Talk:Missionary

This article seems to focus on one "direction" only

But as anybody living in the heathen parts of Europe will tell you, there are not only first world missionaries going into developing or newly industrialized countries, but there are also missionaries from the global South (particularly Latin America but also Africa) who go to Europe to convert the "heathens" there. Which makes sense, if you consider the numbers for cities like Berlin, Prague or Bratislava where "none of the above" is the biggest "religion" by over 80% of the population. Of course as missionaries usually come to a culture and country they hardly understand, their methods rely on praying on vulnerable people in the first world as well as the third. Usually they focus on people who recently had a personal tragedy or who are in a depressive episode. Unfortunately there is hardly any government in Europe with the same "anti-colonialist" rhetoric that led to missionaries being thrown out of South America. Fortunately the damage missionaries do in Europe is a lot less than the damage done in the global South... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 15:27, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Can you provide some backup that Latin American missionaries are going to Europe to convert people? -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 15:45, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Having personally met some, does not count, does it? Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 15:55, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

No. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 15:58, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Here's a reference.[1] It shouldn't be hard to find a few more. Bongolian (talk) 17:14, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Cool, perfect. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 17:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Next question: how does it relate to rationalwiki's mission? ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 17:23, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Well those that come a-missionaring int the first world are usually unabashed cranks and religious nutcases without even the excuse of doing some incidental "development aid". Isn't denouncing this kind of stuff exactly on mission? Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 17:41, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Those ones specifically though? I mean, if you want an offhand comment, an offhand comment is fine without that. It's just context. I don't actually know what kinda edit you're wanting. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 19:53, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know either, but anything from an offhand comment to a whole paragraph. Right now the article mostly bashes two or three particularly nasty groups... Avengerofthe BoN (talk) 19:59, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. Make whatever changes you think are appropriate. The best way to suss this out is for me to fix it if it's broken afterwards. Then we'll have an actual edit to argue over. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 21:07, 3 August .

I agree also; the entry comes across more like group bashing than a rational discussion of the topic. We're supposed to come across as the rational ones! Could we change it to more of a discussion of methods and good/bad of "missionary" work and use groups and incidents as citations instead of the focus? Seems to me that approach would be more effective and a dialogue I'd enjoy having. RationalFacts (talk) 19:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)