Over the years missionaries have done "good" providing for those less fortunate and have done "well" for themselves by converting the less fortunate as the quid pro quo, all in the name of the God of Abraham (thus covering Christians, Muslims and Jews). But natural - and unnatural - disasters continue. Is God punishing the missionaries on the basis that no good deed goes unpunished? The missionaries should walk in the shoes of the less fortunate to understand their plight but leave their souls alone.

Southpark did a parody of this a few years back, where missionaries would only provide food for starving ethiopians if they would recite the bible in gods own language (english). One of their better episodes.

I think is was titled Starvin Marvin in space.

The traditional expression for this is "rice Christians," ie, telling people they can't have any rice unless they become Christians.

There is also the interesting phenomenon of Christians deciding that other denominations aren't *really* Christians, as when a few English "charity" workers went to help folks in Ireland during the Famine (these were the few who were "generous" enough not to buy into the standard logic that these people were lazy and immoral and if only they were more hardworking and responsible they wouldn't be in this state, and giving them help was only encouraging such laziness, while millions died) and made conversion to Protestantism the condition for getting aid, thus giving rise to the expression - not complimentary - "soupers."

--And yeah, I can see the Theocons managing to do what Indonesia's drastic efforts at mandatory tolerance can't achieve, and uniting Hindus, Buddhists, and Moslems against us...

1. Timely
   
2. Strategery
   
3. Webb wins
   
4. Huh?
   
5. Bunnypants in Bagdad
   
6. Outage
   
7. Filthy Lucre Watch
   
8. Playing the numbers
   
9. My letter to Countdown
   
10. Jefferson's Nigerian Scams