The Communion of Women

Abstract

From the 1860s to 1920s many British women followed a call to the African mission field of the Anglican church. This form of Christian feminism promoted white women's distinct ability to emancipate ‘heathen’ women and consolidate the religious framework of British imperialism. As part of the professionalization of women's social services, women pursued their vocation in a skilled, independent capacity, confident in the transformative power of the gospel and its institutional counterparts: the Christian home, school, and clinic. They found, however, that British paradigms did not translate neatly onto African soil. Competing forms of culture and knowledge caused missionary women to approach evangelism as a series of negotiations and to rethink notions of race, gender, and religion. The collaborative, feminized outcome fostered new opportunities for solidarity and authority among British and African women that decentred collective representations of empire, patriarchy, progress, and ‘civilization’. Missionaries accordingly focused not only on the overseas mission field, but on State and Church in Britain as sites of regeneration, emancipation, and reform, promoting women's Christian authority to ameliorate the trauma of imperialism and war. Anglican women mission workers in Madagascar, Uganda, and the British metropole are shown as both products and agents of the globalization of Christianity during a time of rapid change at the local, regional, and transnational level. The book draws on a rich and largely untapped base of archival and published sources, covering a wide range of geographical, social, political, and theological contexts and showing the global interconnections of Christianity and feminism. This book looks at missionaries as the products as well as the agents of the globalization of Christianity, during a time of rapid change at the local, regional, and transnational level. Anglican women in Madagascar, Uganda, and the British metropole form the basis for this story. Using a rich and largely untapped base of archival and published sources, and encompassing a wide scope of geographical, social, political, and theological contexts, this book brings together the fine grain and the broad strokes of the global interconnections of Christianity and feminism.