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Reverse Mission: Transnational Religious Communities and the Making of US Foreign Policy
By Timothy Byrnes.
Georgetown University Press, 2001.
216 pp.

by Frances Kissling

Timothy Byrnes is an engaging academic political scientist who has written extensively and wisely on religion and politics, particularly the political role of the institutional Catholic church (see Transnational Catholicism in Postcommunist Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001; Catholic Bishops in American Politics, Princeton, 1991; Abortion Politics in American States, co-editor, M.E. Sharpe, 1995; The Catholic Church and the Politics of Abortion, co-editor, Westview Press, 1992). In a recent lecture at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Byrnes discussed his latest book Reverse Mission: Transnational Religious Communities and the Making of US Foreign Policy. It marked, he noted, a shift from his longstanding interest in the politics of religion to a more intense look at how the character of transnational religious groups affects the ways they seek to influence foreign policy. Perhaps he, like many of us, has about had it with the perverse mission of the Vatican and US bishops. The Vatican squanders its moral authority on protecting bishops from criminal charges for covering up clerical sexual abuse while US bishops lobby against marriage equality laws and contraceptive insurance for Catholic hospital and university employees.

Most relevant to the book is the Vatican’s current attack on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious for being too outspoken on poverty and not outspoken enough against abortion and homosexuality. Byrnes’ analysis of what the Maryknoll sisters call their “reverse mission” perhaps restores a sense of Catholicism as on the side of the poor and oppressed rather than as oppressor. The term reverse mission was coined by Maryknoll Sisters who would come back from foreign missions to educate fellow Catholics about their work—and raise funds. It is most benignly described as educational on the Maryknoll website; but more accurately described by Byrnes as the hard core effort it became when the sisters stopped trying to baptize pagan babies in China and committed themselves to live with and share in the lives of the people they served, often for a lifetime. This role, which was called “accompaniment,” sometimes put sisters at odds with the US government—and even their own order. Byrnes details the role played by Maryknoll sisters in Nicaragua who were horrified by US support for the contras’  efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government—a  government democratically elected and widely supported by the rural people with whom the sisters lived and worked. Continue Reading →