Missionaries
Category archives for Missionaries
Humanist Service Corps: Missionaries Without God
Posted by Greg Laden on April 8, 2013 This year Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB) is sponsoring the Pathfinders Project, a year-long volunteer journey, taking four humanist volunteers across the world to work in education, clean water, human rights and construction projects, and to evaluate programs for inclusion in a future Humanist Service Corps (HSC). The HSC will be a proud moment for all…
Utah wants to count Mormon Missionaries in census.
Posted by Greg Laden on August 18, 2009 But they can’t, because they don’t freakin’ live in Utah. But I wish they did. Hey, has anyone noticed a marked increase in these drones from Utah in South Minneapolis lately? What do they think they are goig to accomplish there? Anyway: SALT LAKE CITY – The U.S. Census Bureau has told Utah’s elected leaders…
Questions about Missionaries
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2009 As you know, there has been quite a bit of discussion about missionaries in the Congo on this blog. This is the central post pointing to everything else, and at Minnesota Atheists you’ll find a link to today’s radio show on the topic. It turns out that a number of calls and emails did come…
The good book
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2009 Whenever I sat at Joseph and Mary’s dinner table, Mary showed a great deal of interest in my work. In between her frequent forays away from the dining room table to get this or that food item, or to issue instructions to a servant, or whatever, she would sit at the table across from me…
Don’t be a Jew
Posted by Greg Laden on June 27, 2009 Joseph and Mary, and Little Joe and Mary, and Grinker and I, sat around the table where most of the dinner had been laid out. Additional bits and pieces of the dinner would be brought out as needed shortly, but now it was time to pray. So we held hands and bowed our heads, and…
Dirty poor people living in slime: Missionaries and American Idol
Posted by Greg Laden on June 26, 2009 Actual missionaries As you may have noticed, I have written a series of posts about missionaries in eastern Zaire in the 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on my own personal experiences. These seven posts represent only a small number of these experiences, but they are more or less representative. They are meant to underscore the…
Attack of the Hound of Malembi. Or, “Whose are these people, anyway?”
Posted by Greg Laden on June 26, 2009 As I’ve mentioned previously, the study site I worked in was beyond the Peace Corps Line. It was beyond the Blender Line. And it was beyond the Beer Line. Out here in this arguably very remote area, we were never short of remoteness. Every year the study site become more and more remote, as roads…
The Great White Missionary
Posted by Greg Laden on June 25, 2009 It was a rare day that I was at the Ngodingodi research station at all … usually I was off in the forest with the Efe Pygmies, up the road excavating an archaeological site. It was also rare that Grinker, my cultural anthropologist colleague, was at the research station. He was spending most of his…
Our Research Camp as a Mission Station
Posted by Greg Laden on June 24, 2009 A couple of “missionary” posts back, I intimated that we got to stay at the missionary stations while visiting various cities or en route between points in return for our work giving out medicine and such at our research camp. In truth, the arrangement was a bit more complex and subtle than this, and in…
Forget the Maginot Line, What About the Beer Line?
Posted by Greg Laden on June 23, 2009 Near the end of the earth there are lines one might not cross for fear of falling off. OK, you won’t really fall off, but you will become scared and lost.