Missionary Practice Research Articles

Provincializing Albert Schweitzer's Ethical Colonialism in Africa

Unlike many commentators who tend to see Schweitzer's mission one-sidedly, I show the coexistence of liberal and conservative elements in his mission. While his mission intent was mostly motivated by the former, his mission practices largely show the latter. In this essay, I analyze them in detail in three parts. I first explain how such opposite elements can coexist by applying Dipesh Chakrabarty's notion of provincializing Europe. Like most nineteenth-century Western liberals, Schweitzer advocated Enlightenment rights for Europeans, but denied them to the colonized. I then argue that Schweitzer's mission was motivated by the liberal elements of his theology. When his critical theology led him to deny the divinity of Jesus, he found a new basis for Christianity in Jesus’ ethical activism, which led him to become a medical missionary to Africa. I then examine Schweitzer's conservative practices in Africa: by applying the developmental model of Hegelian-Marxist historicism to African society, Schweitzer opposed both decolonization and advanced learning to Africans. Schweitzer's missionary practices in Africa, I therefore conclude, were more conservative than those of the typical European missionary.

Weapons of the Weak

This essay explores the missiological significance of oppressed peoples' cultural forms of resistance. It begins with a brief exposition on the concept of the weapons of the weak, followed by a discussion of examples of these subtle resistance strategies, namely, stories, songs, and dance, as well as humor and laughter. I then offer for missionary theology and practice some theological reflections on the implications of these cultural forms of resistance, and end with a brief conclusion.

The Pneumatological Motivation and Influences of the Cambridge Seven

James Hudson Taylor's legacy upon early British Pentecostal missiOnary activity in the form of Cecil Polhill's Pentecostal Missionary Union (PMU) and Willie Burton's Congo Evangelistic Mission (CEM) was substantial. Taylor believed that missionary work should be done in total reliance upon God. ‘If our hearts are right, we may count upon the Holy Spirit's working through us to bring others into deeper fellowship with God - the way the work began at Pentecost. We do not need to say much about the C.I.M.’2 Dr. & Mrs Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission: The Growth of a Work of God (London, Lutterworth, 1949) p. 53 Taylor believed that it was sufficient to have Spirit filled missionaries and God would meet the financial needs of those missionaries He had empowered.3 Taylor, Hudson Taylor, p. 64 He exemplified a successful model of faith mission in China both at a personal and organisational level that influenced early Pentecostal missionary praxis.

Aanbidding en prediking in missionale gemeentes – homileties- liturgiese beskouinge van missionêre gemeentebediening

Worship and preaching in missional congregations – homiletic-liturgical perspectives on missionary congregational ministryIn the context of changes in society, and the resulting paradigm shifts in theological thinking, this article explores the development of a missional ministry praxis for church services in the reformed theological tradition. This is done through a basic overview of recent theological developments in missional ecclesiology, homiletics and liturgy, and a case study of a congregation who shifted to missional ministry praxis by renewing its church services. Opportunities for further research are identified, and the conclusion is reached that churches who make the theological paradigm shift to missional ministry should inherently change the character and planning of their church services to reflect and enhance this shift.

“How better could she serve her country?”: Cultural Translators, U.S. Women’s History, and Kang Cheng’s “An Amazon in Cathay”

This article revisits a 1912 short story by Kang Cheng, a Chinese female missionary physician prominent in both the United States and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholars have interpreted this story as evidence of Kang’s uncritical acceptance of American missionary emphasis on women serving the nation only through work for other women and children. Placing the story in the context of the history of Kang’s medical work, this article argues that Kang’s ideology is more accurately seen as a synthesis between late-nineteenth-century Chinese nationalist and American missionary thought. Even while supporting the missionary enterprise, she challenged notions of racial hierarchy embedded in much missionary practice. The article ultimately addresses the question of the historical treatment of women who functioned as cultural translators, arguing that attention to such women is essential as the field of U.S. women’s history becomes more transnational.

Premillennial Theology, Christian Zionism, and Christian Mission

July 2009 S the late 1800s, premillennial theology has been enormously influential in providing motivation for thousands of participants in the missionary movement from the West. In this article I wish to raise several probing, even disquieting, questions about the inner logic and the historical pattern of influence of premillennial theology. I also briefly discuss an alternative theological approach that holds promise for undergirding mission outreach without falling into the many snares and traps that beset the path of dispensational premillennialism. Though dispensational premillennialism at its extreme edge has displayed unwavering support for Christian Zionism, premillennial theology itself is not monolithic. We are greatly helped in understanding this position and its relation to missionary practice by an article by Michael Pocock entitled “The Influence of Premillennial Eschatology on Evangelical Missionary Theory and Praxis from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present,” printed in this issue. I appreciate Pocock’s clarity in identifying the essential features of premillennial eschatology, which he lists as insistence on literal interpretation of the Bible, understanding it “in its plain sense” (pp. 130, 131), belief in “a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth” (p. 129), “the distinction between Israel and the church” (p. 130), and a role for Israel/the Jewish people that includes a return to the land (p. 130).1 Pocock shows how premillennial eschatology became the dominant eschatology in the United States in the nineteenth century and played an extremely important role in motivating Christians for mission. The premillennial movement “has prepared the majority of Western and many non-Western missionaries since the late nineteenth century” (p. 134, also p. 132). In the nineteenth century this motivation included a strong commitment to holistic mission. In addition to motivating Christians for mission, this eschatology with its associated hermeneutic played an important role in encouraging Christians to have confidence in the complete authority and inspiration of Scripture. At a time when liberalism was gaining strength in the mainline churches, it encouraged Christians to take Scripture at its face value and, among other things, to look for literal fulfillment of prophecy. Pocock reminds us that in the nineteenth century there was a wide variety of different kinds of premillennial eschatology, and there were (and still are) significant differences between historical premillennialists and dispensationalist millennialists. Not all premillennialists were dispensationalists, and there was no rigid understanding of dispensations until the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 popularized an understanding of seven dispensations that became widely accepted by evangelicals all over the world with “an almost canonical status” (p. 131). In recent years we have seen the development of progressive dispensationalism. It is therefore misleading to lump all premillennialists together Premillennial Theology, Christian Zionism, and Christian Mission

D’un Jansénisme à l’autre. Chroniques de Sorbonne (1696–1713) (review)

Reviewed by: D’un Jansénisme à l’autre. Chroniques de Sorbonne (1696–1713) Joseph Bergin D’un Jansénisme à l’autre. Chroniques de Sorbonne (1696–1713). By Jacques Gres-Gayer. [Univers Port-Royal.] (Paris: Éditions Nolin. 2007. Pp. 573. €45,00 paperback. ISBN 978-2-910-48733-1.) With this volume, Jacques Gres-Gayer brings to completion a four-volume project that began with the publication in 1991 of Théologie et pouvoir en [End Page 376] Sorbonne. La Faculté de théologie de Paris et la bulle Unigenitus, 1714–1721.The three volumes published since 1991 have applied the methods used in that first volume to the Paris theology faculty in its dealings with the questions of Jansenism and Gallicanism between 1643 and 1713. Drawing in each volume on a substantial but complex body of manuscript and printed sources, the author has navigated his way with great assurance through some highly contentious theological disputes and their ramifications, religious and political. In each volume he has examined the faculty’s internal politics, assemblies, and working methods through a prosopographical approach that seeks essentially to quantify and evaluate the participation of the faculty’s body of doctors in approving books for publication and censuring books, theses, and propositions already in circulation that were submitted to it for its consideration. This volume focuses on the major crises or controversies of the period under consideration, analyzing the faculty’s makeup that was in constant flux and evolution during the long reign of Louis XIV. It is a history that is highly sensitive to theological, generational, and political shifts within the faculty and that refuses to reify the parties and their ideological stances. Despite its dates (1696–1713) the volume covers a series of debates running essentially from 1696 to 1704, since the faculty was not a major player in the events following the papal bull Vineam Domini Sabaoth (1705), nor in the maneuvers that led to its successor Unigenitus (1713). In 1696, the faculty as an institution was largely becalmed, due to the master clerical politician François de Harlay, who insisted, as did his successor Louis Antoine Noailles, on the ultimate responsibility of bishops for the religious orthodoxy of their dioceses, yet employed doctors of the faculty as advisers or censors. The historical magisterium of the faculty from Jean Gerson to Edmond Richer seemed all but extinguished. The new regime of Noailles was initially more inclined to give the faculty greater leeway, but as Noailles himself was suspected of Jansenist affinities, he was increasingly wary, after 1700, of allowing the faculty to regain its earlier independence. It was Noailles who famously declared in 1702 that bishops were the first casuists of their diocese, a claim that had wider ramifications to theological authority than is immediately obvious. It was all the more paradoxical, therefore, that the incident that sparked the crisis of the so-called second Jansenism involved the faculty engaging in a fairly “standard” exercise in casuistry concerning the actions of a penitent and his confessor with regard to the first papal condemnation of Jansenism. This volume analyzes five particular debates of varying duration and significance between 1696 and 1704. Some were interconnected but discontinuous, as with the 1696 debates over the translation of the work of a Spanish female mystic, Maria of Agreda, and those of 1699 over François Fenelon and quietism. The Saint-Pons consultation of 1699 was triggered by a local dispute over sacramental practices, especially penitential ones, that would resurface with the 1702 “case of conscience.” In between lay the question of the “Chinese rites” (1700) sparked by Jesuit missionary practices in China. In one [End Page 377] way or another, these issues involved conflicts with the Jesuits, Molinist theology, the role of papal authority, and the nature of revealed and natural religion. Gres-Gayer also notes, interestingly, a far greater concern among faculty members around 1700 than in previous generations with the pastoral implications of the issues they debated, if only because many doctors were parish priests in Paris and its environs or administrators employed by bishops. Even though the faculty’s debates were, with the exception of that over the Chinese rites, less momentous than...

La Compagnia di Gesù e l’evangelizzazione dei musulmani nella Spagna del seicento : il caso González

After more than ten years of « popular missions » on the Iberian peninsula, largely devoted to the Muslims, Tirso González Santalla (1624-1705) was elected the thirteenth general of the Company of Jesus and ordered the printing of a manual for converting adherents of the Islamic religion. The « theoretical » arguments of González are the same as those of medieval Catholic treatises, which consider Islam to be a veritable heresy that must be refuted through theological debate and controversy. Missionary practice, however, which is amply described in this manual and in the abundant documentation preserved in the Roman archives of the Company, shows an attitude that is less rigid and in certain respects comparable to the approach of Jesuit missions working abroad. The method is the traditional one of accommodation, applied in this case to interlocutors who are proximate in space, but distant in their culture, education and religion.

Acts 2.17-21: A Paradigm for Pentecostal Mission

AbstractAccording to Menzies, a careful analysis of Acts 2:17-21 reveals that Luke has modified the Joel quotation in three significant ways, and that each modification serves to highlight an important aspect of the mission of the church. The church's mission is to be characterized by visions and divine guidance, bold witness in the face of intense opposition, and signs and wonders. These three themes run throughout the narrative of Acts, and Luke anticipates that they will continue to mark the life of the church in 'these last days'. Luke's narrative, then, is much more than a nostalgic review of how it all began. Although Luke is concerned to stress the reliability of the apostolic witness, his purposes go beyond this. Luke presents the missionary praxis of the early church as a model that is relevant for His church and ours.

“A Internet e seus perigos”: Individualismo, Missão e Poder entre as Testemunhas de Jeová

The missionary practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses is the result of a diligent and proselityst work. The main way they access the public, given through the personal dialogue and the distribution of brochures and leaflets, points out the fact they do not use the Internet as a possible way of proselytism. This article aims to discuss the different elements used by the group to accomplish the missionary goal and takes into account the fact that their proselytist practice is elaborated based on a different pattern of communication.

The suffering witness: a missiological reading of Lamentations

This article explores the possibilities of a missiological reading of the book of Lamentations. Based upon a historical understanding of Lamentations, Christological conclusions are drawn from it with a view on formulating some missiologically relevant guidelines for missionary praxis. This article contends that Lamentations was composed to be used pastorally in an unprecedented crisis in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In a situation of utter powerlessness and otherlessness the lamenting population was shown a way to rebuild their shattered universe by, paradoxically, reaching out to their God who was not there for them anymore. The suffering witness of Lamentations 3 is used as a Christological model, which is applied to missionary praxis. In the fields of worship and liturgy, aid and assistance and prophetic analysis the church has to continue the witnessing ministry of her Lord, empowered by his Spirit.

The Jewish Context of Paul’s Gentile Mission

Luke consistently portrays Paul going first to a synagogue to preach when entering a new location and only later turning to the Gentiles. Many scholars contest this depiction, claiming that the apostle to the Gentiles would not have preached to Jews. Luke’s portrayal of Paul on this point, therefore, must be a product of Luke’s theology rather than a reflection of Paul’s actual practice. On the basis of evidence drawn from the argument of Romans, this essay contends that Paul’s apostleship consisted of bringing the Gentile peoples alongside the Jewish people as one people in united praise of God. As such, the nature of Paul’s task necessitated working with Jews whenever possible. Such an understanding of Paul’s calling not only requires rethinking common understandings of what ‘apostle to the Gentiles’ meant, it also lends credence to Luke’s depiction of Paul’s missionary practice.

Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymaras, and the "New Evangelization" (review)

Andrew Orta, Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymaras, and the Evangelization. New York: Columbia University Press, October 2004. Andrew Orta's book deals (ostensibly, at least) with the implementation of Catholic missionary practices inspired by a of among Aymara-speaking peasants in the Bolivian altiplano.1 These practices constitute the latest phase in a embarked upon by the Church in Latin America after World War II (particularly after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65) and imagined as a rectification of the flawed and violent conversion that followed the conquest. During the 1960s and 70s the New Evangelization in the altiplano, as elsewhere in Latin America, was oriented primarily by liberation theology, with its emphasis on class differences and its preferential option for the poor requiring the empowerment of lay pastoral agents and grass-roots organizations. By the time Orta began his fieldwork in the late 1980s, re-evangelization efforts had been recast in inculturationist terms, a move which involved a valorization of the Aymara peasantry's Aymaraness as opposed to a generic class condition. Inculturationism posits Christianity as a force that must become incarnated in local cultural forms if conversion is to be effective, and views culture in general-any given culture-as being already Christian in essence or potentiality. Inculturationism as a missionary strategy can take a variety of forms-particularly liturgical adaptations involving native performances and symbols, and dynamic translation practices incorporating native religious categories (things which have, of course, been going on since long before the development of a theology of inculturation). As stated in the book's opening paragraph, the application of inculturation theology results in a surprising twist to previous pastoral policies: To become more Christian, the missionaries declare, the Aymara must become more 'Indian' and return to 'the ways of the ancestors'-ways that the missionaries have come to see as local cultural expressions of Christian values (vii). Orta approaches his topic through the theoretical lense of globalization and the production of locality in globalizing contexts. Firstly, the transition from liberation theology to inculturationism is presented as symptomatic of the global shift from a politics of class to a politics of ethnicity. Orta also argues that even though inculturationism may seem to be an inherently localizing move, it is still part and parcel of global forces and tends to impose standardized and thus fictional models of local culture, in this case a generic Aymaraness that does always sit well with local practices. It is the Aymara catechists deputized by the mostly North American and European inculturationist missionaries who are engaged in the real task of the production of locality, and who are the real protagonists of the book. A second dominant theme is that of cultural and historical essentialisms, binarisms, and presuppositions of purity or continuity. Orta notes the importance of such essentialisms for missionary models and practices-in particular, inculturationst missionaries see Aymara culture, and the Aymara person, as a composite consisting of an unchanged Aymara core with an overlay of colonial or creole Christianity. At the same time, Orta is very much engaged in the critique of such essentialisms as they pervade anthropological and ethnohistorical research on the Andes. The critique is closely tied to the question of locality, which, he emphasizes, must be seen not as an embattled site of primordial authenticity but as an evanescent project continually produced by a range of situated actors (204). …

“Biblical Interpretation: A Power for Good or Evil?”

As an academic ducipline, missiology is often considered marginal. However, if missologists take seriously the insights that some of the newer biblical critical methodologies have for their discipline, missiology ceases to be marginal an? becomes central in conversations concerning the great ethical issues of our age. In particular, postcolonial and diasporic methodologies are important in allowing missiology to engage with the biblical text in a new and refreshing way. Postcolonial methodologies allow the musiologist and the missionary to reflect on the history of Christian mission particularly in the modern era, and to reclaim for Christian mission a new role that seeks to resolve some of the problems that occurred when missionary activity was seen as the cultural arm of the colonial powers. Diasporic methodologies are important insofar as they recognize as a gift not a problem the reality of multicultural contemporary society and the need for a missionary praxis that appreciates that cultural diversity.

Religion versus empire?: British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700-1914

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. Missionary practice and precedents, 1701-1789 2. The reorganisation of missionary enterprise, 1790-1812 3. Missions, governments and empire: the terms of engagement, 1800-1830 4. Missionary religion and secular influences: Christianity, commerce and civilisation, 1800-1830 5. International networks in the missionary movement, 1815-1850 6. The new wave: Missionary expansion and plans for the future, 1834-1850 7. Missionary goals, colonial experience, and the waning of enthusiasm, 1850-1870 8. New directions: the challenge of 'faith missions', China and Islam 9. Missionary traditions, 1860-1895: adaptations and consequences (1) 10. Missionary traditions, 1860-1895: adaptations and consequences (2) 11. Beyond the centeneries: missions versus empire, 1890-1914 12. Conclusion: the 'anti' imperialism' of missions? Select bibliography

Elijah's Mantle: Ministerial Formation in Contemporary African Christianity

Commentators have emphasized the explosion of Christianity. Africa may he recovering the importance it had in early Christianity. However, growth could be traumatic and challenging. One factor to take into consideration is ministerial formation because the quality of a church's stewardship may depend on the quality of its messengers. Missionary practice of theological education was vitiated by a racism that delimited the range and curricula of African education. Internal critics from missionary homelands, as well as nationalists, challenged this by promoting indigenised curricula, open access and creative pedagogy. By the late 1940s, colonial governments began to found universities. In the next two decades, nationalists and the educated elite made further efforts to liberate theological education. By the early 1980s, proponents of theological education by extension (TEE) essayed to contextualize the curricula and environment of formation, and reduce costs. TEE failed because of a host of reasons, including logistics and the African love of certificates. Other reforms included the formation of regional ecumenical associations to design relevant curricula, and establish accountability and quality control. The Roman Catholics increased the number of African centres for postgraduate training. However, the insurgence of Pentecostalism scrambled the models of theological education. Inheriting “the mantle of Elijah” became a metaphor for short-circuiting long years of ministerial formation. Rapid expansion put much pressure on the need for personnel By the 1990s, churches that had been displaced from the education field by imploding new states, re-entered the field at the cost-intensive tertiary level. The growth of Christian universities has immense import for African Christianity. Recently, educated and professional Pentecostals engaged in inter-regional mission have developed new models of “theological education by engagement” to supplement the mushrooming Bible colleges that hardly seek accreditation. Other title-loving “men of God” acquire doctorates from offshore agents and some fake ones. Old hands can hardly recognize the vibrant terrain anymore!

Footsteps in Deserted Valleys: Missionary Cases, Strategies and Practice in Qing China, and: Authentic Chinese Christianity: Preludes to Its Development (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), and: Missionary Approaches and Linguistics in Mainland China and Taiwan (review)

Footsteps in Deserted Valleys: Missionary Cases, Strategies and Practice in Qing China, and: Authentic Chinese Christianity: Preludes to Its Development (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries), and: Missionary Approaches and Linguistics in Mainland China and Taiwan (review)

A Trinitarian Ontology of Missions

AbstractBosed on the premise that nature and action are inextricably linked, it is contended that any con‐strual of missional theology as the church's participation in the missio Dei, cannot disregard the doctrine of the immanent Trinity. Four images of the Trinity are appropriated as theological maps for a critical and “thick”description of missions. The trinitarian paradigms characterising the three divine Persons as Source, Word and Love (emphasised by the Greek, Protestant and Latin traditions respectively) are used to counterbalance the contemporary bias toward a social Trinity, which draws its inspiration from the classical doctrine of perichoresis. In the processional model, God's transcendence secures a theocentric missiology, while the reciprocity of the Son and Spirit is correlated to incarnational and charismatic ministry. The linguistical paradigm points to our participation in the mission of the Word that demands both proclamation and action; the eternal dialogue within God prompts our continual hearing and speaking, in relation to God and the world. The dispositional image highlights the Spirit of love, who brings about mis‐sional spirituality, humility and unity, even as the loving embrace of the Father and Son leads us to participate in the sufferings of those at the margins. Finally, the perichoretic model of the Trinity points to the inseparability of the missio Dei and the imago Dei, being and doing, the self and the Other. The oneness of the divine mission implies an integral missional praxis that is rooted in the worship of this triune God.

Wesley e os Pobres

The author describes the poor in its special challenge for the missionary praxis and argues that this pastoral emphasis is justified by it’s Biblical legacy and inspired by the Wesleyan passion for the poor, and its related pronouncements and programs.

Negotiating for Space and Autonomy: Strategies of Finnish Missionary Women in Japan, 1900-1941

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on the strategies Finnish women used to influence their status and the missionary practices in the Japan mission of the Lutheran Evangelical Association of Finland during the early part of the 20th century. Women had a head-start in the mission compared to men but lost this later as the organization developed. However, the early years demonstrate how women were able to gain a foothold simply by exceptional circumstances, such as a political turmoil. The crisis years of the Finnish mission in the early 1910s illustrate how organizational rigidity was created at the cost of women's status, but also that everyday work carried out separately from the men's work offered women satisfactory roles regardless of the patriarchal structure. An additional strategy is introduced by the career of one missionary, Siiri Uusitalo. A lifelong career in the mission and a pioneer's status enabled Siiri Uusitalo to carve out an independent position inside the Finnish mission which can be defined as matriarchal. Through the Finnish female missionaries, the contested male control of the mission in the Japanese context is discussed. The article presents one historically unique case that nevertheless points to certain patterns in contesting and redefining the gendered hierarchy in a religious community amidst a foreign culture.