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If anti-Americanism was running high in Latin America, disdain for missionaries had soared. Missionaries, one leader said, were Yankee imperialists, "an affront to the indigenous communities and to our national sovereignty." Rumors flew that Bible translators living among remote people groups were mining national resources and spying for the CIA, all under the guise of doing good things for the nation's tribal peoples.

Finally came an ultimatum: The evangelical mission that sends linguists to work among indigenous peoples must leave the country.

But in this case, the leader wasn't Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who last week claimed New Tribes Mission (NTM) had committed such abuses and announced his intent to expel them.

The year was 1981. In neighboring Colombia, the Marxist M-19 rebel group cited these among other "reasons" and demanded the exit from Colombia of a Bible translation group unrelated to NTM, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).

In contrast to the current situation in Venezuela, the M-19 kidnapped SIL translator Chet Bitterman. Six weeks later, Bitterman's body was found draped in one of the guerrilla group's banners in a bus in a parking lot south of Bogota.

On October 12, Chavez spoke at an indigenous gathering marking Columbus Day, which Chavez has renamed "Day of Indigenous Resistance." At the gathering, he demanded that NTM missionaries leave the country, citing a roster of reasons, many of which were similar or identical to the M-19's demands of SIL 24 years ago. The country has also made it difficult for other mission agencies to gain access to the country. In response, the Mormon church has moved its Venezuela missionaries elsewhere.

Both SIL and NTM are evangelical frontier mission groups that translate Scripture into indigenous languages. Both advance literacy among these cultures, and carry out community development, health, and educational projects. Both groups' work is spiritual and developmental, not political. And though SIL has never worked in Venezuela, some news reports on the current NTM crisis have invoked SIL's name, claiming that the two groups are linked and that both have dark, hidden agendas.

Myths about frontier mission groups abound. Among some circles, urban legends about these groups never quite fall out of circulation, every so often resurrecting and recycling with different lives. But some groups and individuals seize on the accusations and view the missionaries with suspicion.

But why?

False accusations
Arthur Lightbody, spokesman for Wycliffe Bible Translators' technical support arm, JAARS, calls it guilt by association. "They see us there, and they see people there with development of resources and think we must be linked," Lightbody said. "It's conjecture because we're working in the same place.

"People don't get why we're there. They don't understand our motivation."

That motivation is fulfilling the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. To that end, SIL'scalling is to provide Scriptures in the heart languages of people groups that don't have a translation of the Bible.

Anthropologists and others, however, have long resented missionaries' presence among tribal peoples. That's at least in part because of the myth of the noble savage, a worldview popularized by the French philosopher Rousseau. Man, Rousseau held, is good by nature and is only corrupted by civilization and society. It follows, then, that missionaries corrupt the tribal people, ruining their blissful, peaceful, happy lives with notions such as the sinfulness of man and the need for a Savior.

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October (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49