Great Was the Company of the Preachers: The Word of Missionaries and the Word of Anthropologists

Abstract

field. It was my impression then that this was due in large part to strong feelings of ambivalence that anthropologists had toward missionaries. On the one hand, missionaries turned out to be helpful in the field;on the other, their activities and goals conflicted with those of the anthropologist. While the ambivalence may still be present, certainly the record of anthropological interest in missionary activity has changed dramatically. During the past decade, anthropological investigations of mission programs have come into full bloom and an increasing number of anthropologists are focusing directly on missionary enterprises.2 Here I aim to place these investigations in perspective and to consider some of the implications of their findings for anthropology. Without attempting to exhaustively summarize the results of this research, which is still underway, it may be useful to point out that anthropologists have called attention to: 1) the largely unintended consequences of missionary activity, both in negative and positive terms (Miller 1970, and n.d.); 2) an inherently contradictory relationship between mission recruitment philosophy back home and missionary practices in the field (Beidelman 1974; Wolcott 1972); 3) the intensely enigmatical relationship between missionary and anthropologist with regard to both theory and practice (see Carter n.d.; Nida 1966; Salamone 1977; Hiebert 1978; Hughes 1978; Burridge 1978); 4) the close connection between mission work and