Dying for Jesus...

John Chau, an evangelical Christian, was killed last November by men from the isolated Sentinelese tribe, who still live as hunter-gatherers on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean. According to his blog he had decided to bring Christ to the island he called “Satan’s last stronghold”, despite the fact that the Sentinelese had made it very clear, over the years, that they want to be left alone (and because the tribe would be susceptible to diseases to which they would have no immunity, the Indian government has banned access to the island).

According to the Joshua Project, a Christian missionary website, the Sentinelese “need to know that the Creator God exists, and that He loves them and paid the price for their sins”. The full story of Chau’s attempt to bring Christianity to such an isolated tribe is told today in the Guardian. To cut a long story short, he landed by kayak, offered gifts and quoted from the Bible. “My name is John,” he shouted. “I love you, and Jesus loves you.” When the tribesmen shot arrows at him, he retreated back to the boat he had hired. Most sane people would have taken the hint at that point. Instead he paddled to the island the following day… and never returned.

A friend, and fellow evangelical, said that John Chau had been motivated by love for the Sentinelese, adding that “If you believe in heaven and hell then what he did was the most loving thing anyone could do.” I agree. If you truly believe in heaven and hell, then a lot of stupid things make a kind of sense. There is, however, no pressing need to believe in either of these posthumous destinations, because they are fictional. The Sentinelese may have their own religion - nobody knows - but what they certainly don’t need is to be “saved” from a religious delusion.

The old Saxon church at Kirk Hammerton, near York, licensed over the weekend...