This paper looks at the short-term mission visits from an American church in a community in rural Trinidad from the perspective of the population visited. In the host community, conceptual links between political economy and faith are made in ways in which many White middle-class Americans are unaccustomed. This affected the reception of the American short-term missionaries, what they were asked to do, what they were prevented from doing, and the nature of their local impact. In this case, and possibly more generally, the American evangelical category of “mission” overshadows the important and locally salient issues of service and work.
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