Sorry, Joe, but I think you're wrong about christian missionaries not coercing native cultures. And they aren't working to preserve cultures. I'll give a specific example. In the last year or two the news (probably NPR, my usual source) has contained stories about the Baptists convincing the Yanomamo of the Amazon jungle to stop their migratory hunting/gathering practice and settle down to grow sugar cane. They totally disregard the fact that the Yanomamo can't use the sugar cane, they can only trade it for goods produced by others. This switch from self-sustaining to commercially dependent is in order to get the Yanomomo to stay put so they can indoctrinate them with their Baptist beliefs.

I personally find this practice obscene.

Finally, you said "It's also grossly paternalistic to depict the natives of a "missionary" land as innocents who are incapable of defending themselves against new ideas that will pollute and destroy their pristine culture. "The natives" are intelligent adults, not innocent prey." Missionaries systematically destroyed the religious leaders of Indian cultures, through belittling them, and the used of advanced European technology (apparent magic) and the seeming magic of the printed word. Matrilineal cultures were disassembled as Europeans appointed Indian men as liasons between the tribe and the conquerors, based in no way on their standing within their own cultures. This undermined families, villages, clans.

Many American Indian tribes today practice a dual-religion system. Some Indians try to adhere to their cultural beliefs, others have a pan-Indian practice today known as the Native American Church. In a different approach, a Kiowa speaker in a class of mine told of how in his town (Carnegie, OK) on Wednesday they would go to one church, on Saturday another, and on Sunday yet another. This is due to the common American Indian view that all religious practices lead to power, so they often participate in the christian church while continuing in their culture's belief system. Many others converted entirely to christianity and have left behind the overt practice of their autochthonous (land or place-based) religion. Elements of it remain in their use of language and the alternate meaning of some words they speak in English. In the same way that christianity is embedded in the English language for non-Indians, Indian beliefs have translated into English and can be found in the literature and art.

Someone in this thread mentioned the Catholic priests/missionaries and their work in the New World. Many of them worked directly with colonial military powers to round up the indigenous population, destroy their land-based economies, and generate a captive population for virtual if not literal slave labor. One of the exceptions to this was Padre Kino, in Sinaloa and Sonora Mexico, and parts of southern Arizona. Years ago I read about his resistance to enslaving the Indian populations.

Is all of this religious social-economic activity terrorism? I doubt it. Both acts are calculated, but one is intended to murder, the other to enslave. Both have political ends.

Just muddying the waters.