Spreading the ‘Word of God’. Women-Missionaries and Protestant Education in the Balkans, Greece and Italy

Abstract

The present chapter explores the protestant female missionary educational attempts in the countryside of the Balkans. It seeks to connect the dissemination of the protestant religious beliefs with the spreading of female schooling in the villages of the Balkans. An attempt is made to study the missionaries’ efforts to eradicate illiteracy by focusing on their target being the conversion of the indigenous people into the protestant dogma. The presence of the women-missionaries in the Balkans rocked the waters and improved women’s social status. Along with their new ideas they brought in a whole different set of ideas and perceptions, as well as new modes of behavior. Additionally, the girls’ schools that they set up, the pamphlets and tracts that they distributed, and the sermons that they delivered, were the main tools of their propaganda, as well as their vehicles for disseminating their religious beliefs. The female missionaries encountered many obstacles and faced prejudices because of the illiteracy that prevailed in the rural areas.