would place him in grave danger. As my posting noted, this story has placed religious missionizing in the spotlight of the mainstream media. It raises serious questions about how Christians understand (or should understand missionizing) — a topic that has been fruitfully discussed for some time now in theology programs in which new understandings of mission are emerging.

Killing of John Allen Chau, Controversy re: Pope Benedict's View of Jewish-Christian Relations, Claim of Franklin Graham That Trump Defends the Faith: Idea of Religious Mission Now in News

With the killing of John Allen Chau on North Sentinel Island and controversy about EPope Benedict XVI's understanding of Jewish-Christian relations in the news right now, religious missionizing is unexpectedly in the spotlight of the mainstream media. In the current conversations about Christian mission, it would be short-sighted not to recognize that these conversations are taking place against the backdrop of great fear in some quarters that Christian cultures are being overtaken by Muslim ones, and that Christianity needs to compete with Islam in a way reminiscent of the "Holy Wars" period in the past.