A missionary family is sent to live in the Belgian Congo in the 1960's, and are given the task of Christianizing an entire group of people with already grounded belief systems. Political turmoil ensues when a newly independent Congo must endure the assassination of a leader that was respected. The leader's replacement was a Western influenced dictator, who did nothing to aid in the hardships of the native Congo. Like in Cry The Beloved Country, the people of Congo must either fight off or learn to live with a culture that they feel has impeded on the very fiber of their existence. In Paton's novel, the native South Africans too must live in fear of a group of Western occupiers. Both novels portray social class systems in a similar light. In Paton's novel, the white elites dominated public policy. They remained wealthy and prospered while the native people suffered from famine and poverty. Similarly, the Western occupiers in The Poisonwood Bible enjoyed lavish lifestyles while the natives lived in poor shambles. The process of Western cultural dominance in foreign lands follows a vicious cycle of a growing disparity between the wealthy and healthy, and the sickly and poor. .
An important question to address would be the question of what causes cultural arrogance or cultural superiority. What exactly causes western cultures to feel superior to eastern or third world cultures? Robert Strayer would argue that the growing disparity between the rich and the poor nations leads to arrogance in a cultural sense. The emergence of science and technology in the nineteenth century west was undeniable. As a result of this technology, the west was able to maintain military dominance, thus assisting in its efforts to obtaining wealth. In 1984, the gross national product of a developed nation was $9,795,000,000. The gross national product of a developing nation was $752,000,000. Clearly, a large disparity between developed and developing countries exists.