Missionary Society Research Articles

Creating an Indigenous Christian Leadership in Papua

In eastern Papua, Christian missionaries found a social structure unparalleled in most areas of religious expansion in the world: it apparently lacked chiefs and any identifiable leadership. Nearly all the Massim societies of eastern Papua were matrilineal, and land was passed through females. Here, women enjoyed a higher status than elsewhere in what is now Papua New Guinea. By drawing on the records of missionary agents, both European and Polynesian, this paper shows how the Methodist, Anglican and Kwato (London Missionary Society) missions in eastern Papua all encountered difficulty in fostering a cadre of male leaders, but — as became evident after World War II — they experienced greater success in fostering women's leadership.

Through the Eyes of Missionaries and the Archives They Created: The Interwoven Histories of Power and Authority in the Nineteenth-century Transvaal

The archives of two German Lutheran mission societies hold rich data on, and interpretations of, Transvaal history. But this material cannot simply be mined for ‘facts’. It was assembled in a process of interaction in which the perceptions and values of both missionaries and converts were challenged, culturally translated and modified. The missionaries' views and perceptions became entangled with the thought patterns of colonial society and were challenged by African converts. This article argues that, in order to engage effectively with this archival material it is necessary to grasp the history of the missionaries, the dialogues they engaged in and the social transformations they experienced. It also suggests that the mission archives provide insights into the nineteenth-century history of marginal social strata in both Germany and South Africa.

Origins of Missionary Periodicals: Form and Function of Three Moravian Publications

The nineteenth century was a boom time for the genre of missionary periodicals. Missionary periodicals were established by religious organizations, societies, and churches for their members, for the general public, for theologians, for women, for children, and for converted non‐Europeans, and their growth reflected the expansion of missionary societies into the non‐European colonial world. Despite the abundance and wide range of these publications, research on the origins, form, and function of missionary periodicals remains limited. This article examines the rationale behind the establishment of three Moravian Church missionary periodicals: the British Periodical Accounts (1790–1970); the German Missions‐Blatt (1837–1941); and the North American The Little Missionary (1870–1920). The article elucidates both broader similarities and differences in missionary periodicals, as well as distinguishing how intentions behind the establishment of missionary periodicals differed from the practice of how religious organizations, societies, and churches utilized these periodicals in presenting themselves to the outside world.

God's Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c. 1801–1908. By Hilary M. Carey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xviii + 381 pp. $99.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Hilary Carey's wide-ranging study of religion makes her something of a scholarly pioneer. As she rightly notes, the colonial missions of British churches to fellow countrymen who settled abroad have long been neglected by historians preoccupied with the quite distinct movement of foreign missions to non-Christians and the racial oppression associated with them. Yet, as this book meticulously documents, missions to emigrants comprised a large movement, in which all churches, established and non-conformist, catholic and evangelical, took part. In so doing, as Carey argues, played an important role in shaping the cultural and religious identity of greater Britain (83).The case for this book's existence is therefore well made, and the author's approach to her subject is a more or less sound one. So vast and varied a movement could only, perhaps, be examined in the round on a denomination by denomination basis, as here. The reader is therefore presented with two central narrative sections on mission societies and clerical training, each chaptered according to church. These are bookended by two sections of a more discursive nature, the first providing an historiographical and definitional grounding for what follows, the last bringing fresh perspectives to the idea of Christian colonization as it played out in both the Antipodes and North America.The relative lack of prior scholarly studies of the missionary movement--although the field is awash with hagiographical histories produced by the individual societies themselves--meant that a considerable feat of research was required from the author. As well as archival sources, Carey has made excellent use of what is clearly an enormous body of printed primary material, with her analysis of missionary memoirs in the concluding chapter being particularly fine; indeed it might usefully have been expanded upon earlier in the text.It is a pity, however, that having exploited this printed material, the bibliography fails adequately to record and highlight the fact. Given its importance, a separation of printed primary and printed secondary sources was surely warranted in this instance. Meanwhile, a referral to a website hosting a general list of missionary periodicals is all very well, but considering the pathbreaking nature of the book, it would surely serve future researchers better to have provided a list of the specific titles consulted. One suspects, however, that publishing constraints are to blame for these lapses.It seems churlish to criticize so source-rich an endeavour for its few lacunae, but they are worth pointing out. …

The Vanguard of Colonialism: Missionaries and the Frontier in Southern Africa in the Nineteenth Century

In this essay, I undertake an examination of how Christian missionary societies facilitated the spread of European ideals and belief systems within an African community, and how this spread both prepared and weakened the African polities for increasing contact with colonial authorities. I specifically explore the role missionaries took in everyday functioning of African chiefdoms and kingdoms through their roles as interpreters and diplomats. Missionaries played a role in shaping the day-to-day existence of the polities in which they were based, as they saw themselves fighting in the “war for souls” in Africa. I examine the effects of this contact in syncretising African and European beliefs, focusing on the especially tragic example of the Xhosa cattle killing. Life on the frontier shaped a deterministic “Christian” identity amongst white settlers along the fringes of colonial life, a distance which in turn led to these fringe groups being seen as un-Christian by their own churches.

Edward Beecher and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Illinois

The Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher was a preacher's preacher and a scholar's scholar. He was son of Rev. Lyman Beecher of whom Theodore Parker said was the father of more brains than any man in America.1 And indeed, Edward along with his twelve siblings who included Henry Ward Beecher, most famous preacher in America, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, most famous novelist of her day, were at firestorms of reform in religious thought and action, women's rights, and antislavery movement. Born in 1803 in New York, Edward, like so many of his generation, had been expected to lead a public life as a productive citizen and moral compass in a nation that needed guidance. Hard work was needed to set a course for successful development of wealth, territorial expansion, and a moral society. He was young, educated, strong, and had a faith in God matched by faith in his fellow Americans. He was always ready to take on challenges, and none of those were bigger than becoming a partner in antislavery movement in East and on frontier of West. When Yale President Jeremiah Day was asked whom recommended for presidency of newly established Illinois College, he told them Edward Beecher if they could get him. In fact, as Lyman Beecher Stowe points out, [n]obody but a Beecher would have given up a powerful eastern church, to assume responsibility for a feeble western college. But here was a chance to help his father save that great western country for education and Protestantism, and also a chance for pioneering - always an irresistible appeal to a Beecher.2 As young Beecher studied, tutored, taught, and preached, young men of Yale Band, an erstwhile group of soon-to-be graduates of Yale College, had fixed their eyes on Illinois as place where they thought they could make most difference through mission work and cultural formation. In 1828, John M. Ellis, an agent for American Home Missionary Society in Illinois, had published a call for help in developing a new college in West, and his article had been read just at time when these young men were casting about for a missionary venture that would be a meaningful and purposeful endeavor in their Christian call to duty. They were afraid that offer had expired since they had not come across call until 1829, but after corresponding with Ellis, they were assured that theirs was most promising response had received. Familiar names in Illinois history: J.M. Sturtevant, Theron Baldwin, Mason Grosvenor, William Kirby, John F. Brooks, Elisha Jenney, and Asa Turner pledged to relocate in West. They applied to American Home Missionary Society for support and asked faculty of Yale to endorse their venture to which they reservedly gave.3 The Yale Band were anti-slavery, and it was part of their understanding that a civil society did not include slavery. This was a radical position that faculty could not heartily endorse given that Yale had a healthy percentage of southerners in its student body and was largest supplier of southern clergy before Civil War.4 One cannot suppose that moving to Illinois was an easy decision professionally or personally for any of these young men. In a series of letters between John Brooks and his fiancee, Jane Bradley, asked Jane to consider going West with him on this venture. In his letter of February 28, 1829, wrote that plan proposed by Mason Grosvenor to go to Mississippi Valley proposes to affect its object by preaching of gospel, and establishment of a reputable literary institution in interior of state of Illinois. Jane was decidedly undecided and was slow to reply because she was confused and somewhat upset that wanted to go West instead of finding a suitable place in East. She lived in Oneida County, New York, in heart of Burned-Over District, and while she was all for missionary endeavors theoretically, it was quite a different matter when it came to leaving her family and home. …

Reconstructing the museum of the london missionary society

(2012). Reconstructing the museum of the london missionary society. Material Religion: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 98-102.

Resisting conformity: Anglican mission women and the schooling of girls in early nineteenth-century West Africa

The origins of modern schooling in early nineteenth-century Africa have been poorly researched. Moreover, histories of education in Africa have focused largely on the education of boys. Little attention has been paid to girls’ schooling or to the missionary women who sought to construct a new feminine Christian identity for African girls. In the absence of personal accounts of African girls’ schooling from that period, this paper draws on a slim body of 71 letters written by women and girls associated with one British mission society in Sierra Leone between 1804 and 1826 to suggest a fluid and at times contradictory construction of gender and racial identity, which sits at odds with the ideology of domestic femininity that the missionaries sought to impart through girls’ schooling. The handful of letters written by African women and girls also casts doubt on the assumed subservience of black subjects to white officialdom.

Sekhukhune II and the Pedi Operations ofthe Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902

In this paper an attempt will be made to demonstrate how the Pedi under the leadership of Sekhukhune II took advantage of wartime conditions during the Anglo - Boer War to reshape the pattern of colonial relations imposed on them by the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, to attempt to re-establish the dominance of the Sekhukhune House in the eastern Transvaal and to negotiate favourable terms with the occupying British military forces once the ZAR was defeated.It will also be shown that often Sekhukhune II deliberately followed a policy of not eliminating republican govemment officials, Boer farmers and their families as well as the Berlin missionaries in order not to antagonise the British and Boer military authorities against him. However, Sekhukhune II subjected all these groups to frequent harassment. Another primary aim of Sekhukhune II was to concentrate on punishing sell-out usurpers of the Pedi paramountcy who had betrayed the Pedi polity by pledging allegiance to Abel Erasmus, the Native Commissioner, who had represented Boer hegemony over the Pedi between 1881 and 1899.Again, Sekhukhune II punished Pedi Christian converts of the Berlin missionary society who had abandoned and undermined Pedi traditions and culture by converting and adhering to Christian principles. In this respect, a number of Berlin mission stations became battlefields of the warring Pedi factions. In the process these mission stations were neutralised as centres of the Berlin missionary activities. It was only after 1902 that attempts were made by the missionary authorities to rebuild these mission stations.

Reterritorizing the West in World Christianity: Black North Atlantic Christianity and the Edinburgh Conferences of 1910 and 2010

The territoriality of the West in World Christianity as the exclusive terrain of European and Euro-North American Christians was punctured by the missiological scholarship of Ogbu Kalu. Kalu inserted the African American missionary and mission societies into the Western missionary enterprise, exposing the fissures in the linkages between the North Atlantic Christianity and Europeans/Euro-North Americans. Incorporating the encounters of black and white western Christians into the territorialization of the Christian West produces a reconceptualization of the West. From the writings of Kalu, a more complicated map of the Christian West is drawn in which white and black Christians encounter each other inside the West.

Gender, Empire and the Church Missionary Society in British Uganda, 1895–1930

Gender, Empire and the Church Missionary Society in British Uganda, 1895–1930

Atkinson: Pioneer Oregon Educator by Donald J. Sevetson

 Reviews African American population in the development , which was critical to the thesis around the erased community narrative. Comerford’s success in gathering images new to the public from private collections as well as from archives is laudable. The array of photographs offers a comprehensive and inspiring look at Northwest Portland spanning 150 years of growth. The text is approachable but unfortunately has an excessive number of typos and errors, prompting the author to create an errata sheet to complement the first addition. Paragraphs on pages 105 and 106, for example, contain the same text. The Forestry Building is described as both made of “peeled whole logs” (p. 28) and “gigantic unpeeled fir logs” (p. 32) (the images show unpeeled logs). A blimp at the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition is described as “driven by TS Baldwin” on page 29, but later identified as piloted by Lincoln Beachey on page 31. The historical errors are more critical. Amos King,for example,did not“give”the land to the city forWashington Park (City Park).He charged $32,624 in 1871, which was considered excessive.Comerford describes theAmos King claim extending to Lovejoy Street, yet the map on page 12 shows a different boundary to his property. On page 32, the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition is described as“the first time electric lights had been used for decorative purposes.” The World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1883, however, had 90,000 incandescent electric light bulbs illuminating the fair with“celestial fire.”A photo on page 37 describesoneof thehousesbelowtheThurman Street Bridge as possibly belonging to Danford Balch, but the image is of a shanty from the Chinese enclave in that region. Despite these problems, the book succeeds in defining boundaries and enhancing the community’s knowledge and connection to history by detailing the evolution of seven discrete neighborhoods within Northwest Portland , from the renowned Pearl District to the recently reclaimed Slabtown. In defining each sub-community within Northwest Portland, Commerford forms a straightforward framework in which each urban community attains a historically enhanced, unique sense of place. The non-confrontational, accessible writing style flows, making the text as approachable as the graphics. For those who live in or simply want to explore the northwest section of Portland ,A History of Northwest Portland: From the River to the Hills will sharpen their grasp of its early settlement and development. Tanya March Portland, Oregon Atkinson: Pioneer Oregon Educator by Donald J. Sevetson CreateSpace, North Charleston, South Carolina, 2011. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 292 pages. $14.99 paper. Organized by the Presbyterian and Congregational churches, the American Home Missionary Society (AHMS) of NewYork City sent GeorgeAtkinson (1819–1889) as a missionary to frontier Oregon. Born into a well-established family residing in Newburyport, Massachusetts , Atkinson came to share his father’s interest in education and railroads. The son became well educated at Dartmouth College and Andover Seminary. Soon after his ordination,Atkinson and his wife traveled by ship to Oregon City in June 1848. An energetic young man, he established a small Congregational church, sold school text books, helped organize Congregational and Presbyterian ministries, set up Sunday schools in nearby settlements, and played an important role in founding Tualatin Academy and Pacific University. Territorial Governor Joseph Lane enlisted his help in establishing public schools. Atkinson, thereby, achieved a lifetime reputation as an advocate of public and private schools.  OHQ vol. 113, no. 4 Atkinson made eight trips to New England to gain support for churches and schools, to recruit teachers and missionaries, and to promote Oregon.Sevetson might have mentioned thatAtkinson’s first trip had much in common with those made by Rev. Jason Lee and Dr. MarcusWhitman for similar purposes.Eastern church organizations who sent both Whitman and Atkinson as missionaries also expressed concern about the excesses of missionary Rev. Henry Spalding. Atkinson failed to raise the money he sought,but he recruited Sydney Harper Marsh for Tualatin Academy. As the first president of Pacific University,Marsh became an important regional educator. On his return to Oregon, Atkinson served as superintendent of Clackamas County Schools and attempted to finance a girls’ seminary in Oregon City. Atkinson faced other difficulties during his time in Oregon, including quarrels...

German colonialism: race, the Holocaust, and postwar Germany

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Reconfiguring German Colonialism, by Volker Langbehn and Mohammad SalamaPart I. Colonial (Dis)Continuities: Framing the Issue 1. Borrowed Light: Nietzsche and the Colonies, by Timothy Brennan2. German Colonialism: Some Reflections on Reassessments, Specificities, and Constellations, by Birthe KundrusPart II. Lebensraum and Genocide 3. Against Human Diversity as Such: Lebensraum and Genocide in the Third Reich, by Shelley Baranowski4. Hannah Arendt, Imperialisms, and the Holocaust, by A. Dirk Moses5. Caesura, Continuity, and Myth: The Stakes of Tethering the Holocaust to German Colonial Theory, by Kitty MilletPart III. Looking East: Poland, the Ottoman Empire, and Politicized Jihadism 6. Germany's Adventures in the Orient: A History of Ambivalent Semicolonial Entanglements, by Malte Fuhrmann7. Arguing the Case for a Colonial Poland, by Kristin Kopp8. Colonialism, and No End: The Other Continuity Theses, by Russell A. BermanPart IV. Of Missionaries, Economics, and Intranational Self-Perception 9. The Purpose of German Colonialism, or, the Long Shadow of Bismarck's Colonial Policy, by Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann10. Christian Missionary Societies in the German Colonies, 1884/85-1914/15, by Ulrich van der Heyden11. German Colonialism and the British Neighbor in Africa Before 1914: Self-Definitions, Lines of Demarcation, and Cooperation, by Ulrike Lindner Part V. Postcolonial German Politics 12. Kalashnikovs, Not Coca-Cola, Bring Self-Determination to Angola: The Two Germanys, Lusophone Africa, and the Rhetoric of Colonial Difference, by Lu s Madureira13. Germany, Palestine, Israel, and the (Post)Colonial Imagination, by Martin Braach-Maksvytis List of ContributorsIndex

Robert Morrison and the Multicultural Beginning of Chinese Protestantism

Robert Morrison (1782-1834), the first Protestant missionary to operate in China, was sent alone to his East Asian post by the London Missionary Society in 1807. He spent more than half his life (he died at his station in Guangzhou) planting a foothold in China for the benefit of evangelical Christianity, and, consequently, he established the foundation upon which all subsequent Protestant missions to China rested. While sinologists are generally familiar with the checklist of Morrison’s accomplishments in the areas of translating and publishing, less has been written about the multicultural nature of Morrison’s mission. His approach to China derived from a strain of British evangelical dissent, and the Protestantism that he planted reflected this cultural background. It follows that his converts absorbed many of these particularly evangelical traits. However, although Morrison was in China to execute this dissenting plan, it cannot go unnoticed that the actual execution of this plan relied on the Chinese. This essay explores the multicultural relationships that led to the beginning of Chinese Protestantism. In the first half of the article I demonstrate how Morrison pro-actively followed his British mission strategy; whilst in the second part I analyze his mission from an alternate viewpoint to show how he was shaped by the Chinese, for example in his speed of language study and in the print opportunities or difficulties he encountered. My aim is to demonstrate not only the degree to which Morrison planted his evangelical version of Protestantism in China, but also that the pioneer responsible for the foundations of Chinese Protestantism and Anglophone sinology only found success through the help of his interactions with the Chinese.

John Eliot Trapnell

After junior doctor jobs in London and Leicester, John Eliot Trapnell spent two years with the Church Missionary Society in Maseno in Kenya. He did his his surgical training his...

Communication and conversion in northern Cameroon. The Dii people and Norwegian missionaries, 1934–1960. By Tomas Sundnes Drønen. (Studies in Christian Mission, 37.) Pp. xvi+236 incl. 2 maps+20 plates. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2009. €99. 978 90 04 17754 3; 0924 9389 - The Presbyterian Church of East Africa. An account of its gospel missionary society origins, 1895–1946. By Evanson N. Wamagatta. (American

Communication and conversion in northern Cameroon. The Dii people and Norwegian missionaries, 1934–1960. By Tomas Sundnes Drønen. (Studies in Christian Mission, 37.) Pp. xvi+236 incl. 2 maps+20 plates. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2009. €99. 978 90 04 17754 3; 0924 9389 - The Presbyterian Church of East Africa. An account of its gospel missionary society origins, 1895–1946. By Evanson N. Wamagatta. (American University Studies. Ser.7. Theology and Religion, 290.) Pp. xx+251 incl. map and 11 figs. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. £49.50. 978 1 4331 0596 8; 0740 0446 - Volume 62 Issue 4

Inculcate Tehran: Opening a Dialogue of Civilizations in the Shadow of God and the Alborz

This essay discusses the establishment of Alborz College by American Presbyterian missionaries. Alborz's early years, before its 1940 nationalization by Iran, were shaped by the vision of its first president, Samuel Jordan, a liberal, athletic, pragmatic Christian reformer who led by example, a practitioner of what we now call “social work” and an encourager of female empowerment. Alborz and the Presbyterian mission which gave it birth grew in the context of American social history, including the religious awakening of the early nineteenth century, American doctrines of freedom and universal education, as well as the contradictory impulses of ethnocentricity and ecumenicism. The essay is based on private and governmental archival sources and the experience of the author as a high school student in Tehran. This history needs to be told. —Yahya Armajani1 1This is a paraphrase of a remark made to me by Alborz alumnus and history professor Yahya Armajani in November 1988 at the MESA banquet in Los Angeles, following our panel on Presbyterian education in interwar Iran. All writing is autobiographical. —Donald Murray2 2Donald Murray was a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial writer, subsequently a writing teacher at the University of New Hampshire and a columnist for the Boston Globe. This phrase appears repeatedly in his books about writing. This essay discusses the origins of Alborz College as an effort by private Americans to share with Iran the blessings of their own culture. This they did for decades, cooperating with the Tehran government, without involving Washington. Remarkably, Alborz survived Reza Shah's assault on foreign schools during the 1930s, and it flourished after nationalization as a premier Iranian institution preparing secondary students for modern university studies. It continues as such today.3 3Not all sources appear in footnotes; the most important archive is that of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, Philadelphia; other archives consulted include those of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris; the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Church of the East, London; the Church Missionary Society, Birmingham; the Archives Lazaristes, Paris; and the US and UK diplomatic archives.

Transforming Christian Womanhood: Female Sexuality and Church Missionary Society Encounters in the Niger Mission, Onitsha

Transforming Christian Womanhood: Female Sexuality and Church Missionary Society Encounters in the Niger Mission, Onitsha

Adam’s escape: Children and the discordant nature of colonial conversions

The article traces the fundamental incoherency that structured the Danish Missionary Society’s work at a boarding school for low-caste ‘heathen’ children in South India in the 1860s and 1870s. Through elaborate disciplinary methods, the missionaries set out to Christianize and civilize the Indian children’s morality, social behaviour and bodily comportment. Yet, the missionaries’ perceptions of ‘the Indian child’ also reflected the contemporary bolstering of racial thinking in Indian colonial society, resulting in doubts whether Indian children could in fact become true Christians. This paradoxical endeavour shows how children became a site for the production of difference that sustained colonialism.

Ein amharischer Atlas aus Malta

In August 2008 Professor Dr. Hans H. Kaminsky of the Institute of History of the University of Giessen, gave me an Amharic atlas, printed in Malta, which he had bought several years ago, at the Giessen flee-market. The atlas is now in the possession of the Hiob Ludolf Zentrum für Äthiopistik of the Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg. The article places the atlas into the historical context of the educational efforts of German protestant missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society in Ethiopia, during the first half of the 19th century. It also sheds light on the Society’s printing activities in Malta.