This was first posted in November 2007, but has been updated several times.

I don’t know how many American missionaries there are, or where they all are, but there are a lot of them. I’ve previously posted a story about the Joshua Project:

Our Mission … to highlight the people groups of the world that have the least Christian presence in their midst and to encourage pioneer church-planting among every ethnic people group.

I wrote “Mad missionaries” because they do seem to suffer from a collective psychosis.They’re programmed to go and poke their interfering evangelical noses into communities that “have the least Christian presence”, regardless of the existing religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs, of the people involved. Their unshakeable belief that they’re doing God’s will is not just misguided, it’s very destructive.

Suffolk Humanist Nathan Nelson was infuriated by the activities of missionaries in Cambodia, where most people are Buddhists. The young people at the centre where he didvoluntary work must have been bewildered by the books they were given by an American organisation:

The dictionary in the back of the booklet was highly amusing, however. A is for Abraham. B is for Baptism. C is for Commandment. I particularly liked H for Herod,K for King David, and S for Sin. Useful, relevant English for the modern world.

Some evangelicals in Cambodia and elsewhere behave like the do-gooders (or should that be do-Goders?) who expected the poor and destitute to sing hymns for their supper in 19th century British soup kitchens. They ask the Khmers to pray in exchange for food and healthcare – not Christian charity, just bribery.

One of the biggest of these organisations is <a href=“http://www.samaritans-p