A century ago, Cecil Rhodes told a Dutch Reformed missionary’s mother that “your son among the natives is worth as much to me as a hundred policemen.” He was referring, of course, to the role many missionaries played in turning Christianity into an ideology which could be used to convince Africans not to resist white domination.
Rhodes’ modern-day successors—South Africa’s white rulers and their allies—have gone one dangerous step further. For them, it is not enough to use the church as a kind of ideological cheering section for white domination. Instead they are quite literally using pastors and missionaries as soldiers and policemen.