Abstract
When the London Missionary Society (LMS) came into being in 1795 two principles formed the twin pillars of its existence: the Fundamental Principle, which declared that the Society existed to preach the gospel to the heathen and not to promote any particular form of church polity: and the voluntary principle, which declared that financial responsibility for a church devolved upon its members, and not upon the government or, in the long term, upon the missionary society. This paper examines the problems of applying the voluntary principle in a colonial situation. The investigation focuses on the work of the Revd Richard Birt, LMS missionary in South Africa from 1838 to 1892. Birt was a supporter of the voluntary principle by conviction, by background and by commitment to the LMS. In practice, however, his life’s work was to show the difficulty of maintaining the voluntary principle in a pioneering missionary situation.
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