Abstract

A recent re-reading of E. F. Schumacher's classic Small is Beautiful: Economics as though People Matter reminded me that while Western socio-economic systems seem to operate on the assumption that the chief end of a human life is to bring glory to the GNP, no religious person–certainly no Christian–can accept either economic theories or economic practices which functionally regard human beings as mere means to materialist ends. Western mission societies have by no means been exempt from the pressure all about them to become numerically bigger, materially richer, and technologically more powerful in response to the highly competitive world of conflicting world views. That this is not only an inappropriate but dangerous trend is the point of this article.