Who Supervises Missionaries?

via Flickr’s saabbiaithinLove | Peace The case of the 10 missionaries jailed in Haiti for child kidnapping has shown the spotlight on missionaries serving God in countries around the world. Even if the missionaries are freed soon, as expected, thinking people are asking critical questions about missionaries.

First and foremost, who supervised people on these missions? The Daily Beast’s Sarah Posner writes about Douglas Perlitz, 39, a pastoral minister presently charged with 19 felony counts of travel in Haiti and forcing 18 boys to have sex with him in the years from 1998 to 2008, while he ran a boarding school for street children in Haiti.

Elizabeth McAlister, associate professor of religion at Wesleyan University and an expert on Haiti, said that child sex abuse there, including the targeting of boys by Roman Catholic priests, “has a long history from the slavery period to the Roman Catholic educational system through the continued economic and political downward spiral in Haiti.”

Countries have laws against evangelizing in their countries, but evangelizing is a reinvigorated mission of Christians in America and elsewhere. What vetting process exists for missionaries? Read on When Christian Groups Go Too Far The Daily Beast