Are Christian missionaries in India funded from the West?

Answer Podcast

Regarding the Funding of Christian Missionaries by Western sources There are Different ways of looking at this First is That Charity is a universal principle In all religions And there are Christians in Europe, in America Who have money and they want to Give in charity And for Many Christians For them to come from America or Europe to India They are living in very comfortable situations And they come here for missionary work They often accept quite a difficult life As compared to their standards Simply for the Sake of preaching For sharing the gospel of Jesus So for them they need support And from that point of view Supporting is fine Now the problems come in 3-4 ways One is Many of these Organizations When they collect funds They collect funds Not on religious grounds So if say Funds are collected on religious grounds And they are used for religious purposes That is fine But often the funds are collected on humanitarian grounds Oh there are these poor people in India Poor children starving in India And we will feed them They are collected on humanitarian grounds But then they are used for proselytizing Now we will feed only those children Who convert to Christianity We will build a well In a village But only those people who convert to Christianity Will have access to water in the well Nobody else So when funds collected for humanitarian purposes Are used for proselytizing That is the use of funds Now beyond that Sometimes these funds are also used in I was with one I had gone for one Hindu-Christian conference And there was all this I saw there all these people I was the only Hindu at that time There was Father Joseph, Father Peter Father John, Father Jack And then when I went there And I was speaking English Most of the students Can you speak in Hindi or Marathi? And I asked them Where is this Father Joseph, Father John And then they were all Maharashtrians So then I talked with one of them They had this whole System Of rewards That you know If you become a Christian You get this much money If you convert This many people to Christians You get this much more money If you convert say something like 50 or 100 people To Christianity Then they will fund the building of a church In your village and you will become the bishop of that church So now for a person over there In a religious country to become the bishop That’s a very prestigious thing And they have something like If you convert 500 Christians You get a free trip to America They say it’s religious purposes So you rob, you go to The Vatican or whatever But it’s It’s very much material inducements over there So people So these people they convert So when I was quoting from the Bhagavad Gita Somehow they were repeating the verses with me Like it happens in our classes So It is if say financial allurement Allurement is used to If it is used to If the whole religion Becomes simply commercialized It’s like what is that Amway or some company is there Amway So sometimes Christianity becomes Like a religious Amway You know you convert, you get this much You get this much commission, you convert this much people You convert this much people, you get this much So then it becomes very commercialized So that kind of funding Is a flashpoint It is a point of A sore point for many people And now there is more monitoring also Of where the funds are coming from How the funds are being used So ultimately People are people What that means is In every religion section there are different people of different kinds There may be Christians who may be giving For charitable purposes But they may not be knowing How the funds are being used now over here So They just give with good intention But they think it’s our duty In Christianity giving charity About one-tenth of your salary, that’s called tithing So they give as a charity But how the funds are used That accountability may not be there But the fact overall Is that the Funds Money is a very important resource For doing anything in this world Money is not necessarily important For going towards God But for doing anything in this world It’s a very important resource So whether it is Christianity or whether it is Islam Money is often used to Propagate the religions And that is when money becomes Too central a factor Then it leads to All kinds of corruptions and Ignorance Does that answer your question?