Protestant Missionaries Research Articles

“Bütün Ümidimiz Cömert Bir Uyanış”: On Dokuzuncu Yüzyılda Batı Anadolu’da Osmanlı Hıristiyanlarının Evanjelizasyonu

This article examines the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ activities in the 1870s and 80s at the Manisa and Smyrna/İzmir stations in an attempt to evangelize Greeks and Armenians living in the region. The main body of sources used in this study are the letters of the missionary Rev. Marcellus Bowen (1874-1880) sent from Manisa to the headquarters of the ABCFM in Boston, and the letters of Rev. George Constantine (1880-1889) sent from İzmir to the same destination. These first-person narratives provide us with extremely rich material, due to the fact that they comment on phenomena and events directly and immediately. This article investigates a variety of themes, such as the efforts of the American missionaries to adapt their missionary work to Smyrna’s multicultural and multinational society; the missionaries’ decisions and arguments regarding which language to use in their preachings or at religious services for the Greeks and Armenians of the region; the means of persecution or opposition employed by the Greek Orthodox high-ranked clergy in Smyrna/İzmir against the Protestant missionaries; and the conditions under which foreigners could sell religious books or open / build schools and churches in the Ottoman lands, and which intermediaries the missionaries appealed to when they were challenged by the Ottoman authorities.

19세기 초 신교 선교사들의 아시아 종교에 대한 서사 전략 고찰 - 『차이니즈 레포지터리 The Chinese Repository』1권과 2권의 「서론 Introduction」과 「종교소식 Religious Intelligence」란을 중심으로

In this thesis, we reviewed not only the religious view of editors and writers but also the recognition of religion in each zone of Asia, focusing on 『Introduction』and 『Religious Intelligence』 column in the 1st and 2nd edition of 『The Chinese Repository』. And analyzing in order the recognition of liberalist value, human right and constitutional government, its connection with practical knowledge distribution movement, and the epic mode of Asia, we observed reflectively their recognition process otherized of Asian religion progressed differently from the previous generation. Of them, 『Religious Intelligence』 between 1832 and 1833 records the local religion reflected on their eyes and the missionary activity in that zone, and describes professionally how are these activities progressed and what performance is it making, and what prospect does it have.BR In this thesis, we observed through their epic strategy how did it change the fear or insecurity of the zone into the modern or occidental value in the recognition of asian zone’s religion or culture that these Protestant Missionaries before and after 1832. And, we analyzed how the occidental christian missionaries’ eyes of orient and the epic reflecting those eyes have been acted implicitly in establishing mutual status of orient and occident. It is clear that their epic of Southeast Asia and China is not only a transparent and objective explanation to spread the knowledge of zone but also, doing ‘its practical interpretation’ with any directionality, it did the mutual role between the political and cultural contact of orient and occident. Their east asian epic was not the value neutral religious epic without politicality or ideologism excluded or propagation of knowledge of the zone but the result of practical exclusive possession to project their will or goal of the other and to induce such a change.

Protestants, Gender, and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria, by Deanna Ferree Womack

<i>Protestants, Gender, and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria</i>, by Deanna Ferree Womack

The Tragic Irony of a Patriotic Mission: The Indigenous Leadership of Francis Wei and T. C. Chao, Radicalized Patriotism, and the Reversal of Protestant Missions in China

Motivated by a patriotic zeal for the national salvation of China, in the 1910s, US-trained Chinese intellectuals like Francis Wei and T. C. Chao embraced a progressive version of Protestantism. While Christian colleges established by liberal missionaries during this time initially contributed greatly to nurturing a generation of intellectual elites for China, its institutionalization of progressive ideas, and its tolerance and protection of revolutionary mobilization under extraterritorial rights, also unintendedly helped invigorate indigenous revolutionary movements. Meanwhile, in the 1920s, anti-Western and anti-Christian student movements radicalized in China’s major urban centers. When the communist revolution showed more promise of granting China independence, Francis Wei and T. C. Chao became optimistic supporters. However, neither of them foresaw the reversal of China missions under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in the 1950s.

In memoriam: Napoleon A. Chagnon

Anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon was a central figure in the development and foundation of evolutionary approaches to human behavior. We highlight his ethnographic fieldwork, contributions to studies of kinship and marriage, and his foundational role in the development of evolutionary approaches to human behavior. As a holistic anthropologist Chagnon led anthropology toward the integration of cultural and evolutionary theory. Finally, his leadership was central in the foundation of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Ricardo, a Brazilian Protestant missionary who was assisting the scientific team and who has worked with the Yanomami for over 25 years … told me to run and get my camera. “There's going to be a fight,” he said. Then he turned to leave. “Aren't you going to stay?” I asked. “Nah, happens all the time. You stay, you're an anthropologist, should be interesting. Call me if anyone gets hurt.”

Redeeming Santo Domingo: North Atlantic Missionaries and the Racial Conversion of a Nation

AbstractThis article examines North Atlantic views of Protestant missions and race in the Dominican Republic between 1905 and 1911, a brief period of political stability in the years leading up to the U.S. Occupation (1916–1924). Although Protestant missions during this period remained small in scale on the Catholic island, the views of British and American missionaries evidence how international perceptions of Dominicans transformed in the early twentieth century. Thus, this article makes two key interventions within the literature on Caribbean race and religion. First, it shows how outsiders’ ideas about the Dominican Republic's racial composition aimed to change the Dominican Republic from a “black” country into a racially ambiguous “Latin” one on the international stage. Second, in using North Atlantic missionaries’ perspectives to track this shift, it argues that black-led Protestant congregations represented a possible alternative future that both elite Dominicans and white North Atlantic missionaries rejected.

The Evolution of Evolutionism in China, 1870–1930

The earliest references to Darwin in China, which came by way of the network of Protestant missionaries, emerged in the early 1870s: the principle of general transformism and ideas about human origins were transmitted to the Chinese intellectual landscape. Only with the “evolutionary sensation” aroused by Yan Fu, in the mid-1890s, did Chinese readers begin to learn of Darwinian principles like the “struggle for existence” and “natural selection.” Translation of the Origin began much later, in 1902, and the initial effort was misleading. In his translation of the first five chapters of the Origin, published before 1906, Ma Junwu used linguistic strategies to modify Darwin’s texts so as to reflect Yan’s progressive transformism. But in his 1920 translation of the book in its entirety, Ma redid his earlier work. The complete Chinese Origin did not generate a sensation in the biological community. Even so, the deliberate selection, absorption, and appropriation of Darwinian ideas by the Chinese over the next several decades assimilated the new evolution into their own cultural setting. The case of “Darwin in China” details a specific Chinese context that deepens our understanding of how audiences for new scientific theories can be actively involved in the processes of appropriation and universalizing, while also disseminating, modifying, and assimilating Darwinian ideas in local context.

19세기 개신교 국제 선교사 대회에 나타난 선교 이양의 연구

본 연구는 19세기 주요 국제 개신교 선교사 대회들 중 선교 이양 의 공식적 문서를 풍부하게 남긴 1860년에 개최된 리버풀 선교사 대회 (Liverpool Missionary Conference), 1888년에 개최된 개신교 백주 년 세계 선교 대회(Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World, London), 1900년에 개최된 뉴욕 에큐메니칼 선교사 대회 (Ecumenical Missionary Conference)의 선교 이양의 주제를 비평적으로 살펴봄으로써 한국 교회의 선교 이양에 주는 선교적 함의로 삼고자 한다. 현재 한국 교회의 선교는 교파를 막론하고 세계 선교 현장의 곳곳에서 종 교 근본주의로 인한 복음 전도 위협과 종교간 갈등, 선교사 비자 거부, 선 교사 재산 문제, 그리고 선교비 축소 등의 복잡한 문제에 겪고 있다. 이러 한 문제의 해결하기 위한 선교사 재배치와 선교 이양의 문제가 최근에 자 주 논의되고는 있지만 아직까지 다양하고 심도 있는 선교학적 접근은 미약 한 형편이다. 선교 이양에 대한 한국 선교 신학적 논의를 심도 있게 다루기 위해서 본 연구는 우선 서구 개신교 선교 역사에 나타난 이양의 논의를 비평적으 로 고찰하고자 한다. 19세기 개신교 선교사들의 각 지역과 국가 연합의 모 임에서 시작된 다양한 선교 현장의 주제들 중 현지 교회의 자립과 이양에 관한 문제는 중요한 비중을 차지하였다. 특별히 19세기 중반 이후부터 본 격적으로 논의된 선교 이양의 다양한 주제들, 현지 교회의 자립 방안, 토착 화, 선교사 온정주의 폐해의 극복, 선교 이양을 위한 선교사의 정체성 확립 과 점진적 이양 기구의 설립 등은 오늘날 한국 선교에도 좋은 선교적 교훈 을 제공한다. 본 연구는 19세기 개신교 국제 선교사 주요 대회들 중 선교 이양에 대한 공식 문서를 풍부하고 심도 있게 남긴 위의 세 개의 국제 선교사 대회에 나타난 선교 이양의 주제를 다룬다. 그 주요 내용을 공통점을 간 략하게 정리해 보면 첫째, 선교 이양의 저해 요인인 서구 문명 우월주의와 온정주의의 극복을 위한 현지 토착화, 둘째, 급속한 선교지 성장의 후유증 (현지 사역자의 자격, 월급문제 등)을 극복하기 위한 효율적 선교 방법의 추구: 자립 정책과 점진적 이양의 추구이다. 셋째, 선교사와 현지 교회의 파트너십을 통한 점진적 이양의 추구이다. 효율적인 선교 이양을 위한 기구인 ‘현지 목회자 위원회’을 통해 선교사와 현지 사역자, 선교회와 현지 교 회들의 동등한 형제애적 연합 추구와 권한 위임을 추구하였다. 한국 선교가 변화된 세계화의 선교 현장 속에서도 하나님의 선교를 추 구하면서도 유기적인 성장을 이루려면 현지 교회와의 동반자적 리더십을 통해 선교 이양을 출구가 아닌 그 입구부터 종합적으로 실천해 나가야 할 것이다.

Distinction through Religious Activism: How Capital Shapes the Organizational Repertoires of Transnational Protestant Outreach

AbstractHow religious organizations distinguish themselves from one another influences the extent to which they compete (or cooperate) with other similar organizations, thus serving to shape both their survivability and efficacy in achieving their goals. Although theological differences provide one source of distinction, organizations also strategically distinguish themselves not only by what they do but also what they avoid doing. Adopting a Bourdieu(s)ian field theory approach to the study of transnational American Protestant mission agencies, this article explores how agencies’ ministry activities are organized into symbolically distinctive repertoires of activism that vary by agencies’ differing levels of religious and economic capital. Based on how these repertoires are diversified (versus concentrated) and focused on inner- (as opposed to other-worldly) goals, the article discusses the implications of these organizational patterns for the survivability and efficacy of agencies in the transnational missions field, as well as their prospects for interorganizational cooperation and coordination.

Mirrors of the Soul

Scenes of avarna castes (slave and intermediate castes) pondering their reflections recur throughout the history of anti-caste struggle in the princely state of Travancore in colonial-era south India. These scenes represent what I will call performative egalitarianisms, which are repetitive enactments in the performance of everyday lives that embody claims to equality against the dehumanizing caste codes of colonial Travancore. In this paper, I will describe three scenes that represent distinct yet intertwined routes for the flows of egalitarian discourses in colonial Kerala. The concept of equality emerged in Travancore, first, via Enlightenment values of the British Protestant missionaries, or soulful Enlightenment; second, as non-dualistic equality of Narayana Guru, or repurposed Advaita; and third, through the discourses and practices of a Tamil religious cult called Ayya Vazhi, or radical Siddha Saiva. In viewing the flows of egalitarian discourse through the lens of performance, I demonstrate the method of intellectual histories in the repertoire which allows us to investigate how particular conceptual frameworks and discursive modes are transmitted, transformed, and embodied by people for whom these ideas are, quite literally, a matter of life and death. The intentional, productive, and empowering relationship between universals such as equality or humanity and the particular claims of anti-caste struggle in Kerala leads to a politics of practice that I describe as repurposing universals. The centrality of the notion of the human in the anti-caste politics of colonial-era Travancore leads me to refer to these flows of egalitarian discourses and the political struggles that they empowered as genealogies of the human. In sum, I analyze the genealogies of the human in colonial-era Travancore by focussing on three scenes exemplifying performative egalitarianisms: soulful Enlightenment, repurposed Advaita, and radical Siddha Saiva.

Transplanting institutional innovation: comparing the success of NGOs and missionary Protestantism in sub-Saharan Africa

Viewing missionary Protestantism and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as carriers of transnational institutional innovation, this article compares their successes and failures at creating self-sustaining institutions in distant societies. Missionary Protestantism and NGOs are similar in that they attempt to establish formal organizations outside kinship, lineage, and ethnic forms of solidarity. Focusing on institutions as ways to create collective capacities that organize social life, we trace the route whereby Protestant missionaries established congregational religion in Africa and identify social practices that made this enterprise successful but are comparatively absent in current NGO attempts to transform organizational life. Largely ignored by sociologists interested in institutional transformation, the history of congregational religion offers valuable sociological lessons about the conditions for radical institutional innovation. Its success was rooted first, in colonial missionaries’ ability to enforce new ways of life on small exemplary communities; second, in local adaptations (African prophetic movements, Pentecostalism) that deepened and widened the social reach of congregational principles; and third in the incentives Protestantism created for propagating the congregational form.

Streams of Latin American Protestant Theology

Abstract Although church historians often call the 19th century the Great Century of Protestant mission, for Latin America it was the 20th century that was the great century of Protestant growth and expansion. The 20th century witnessed vast societal changes and the realization of systemic poverty and injustice as well as the exponential growth, pentecostalization, and diversification of Latin American Protestantism. Latin American Protestant Theology emerged during this century of change. This text provides an introduction to Latin American Protestant Theology by engaging its dominant theological streams (Liberal, Evangelical, and Pentecostal) and how they understand themselves through the lens of mission. The text offers both a critique of the Christendom cartography that is dominant in Latin American Protestant Theology as well as suggestions for how to move towards a transformative theology of mission. The primary intention of this text is to offer an informed outline and analysis of the theological landscape of Latin American Protestantism. The secondary intention of this book is to note the contributions as well as deficiencies of the streams of LAPT in the hope to signal a possible path towards the development of an integral, transformative, contextual, and decolonial theological voice.

Protestant Missionaries Perspectives on the Arab Orthodox and Orthodoxy at the Turn of the 20th Century

Some centuries after the onset of European missionaries to the East and their competition over winning converts, Protestants started their missionary work at the turn of the nineteenth century in an East which was then under the Ottoman Rule. From Aleppo to Palestine, they eventually promulgated across the entire Near and Middle East, with the purpose of instilling in the population there — both Muslim and Christian — what they believed to be the “true” Christian faith. In fact, their claim revolved around their firm conviction that both Catholics and Orthodox have gone astray in their basic elements of faith, which in turn have always dissuaded the Moslems to accept Christianity as the true religion. From primary protestant sources, this paper will focus on their perspective regarding the “degrading” Orthodox faith, and their “shallow” clerics and “obsolete” established traditions.

Protestant Missionaries in Literature

Protestant cross-cultural missionaries have appeared as characters in literary narratives for some two hundred years. These narratives use three patterns. The first, showing godly missionaries supported by divine interventions, includes nonfiction accounts of missionaries like Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot, and Don Richardson. The second pattern, showing missionaries as orthodox fanatics, includes Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Maugham’s “Rain,” and Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. The third pattern, common in postcolonial novels, portrays missionaries with ambivalence and humor and includes elements of Bakhtin’s “carnivalesque”: comic-grotesque imagery, obscenities, and feasts. This postcolonial missionary character represents not oppression but freedom and appears in such novels as Anand’s Untouchable, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller.

Church, State, and “Native Liberty” in the Belgian Congo

AbstractThis essay describes a religious freedom controversy that developed between the world wars in the Belgian colony of the Congo, where Protestant missionaries complained that Catholic priests were abusing Congolese Protestants and that the Belgian government favored the Catholics. The history of this campaign demonstrates how humanitarian discourses of religious freedom—and with them competing configurations of church and state—took shape in colonial contexts. From the beginnings of the European scramble for Africa, Protestant and Catholic missionaries had helped formulate the “civilizing” mission and the humanitarian policies—against slavery, for free trade, and for religious freedom—that served to justify the European and U.S. empires of the time. Protestant missionaries in the Congo challenged the privileges granted to Catholic institutions by appealing to religious freedom guarantees in colonial and international law. In response, Belgian authorities and Catholic missionaries elaborated a church-state arrangement that limited “foreign” missions in the name of Belgian national unity. Both groups, however, rejected Native Congolese religious movements—which refused the authority of the colonial church(es) along with the colonial state—as “political” and so beyond the bounds of legitimate “religion.” Our analysis shows how competing configurations of church and state emerged dialogically in this colonial context and how alternative Congolese movements ultimately challenged Belgian colonial rule.

The Life, Works, and Witness of Tsehay Tolessa and Gudina Tumsa, The Ethiopian Bonhoeffer ed. by Samuel Yonas Deressa and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Reviewed by: The Life, Works, and Witness of Tsehay Tolessa and Gudina Tumsa, The Ethiopian Bonhoeffered. by Samuel Yonas Deressa and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Clayton Faulkner The Life, Works, and Witness of Tsehay Tolessa and Gudina Tumsa, The Ethiopian Bonhoeffer. Edited by Samuel Yonas Deressa and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. Lutheran Quarterly Books. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017. 263 pp. This work documents the life and work of two Ethiopian Lutherans:Tsehay Tolessa (1931–2014) and Gudina Tumsa (1929–1979). The first section contains the theological writings of Gudina Tumsa, the General Secretary of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (1966–1979). The second section, In the Fiery Furnace, is an autobiographical narrative written by Tsehay Tolessa with Aud Sæverås. A foreword by Darrell Jodock, an editor's introduction and concluding editorial remarks on the legacy of Gudina Tumsa, as well as an appendix by Gudina's brother, a bibliography, and subject and scripture indices, round out the book. The work's two main purposes can be seen in its two sections. One is to tell the heart-wrenching story of two great people of faith. The other is to disseminate to a wider audience the theological works of a Lutheran martyr. Tsehay and Gudina were married in 1951. He became an influential leader not only in Ethiopia, but also in the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). Tsehay raised a family and supported Gudina even though his ministry took him from home for long periods of time. Gudina was kidnapped and murdered by the Communist Derg regime, leading to his portrayal as the African Bonhoeffer. She was imprisoned for a long time, faced unimaginable hardships, and fortunately survived to tell their stories. [End Page 104] Gudina Tumsa's writings offer insights into a growing Christian movement in a context quite unfamiliar to the Western world. He gives clarity and definition to how the gospel meets the great needs of the developing world. "We therefore see the development of the inner man [sic] as a prerequisite for a healthy and lasting development of our society" (38–39). He understood the Small Catechism's explanation that daily bread goes beyond food to include money, property, and good government (The Lord's Prayer, Fourth Petition). He worked tirelessly to see the Ethiopian government reformed for the good of all. He also critiqued those in the global Lutheran church who quickly funded developmental projects while hesitating to pay for evangelization efforts. He promoted a holistic approach to ministry in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a record of independence from western imperialism. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has been in existence for nearly as long as Christianity. The country's government has been intertwined with the Orthodox Church since its beginning. Such a lengthy, proud history of independence made outside influence questionable for many Ethiopians. Protestant missionaries did not show up in Ethiopia until the end of the nineteenth century. Gudina Tumsa is careful throughout his dialogue with the western Lutheran churches to protect the interests of Ethiopians. He actually credits the evangelistic spread of Lutheranism to the missionaries' departure during World War II (27). This text does a tremendous service by providing the first English translation of Tsehay Tolessa's powerful story, and presenting it alongside the theological and church governance writings of Gudina Tumsa. Also important is what this text represents to the broader church. The Lutheran Church in Ethiopia has over seven million members and is one of the largest bodies in the LWF. They have sustained a level of growth that should make them the de facto leaders of our global communion. It is time for their theology and their narratives to be shared and to influence the rest of the world. This text is a solid step in that direction. Anyone with interests in global Christianity, especially in Africa and developing countries, will here find a wealth of material. It is a wonderful source for [End Page 105]understanding the Lutheran church in Ethiopia. It has application in both academic and devotional settings, thanks to the mixture of theological praxis in Gudina Tumsa's writings and personal faith in Tsehay Tolessa's narrative. I have traveled to Ethiopia twice, each time to bring...

A Real American “Spakes English”: Ethnicity, Religion, and Respectability in John Talbot Smith’s “How the McGuinness Saved His Pride” (1891)

A Real American “Spakes English”: Ethnicity, Religion, and Respectability in John Talbot Smith’s “How the McGuinness Saved His Pride” (1891) Lindsay Janssen (bio) The French-Canadian of any rank in life feels that God can confer no greater honor than to make one of his boys a priest, one of his girls a nun. This is a curious view…. The life of the ordinary priest or nun in Canada is not financially a happy one.… It seems to make little difference to the Canadian, as long as his son is the priest. Therefore Protestant missions have found it difficult to bribe this people. Honor seems to mean more to them than soup,1 and they are evidently determined to continue in their priest-ridden condition. We apologize for them to our separated brethren.2 In 1889, author, editor, and priest John Talbot Smith (1855–1923) defended the French Canadians of Quebec to the readers of the New York Catholic World, casting the former as devout believers immune to the lure of financial standing or corruption. Dipping his pen in irony, as he frequently did, Smith took it upon himself to apologize for the ardently religious and virtuous spirit of the French Canadians to those displaying antipathy towards them—“the Orangemen of Ontario…the faction represented by Goldwin Smith,” and several newspapers in Canada and the US.3 British journalist and historian Goldwin Smith made pejorative comments concerning the French Canadians of Quebec, seeing them as a backward, “surviving offset of the France of the Bourbons, cut off by conquest from the mother country and her revolutions,” whose religious “character has been perpetuated by isolation like the form of an antediluvian animal preserved in Siberian ice.”4 Moreover, he warned against a rise in Ultramontanism in Quebec, which he perceived to be a threat to English-speaking Protestants in the province.5 Goldwin Smith’s ideas were disseminated throughout Britain, Canada, and the US, which was demonstrated by the simultaneous publication of his Canada and the Canadian Question—from which the quote above is taken—in Toronto, London, and New York in 1891. Talbot Smith, on the contrary, set out to counter such negative views, and represented Quebec’s Catholics as ardent rather than extremist. When taking Talbot Smith’s fiction into account, it becomes clear that he not only viewed French Canadian Catholics in a favorable light, but [End Page 146] also posited them as an example for US Catholics. In his story “How the McGuinness Saved his Pride,” published in the collection His Honor, the Mayor: And Other Tales (1891), Talbot Smith exposes what he perceived as the potential superficiality of Irish American Catholicism. He does so through an exploration of the exclusionist tendencies of a small-town Irish immigrant community towards the figure of a poor Catholic French Canadian immigrant who tries to assimilate. By the time of Talbot Smith’s literary activity, Catholicism in the US had become practically synonymous with ethnic Irish identity, and the author himself belonged to the Irish American community. Thus, the specific Irish American dimension to his criticism is logical from both a personal and a sociohistorical standpoint. This essay will analyze how Talbot Smith constructs his criticism of Irish American Catholicism and will do so through an analysis of “How the McGuinness Saved his Pride.” Talbot Smith presents his readers with an Irish immigrant community in which religion is inevitably compromised by ethnic differences that are perceived to be insurmountable, labor tensions, and pretensions to middle-class respectability. Within this atmosphere, the narrative simultaneously acknowledges and problematizes the strong links existing between ethnic Irish identity and Catholicism in late nineteenth-century America and achieves this by presenting Irish American Catholicism as a veneer. In Talbot Smith’s story, the Catholic religion serves a means to achieve middle-class respectability but has become divested of those Christian virtues which would give it its actual value: unconditional compassion and acceptance. Talbot Smith was born in Saratoga (NY), a town with a considerable Irish population.6 His parents were Brigid O’Donnell and railroad worker Bernard Smith. In 1881, he was ordained a priest. Eight years later, he moved to New York, where...

“As They Really Are”: The World Outlook of Protestant-Sponsored Mission Films, 1930–1950

“As They Really Are”The World Outlook of Protestant-Sponsored Mission Films, 1930–1950 April Makgoeng (bio) Perhaps the most striking feature of the history of America’s missionary enterprise in the twentieth century is the movement’s virtual loss of visibility as a cultural phenomenon. – Patricia R. Hill1 Kenji Comes Home is no longer a recognizable title, but in 1950 the motion picture was nominated for an Academy Award under the category of documentary feature.2 Produced by the Protestant Film Commission, this educational film about post-war Protestant missions in Japan served as a nondenominational resource for churches engaged in a systematized foreign mission studies movement. Beyond its Oscar nomination, the docudrama is notable for marking the apex of the ecumenical mission studies movement. Since the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of mainline and evangelical Protestants had annually read books and periodicals, hung maps on their walls, and consumed images based on an annual foreign mission theme, such as in 1949 when the theme was Japan. Beginning in the 1930s, motion pictures were added to the array of interdenominational resources. Educational leaders promoted moving images as the “ideal vehicle” for the study of foreign missions due to their ability to bring “far people near” and to portray “them as they really are.”3 At the height of their popularity in the late 1940s, films about foreign missions received critical acclaim and [End Page 233] widespread distribution (Fig. 1). Today they are mostly forgotten by laypeople and scholars. This essay explores the role of ecumenical films about Protestant foreign missions in the public understanding of religion from 1930 to 1950. Despite their contemporary lapse into obscurity, foreign mission films, as part of a larger mission study movement within the Protestant churches, played a significant role in the shaping of North American attitudes about Protestantism and its relationship to non-Western cultures and non-Christian religions. “The effect of this world-wide missionary effort,” wrote mission scholar Kenneth Scott Latourette in 1949, “is seldom appreciated. Even those most active in it are infrequently aware of how deeply it has molded the American outlook on the world.”4 Addressing missionary education, Latourette claimed that it had familiarized “thousands of Americans with country after country and people after people with whom they would otherwise have little or no direct contact.”5 In the following, I examine the ways in which these motion pictures were exhibited and received by audiences. Church sponsorship, along with an educational agenda, endowed these films with religious authority. Moreover, the mixture of documentary and fiction film techniques and conventions lent an aura of authenticity to these films. The prevalent theme of these foreign mission films was one of Protestant-American superiority in relation to other dogmas and faith traditions. Simply put, Protestant missions held the solutions to global problems. This message was reinforced by an educational curriculum of mission study designed for the Protestant churches. Missionary education During the peak of the Protestant foreign mission enterprise, from about 1880 to 1930, North American missionaries “were the chief interpreters of remote cultures for the people at home,” contends historian William Hutchison, “and as such played a central role in the shaping of American public attitudes.”6. It was during this period of evangelical enthusiasm that the ecumenical study of foreign missions, or missionary education, came to play a significant role within the mission enterprise. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, youth groups, such as the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), and women’s mission societies began to organize mission study programs. The goal was to stimulate interest in the [End Page 234] world’s peoples as a way to cultivate domestic support of the foreign missionary enterprise. Pragmatically, this meant securing financial contributions and volunteers for missionary service.7 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. “Movie hour, school of missions, Westwood, NJ”. Source: Board of Missions and Church Extension, Methodist Church, 1949,Composite Report of the Secretaries, Division of Education and Cultivation, New York: Board of Missions and Church Extension, Methodist Church, p. 17, United Methodist Archives and History Center, Madison, NJ. Beginning in 1903 the Central Committee on the United Study...

Keeping Them Honest: The Long-term Effects of Protestant Missionaries on Honesty and Corporate Tax Avoidance in Modern China

Combining datasets on the 1920 Protestant diffusion in China and the financial reports of about 125,000 Chinese industrial firms from 1999 to 2007, we find significant effects of historical Protestant activities on current corporate tax avoidance. We then use disaster frequency as the instrumental variable to establish causality. Analysis of the survey-based CFPS data and a peer-to-peer lending dataset with more than one million borrowers shows that people from cities with more historical Protestant activities tend to trust others more and have better credit records. By illustrating the role of Protestantism in fostering social capital, our analysis suggests persistent effects of religion on individual and corporate behaviors.

The Old Testament Also Needs Annotations: The National Bible Society of Scotland's Annotated Edition of the Book of Proverbs in the MandarinUnion Version

AbstractThis article explores the path of the National Bible Society of Scotland (NBSS) to publishing its annotated edition of Proverbs in the MandarinUnion Versionin China during the Republican era. After providing an overview of how the NBSS became the first Bible society to publish annotated Chinese Gospels and Acts in the 1890s, this article examines why it took more than three decades thereafter for the NBSS to publish an annotated edition of another biblical book. It argues that one of the main reasons was that the NBSS had difficulty securing reputable scholarly Protestant missionaries’ services to prepare the necessary annotations. Moreover, this article suggests that the familiarity of the Chinese people with short and pithy sayings was a condition favourable for the reception of Proverbs in China. This, together with the status of the MandarinUnion Versionas the standard biblical text for Chinese Protestants, helps explain why the NBSS eventually published an annotated edition of Proverbs in the MandarinUnion Version. Annotations in that edition of Proverbs are analysed to understand how they could help bridge the gaps between Proverbs and its Chinese readers, so as to shed light on why such an edition of Proverbs was well-received as an evangelistic tool.