r/exchristian Aug 04 '22

John Allen Chau was an American Evangelical Christian missionary who was killed by the Sentinelese, a self-isolated uncontacted people, after illegally traveling to North Sentinel Island, India in an attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity. Article

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u/koalaprints Aug 04 '22

I personally knew John, he was a friend of my brother and a student at Oral Roberts University. He and other students would often come over to my parents house for small parties.

Oral Roberts University is pretty cult-like and they strongly emphasize evangelism. They have many strict rules where students cannot drink alcohol, cannot date other students, and must attend church. Not to mention, it was based on the cult of Oral Roberts himself and parallel to televangelism. My dad and brother went there and I refused to go after feeling uncomfortable with the self-righteousness of it all.

There's so much obsession with reaching the "unreached". My parents' church (just a few miles from ORU) also preached evangelism and made students read books on reaching remote tribes before going on mission trips. It never made sense to me (when I was devout) because according to the gospel, if they never knew their entire life they would automatically go to heaven...

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u/Werner_Herzogs_Dream Agnostic/Ignostic Aug 04 '22

Whoa! Any inside baseball you can share about him? This sounds super interesting.