Mission History Research Articles

The Translation of יהוה‎ in Dholuo: Overview and History

The rendering of the divine name יהוה‎ is one of the most debated issues in Bible translation. This is also the case in translation of the Bible into the Dholuo language of Kenya and Tanzania. Different solutions have been proffered in different Dholuo versions, but without a clear rationale. This raises important questions. To what extent do versions used as sources influence translation choice? Should traditional religion and culture provide guidance in the search for a solution? This study analyses renderings of יהוה‎ in existing Dholuo versions against the background of the history of church and mission in the Dholuo context.

미국 장로교회 선교 역사를 통해서 보는 에큐메니컬 신학과 선교 감소의 상관 관계 연구

미국 장로교회는 미국 내에서 1692년에 시작되어서 부흥과 성장을 거듭해 왔다. 연이은 부흥운동은 선교의 열정을 불러일으켰고, 그에 따라 미국장로교회는 해외선교를 적극적으로 펼쳐나갔다. 미국 해외선교본부(ABCFM)을 통해서 19세기 말과 20세기 초에는 한국에까지 선교를 보내는 등 수 많은 나라에 선교사를 파송했다. 미국장로교회 해외 선교는 미국 기독교단의 해외선교를 주도했다. 그들은 의료와 교육선교와 함께 많은 전도적 수단들을 활용하여 해외선교를 진행하였다. 그러나 19세기 말부터 불어온 자유주의신학은 미국장로교회의 신학을 흔들었으며 이것은 선교적 열정의 감소라는 결과를 가져왔다. 주된 인물과 사건은 1890년의 찰스 브릭스(Charles A. Briggs) 1922년의 Auburn Affirmation이 있다. 결정적 사건으로는 1932년의 “Re-Thinking Missions”의 책의 출간이 있는데 이로 인해 미장로교단은 분열하게 되는 계기가 되었다. 그 이후 에큐메니칼신학의 영향으로 미국 장로교회의 선교신학은 사회정의와 사회참여, 인간화로 귀결되어져 갔으며 이는 전통적 해외선교의 약화를 필연적으로 초래할 수 밖에 없었다. 본 논문은 미국장로교회의 역사와 선교신학의 변질이 어떻게 미국장로교회의 해외선교의 약화를 초래하였는지의 상관관계를 밝히는데 목적이 있다.

Give Them Christ: Native Agency in the Evangelization of Puerto Rico, 1900 to 1917

The scholarship on the history of Protestant missions to Puerto Rico after the Spanish American War of 1898 emphasizes the Americanizing tendencies of the missionaries in the construction of the new Puerto Rican. There is no doubt that the main missionary motif during the 1890s was indeed civilization. Even though the Americanizing motif was part of the evangelistic efforts of some missionaries, new evidence shows that a minority of missionaries, among them Presbyterians James A. McAllister and Judson Underwood, had a clear vision of indigenization/contextualization for the emerging church based on language (Spanish) and culture (Puerto Rican). The spread of Christianity was successful not only because of the missionaries but also because native agents took up the task of evangelizing their own people; they were not passive spectators but active agents translating and processing the message of the gospel to fulfill their own people’s needs based on their own individual cultural assumptions. This article problematizes the past divisions of such evangelizing activities between the history of Christianity, mission history, and theology by analyzing the native ministries of Adela Sousa (a Bible woman) and Miguel Martinez in light of the teachings of the American missionaries. The investigation claims that because of Puerto Rican agents’ roles in the process of evangelization, a new fusion between the history of Christianity, mission history, and theology emerged as soon as new converts embraced and began to preach the gospel.

The Sailors’ Home and moral regulation of white European seamen in nineteenth-century India

ABSTRACT This article examines the efforts of British Christian missionaries in regulating the daily lives of European seamen in colonial Indian port cities. Missionaries aimed to reform seamen, who typically lived a life a debauchery and degeneration, by moral regulation and promotion of healthy living and hygienic practices in their everyday lives. Through a study of the Sailors’ Home run by Baptist missionaries and several other charitable institutions in Calcutta, this article provides new insights into maritime history, missionary history and colonial politics. Missionaries conceived seamen as not only the victims of government apathy and a malevolent labour market, but also tropical climate and an unforgiving urban space. This perception, rooted in the Victorian notions of purity and the link between a sanitary body and a moral mind, helped them justify regulating seamen’s bodies across the colonial world and beyond. The article shows how their actions produced white imperial bodies in a colonial context.

Thirty Years of Mission in Taiwan: The Case of Presbyterian Missionary George Leslie Mackay

The aims of this paper are to analyze the missionary endeavors of the first Canadian Presbyterian missionary in Taiwan, George Leslie Mackay (1844–1901), as described in From Far Formosa: The Islands, Its People and Missions, and to explore how Christian theology was established among and adapted to the Taiwanese people: the approaches that Mackay used and the missionary strategies that he implemented, as well as the difficulties that he faced. Given that Mackay’s missionary strategy was clearly highly successful—within 30 years, he had built 60 churches and made approximately 2000 converts—the question of how he achieved these results is certainly worth considering. Furthermore, from the outset, Mackay was perceived and received very positively in Taiwan and is considered something of a folk hero in the country even today. In the present-day narrative of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, Mackay is seen as someone whose efforts to establish an independent church with native local leadership helped to introduce democracy to Taiwan. However, in some of the scholarship, missionaries such as Mackay are portrayed as profit seekers. This paper seeks to give a voice to Mackay himself and thereby to provide a more symmetrical approach to mission history.

Dalit Theology and Indian Christian History in Dialogue: Constructive and Practical Possibilities

In this article, I consider how an integration of Dalit theology and Indian Christian history could help Dalit theologians in their efforts to connect more deeply with the lived realities of today’s Dalit Christians. Drawing from the foundational work of such scholars as James Massey and John C. B. Webster, I argue for and begin a deeper and more comprehensive Dalit reading and theological analysis of the history of Christianity and mission in India. My explorations—touching on India’s Thomas/Syrian, Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal traditions—reveal the persistence and complexity of caste oppression throughout Christian history in India, and they simultaneously draw attention to over-looked, empowering, and liberative resources that are bound to Dalit Christians lives, both past and present. More broadly, I suggest that historians and theologians in a variety of contexts—not just in India—can benefit from blurring the lines between their disciplines.

Traversing a Tightrope between Ecumenism and Exclusivism: The Intertwined History of South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Nyasaland (Malawi)

During the first few decades of the 20th century, the Nkhoma mission of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became involved in an ecumenical venture that was initiated by the Church of Scotland’s Blantyre mission, and the Free Church of Scotland’s Livingstonia mission in central Africa. Geographically sandwiched between these two Scots missions in Nyasaland (presently Malawi) was Nkhoma in the central region of the country. During a period of history when the DRC in South Africa had begun to regressively disengage from ecumenical entanglements in order to focus on its developing discourse of Afrikaner Christian nationalism, this venture in ecumenism by one of its foreign missions was a remarkable anomaly. Yet, as this article illustrates, the ecumenical project as finalized at a conference in 1924 was characterized by controversy and nearly became derailed as a result of the intransigence of white DRC missionaries on the subject of eating together with black colleagues at a communal table. Negotiations proceeded and somehow ended in church unity despite the DRC’s missionaries’ objection to communal eating. After the merger of the synods of Blantyre, Nkhoma and Livingstonia into the unified CCAP, distinct regional differences remained, long after the colonial missionaries departed. In terms of its theological predisposition, especially on the hierarchy of social relations, the Nkhoma synod remains much more conservative than both of its neighboring synods in the CCAP to the south and north. Race is no longer a matter of division. More recently, it has been gender, and especially the issue of women’s ordination to ministry, which has been affirmed by both Blantyre and Livingstonia, but resisted by the Nkhoma synod. Back in South Africa, these events similarly had an impact on church history and theological debate, but in a completely different direction. As the theology of Afrikaner Christian nationalism and eventually apartheid came into positions of power in the 1940s, the DRC’s Nkhoma mission in Malawi found itself in a position of vulnerability and suspicion. The very fact of its participation in an ecumenical project involving ‘liberal’ Scots in the formation of an indigenous black church was an intolerable digression from the normative separatism that was the hallmark of the DRC under apartheid. Hence, this article focuses on the variegated entanglements of Reformed Church history, mission history, theology and politics in two different 20th-century African contexts, Malawi and South Africa.

‘Alternative facts’ and the airbrushing of women from early mission history: the case of Susanna Klein

ABSTRACT Despite several decades of feminist scholarship, the early period of overseas evangelism has remained largely untouched, allowing the myth of the mission as an all male affair to go unchallenged. The paper takes the life story of one particular missionary wife who served on the Church Missionary Society’s first African mission to illustrate the role played by historians’ uncritical use of archival material in perpetuating the male narrative. It focuses on Susanna Klein’s dramatic decision in 1815 to turn whistleblower by exposing numerous missionary misdemeanours, which prompted an inspection visit from London. It traces the mechanism whereby the Society, deeply unsettled by her role in the affair, airbrushed all mention of her from its public records, thus revealing the ease with which female agency could be suppressed to preserve the all male story. In conclusion, a number of lessons are drawn from the unquestioning reliance on the work of others.

Mission and Engagement of The Vincentians to Priestly Formation in Indonesia: A Historical-Theological Revisit

This paper explores historical engagement in priestly formation in Indonesia by the Vincentians, the Catholic Religious Congregation, who has been sent to a mission in Indonesia (from the Netherlands) and erected the Diocese of Surabaya since 1923. The paper outlines the Vincentian missionaries’ theological understanding of mission and the importance of establishing minor and major seminary to train the indigenous candidates for the priesthood to take care of their local churches. This study's methodology applies a historical approach to see the strategies of the Vincentians to develop the formation of priestly candidates related to the challenges of the times. From this study, we found that the history of the Catholic mission has a meaningful peak in planting the Church as often produced in the mission and the formation of its local priests. The education of candidates for the priesthood is not just a form of apostolic work but is essentially a necessary part of the Catholic Church's mission. The Vincentians have carved a hard work of mission apostolates in the establishment of the Diocese of Surabaya with its charismatic works and the education of its laymen until today and especially in the continual engagement in the priestly formation in Indonesia with its changing challenges. The excellent form of the Catholic priests is essential to the mission, as the candidates will be the future leaders of the local Church and the preachers of the Gospel wherever they are sent.

Dynamical Investigation of Cam-Follower Profile Under Space - 100 to + 120°C Temperature Condition

Cam-follower mechanism efficiency in production of desired motions has been proved along the history of space missions. In this paper, according to pre-specified spatial condition of wide temperature variations between -100 and +120 Celsius degrees, some new and innovative cam-follower profile designs are presented. In the first follower mechanism, through rotating a connected screw to a servomotor, changes in length of the moving follower on cam is compensated with respect to the temperature changes of certain spatial conditions. In the second design, an inclined surface cam is equipped with an active controllable follower. As the third suggestion, the design with an inclined cam surface is optimized by investigating the length of the shaft connected to the cam. In the fourth model, a new design is proposed by changing the shaft's material from aluminum to titanium and a modified design is presented. The proposed designs are investigated and compared using the analytical solutions and optimization tools using MATLAB and ANSYS. The purpose of this study was to identify the effect of profile type on the dynamic behavior of the mechanism under the effects of a temperature difference of -100 to +120°C in space condition. It is concluded that changing the length of the follower, using an inclined cam surface and optimizing the length of the shaft connected to the follower are all effective solutions to the cam's volume variation problem. The results also indicate that for solving the problem of the volume variation of the cam-follower mechanism a combination of the proposed designs is optimal. Moreover, among the presented designs, the mechanism with an inclined cam surface with an aluminum shaft is shown to have the highest precision and performance with respect to the other three.

Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism by Nicholas T. Pruitt

Reviewed by: Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism by Nicholas T. Pruitt Mark Thomas Edwards Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism. By Nicholas T. Pruitt. (New York: New York University Press. 2021. pp. x, 279. $45.00. ISBN: 9781479803545.) Evangelicals and fundamentalists were once marginalized in the study of American religious history, but now they receive too much attention. Thankfully, a new generation of scholars is proving that we still have a lot to learn about liberal, mainline, and ecumenical Protestants. Elesha Coffman, K. Healan Gaston, Kevin Schultz, Gale Kenny, and Gene Zubovich, among others, are moving the field beyond the "history of theology"—with its attendant obsession with the Niebuhr brothers—and establishing broader connections to American public life and identity. Nicholas T. Pruitt's new book is a welcome addition to that endeavor. His subject is the ecumenical Protestant "pluralistic bargain" (3) that culminated in support for the liberalization of immigration law under the landmark Hart-Cellar Act (1965). Pruitt's subjects were cosmopolitan in the (David) Hollingerian sense of championing controlled ethnic, racial, and religious diversity within a framework of continuing white Protestant supremacy. As Pruitt aptly puts it, "the pluralistic bargain amounted to an attempt by Protestant churches to incorporate progressive mores of toleration while bracing themselves against modern [End Page 633] cultural forces that threatened to decenter Protestant Christianity within American society" (7). Open Hearts, Closed Doors is an institutional history of Protestant home missions that highlights the social gospel's paradoxical inclusive-exclusive nature. Following the establishment of immigrant quota systems between 1917–1924, the Federal Council of Churches (FCC) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) pursued kinder, gentler forms of "Christian Americanization" (43)—like community centers, immigrant schools on Ellis Island, and the Bureau of Reference for Migrating Peoples—as alternatives to the violent nativism of a resurgent Ku Klux Klan. Ecumenical Protestants advocated toleration for Japanese immigrants but did not begin challenging immigration restriction laws until during and after World War II. In the name of wartime "Christian brotherhood" (92), the FCC and SBC expanded refugee relief, aided the resettlement of interned Japanese Americans, and lobbied for increased immigration from Asia. Pruitt finds that "tri-faith" Christian Americanism still aimed to keep the country white and Protestant even while becoming more accepting of diversities of culture and language. Perhaps the most important Cold War liberal project ecumenical Protestants undertook was applying steady pressure on Washington for a more open immigration policy, including the passage of Hart-Cellar. The costs for doing so were both immediate and long-term: Ecumenical Protestants found themselves repeated targets of Red Scare churches and politicians, while the eventual consequence of their activism was the undermining of any white Protestant establishment. Pruitt concludes his study with a brief discussion of how evangelicals have taken up ecumenical Protestants' "pluralistic bargain" in the twenty-first century. He might have used that space to relay how ecumenical churches today have repented of Protestant exceptionalism and embraced a thoroughgoing cultural and religious pluralism centered around supporting immigrants—as Grace Yukich explored in One Family Under God (2013). But that is a minor point of disagreement. Pruitt has masterfully documented and detailed an unexplored dimension of Protestant social Christianity in action, including its direct and lasting impact on American life and politics. His book deserves a wide audience. [End Page 634] Mark Thomas Edwards Spring Arbor University Copyright © 2021 The Catholic University of America Press

From the Editors

From the Editors June Scudeler tawow, welcome! Special sections and special issues are proving to be a vital way for Studies in American Indian Literatures to engage scholars and readers within our field, and to produce vibrant new knowledge about Indigenous writing. We’ve had dynamic special issues on Water (Fall/Winter 2018, guest edited by Christina Boyles and Hilary Wyss) and, earlier this year, on Indigenous Literatures from Canada (guest edited by Michelle Coupal, Aubrey Hanson, and Sarah Henzi). These issues have had enormous appeal for readers and have helped to build and reinforce community within Indigenous literary studies. Keep the proposals coming! In the issue at hand, we are pleased to present a special section devoted entirely to Deborah Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013). For nearly a decade, many of our colleagues have read, written about, and taught Miranda’s powerful, palimpsestic book, pondering what it tells us about California Mission history, colonial and personal archives, violence and intergenerational trauma, tribal genealogies, and of course, Native sovereignty and survivance. Guest editors Laura M. Furlan and Lydia M. Heberling have written and collected a thought-provoking collection of essays that walk us through these themes and more . . . including a piece by Deborah Miranda herself. In addition to the special section, we have two other essays on canonical writers. Jane Im reads Louise Erdrich’s The Beet Queen through the lens of traditional Ojibwe plant knowledge, and Cristina Stanciu advances our understanding of both the so-called “Red Progressive” era and of Indigenous print culture with some close readings of Carlos Montezuma’s early twentieth-century newsletter, Wassaja. The span of essays represented here—from elevating one of our most innovative contemporary Indigenous authors to revisiting a more well [End Page vii] known Native American Renaissance novel to exhuming new knowledge about the more distant history of Indigenous periodical literature—represents the kind of diversity and imagination we have come to expect from SAIL contributors, and to which we look forward to seeing more. [End Page viii] June Scudeler Siobhan Senier Copyright © 2021 University of Nebraska Press

The emergence and development of UN peacekeeping activities

The first two official UN missions to launch UN peacekeeping operations were the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization(Israel) and the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan.The UN’s peacekeeping activities, in its traditional sense, came at a time when confrontation between the parties to the Cold Warparalyzed the Security Council in 1956 during the Suez Crisis.In order to understand how peacekeeping has evolved from its inception to the present day, as well as to be able to assess howits effectiveness has grown, the author proposes to divide the history of peacekeeping missions into periods.In 1987, 5 peacekeeping operations were carried out, and in 1993 their number reached 19, in 1995 – 20. In 2019 – 14 peacekeepingmissions were carried out. However, not all peacekeeping operations are carried out only by the UN. Between 2004 and 2013,regional organizations and situational alliances were involved in stabilizing the conflict (as in the case of the CAR, Chad and Darfurmissions).Peacekeeping has become a unique example of global cooperation as a major UN body, such as the General Assembly, the SecurityCouncil, the Secretariat; and States, both those providing military and police contingents and those receiving missions.Throughout its history, there have been setbacks and victories, but peacekeeping has proved the necessity of its existence. It hasbecome a unique example of global cooperation as a major UN body, such as the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretariat;and States, both those providing military and police contingents and those receiving missions.Given all the shortcomings and problems that have arisen during peacekeeping missions for half a century, in 2000 the UN beganreforming the peacekeeping mechanism, which continues to this day.Since 1948, UN peacekeeping has evolved significantly and become much more effective, but there are still problems with thelegitimacy of UN missions, human rights violations and others.

“True Heirs to a Heroic Russian Past” or “Russians in Name Only”: Sitka Creoles as Seen by the Late Nineteenth Century Russian Orthodox Clergy

The paper examines the criticism levelled against the Creoles of Sitka (persons of Russian and Alaska Native descent) by the Russian Orthodox priests who came to minister among them in the late 19th-early 20th century. These clergymen accused their parishioners not only of immorality but also of not being truly Russian, as far as their language and culture were concerned. By focusing on this criticism, the paper explores the symbolic significance of Alaska’s Russian colonial and missionary history and its legacy in the conservative nationalist ideology of the Russian Orthodox clergy. Particular attention is paid to the causes to which this clergy attributed the decline of the Russian culture and devotion to Orthodoxy among the Creole population of this frontier American/Alaskan town.

Protestant Missions Collections

Collections documenting the history of Protestant missions are of great and ongoing interest to a wide range of researchers. Global in scope, they capture histories and perspectives often not otherwise available and support learning and scholarship in disciplines such as history, anthropology, and religious studies. This panel addressed librarians, students, and scholars working with theological, religious studies, or related collections and institutions, particularly where the documentation and study of colonial legacies is a primary concern for researchers, faculty, and students. It emphasized the need for critical engagement -- for instruction, management, outreach -- with complex and high-interest primary sources.

Global health: A new paradigm for medical mission?

This article explores the practice of Christian mission in the developing field of global health care. First, the definition and context of global health is discussed. Second, the history of medical missions is traced, from their origins in biblical healing, through traditional medical missions in the 19th century, to today’s global health-care paradigm. Third, the situation of Christian medical mission today is described – in hospitals and non-governmental organisations, and in partnerships with governments and other secular agencies delivering health care. Two key challenges for Christian mission in the global health-care context are then discussed: increasing distance from individuals and increasing pressure not to evangelise. The reasons for evangelicals sometimes appearing to succumb to this latter pressure are considered. Finally, an attempt to resolve this tension is made in the context of Christian calling and the task all Christians have to make disciples, whatever their role in life.

Fighting for Peace in Somalia: A History and Analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007–2017, by Paul D. Williams

Fighting for Peace in Somalia: A History and Analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007–2017, by Paul D. Williams

Attaining the correct balance: Exploring the challenges and spirituality of single women missionaries in the Victorian era

This comprehensive account analyses the issues of the role of single women missionaries in the Victorian era. In mission history, the moreover complex place of these women in the whole spectrum of missionary life has been dominated mostly by male authority. We meet several personalities who, in their own person, promised to follow God’s lead and to give their utmost energies to accomplish God’s highest plans. Recently I saw a leaflet with the names and pictures of all the Africa Inland Mission (AIM) missionaries in Africa and those who are on home assignment. A quick view shows that most of them are single women. This pamphlet affirms the thesis, that of all the missionaries sent to foreign countries, the majority are single women. Having been overlooked for a long time, in the last decades of the 20th century, more attention is being given to their involvement in mission work and the role of single women missionaries is highlighted. Missionary attitude is an essential dimension of the spirituality of these women. This article explores the tensions, the critical issues and direction of single women missionaries in the Victorian era. This serves as a contribution to the continuing research to understand the history of ‘half the church’. Being involved in mission does raise special challenges, and women’s spirituality should reflect these. Today many people are ignorant of their existence, and it is as though they had noiselessly tip-toed out of the pages of history and had been removed to page-less oblivion. Stanley reports that their contribution was rarely acknowledged, and hence has left little historical record. Murray is also very clear when talking about women’s missionary work, namely that their contribution in mission was little recorded, little regarded, and little known. In examining their experiences, I turn to the key theological frames of motivation: call, purpose, vision and suffering in order to make a contribution to the debate about the role of single women in missionary work, and to incorporate their experiences in the debate. These women, for a long time overlooked in the prevailing missionary debate, show a professionalism in missionary issues, which were overlooked for a long time.

Healing Waters and Buffalo Bones: Using Women’s Histories to challenge the Patriarchal Narrative of Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta

Most historical narratives have overlooked women’s roles in and Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the Roman Catholic church, such as that of Lac Ste. Anne, a 19th century Roman Catholic community in Alberta. Lac Ste. Anne was the first permanent Catholic mission west of the Red River settlement and frequently appears in historical documents and missionary histories. Women and Indigenous peoples, however, are scantily mentioned. In contrast to the dominant patriarchal narratives built from decades of male-based stories, I propose that women’s accounts from the settlement illuminate life and relationships between its inhabitants. Drawing on historical sources left by three Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns), who maintained the chapel and founded the school and hospital in 1859, and oral histories from Victoria Callihoo, a Métis woman who lived in the settlement as a young girl, I will argue that the Catholic Fathers conflated women’s lives at Lac Ste. Anne into one over-simplistic patriarchal narrative. Additionally, when re-examined with a 21st century lens, these stories can inform the anthropological study of women at Lac Ste. Anne including their roles and responsibilities, living conditions, physical and social mobility, and rela­tionships with colonialism.

British Evangelicals and German Pietists Promoting Revival through the Work of the Bible and Tract Societies in Hungary

This article demonstrates how British evangelicals, German pietists, and Hungarian Protestants sought to ‘educate’ the masses outside the educational framework of ecclesiastical and state structures within the Hungarian Kingdom in the nineteenth century. More specifically the study intends to offer a concise overview of the history of Protestants who spread the gospel through the distribution of affordable Bibles, New Testaments and Christian tracts. It shows how various denominations worked together and directs attention to their theological outlook which transcended ethnic boundaries. It is a well-known fact in mission and church history that such undertakings were carried out to stir revivalism. The study also throws light on the influential role the Scottish Mission, as well as Archduchess Maria Dorothea, played in stirring revivalism through the aforementioned means. The history of these endeavours, especially those of the British and Foreign Bible Society and Religious Tract Society, has not been treated adequately by intellectual historians, social historians or historians of religion and education. This account adds to scholarly understanding of the multi-ethnic and trans-denominational work of international Protestantism in Central Europe.