Missionary Motivation

Abstract

In discussing missionary motivation, H. Richard Niebuhr presented the “love of the distant” as one of the manifold motives for overseas missionary service. The allure of the far, the strange, and the foreign was contrasted with “love of the near.” North American children of missionaries have a high percentage of return or “call” back overseas upon reaching adulthood. Would missionary children left in the home culture experience the “call” to overseas missions in such a high percentage? This article begins with a summary of previous research, includes a discussion of Ruth E. Slifer's concept of “cultural empathy,” and centers on findings using a sample of 35 former inhabitants of the Basel Mission's Children's Home. The findings substantiate the influence of the social matrix of a mission-oriented community in the homeland. Unlike Niebuhr's thesis, the present research concludes that missionary motivation as “love of the distant” can be seen in dialectical synthesis with “love of the near.”