‘The Mission’ Is A Challenging Documentary Held Back By Its Own Blind Spots
(REVIEW) “The Mission” is a thoughtful and empathetic documentary that explores the growing controversy around Christian missionary work – even if its glaring secular blind spots mean that it will challenge religious viewers more than non-religious ones.
One of the interesting parts of being a Christian in an age of growing secularism is that you see things that used to seem generally uncontroversial become increasingly controversial. One of those things is missionary work. In my Christian culture, while there were always controversies about the right and wrong ways to do missionary work, the idea that Christians go out and spread The Gospel – potentially dying in the process – was viewed as good in principle. Even secular people, while they might think it wasn’t worth it because they didn’t believe Christianity was true, at least understood the logic.
One story that I would hear in sermons all the time, which gives a flavor of how we saw things, was a soldier during either World War I or II who ended up hurt and taken care of by a random tribe. They asked him if he was a Christian and told him that they were converted to Christianity by missionaries. He said that back home nobody believed in Christianity anymore. The tribe retorted that it’s a good thing for him that this tribe had converted because they used to be cannibals.
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But the change in how the culture sees missionary work came into sharper focus in 2018, where the events chronicled in the new National Geographic documentary “The Mission.” In it, a young American missionary, John Chau, was killed by arrows while attempting to contact one of the world’s most isolated Indigenous peoples on remote North Sentinel Island. From there, the Christian and secular worlds clashed about the ethics of missionary work, with many non-religious people showing both moral outrage and bewilderment at why someone would risk their life to impose their moral values on a people who clearly didn’t want it.
“The Mission,” from Emmy-winning directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss (“Boys State”) with Oscar-winning producer Simon Chinn and Emmy-winning producer Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox, uses exclusive interviews with experts and family members (as well as exclusive looks at Chau’s secret plans, personal diaries and video archives) to examine his motives and understanding of what he was doing. It also reveals his own father’s heartbreak over Chau’s life choices and untimely death.
“So many things from the get-go truly upon reading the news, I think captivated us,” McBaine explained when talking about the project. “Not only because it was extraordinary that there is a tribe still out there that has had so little contact and still is a hunter-gatherer tribe. But also it did feel a little bit like a throwback moment, but it was 2018. So also this was a story that seemed to captivate both faith communities and secular communities. And there's so few stories that really get both those groups just debating and talking to each other. And that space is really interesting for us.”
Despite either directors having a religious background, or perhaps because of this, they’ve always been fascinated with understanding religious people. McBaine and Moss were also involved in the acclaimed documentary “The Overnighters,” about a Lutheran pastor who opens a church to help and to house men who were looking for work in the North Dakota oil fields.
“I think we always make films as an effort to understand the world we live in.” Moss said. “And there are a lot of questions and mysteries. And I think that motivation is a way to explore. And because we didn't grow up in the church, and I recognize the power of faith in our world and influencing our culture, our politics, and the individual choices that people make in their lives. And I think I just want to know more about that.”
One place the documentary deserves some kudos is giving both the voices for missionary work and skeptics their time to speak. They interview advocates of mission work and its critics to make their case for the benefits and harms of going on missions to convert people. This is the kind of back and forth I would have liked to see in Angel Studios (otherwise excellent) pro near-death experience movie “After Death”. They ask hard-hitting questions about whether missionary work carries with it arrogant assumptions of cultural superiority, whether people should have the right to refuse contact with another, but also whether they shouldn’t have the opportunity to hear about Jesus if they want to.
One of the most moving aspects the movie has is presenting both Jonathan and his father Patrick Chau’s voices presented in parallel with each other. By going through Jonathan’s journals during the mission and his father’s writings about his son’s mission, we get to see how the two men saw the situation.
Despite the obvious and admirable attempt at honest inquiry religious people will find obvious biases and blind-spots that are left unaddressed and hamper the exploration of the subject matter. There is definitely far more time given to skeptics of missionary work than proponents of it. While the documentary does a better job than “After Death” by actually featuring any voices that disagree with each other, the movie still tilts the amount of time heavily in favor of voices of skepticism toward missionary work. When it comes to John and his father, things are pretty balanced, but when it comes to the experts, it’s decidedly unbalanced.
For example, some of the criticism in the movie toward missionary work is based on sweeping moral principles that most people would not apply to any other similar context. It is easy to ask“what right do we have to introduce our values to these people?” when you’re talking about Jesus, but what if you were to say the same thing about introducing your values about feminism, LGBTQ rights or anti-racism? Would they also say the same thing about those topics?
Also, the documentary takes a really hard line that it’s immoral to go to a country where you are not invited for a group of people who I assume are not Trump supporters. Would they take as hard a line for immigration, for example, or would they see it as more nuanced? It’s not that these opinions can’t be squared with each other, but the fact that these questions are never addressed comes across as major blind spots that tilt the debate unfairly in favor of the anti-missionary approach.
For the directors, Dan Everett was the interview that unlocked the story of “The Mission” more than any other. Everett did missionary work in a tribal community for years, only to feel like his work was a failure and to eventually abandon his faith. To them, this was a man who could understand both perspectives because he had both at one time.
“[Everett was] someone who had himself been a lot like John as a young man,” McBaine said. “Been a missionary in the Amazon and done the hard work and could speak to that experience, had this shattering experience of losing his faith and coming to think about his actions as an older man and recognizing perhaps the consequences and costs of his actions and youthful impulse. And I think so much of this film is about allowing the perspectives of people who have lived versions of the adventure that John did, but have grown up and have more wisdom and no longer see themselves as the center of the story or the hero of the journey, but actually part of a much larger and more complicated mosaic of our world.”
Of course, most Christians listening to Everett talk throughout the movie, far from seeing him as someone who unlocks an understanding of the movie, will find what they see as many holes in his reasoning. He had his faith shattered by the fact that it was pointed out to him that he never personally saw Jesus perform a miracle? Really? And in the same way he and other guests psychologize missionaries beliefs based on the need for significance, Christians will probably psychologize that his ultimate rejection of God is based on the frustration of giving so much to him and not seeing fruits of his labor.
Despite this, it is clear that the directors are really trying to empathize and understand how they aren’t so different from the religious people they’re trying to understand. The commitment they have to self-awareness leads them to see — quite admirably — that while Christians’ belief in missionary work is important to them, secular society also tells stories that shape how they see the world. They point out that the story that “we are civilized and we’re bringing civilization to the uncivilized people” was a secular Western concept that shaped how they saw the world as well.
“As different as John is from us in his background, we actually located points of connection,” Moss said. “Several important points of connection in the other kinds of stories that he took in beyond the Scriptures that so influenced him, the Tintin, the Robinson Crusoe.These are stories that we shared as children and loved and were captivated by. And I've also shaped our worldview and how we think about indigenous communities. National Geographic notably as well. John read, we read, we still read.”
In the end, “The Mission” is a courageous and well-meaning attempt to wrestle with an important topic, held back by “not knowing what they don’t know” about their own biases much like some of the missionaries in ages past. Hopefully, the filmmakers and audience will use this film as a conversation starter rather than an ender. If they do, the world will be better for it.
“The Mission” is available for streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
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Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York City. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at his website josephholmesstudios.com.