The Value of Money: Funding Sources and Philanthropic Priorities in Twentieth-Century American Mission

David Scott

doi:10.3390/rel9040122

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, Western missionaries and mission organizations sought to develop financial strategies that would facilitate the further expansion of the Western mission enterprise. Three such strategies emerged: an increasingly sophisticated, corporatized approach to fundraising by mission boards; faith missions that shifted the economic risks associated with fundraising from mission agencies to missionaries; and self-supporting missions that cultivated economic funding available in the mission field. Each of these strategies had different implications for power configurations in the mission enterprise and allowed the values and views of different groups to prevail. The board approach empowered mission executives and large donors. The faith mission approach empowered missionaries and supporters with a conservative theology. The self-supporting mission approach made missionaries arbiters among a variety of competing interests. This economic approach to the study of mission provides new insights into the complex and contested power arrangements involved in Western foreign mission that extend beyond those gained from traditional political and cultural analyses.

Highlights

The colonial model of the Western missionary enterprise was an expensive one
Western missionaries sought to extend a model of Christianity and Western culture predicated on this level of resource consumption to societies without a corresponding level of resource development
Money raised from Western donors or borrowed by mission agencies went toward almost all aspects of the mission enterprise

Summary

Introduction

The colonial model of the Western missionary enterprise was an expensive one. While Christian missionaries have adopted financial strategies since the time of Paul or Jesus himself, the level of resources required for the extension of Christianity has varied across time and place. Westerners had proven able to successfully establish missions overseas and recruit some level of native converts, though generally a rather small number. These limited successes whetted Westerners’ appetite to send out more missionaries and engage in more mission. Since Westerners had proven capable of establishing missions in some locations abroad, they wanted to do so in more places Since they had only limited success in recruiting converts in the places where they were established, they wanted to intensify efforts in established areas of mission work. Because of the connection between financing, power, and values, this paper will conclude by asserting that further research into mission financing can help scholars better understand the complex and changing constellations of agendas involved in Western mission work

The Corporatization of Mission Agencies

The Rise of Faith Missions

The Rise of Self-Supporting Missions

Conclusions