Guilty of a Lesser Love
Missionaries for Christ or Prosperity?
Sabrina Alkire
January 1, 1996
Yesterday over lunch my officemate spoke of Ethiopia, his home. "There are Christian villages, up in the rugged countryside, and churches from the third to thirteenth centuries. Communities still live in medieval times. It's very fierce, the land, but the people are strong. A man wonders whether he will get a scrap of bread today, and if he does he is grateful and thinks today has been a good day. … And where there are monks, they really believe. Nobody celebrates Easter and Christmas as joyfully as they do. … Nowadays a tourist road has been built through much of Ethiopia. Churches near to the road have gotten electricity, because the modern world has heard of them and comes rushing in. The churches there are weaker, somehow-the abbeys have fluorescent lights. Still there is something, I don't know what, that bothers me [he was thinking hard, and at this thought pressed his arms tensely into his sides and dropped his head, as if grieving. Then he brightened]. But if you have a mule, you can still go to the other places. You should go. You would like it." If we are to alleviate poverty, we must provide a way for the poor to generate income. But how do we know that an income-generation project-fly tying in Bhutan, coconut-mat weaving in South India, microenterprise in Peru-will reduce poverty and call forth love? Or will a job in a local factory instead take people away from their families, from their values and their love of God, from their commitment to the community? Will the Western generation of income and its concomitant culture expand their true freedom or offer them merely a mirage that deforms their true fulfillment? I would like to tussle with the impetus to serve and love "the poor" by providing them with ...
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