Missionary Journals Research Articles

The power of the 'universal': caste and missionary medical discourses of alcoholism in the Telugu print sphere, 1900-1940.

This article explores missionary medical discourses in three Telugu journals published in the early twentieth century, to analyse how caste pivoted denunciations of alcohol, especially toddy and arrack, in the Madras Presidency and the Hyderabad state. It argues that one women's missionary journal, Vivekavathi, deployed medical knowledge to formulate subtle and occasionally explicit condemnations of toddy and arrack as unclean and unhealthy substances. The journal relied on universal medical and missionary, British and American knowledge frameworks to mark out Dalits and other marginalised castes as consumers of these local beverages. This stigma was conjured through medical narratives of marginalised castes as lacking in the knowledge of alcohol's relation to digestion, toddy's role in ruining maternal and child nutrition, the unhygienic environment of arrack shops and their propensity to 'alcoholism'. However, this article also traces counter-caste voices who too invoked 'the power of the universal' to dispel caste stigma against marginalised castes. While both sets of voices deployed medical 'enslavement' to alcohol as an interpretive move, they differed in their social imperatives and political imaginaries, defined in caste terms. This article explores a third set of implications of the term 'universal' by analysing global medico-missionary narratives of alcohol in two other Telugu journals. On a methodological plane, this article also pushes for a hybrid reading of what counts for 'scientific instruction', where hymns, catechisms, parables and allegories are considered alongside conventional scientific experiments. In that sense, it upholds vernacular missionary publications as an invaluable resource for the social history of medicine.

Phallogocentrism, Global Entanglements and Comparison in the Study of Religion

Abstract Along with the critique of generic terms, such as religion or mysticism, regarded as Western-centric, comparison in religious studies has been faulted for reinforcing Western dominance over the rest of the world. Global Religious History claims to constructively address these charges by focusing on global entanglements. On closer inspection, however, if the latter are theorized at all, an astounding exclusion comes to the fore: the omission of gender as category of knowledge. Engaging this phallogocentrism in Global Religious History, this article calls for a conceptualization of global entanglements that takes this omission seriously. As a case study, I use a tract published serially in a Singapore-based Islamic missionary journal (1938–1941), to argue that a revised conceptualization of global entanglements can help to uncover the contributions of non-hegemonic subjects to contemporary discourses on religion, mysticism, Islam, and Sufism, as well as to the comparative study of religion.

Leading Polish missionary journals during the Covid-19 pandemic, their functioning, message and realization of press functions

This research has confirmed the need for missionary periodicals on the Polish press market, which have specific tasks and functions to perform. Declining circulation should lead to some consolidation of press titles and to cooperation and raising the standard of individual titles. The period of the pandemic proved that the leading Polish missionary periodicals react quickly to the crisis situation, provide reliable and wide-ranging information about it, and in some titles this translates into an invitation to readers to commit themselves spiritually and materially to specific needs. From the course of the analyses carried out, we can verify the hypotheses or confirm the theses posed before the research began.
 Thesis 1. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the leading missionary journals carried out the press functions for which they were established - confirmed, although mainly in terms of information-publicity, fundraising and organising functions.
 Thesis 2. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the leading missionary magazines reported on the pandemic situation in mission areas and publicised the social campaigns that were being conducted - confirmed, although some titles more than others.
 Hypothesis 1. There is a deepening crisis of missionary journalism, in favour of missionary media communicating via the internet. It seems necessary to adapt different content to the two distinct target groups (audiences) - verified positively.
 Hypothesis 2. There is a need for change and centralisation on the market of missionary journalism - verified positively.

7. Human Rights and Decolonization in the Missionary Journal of the Salesians (1945-1978)

7. Human Rights and Decolonization in the Missionary Journal of the Salesians (1945-1978)

The New Calling

The New Calling

The Challenges of Global Church History for Those outside the United States of America

The Challenges of Global Church History for Those outside the United States of America

The Saints Abroad: Missionaries Who Answered Brigham Young's 1852 Call to the Nations of the World

I was disappointed in this book from the start. First, this book ended up being nothing more than a collection of well-published and equally well-read missionary journals of extremely prominent LDS missionaries of the time. What is the problem with that? Nothing, if that is what someone likes to read or reread. But getting more to the heart of the issue, I believe it would have been more representative, as well as more illuminating, had the authors presented material that wasn't already so accessible and even famous. This would have given a feel for the missionaries who served during this period who were much less well-known. Having researched both, I have discovered literally hundreds of missionary journals that are more evenly representative of the time and service of those called. What is more, these missionaries are listed in alphabetical order, covering over fifty pages of printed text, in appendix 2. A quick perusal of library information regarding the first eight missionaries listed reveals that there is biographical data regarding their missions served, but none were used for the compilation of this text.The eight journals used to create this text, although written by relatively well-known church leaders, are presented as “fairly representative” of missionary service at the time. But are they? I think it is obvious that no one who served a mission abroad has ever experienced the unprecedented success (then or now) of Dan Jones, or the high-profile image of Orson Spencer, etc. These journals are well written. From that perspective, they were well chosen—they fill many pages and are rather all-inclusive. Again, a more realistic and representative effort would have been to include journals half written, not so well written, or even fragmentary.If readers anticipate a high-profile, nonrepresentative text that chronicles the success of eight equally abnormal missionaries, this is a book for them.

Practicing Ho?omana Under American Occupation

Practicing Hoʻomana Under American Occupation Marie Alohalani Brown We are not Americans…. We will die as Hawaiians, we will never be Americans.” — Haunani-Kay Trask, 1993 Given the Hawaiian people’s religious-political history, “America” and “religion” are potentially divisive topics for Kanaka ʻŌiwi (a.k.a. “Hawaiians”). While some ʻŌiwi are proud to be American, others refuse to think of themselves as such and reject Americanism. As for “religion,” today’s Kanaka fight for their right to practice their traditional beliefs and belief-related practices, the correct and traditional term for which is Hoʻomana, in the face of Christian-inflected religious bias and under the hegemony of a largely Christian nation, the United States. This article has two parts. The first offers an overview of the religious-political history of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the injustices that continue to affect Kanaka. The second considers the resurgence of Hoʻomana, specifically in connection with recent efforts to protect Mauna Kea, a sacred mountain on Hawaiʻi Island. RELIGIOUS-POLITICAL HISTORY FROM 1819 TO 1959 In November 1819, Liholiho, King Kamehameha II, was persuaded by fellow aliʻi (members of the ruling class) to abolish the state religion—a religious-social-cultural-political system that permeated and regulated every aspect of Hawaiian existence and that had been in place so long that it was accorded a [End Page 97] mythic origin.1 While some Kanaka were overjoyed to be free of a system that imposed many laws, the infractions of which sometimes carried a death sentence, others were either disoriented or dismayed after the only religion they had known was abolished. Religion-related structures and objects were destroyed throughout the islands, and anyone who refused to comply with the edict was persecuted and even killed.2 Not all aliʻi agreed with the king’s choice, however, which resulted in the 1819 battle at Kuamoʻo between the aliʻi who backed Liholiho’s abolition and those who were against it. The latter were defeated and many of them died.3 On March 30, 1820, five months later, during the ongoing religious-social-political upheaval that followed Liholiho’s edict, the first US Protestant missionaries arrived in Hawaiʻi. Liholiho gave them permission to remain in the islands for one year, but as it turned out, they were never asked to leave.4 Other missionaries came to Hawaiʻi to continue their work. At the behest of Kaʻahumanu, one of the aliʻi who had urged Liholiho to abolish the state religion, many Kanaka— but not all—embraced Christianity.5 Despite the king’s edict and Kaʻahumanu’s desire that all Kanaka become Christians, ardent practitioners secretly continued to pass on their beliefs and belief-related practices in their families or professions. This continuity is supported by substantial and conclusive evidence taken from missionary journals and letters from 1810 on, from Hawaiian-language newspapers published between 1834 and 1948, from scholarly treatises by missionary descendants, from ethnologies carried out in the early 1900s, from interviews with elders from the 1950s to the 1970s, and from social-service research from the 1960s to the 1970s.6 [End Page 98] Kanaka have been subjected to historical injustices at the hands of missionaries (since April 1810) as well as their descendants and hostile settlers who overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy (January 17, 1893). The US, illegally and against the will of the ʻŌiwi population, first annexed an independent nation (July 12, 1898) for their empire-building endeavors and then made it their fiftieth state on August 21, 1959. Today’s ʻŌiwi continue to suffer from and cope with the aftermath of these historical traumas caused by a white minority who are driven by religious and racial bias and, in many cases, covet political power to support their capitalist aims.7 The physical, spiritual, and intellectual violence Kanaka have experienced because of this history include demographic collapse because of introduced diseases, land dispossession, the destruction of cultural and natural resources, the desecration of sacred sites, loss of language, culture, and identity from imposed assimilation and blood quantum laws, reduction to stereotypes, cultural appropriation, religious discrimination, sexual objectification, marginalization in our own homelands...

An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L Richards and the Expansion of Missionary Work in South America

An Apostolic Journey: Stephen L Richards and the Expansion of Missionary Work in South America

A Study on Advertisements in The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal

A Study on Advertisements in The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal

Over two centuries: Black people in nineteenth-century Hawaiʻi

ABSTRACTThis article charts the history of Black people in nineteenth-century Hawaiʻi, an Indigenous and non-White society that prohibited slavery. Far from the Black Atlantic, African-descended people in the Pacific found acceptance and refuge. Since the late 1700s, Black mariners and notable figures – including former slaves from the US as well as Cape Verdeans – arrived in a non-slave society which was in the process of adopting race. Largely unrecognized, they worked in concert with Native Hawaiians – as spouses, educators, attorneys, and advisors to the monarchs – to influence and resist the development of American racial ideologies. Combining Hawaiian language sources, missionary journals, and ship logs with the scant existing historiography, this article accounts for Black people in the Hawaiian Islands during its tumultuous shift from an independent nation to a US Territory – a period and people neglected in twentieth-century scholarship on the Black Pacific.

Historical records of earthquakes for Greenland and Labrador in Moravian Missionary journals

In the general seismological literature, there is scant information regarding historical earthquakes in Greenland and Labrador. This paper seeks to redress this by focusing on earthquakes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (to the early 1870s) in western Greenland and Labrador, regions bordering Davis Strait. The information is drawn primarily from the journals of Danish and Moravian missionaries and missionary newspapers. The missionaries were keen observers of nature and natural phenomena, and their records constitute a reliable source of climatic and environmental information.

Christians and Muslims in Nineteenth-Century China: Perspectives of Two Contemporary Journals

ABSTRACTThroughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, two journals stand out as primary sources of information about China. The Chinese Repository and The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal were edited by senior missionary scholars, who recorded observations of Chinese life and the development of the Church in China. While they make only scattered references to the Muslim population in China, these items are nevertheless significant indicators of the size, importance and nature of these Muslim communities. They also portray Christian attitudes to ‘Mohammedans’ and on occasions indicate Christian strategies of engagement with them. There was a particular burst of interest in ‘Mohammedism’ in the 1880s. However, engagement with the Muslim communities was never a priority for the Christian missionary force, as they were a distinct minority of the total Chinese population.

John Kerr and the early China Medical Missionary Association

In 1886, the Euro-American medical missionaries in China founded the first modern Chinese medical association-the China Medical Missionary Association, and John Kerr was elected as the first chairman and the first editor-in-chief of the China Medical Missionary Journal. John Kerr, who had done missionary medical work in China for thirty years, was then the director of Canton Hospital, and was one of the most influential medical missionaries in China and even all over the world. His great prestige and foresight and sagacity played an important role in the early development of the China Medical Missionary Association.

Before Hinduism: Missionaries, Unitarians, and Hindoos in Nineteenth-Century America

AbstractAmerican interest in and knowledge of religion in India began before Americans imagined Hinduism as a coherent world religion. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Americans used a variety of terms to describe, represent, and imagine the religious culture of India: Gentoos, Hindoos, religion of the Hindoos, Hindoo religion, Brahmanism, heathenism, and paganism. Each term meant different things to different writers at different times. But there was no Hinduism, a world religion originating in India and comparable to others, in America prior to the late nineteenth century. Americans read and wrote about “Hindoos” and “Hindoo religion,” something altogether different from Hindus and Hinduism. This article analyzes two examples of American representations of Hindoo religion before Hinduism. First, it examines American missionary reports about “Hindoo heathenism” written by American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionaries and published in American missionary journals in the early nineteenth century. Second, it examines the Unitarian interest in Rammohun Roy and his growing popularity in New England during the 1820s and 1830s. Unitarian interest in Roy and ABCFM missionary reports exemplify the ways Protestant questions and interests shaped the American understanding of religions and the eventual construction of “world religions” such as Hinduism to suit American Protestant concerns.

Historical origins between National Medical Association of China and Boji Hospital in Guangzhou

In 2015, National Medical Association of China, now being called the Chinese Medical Association, celebrates its centennial and Boji Hospital in Guangzhou ( also known as Canton Hospital, or the Canton Pok Tsai Hospital, and now Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University ) marks its 180th anniversary. Three major historical events establish the role of Boji Hospital in the founding and development of the National Medical Association of China during the last 100 years, viz.: ①hosting and participating in the establishment of the Medical Missionary Association of China and its official journal: the China Medical Missionary Journal; ②holding the 11th scientific sessions of the National Medical Association of China; ③nominating Dr. Wu Lien-teh as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1935 by William Warder Cadbury, the president of Boji Hospital.

A study on the awareness of Chinese medicine by medical missionaries: focused on the China Medical Missionary Journal (1887-1932)

Protestant medical missionaries, who started entering China during the beginning of the 19th century, set the goal as propagating Western medicine to the Chinese while spreading the Christian gospel. Back in those days, China formed deep relations with their own ideology and culture and depended on Chinese medicine that caused major influence on their lives instead of just treatment behaviors. Accordingly, it is natural to see information about Chinese medicine in documents that were left behind. Yet, there are not many studies which dealt with the awareness of Chinese medicine by medical missionaries, and most were focused on the criticism imposed by medical missionaries regarding Chinese medicine. Thus, there are also claims amongst recent studies which impose how the medical missionaries moved from overlooking and criticizing Chinese medicine to gaining a "sympathetic viewpoint" to a certain degree. Still, when the documents left behind by medical missionaries is observed, there are many aspects which support how the awareness of Chinese medicine in medical missionaries has not changed significantly. In addition, medical missionaries actively used medicine like traditional Chinese drugs if the treatment effect was well known. Yet, they barely gave any interest to the five elements, which are the basics of traditional Chinese drugs prescription. In other words, medical missionaries only selected elements of Chinese medicine that were helpful to them just like how the Chinese were choosing what they needed from Western knowledge. The need to understand Chinese medicine was growing according to the flow of times. For instance, some medical missionaries admitted the treatment effect of acupuncture in contrast to claiming it as non-scientific in the past. Such changes were also related to how focused medical missionaries were on medical activities. The first medical missionaries emphasized the non-scientific aspect of Chinese medicine to verify the legitimacy of medical mission. Then, medical missionaries gradually exerted more efforts on medical treatment than direct mission activities so the need of Chinese medicine became greater. This was because Chinese relied on Chinese medicine the most and even used Chinese medicine terms that they knew to explain their conditions while getting treatment from doctors who learned Western medicine. Additionally, medicine missionaries witnessed patients getting better after receiving treatment so they could not completely overlook Chinese medicine. However, medical missionaries strongly believed in the superiority of Western medicine and considered that China certainly needed Western medicine from a scientific perspective. Chinese doctors who were close to medical missionaries and learned about Western medicine believed in Western medicine and thought that Chinese medicine only held historical value besides some fields like Chinese traditional drugs.

Chinese Perspectives on Medical Missionaries in the 19th Century: The Chinese Medical Missionary Journal

Chinese Perspectives on Medical Missionaries in the 19th Century: The Chinese Medical Missionary Journal

Merging the Private Past with Public Perception: John Hines’s Missionary Journals and The Red Indians of the Plains

By writing the story of his life as a missionary in the Canadian North West twice, 40 years apart and in two different forms, John Hines provides the historian with an opportunity to consider the creative process in history by questioning why Hines’s perception of events varied. In the field journals, Hines wrote for himself and his employers. Forty years later, he faced different considerations. He wrote his autobiography to appeal to a reading audience conditioned to expect a product that conformed to an established genre of missionary biography. A different historical reality had emerged by 1915. Hines redefined events to match the emerged government policy and the anticipated future of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian society. The narrative forms imposed on Hines are more than poetic imagination as they reflect history itself.

The Baptism of Death: Rereading the Life and Death of Lakshmi Kaundinya

AbstractThis article re-reads the life and death of a young Brahmin woman, Lakshmi Kaundinya, as reported in a missionary journal in the middle of the nineteenth century. Using the analytical tools of postcolonial theory, it raises urgent questions about our unstable present by giving voice to this woman, who is silenced in a narrative that, though sympathetic, attempts to frame her as an arrogant Brahmin woman who did not want to give up the ways of her culture and conform to the expectations of the mission. It provides a sub-text to the more ‘successful’ story of the conversion of her husband, Anandarao Kaundinya, who is subsequently absorbed into the team of missionaries from the Basel Mission, by focusing on the challenges posed by gender and culture in narratives of nineteenth century conversions to Christianity.