Church Missionary Society Research Articles

Contesting ‘Truth’: A Late Ottoman Response to Protestant Missionary Writings

This study delves into the polemical exchange between the 19th-century Ottoman scholar Harputlu İshak Hoca (d. 1892) and the protestant missionary Karl Gottlieb Pfander (d. 1865). By examining the historical context surrounding their controversy, this research sheds light on the interaction between the Ottoman state and British and American missionaries, particularly during the expansion of missionary activities in Anatolia. This paper also explores the responses of the Ottoman authorities to the missionary printing activities and the impact of the Church Missionary Society’s work on societal and governmental levels. Furthermore, it provides an analysis of Pfander’s Mizan ul-haqq (The Balance of Truth) and Harputlu’s Şemsü’l-hakîkat (The Sun of Truth) and Ziyâü’l-kulûb (The Light of Hearts), portraying them as not only engaging in interreligious polemics but also as creators of textual products that reflect the complex historical realities of their time. This research underscores the Ottoman scholars’ close attention and prompt responses to missionary literature.

A Semicentennial of the Development of Indigenous Leadership in the Anglican Church of Kenya (1970-2020): Challenges and Opportunities

The Anglican Church was planted in Kenya by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1844, but it was not until 1970 when it became autonomous with the formation of the first province and election of Bishop Festo Olang’ as its first Archbishop. The first 5o years (1970-2020), were characterized by massive evangelization and tremendous numerical growth. There were also numerous challenges in local leadership development. While the success of any organization is dependent on its ability to develop its personnel, the ACK has faced challenges in that it has not been able develop sufficient and well-equipped clergy for its ministry. This has continued to hamper evangelization in that the few and the less-equipped clergy are not able to effectively the spiritual needs of the ACK Christians in the twenty-first century. For the success of its mission and ministry, the ACK should address the issue of training and retaining which has remained a real challenge over the last 50 years.

The Economics of Missionary Colonialism: Evaluating the Church Missionary Society's Complicity in Dispossessing the Tsimshian of Metlakatla, 1882–1887

The 1882 religious schism in the mission village of Metlakatla, British Columbia, and the subsequent battle over land rights between the Tsimshian First Nations and settler governments, are some of the most extensively analysed events in the history of missions in nineteenth‐century Canada. Yet historians have overlooked the role played by the Church Missionary Society in perpetuating these events. Most importantly, historians have failed to ask why a society that was in financial difficulties and that regularly abandoned mission stations all over the world was so determined to hold on to this one station. The Society's official story was that it needed to protect its converts from persecution, but this article argues that two economic factors also contributed to the value of Metlakatla for the Society. First, competition with Methodist missionaries in the region made Metlakatla a valuable asset for attracting government grants and private donations. Second, the religious schism in Metlakatla undermined the Society's branding as a bastion of doctrinal purity, rendering it necessary to protect the Society's marketing strategy. Attending to these economic factors complicates simplistic narratives of imperial missionary work as only about Christianisation and civilisation, and contributes to ongoing efforts to understand missionary societies as corporations.

Rubble and Ruin: the CMS Hospital of Gaza in World War I … and Today?

ABSTRACT While the Ahli Arab Hospital of Gaza – formerly the CMS Mission hospital – has been the focus of public attention due to the 17 October 2023 explosion on its premises and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, less attention has been given to its history. Very little information is publicly available. This article addresses that gap, aiming to bring texture, nuance and depth to contemporary discussions. Taking a narrative approach, this article poses two questions: first, how did the social, political and religious contexts of the hospital’s founding period shape its identity and role in the community? Second, how did it fare in World War I and the political transition that followed it? This article argues that Anglican Missionaries from the Church Mission Society (CMS) established the hospital in 1881 with the motivation and inspiration of their evangelical faith. After facing resistance from the local population, the missionaries won people’s trust through medical service. Their work was boosted after local leaders gave their endorsements and British imperial agents offered support. The situation changed rapidly, however, during World War I and the Ottoman entry into the war on the German side. The missionaries were expelled and the hospital was closed and eventually destroyed. Yet, after British victory, the missionaries were granted permission to resume services and rebuild the hospital.

The Rev. John Stainsby and the ‘diffusion of Gospel truth’ in Early Nineteenth-Century Jamaica

First dispatched to Jamaica in 1818 by The Conversion Society, the Rev. John Stainsby became a prominent figure on the island. This article examines his intense involvement in Anglican missionary affairs to reveal how dishonesties and concealment of belief were used to expand Anglican missions in the Caribbean. Firstly, this article examines two key sites of contention between missionaries and the plantocracy – Sunday markets and baptism – where Stainsby used deception to reconcile his religious duties and colonial law. Secondly, it considers the motivations and actions of The Conversion Society and the Church Missionary Society more generally, including the heavily censored material used for religious instruction. Finally, it examines Stainsby as an enslaver, and considers the religious justifications used to support enslavement by many resident Anglican clergymen in the early nineteenth century.

Philip O’Flaherty and the Irish roots of Uganda’s Protestantism

Despite exiting history only a few years after his death, Philip O’Flaherty, the Irish missionary sent to Uganda by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1880, planted Uganda’s Protestantism and, with others, established the foundation that its present success can be understood. Upon arriving on March 18, 1881, he renewed the enthusiasm of a mission station struggling to find its footing in the East African country by conceptualizing a long-term vision for the mission and ensuring it was implemented. According to the historian J.A. Rowe, O’Flaherty possessed just those qualities of tact and savoir-faire that his colleagues lacked, making him a perfect fit for the mission field in Uganda. Among others, he performed the landmark first Protestant baptism in 1882, which had been five years in waiting. He was also a key member in forming the first church councils (one for men and another for women) whose membership included only Ugandans, a move that indigenized the church’s leadership for the first time.

Stationed at the Gateway

Abstract As a missionary with the Church Missionary Society, Claud Field lived and worked in Peshawar between the years of 1892 and 1903. At the time, Peshawar was a geopolitically sensitive and missionally strategic city, and subsequent to Field’s missionary years there, he began writing and translating publications relating to the history of mission, the Afghan people and culture, notable figures of Islamic history, and Christian-Muslim relations. However, Field is little known today. This research introduces Field and a historical puzzle regarding his shift in tone, reviews his first five published books, analyses the import of the books for his time, offers an explanation to the historical puzzle, and concludes with a call for further research into Field’s life and publications. These findings help to begin filling the gap of historical research and literary criticism of Field’s corpus of works.

English Language and Communication in Christian Assemblies

Language, the medium through which people communicate their thoughts, feelings and aspirations to one another, is regarded as the most intimate possession of man as well as the most important form of communication and interaction employed by humans. The advent of the English language in Nigeria was championed by the Church Missionary Society and other Christian missions. The need to propagate the gospel to the nook and crannies of Nigeria effectively necessitated the introduction of literary education (ability to read and write), which was conducted in English. The products of these schools served, inter alia, as interpreters in the Churches, facilitating the propagation of the Christian religion in Nigeria which has about 522 local languages. Today, the common practice is for the main preacher to speak in English while another interprets the message into the local language of the Church members. Against this background, this paper examines the use of the English language in Christian assemblies in Nigeria.

Unravelling the Dynamics of Christian Missionary Evangelical Activities in Colonial Punjab (1849-1947)

The article focused on the evangelical activities of Christian missionaries to convert the natives to Christianity in colonial Punjab, with particular reference to Lahore and Sialkot districts. With the annexation of Punjab in 1849, the cultural and social ethos took a surprising turn, and a new community of converted Christians started to form progressively. This new societal drive was unique because it attracted individuals from affluent backgrounds and triggered mass conversion in socially and economically side-lined communities of Punjab. After annexation, missionaries flocked to Punjab from all parts of India. Most missionaries, who moved to Punjab, were either associated with the American Presbyterian Church or the Church Missionary Society of England (CMS) and the Church of Scotland. Nonetheless, along with these two mission societies, other established missions in India also contributed to converting natives to Christianity, though to a lesser extent. In the conversion process, missionaries used institutions, e.g., schools, colleges, and medical centres, but they also employed different conversion techniques already being deployed in other parts of India. The primary aim of the missionaries was to convert a large part of Punjabi society to Christianity by employing various techniques of evangelicalism. The conversion among lower caste degraded the image of Christianity and further handicapped further activities of missionaries.

The First Indigenous Anglican Diocese of Western Africa: Contested Legacy of the Diocese on the Niger and CMS Mission in Igboland

AbstractAs Nigeria grew as an independent nation, the role of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) began to evolve, reflecting the needs of a burgeoning multi-ethnic society. This transformation is particularly evident in the Diocese on the Niger – the first indigenous Anglican diocese in Western Africa – a topic of debate within various factions of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion. These contentions – centred on historical accuracy, heritage and primacy – mirror broader socio-political disputes concerning the Igbo people’s history and reveal postwar ethnocentric trends in Nigeria. We propose that the strategic positioning of the Diocese on the Niger was part of the CMS mission’s expansion plan into Islamic-dominated Western and Northern Nigeria. Igboland, with its geographical significance and potential as a fertile ground for the gospel, was a deliberate choice. The debates around these contested viewpoints and legacies epitomize the societal disputes over historical interpretation and its theological implications – extending beyond the events themselves and prompting reflection on the embodiment of Christ’s teachings in navigating socio-political complexities. These discussions go beyond religious or geographical disagreements – they symbolize a broader struggle to understand and interpret the past.

Bishop Robert Caldwell

Abstract: At Calcutta in March 1877 after nearly forty years in India and at the age of 63, Caldwell was consecrated as bishop. It had long been felt that Tirunelveli should have a bishop of its own and in many ways Caldwell had, together with Rev Dr Edward Sargent of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), carried out the coordinating function in their large districts with help from their societies in Madras. Caldwell felt that he could do more good by ministering not to the privileged higher castes in the towns and European settlements but to the poorest and most isolated communities. Caldwell’s mission lasted more than fifty years.

African Indigenous knowledge versus Western science in the Mbeere Mission of Kenya

This article sets out to explore the way in which Western science and technology was received in the Mbeere Mission of central Kenya since August 1912 when a medical missionary, Dr T.W.W. Crawford, visited the area. In his dalliance with ecclesiastical matters, Crawford, a highly trained Canadian medical doctor, was sent by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) at Kigari-Embu, in 1910, to pioneer the Anglican mission in the vast area that included Mbeereland, where Mbeere Mission is situated. Contending with the African indigenous knowledge in medicine, environmental conservation, agriculture and other forms of indigenous science, the introduction of Western science and technology, 1912 to 1952, the article argues, did not erase the former; rather, it complimented it. Pockets of general resistance were evident, though Mbeereland, unlike its neighbouring Mutira Mission of 1912, did not offer elaborate opposition to the Western science and technology, partly because the locals could have learnt about it from their neighbours who had experienced it much earlier. Through a historico-narrative design, the research article endeavours to primarily review the coming of Western medicine in Mbeereland: Did it conflict with the African medicine? Methodologically, the data have been collected via archival sources, oral interviews and by reviewing applicable literature.Contribution: The input of this research article to the HTS Journal’s vision and scope is seen by appreciating its focus on the interface between African indigenous knowledge and the European science and technology. Although the main focus is

Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan

Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan

‘A Religion whose Author was Meek and Lowly’

Abstract The journals and letters of Abdul Masih (1776–1827) provide a lively and fascinating entry into consideration of the themes of faith and humility in South Asian Christianity. These themes were strong in the training Abdul received from evangelical chaplains of the East India Company prior to British permission for Christian mission in India. However, it is in Abdul’s reports of personal encounters with a wide variety of Muslim, Hindu, and Catholic interlocutors that the quality of meekness especially comes alive. Abdul perceived that the quality came from the teaching and example of Jesus. How was this quality to be shown in authentic faith conversation that revealed a clash of truth claims and even public calls for punishment of an ‘apostate’? When ambushed with polemic in excitable public settings? As Abdul conceived it, the ‘meekness and gentleness of Christ’ (2 Cor 10:1) dovetails nicely with a ‘boldness’ in gospel witness and a clear proclamation of the only faith that brings salvation. Remarkable, though wholly in line with his approach, was the way in which Muslim interlocutors who frequently came to dispute or reproach expressed satisfaction with Abdul by the end of the conversation. Meanwhile, Abdul humbly and faithfully ministered among Indian Christians in Agra and elsewhere as a catechist for the Church Missionary Society over a period of fourteen years.

Laying the Foundation of the ‘Native’ Christian Community: The Church Missionary Society and Its Experiments with Famine Orphans and Orphanages, 1840s–1920s

This article traces the historical trajectory of the work of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in orphanages in north and western India through two case studies of the important and well-documented CMS orphanages, the Secundra and Sharanpur Orphanages. In doing so, the article makes two historiographical contributions. Firstly, it brings to the forefront the significance of famine orphans and orphanages in the global evangelical Christian project. Secondly, contrary to the overwhelming focus on the sentimentalisation of childhood in historical literature, it asserts that along with factors that point towards such sentimentalisation, other aspects also contributed to the decline in popularity of orphanage work among CMS missionaries.

“A Friend of God and the Poor Wretched Blacks”: Violence, Race, and Redemption in Missionary Narratives of Nile Valley Slavery

Abstract This article explores narratives of slavery written by Christian missionaries in the Nile Valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on works produced by the Italian Comboni mission, American Presbyterians, and the British Church Missionary Society, I approach missionary narratives of Nile Valley slavery as a distinct genre of storytelling shaped by the unique position of the missionary as a narrator and the symbolic utility of slavery as a vehicle for conveying suffering. Reading these sources critically, I argue that the slaves and former slaves that missionaries depicted in their writings served as a discursive canvas for missionaries to situate their activities in a world of suffering and violence. By positioning mission work alongside the material trials of slavery, missionaries lent a temporal urgency to their spiritual projects and justified their relationship with colonial violence.

Song Melody and Speech Tone Conflict in Translated Yorùbá Christian Hymns

This article engages song melody and speech tone conflict in translated Yorùbá Christian hymns between the late 19th and early 20th century. In their effort to make early Yorùbá Christian converts sing Christian hymns in the church, European missionaries translated English hymns to Yoruba, and sang them to the original European hymn tunes. Yorùbá being a tone language, requires a significant level of correlation between song melody and speech tone, for the words to retain their original meaning when sung. The tripartite constraint of aligning melody, meter, as well as meaning, posed a major problem to the hymn translators. Having given priority to melody and metre, the translators therefore, tend to compromise on meaning, thereby producing Yorùbá hymns that will sound interesting melodically, and correlate metrically with the metre, but producing hardly meaningful words when sung. This study utilized samples from Iwe Orin Mimo, being the Yorùbá translation of a range of hymns in Hymnal Companion, Hymns Ancient and Modern, and some other hymn books popularly used by the Church Missionary Society (CMS). The work presents a graphical illustration of the disparity between the hymn tunes and the speech tone of the Yorùbá language. It also highlights the efforts of Indigenous composers in correcting the perceived error through re-composition of the first stanza of selected hymns, to which they wrote more stanzas that align with the theme of the first stanza. The inappropriately translated Yorùbá hymn books have remained strong institutions within the church and have therefore, continued to promote the use of the translated hymns in the Yoruba church.

‘Returning to the world of ancestors’: death and dying among the Acholi of Northern Uganda, 1900s–1980s

ABSTRACT The encounters between Acholi and Europeans, beginning in 1904 with the settlement of the Church Missionary Society in Acholiland, had a profound impact on the people. Scholars have long examined the impact of these encounters on various aspects of life. But a study of their impact on mortuary practices in the region has largely been neglected. Recently, scholars have shined a spotlight on death and dying as a result of the armed conflict that engulfed Acholiland from the late 1980s. Drawing on previously untapped primary sources, interviews, and works of Acholi intellectuals, this article complements this new trend, by focusing on death and mortuary practices between the 1900s and the 1980s. Specifically, it recreates these practices and demonstrates change and continuity; and it concludes with a history of the cemetery in Acholiland.

Inculturation in Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches in Igboland, 1857 to 1960

The Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches have stayed for more than a century, yet the gospel had not taken root in Igboland. These churches were selected for this study owing to the fact that they were the foremost churches that evangelized Igboland. The legacies laid by the Roman Catholic Mission (RCM) and Church Missionary Society (CMS) on inculturation have created problem for the present churches and other denominations. This problem is the negative attitude of these churches to inculturation. The work examined the negative attitude of the RCM and CMS to inculturation and proffered solution to the problem for the gospel to be more relevant for the people. This work used primary source like observation and secondary sources which included books, Internet materials and newspapers. It used historical approach. The data collected were described and analyzed. It was discovered that the RCM and CMS’ nonchalant attitude to inculturation had deprived the people the opportunity of receiving the gospel that was more relevant to their situations and context. It was discovered that the negative attitudes of the RCM and CMS on inculturation are still affecting the contemporary Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches. The work recommended that the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches should expedite action in employing inculturation as a strategy for evangelization in Igboland which would make the gospel to adapt to their situations and cultural context.

List of Contributors

James Butler(PhD, Durham University) is the Assistant Coordinator and lecturer of the MA Programme at Church Mission Society, Oxford, UK and Post-doctoral Researcher at the University of Roehampton, London, UK. His PhD explored how Small Missional Communities sustain their social action.Rachel Iwamony(PhD, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is a staff member of the faculty of theology at Indonesia Christian University in the Moluccas and now serves as the director of Graduate Program. She teaches courses in theology of religions and Christian spirituality.E.J. David KramerE.J. David Kramer is Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the