European Missionaries Research Articles

The Bible and Music in African Christianity

This bibliographic study explores the interplay between the Bible and music within the context of African Christianity. Underpinned by the theory of syncretism, the paper employs a contextual thematic analysis to unravel the nexus between African indigenous music and Christian worship and draws implications for both scholarship and practice. Findings indicate that early European missionaries incited a satanic impression against the use of African indigenous music among Christian worshippers. It was contrarily revealed that Bible-informed use of African music in Christian worship is imperative for evangelisation, deeper spirituality, and faster church growth in Africa. In conclusion, the paper emphasises that the Bible and (indigenous) music are inseparable. It also maintains that music has the transformative power of fostering community cohesion, religious identity, and spiritual devotion among African Christians. Finally, the paper recommends greater collaboration among scholars, theologians, music educators, and gospel music practitioners in the African context in accomplishing the goal of the gospel.

The Image of Chinese Law in the Writings of European Missionaries of the 16th Century

In the mid-1600s, European missionaries journeyed to China, producing a wealth of travel diaries, scholarly writings, and reports. These missionaries meticulously documented China's political and legal systems. This study delves into the Ming Dynasty missionaries’ interpretations of Chinese law, highlighting the historical context and its mutual influence with European culture. Our findings indicate that, during a certain period, Chinese law was portrayed in European culture as the cultural “other”. This representation not only served as a self-examination and reflection for European culture but also mirrored its understanding of its own cultural identity. While grounded in reality, these descriptions largely represent European cultural projections.

Missionary Writings during the Canton Exile (1666–1671): Crisis in the Manchu-Christian Relationship

During their Canton exile (1666–1671), European missionaries wrote an impressive number of reports and letters which have not been systematically studied until now. After presenting a detailed analysis of the institutional background of the 25 missionaries who arrived in Canton, we analyze the first internal reports about the Calendar Case. Then, we discuss three important Jesuit works by Gabiani, Grelon and Rougemont, who attributed the crisis to the opposition of the Manchus to Christianity. The distrust of the Canton Jesuits towards the Manchus throws a new light into the approach of Christianity towards politics and religion in China.

Forgeries, Falsifications, Fictions, Fälschungen?

This article examines—and rejects—the idea that, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans who sought to obtain copies of the Vedas were repeatedly duped by having other works (purporting to be Vedas) passed off on them. The focus is on a text entitled “The Essence of the Yajur Veda,” produced by a Pietist missionary, Christoph Theodosius Walther (1699–1741), and a Brahmin identified only as Krishna, published in a German missionary periodical in 1740. This text is examined in the context of a series of similar works produced by Indian intellectuals with, or at the behest of, European missionaries and colonial officials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rather than seeing these works as fakes, it is argued here that they are better understood as the outcome of distinctive modes of composition, transmission, and translation of Indian religious literature emerging from the early modern encounter of Indian and European scholars.

Malarial Encounters and Shifting Racial Recruitment Strategies by the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast, 1828-1849.

In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, European mortality rates in West Africa were the highest in the world. Mortality estimates included nine missionaries sent from the Basel Mission (established in what is now Switzerland) to the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), eight of whom died between 1828 and 1840, mostly from "fevers." In response to high mortality rates, the Basel Mission recruited several Afro-West Indians to work as Christian missionaries in the Gold Coast, mostly based on the presumption that individuals of African descent would better survive the environment. The decision to recruit Afro-West Indians to evangelize on the Gold Coast seemed to the mission to be a rational decision, one not in need of further justification or an overarching theory of race, environment, and disease. Surprisingly, the Basel Mission did not justify this position Biblically either. Once arrived, the West Indian Christian missionaries mostly lived in the Akwapem hills above Accra at an elevation that would have provided some protection against malaria; subsequently, their mortality rates were significantly lower than the European missionaries. After quinine came to be used as a prophylactic against malaria after 1850, thus lowering European missionary mortality rates, no more Afro-West Indians were recruited by the Basel Mission.

MUSICAL ACTIVITY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES AT THE COURT OF THE QING EMPERORS OF THE 17TH–18TH CENTURIES

The article raises the problem of the significance of European missionaries’ musical activities at the court of the Qing emperors during the Golden Age and attempts to integrate Western art into palace musical life. A critical review of existing Russian-language sources leads the author to the conclusion that there is a lack of information on the topic of the article as well as some freedom in the interpretation of known historical facts in scientific articles. The author sees the possibility of filling gaps in this area of musicology in a detailed study of documents of the era, primarily diaries, letters, reports and other missionaries’ correspondence. Primary scholarly sources include Father Ripa's Diary, Father Du Halde's Description of the Chinese Empire, compiled from the correspondence of French Jesuits, and Father Amiot's work on the history of Chinese music. The author considers these books to be significant; however, they are not, of course, the only documents that help shed light on the scale and depth of the functioning of European music, theory and practice in the space of Chinese musical culture, which is closed, self-sufficient and by its nature not related to Europe. Works on music theory, created by order of and jointly with the Kangxi Emperor, are proof of a considerable interest in the West. In the palaces, the presence of a large number of European instruments, with which a Western-style ensemble could be formed, as well as attention to European clothing and wigs in which the emperor dressed his musicians, is indicative. In conclusion, the author finds that the musical activities of Christian missionaries produced certain results. On the one hand, organic interaction with European music and its deep understanding did not happen at the end of the 18th century. On the other hand, regardless of the subjective attitude of one or another emperor towards the Jesuits, the idea of ​​introducing musical theoretical ideas and practices of European music-making into everyday life gradually became a reality only owing to their persistent, regular and purposeful promotion. At the same time, a reverse process was underway - the missionaries’ research instinct led to the creation of memoirs and books on the history and acoustics of Chinese music, and contributed to its active promotion in European intellectual circles.

The bishop’s ‘fine tact’: the ambiguity, ambivalence, and relationality of Catholic peacebuilding from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Flores, Indonesia during the Asia-Pacific War

In the ongoing debate about the role of religion in peacebuilding, particular attention has been paid to religious attitudes toward violence as a locus of the peacebuilding potential of religions. In this article, I turn to the case of the Catholic Church’s ambiguous and ambivalent relationship to Japan’s war in the Asia-Pacific region. The focus of my analysis is an exceptionally well-documented case of four Japanese Catholic priests on a Japanese Imperial Navy-sponsored ‘religious propaganda’ mission to Flores, Indonesia during the Japanese occupation. The four priests, including two leaders of the Catholic Church in Japan at the time—Bishop Yamaguchi Aijiro of Nagasaki and Apostolic Administrator Ogihara Akira of Hiroshima—worked closely with European missionaries left on the island of Flores to protect the church’s interests against Japanese military aggression. This unusual case of war-time cooperation between civilians from enemy nations in the context of the otherwise brutal war in Asia offers a rare glimpse into Japanese Catholic Church leaders’ engagement with Japan’s war efforts. The article demonstrates tact as a self-consciously limited and yet distinctively relational mode of peacebuilding that capitalises on layers of ambiguity and ambivalence.

When Christianity Became a Shūshi 宗旨

Abstract Cultural encounters, entanglements, and comparisons were the driving force behind the formation of a global history of religion. Such encounters require the formation of comparative concepts; for Europeans, the most important of these was ‘religion’ . With European expansion, and especially its forays into Asia starting in the late fifteenth century, ‘religion’ gradually became a general term to describe a distinct subset of human culture, with encounters between European missionaries and the Japanese people playing a decisive role in this regard. Arguably, the ultimately failed attempts of the Christian mission led to the emergence of analogous comparative concepts on the Japanese side, too. As a side effect, the encounter with Christianity brought about an individualisation and confessionalisation of Buddhism. From here, it was only a small step to the ‘religionisation’ of Buddhism in the nineteenth century – and, thus, to its integration into a global religious system.

Зарождение возрожденческого движения в Корее в 1905–1910 гг.

The Christian revival movement in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century is a prominent and important part of Korean religious history. Despite the fact that modern scholars’ interpretations of this complex religious and cultural event are far from unambiguous, they all agree on the importance of its cultural, historical and religious significance not only in the history of the Japanese colonial period, but also in the formation of new democratic values in modern South Korea. Beginning as a narrow sectarian movement of European missionaries, it strengthened its ideological and religious influence in Korea against the background of the most acute religious, cultural and social contradictions of the colonial period, playing an important role in the formation of the modern Korean Christian church.

The Aztecs' Huehuetlatolli: "discourse" and education by tradition

Current paper shows that the role of ‘ritual discourses’, cultivated within families and schools in the Spanish pre-conquest Aztec society, was the formation of warriors, clerics and Aztec power-ridden people according to the requirements of the period. The ancient discourses or Huehuetlatolli, one of the first educational models developed on the American continente, are analysed as na oral heritage of a far-gone past which should be preserved and transmitted to future generations as received. Imbued with social, political, cultural and educational issues, these oratory artifacts are importante didactic and pedagogical manifestations which made their appearance in the works of the first European missionaries who adapted and employed them in the missionary process and in the chronicles and reports of the Conquest and Colonization periods. The huehuetlatolli are a witness of a society which had clearly in mind the type of person it wanted to form.

Investigating the opportunities and challenges for African languages in public spaces: an introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction to the Special Edition provides a rationale for the inclusion of the selected articles. We begin with a consideration of various factors that led to the marginalisation of African languages, including the hegemony of English, colonialism and ensuing language policies that still hold today. Such policies proclaimed languages exogenous to the continent as official languages for formal public discourses, including the education domain. This led to the low visibility of indigenous languages in such domains. European missionaries also contributed to this by imposing Western linguistic frameworks on the continuum of African languages such that they became separate, named and bounded, which is counter-intuitive to the heteroglossic, multilingual realities of language use in African indigenous communities. We then examine the expanding role of African languages in response to technology, social media, globalisation and more responsive and dynamic language policies. The articles in this Special Edition cover language policy and language in education; language and identity negotiation in contexts of migration; language use on social media platforms; language and the workplace and language use in advertising. These contributions reveal that the multilingual reality of Africa’s language ecology is increasingly visible in many domains.

The Extent of the Application of English Laws in the Cameroonian Legal System

The decisive events which made the introduction of English laws possible in Cameroon were the arrival of European traders, the activities of European missionaries and the introduction of the English legal system by the British Government. The arrival of these Europeans introduced certain new practices and institutions which the traditional laws of the country, particularly customary law could not cope with. Besides, the Europeans themselves were not prepared to be bound by tribal laws since the type of society to which the law and custom was appropriate was totally different from the type of society in which they (Europeans) had been brought up. After the 1st World War, Cameroon ceased to be a German Protectorate following her defeat and was thus administered by Great Britain and France under the League of Nations Mandate and subsequently under the United Nations Trusteeship Agreement. By Article 9 of the Mandate Agreement, the laws of the administering authorities were to be transplanted into Cameroon. Article 9 thus provided the basis and officially marked the beginning of the duality of Western legal systems which the people of Cameroon have since experienced and to which they remain subject to till this day. The Foreign Jurisdiction Act, 1890 was also very important and served as the enabling statute that led to the introduction and observance of English law in Southern Cameroons. The English common law, the doctrines of equity and the statutes of general application which were in force in England on the 1st day of January 1900 were then transplanted in Anglophone Cameroon viz s. 11 of the Southern Cameroons High Court Law, 1955. However, neither the statutes in England on the 1st day of January 1900, nor common law and the doctrines of equity apply in Cameroon without limitations. They are subject to local limits and circumstances. In this 21st Century, the laws of a colonial power particularly the statutes of general application should not apply again to an independent nation like Cameroon and thus should be repealed and replaced with local legislation. The Executive and Legislature should thus ensure compliance while the Government is called upon to hasten and complete the harmonization process of the common law and the civil law in a bid to give the country a unified/uniform legal system.

Enslaved by African angels: Swedenborg on African superiority, evangelization, and slavery

ABSTRACT This article provides the first extensive study of Emanuel Swedenborg’s (1688–1772) views on Africans and slavery. Although significant scholarship has been devoted to Swedenborg’s influence on the British abolitionist movement in the 1780s-1790s, comparably little has been written on the ideas and context which inspired this influence in the first place. This article explores Swedenborg’s ties to networks and debates about African evangelization, colonization, and slavery during the neglected period of the Swedish Age of Liberty (1719–1772). It shows that Swedenborg was the first Swede to condemn slavery, as early as 1741, explains why he regarded slavery as a divine punishment in the afterlife for European missionaries, and why he presented sub-Saharan Africans as superior, in contrast to the dominant dismissive views of Linnaeus, Bäck, Kant, or Buffon. Like most Lutherans of his time, Swedenborg did not advocate the abolition of slavery, yet within a generation his provocative views about African superiority and spiritual emancipation were used by his followers to articulate their abolitionist agenda. Swedenborg’s millenarian doctrines more broadly re-harnessed biblical traditions about Africa and tropes about the bon sauvage, in a counter-example to narratives about the trope’s decline in the second half of the eighteenth century.

The Missionaries’ Engagement with Science and Technology in Colonial Kenya, 1887–1963

Abstract The missionaries’ engagement with science and technology in colonial Kenya (1887–1963) is evidentially seen through the use of the post-industrial revolution’s breakthroughs of the eighteenth century, which included: advancement in science and mass production, steam engines, and the rise of digital technology. The tendency to rely heavily on post-industrial innovations and inventions were critical in fast-tracking their missiological discourses, which included scriptural translations, publishing, and the use of printing machines. These were critical in generating instructional materials and especially the Bible, which was produced in the local indigenous languages by 1952, and by encouraging technical-science education after primary school, among other methods. Although the concept of science and technology is largely attributed to the scientific breakthroughs of the twenty-first century, we argue that this concept was also evident in both the African indigenous society and in the missionary era. The widespread use of the phrase ‘science and technology’ is further seen in the missionary enterprises since they founded or supported the establishment of technical schools that offered electrical engineering, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, mechanical engineering, and training in medicine and the establishment of dispensaries and hospitals, among other relevant activities. Methodologically, the research article endeavours to review the European missionary societies, especially the Protestant wing, in its aim to understand their engagement with science and technology, and to determine if there conflict between Western science and the indigenous systems. The data was gathered through a review of existing literature, archival sources, unpublished materials and other oral sources.

The Nexus Between German Pietism and the Mission, Theology, and Spirituality of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana

While the Pentecostal Christianity on the continent of Africa in general and Ghana, in particular, continues to attract growth in terms of membership, the same cannot be said of the historic mission churches in the same breath. This development is partly because the Christianity introduced by the nineteenth-century European missionaries was enveloped in European culture making it almost impossible to resonate with its religio-cultural milieu. As a result, converts have great difficulty in identifying with their newly found faith as it also struggled to address their existential challenges. This development had translated into a situation where the Christian faith as introduced at the time failed to attract new converts while some of the existing ones made their way back into their former religion (syncretism). Other developments besides syncretism experienced by the historic mission churches were schism(s) as well as the emergence of Pentecostal Christianity in Ghana.

Images of Chinese women in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European exotic knowledge books

ABSTRACT All the European missionaries, merchants, and travelers to China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were men. In their books introducing Chinese knowledge, they created idealized images of modest and courteous Chinese women, and idealized them as models for European women to emulate. However, this scrutiny from a perspective of exotic otherness did not reflect the real lives and inner worlds of Chinese women but instead reflected European value judgements. Contemporary chinoiserie art was mainly utilized to embellish women’s spaces with representations of carefree and romantic Chinese women. This research analyses the peculiarities of images of Chinese women as portrayed in male European observers’ books, and locates the distinctions between, and sources of, these images in diverse gender settings throughout Europe, thus analysing Europe’s historical perception of women.

Non-Invasive On-Site pXRF Analysis of Coloring Agents, Marks and Enamels of Qing Imperial and Non-Imperial Porcelain

On-site pXRF analysis in various French collections (Musée du Louvre, Musée national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris) of porcelains decorated with painted enamels from the Qing Dynasty, in particular porcelains bearing an imperial mark, identifies the types of enamels/glazes, the ions and coloring phases or the opacifier. The study of the elements associated with cobalt (nickel, manganese, arsenic, etc.) and of the impurities of the silicate matrix (yttrium, rubidium and strontium) differentiates the use of ‘Chinese/Asian’ raw materials from ones imported from Europe by the initiative of the European missionaries (chiefly Jesuits) present at the Court (Beijing). Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the blue color of the marks and to the elements associated with the use of gold or copper nanoparticles as well as to the compositions of the pyrochlore phases (tin yellow, Naples yellow). The comparison is extended to pXRF and Raman microspectroscopy measurements previously made on other Qing imperial porcelains as well as on Cantonese productions (on porcelain or metal) from different Swiss and French museums and blue-and-white wares of the Ming and Yuan Dynasties (archaeological and private collections).

曆獄의 飜案과 그 의미

This present article examines the European missionaries’ legal struggle to overturn the verdicts that resulted from the Calendar Case (曆獄 liyu) and recover the legal status of their religion to that of the pre-Calendar Case. Although the case ended and Europeans and their churches were kept relatively safe, this ‘salvation’ was not the result of acquittal from the charges the missionaries had faced during the Case, but of the Manchu emperor’s interference instead. Thus, after the closure of the Calendar Case, Beijing missionaries had to make intense efforts to nullify the three confirmed charges and remove all vestige of the Calendar Case. By doing so, they expected the beginning of a new rosy era, like that of the Shunzhi period. However, the privileges the missionaries enjoyed during the Shunzhi reign were exceptional―ones possible only by imperial favour beyond legal boundaries.

In the Eye(s) of the Storm(s): Álvaro Semedo, an Observer of Two Dynastic Transitions in the Global Crisis of the 17th Century

Abstract It is certainly uncommon for a seventeenth-century observer to have borne witness to two dynastic transitions in places as far apart as the opposite corners of Eurasia – the Iberian Peninsula and China. Álvaro Semedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, is one such case. He was in Madrid, when news arrived that the Portuguese had proclaimed a national king in 1640, bringing sixty years of Iberian Union to an end. Semedo returned to China in 1645, one year after the Qing had taken Peking. In 1650, he witnessed first-hand the siege and reconquest of Canton by the Qing. This article aims to explore the political transition in China through the eyes of a European missionary who had already been caught by the breakup of the Habsburg empire. How did he position himself in both dynastic transitions? What comparisons did he make? Was he aware of the “global crisis”? These are some of the questions that will be addressed.

Women in Devotion and Religions (From the Natural Moral Period to the Religious Period)

The woman was the foremost in the early maternal society. Goddesses were also seen as primary in worship. The elements of natural energy were praised as feminine. They saw them as forces of prosperity. The goddesses found in the worship of nature later entered the religion. The goddess Kali (Kottravai) later became a part of Shiva. Women have been monks in Buddhism and Jainism since the early days of the religion. The female monks performed excellent religious duties. In Saivism and vaishnavism the religion that originated in this Tamil soil, woman was seen as a Part of the God. Historical references to many female theologians are also found in all religions. Christian nuns have been performing well since the arrival of European missionaries. There is a history of blessed women in Islam as well. Yet in later times that dignity of femininity gradually diminished. Equality for woman was denied in all religions. There was a situation where the woman was considered as a defilement. To this day such a situation is found in all religions.