‘Wipe the Dust off your Feet’

Abstract

This article looks at the missionary – widely defined – as a character in late eighteenth-century literature. Specifically, it asks why authors would choose to include stories about failures in missionary endeavours. The paper argues that the answer lies in the pervasive influence of biblical stories on colonial religious discourse. The authors treated here view the failed missionary as a harbinger of the gospel's ultimate success because Jesus himself said as much to his apostles, warning of opposition and rejection prior to the kingdom's ultimate victory. Whether consciously or not, biblical precedents shape the expansionist, Christian rhetoric of these eighteenth and early nineteenth-century writers in such a way that they can accommodate both missionary successes and disappointments in their narratives, without doubting their religious superiority over the non-Christians they describe.