Missionary Kids Know the Holes In American Evangelicalism

When Holly Berkley Fletcher was a child, she once heard her missionary parents “literally introduced as ‘Super Christians.’” In a white American evangelical culture that idolizes missionaries in this way, how do we speak honestly about the harm missions too often leave in their wake? In Fletcher’s new book The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism (Broadleaf Books), missionaries’ grown children offer a complex and fascinating perspective.

Fletcher—a historian, former CIA analyst, and missionary kid (MK) herself—draws on extensive research, her own experience as an MK, and surveys and interviews with fellow MKs to present a wide-ranging look at MKs’ experiences. Without losing sight of the noble intentions of most missionaries and the good work that many of them do, she pulls back the curtain on the perceived saintliness of missionaries, uncovering an alarming multitude of systemic harms. In doing so, she exposes key myths at the core of white American evangelicalism itself.

While the MKs interviewed for this book embody a wide range of perspectives, Fletcher draws out the commonalities among them. She describes, for instance, the aching grief of not fully belonging anywhere, either in the United States or their birth country—the lostness of “longing for home, trying to recapture a feeling of belonging, not knowing how or where or who that entails.”

Many MKs search for that belonging in boarding schools. Fletcher herself attended an American evangelical boarding school in Kenya, in a beautiful location overlooking the Great Rift Valley, while her parents served as Southern Baptist missionaries in a town a few hours away. She campaigned to attend this school at the age of 10 because she missed her sister, who was already a student there. Creatively employing a Bible verse about God calling Abram to leave his father’s household, Fletcher convinced her parents. Sending her away from home at such a young age was “absolutely not the right decision,” Fletcher says, adding, “I think my parents would now agree.” Looking back, she reflects, “[Boarding school] was an inadequate home and that my friends—my peer-parents—were an inadequate family.”

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What does it do to a kid when their well-being is constantly considered secondary to their parents’ sense of calling? Fletcher tells the story of Helen, an MK who suffered from being forcibly relocated from a relatively happy childhood in Uzbekistan, where she “played outside, ran around town with other kids, and picked up the language easily,” to spend her early teenage years in Afghanistan—because her father felt called there. In a place where girls her age were “strictly controlled or married off very young,” Helen “didn’t have local playmates and didn’t learn the language as easily.” Her “life became one of anxiety and loneliness.”

As a reader, I felt for Helen, and for other MKs who grew up trapped in families and systems that did not prioritize their well-being. Evangelicalism’s “myth of calling”—that is, “the idea that God so needs the American church to spread the gospel that any hardship or danger, even the sacrifice of one’s children, is justifiable”—did not serve these MKs well.

What does it do to a kid when their well-being is constantly considered secondary to their parents’ sense of calling?

Fletcher tells the stories of other MKs who were victims of abuse, detailing how missionary culture failed to protect them. As American evangelicals “have increasingly tried to wall themselves off” from the broader American culture, she reflects, “the implications for fostering a system that tolerates abuse are multiple: it makes outside accountability less possible, magnifies an external threat over an insider one, and discourages victims from speaking up because doing so would threaten their place in the only community they know.” Anyone who has looked into abuse in stateside evangelical churches will recognize these patterns.

In the decades since Fletcher’s childhood, survivors have advocated for oversight and accountability reforms in their various organizations. They have achieved some success, but much more change is still needed.

While Fletcher’s book centers the stories of MKs—important stories in their own right—ultimately, it tells a story about white American evangelicalism as a whole. “Missions are central to white American evangelicals’ self-concept,” she writes. And in American evangelical culture, “the missionary endeavor continues to be seen as the highest form of Christian calling.” What MKs say about their experiences overseas shines a telling light on the mindsets—and the myths—that underlie evangelicalism.

Fletcher meticulously chips away at some of these core myths: “the myth of calling, the myth of multiculturalism, the myth of saints, and the myth of indispensability.” She unpacks these myths in each of the book’s four sections. As she does so, she tells a story about the U.S.—about a people who imagine not just their government, culture, or technology to be superior to all other nations in the world, but also their theology, their practice of mission, their effectiveness in saving souls.

Nudging readers away from a savior mentality and toward humility, Fletcher challenges white American Christians to see themselves in a global context. For white Americans, avoiding or leaving the particular subculture of evangelicalism is sometimes easier than rooting out deep-seated mindsets of superiority or exceptionalism. When white Christians enter multicultural settings, are we there to see what we can learn? Are we ready to get out of the way, supporting the good work people from other cultural backgrounds are doing rather than needing to control, supervise, or otherwise stand in the center? The Missionary Kids might help white Christians think this through in a way that is both communally and personally beneficial.

Fletcher offers readers a great gift in her invitation to learn from MKs, to see them as full, complex people with unique wisdom to offer, and to hear what they have to say. I hope we listen.