Infantilisation of the missionised

Abstract

The hegemony of European ideology and worldview epitomised in this case by the infantilisation of the missionised permeated both the secular and religious sphere. Infantilisation, as both a system and existence underlined the European Baptists’ attitude to mission among the natives. As a system, the Europeans’ attitude to the natives was to think and treat natives as infants perpetually in need of European guidance. Infantilisation as existence meant that the native and his or her environment were childish (backward and undeveloped). Europeans’ zeal for mission coupled with such perception of the native strengthened the belief that the infant state of the native was by divine providence as it is the same providence that affirmed the role of the European in his or her encounter with the native.