Protestant Societies Research Articles

Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: Une Question Mal Posée

The question of why the Reformation failed to win any significant number of adherents from among the native population in Ireland has, since the nineteenth century, been posed frequently by historians and, until very recently, the question has been accepted as valid and the answers provided have generally been considered plausible. That the problem of the Reformation in Ireland should be approached in this way is at least a concession by scholars that Irish history is a part of European history and that Irish society has always been influenced to some degree by general European movements. Historical practice has unfortunately not conformed with appearance, and historians have lost sight of the broad comparative perspective implied in the question and, as a consequence, have shirked the fundamental issue of whether or not a reform movement developed within Ireland, or whether the necessary conditions for such a development existed. Instead, the problem has been pondered almost exclusively within the context of the Reformation in England with die result that historians, while appearing to be embarked upon a general discussion of the pre-conditions for reformation, have in fact confined their attention to the much more specific issue of why measures which in a relatively short time produced a solidly Protestant society in England failed to achieve anything like the same result in Ireland.

Protestant Mission Societies: The American Experience

When outgoing ASM president Ralph D. Winter was asked to tailor his address to the special circumstances of a joint meeting between the ASM and a sister organization, the International Association of Mission Studies, he decided to present a large canvas interpreting the overall phenomenon of Protestant missions in American experience. The special focus of this address, now in the form of an article, is characteristic of a recurring emphasis in his writings: a comparison between Protestant and Catholic structural mechanisms of mission. His historical summary attempts to explain both how and why the number of overseas missionaries sent out by member denominations of the NCCCUSA is now less than 71/2% of the U.S. Protestant total.

The Extended Presence: Mexico and Its Culture in North American Writing

North American writers, since colonial days, have been subjected to a number of foreign influences, and some of these have been persistentnotably the English and the French. However, the intensity of these influences has waxed and waned according to literary period. But there is one engagement with another culture whose presence is always felt, whether perceived to be malignant or benign. Mexico is not just a neighboring country. Its cultural influences thrust sharply upward from the Southwestern border of the United States. It is an unavoidable presence, and as such it has been reflected in our literature from the earliest days of border contact. The earlier pioneer America which first reacted to this presence displayed the provincialism of a homogenous and somewhat isolated culture. This was Anglo-Saxon Protestant society on the march and getting farther and farther from its home base. The innocence of its faith in unending progress through technology and science was as yet undisturbed. To the members of such a society, backwardness in matters of mechanics and machinery was a rebuke to the glorious nineteenth century, and the writers of this society did not spare themselves in castigating the lazy and feckless Mexicans for their indifference to these matters. Typical among these writers was George Wilkins Kendall, a newspaperman who had traveled much in the borderlands. The patronizing tone which he adopted in writing of the Mexicans was characteristic of the period:

The Quaker Contribution to Education in Madagascar, 1867-1895

THE QUAKER CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATION IN MADAGASCAR, 1867-1895 By Bonar A. Gow* Protestantism came to the island of Madagascar in the year 1818 when two Congregational missionaries and their families landed at the east coast port of Tamatave. Sponsored by the London Missionary Society, these two men had as their aim the conversion of the inhabitants of Imerina, the plateau kingdom of the Merina peoples, and by 1820 Christianity had reached the capital, Antananarivo . The then ruling monarch, King Radama I(r.18??- ?828), had just embarked upon a programme of military expansion and modernisation of the state, and he welcomed the arrival of a foreigner who was willing to teach his people how to read and write their own language. A school was opened, churches built, and soon converts began to appear. Radama's successor, Queen Ranavalona I (r.1828-1861), distrusted the new religion, however, and in 1835 she expelled the European missionaries and commenced to execute or punish all those Malagasy who professed Christianity. Persecution served only to harden the spirits of the new converts, however; by 1861, the year the queen died, their numbers had risen from a few hundred to between seven and ten thousand.1 King Radama II(r.l861-1863) displayed a markedly different attitude towards Christianity; not only had he become a secret Christian in the 1850's, but when his mother died he threw the island open to all Christian mission societies. His successors trod a similar path and Christianity flourished from 1861 onwards. Missionary activity amongst the Merina and other Malagasy peoples became intense, and in all six Protestant societies and the Jesuits entered the island before the arrival of the French in 1895. Large numbers of Protestant converts were made and even larger numbers of adherents were attracted to worship services; many thousands were taken into mission schools and church colleges. This *Director of Academic Studies, Northern Lights College, Dawson Creek, B.C. 1. Andrew Burgess, Zanhary in South Madagascar (Minneapolis: Board of Foreign Missions, 1932), p. 120; James Sibree, The Madagascar Mission (London: London Missionary Society, 1907), p. 41. 87 88QUAKER HISTORY rapid growth was never equalled in mainland Africa before the coming of the European powers. It was in this environment that the Friends' Foreign Missions Association established a progressive school system, the likes of which was never duplicated until after the Malagasy obtained independence in 1960. This paper is an attempt to describe the educational work of the Friends' mission and to assess its impact upon Madagascar before the French invasion. It will endeavour to sketch in the beginnings of Quaker mission work in England, and then to outline the type of school system created in Imerina by the then serving missionaries . Last of all, the legacy of this small but important mission will be evaluated with an eye to determining its contribution to life in pre-colonial Madagascar. The data for this study were gathered from Quaker, Anglican, and Congregational archives in London, England, private papers in Birmingham, England, and the Archives de la République Malgache, Tananarive, Malagasy Republic. Quaker involvement in the evangelisation of Madagascar came about not so much as a result of Quaker initiative; rather, British Friends were drawn to the island by a member of the L.M.S. The senior Congregational missionary in the island, William Ellis, aware that the lower class, artisan backgrounds of most of his fellow workers were not conducive to founding and maintaining a system of mission schools and colleges, approached his wife's nephew, Joseph S. Sewell, in search of assistance. Ellis, in touch with developments within the Society of Friends, knew that interest in mission work was growing in Great Britain, and he hoped that Sewell and other schoolteachers would join him in strengthening the educational programme of the L.M.S. Sewell, a supporter of foreign missions, accepted the offer of service in Madagascar. Despite the Evangelical Revival, involvement in foreign missionary work did not affect the British members of the Society of Friends during the first sixty years of the nineteenth century. Overseas missions were not really a part of the British Quaker tradition before about 1865.2 At first...

Leisure: An Alternate to the Meaning of Work

The nature of work in many instances is changing and is no longer meaningful for some rehabilitation clients. Many occupations have psychological limitations as they afford little career advancement and are repetitive in nature. Yet the client has been conditioned via the Protestant ethic and industrial society to believe that work is the central force of life: the client believes he is what he does. As the structure of work changes, so should the meaning of work. While work remains imperative, it is no longer necessary that the individual achieve his identity and meaning through his work. Leisure is suggested as an alternative to work as it applies to projecting meaning into life. Leisure is a self-actualizing process which is pursued independent of work. By establishing leisure objectives the rehabilitation counselor may increase the quality of the client's life as well as decrease employment instability. The client will recognize that his work provides his extrinsic needs as his leisure provides his intrinsic needs.

Theory of Common Education in Elizabethan Puritanism

Professor L. A. Stone, writing on the ‘educational revolution’ of the period 1560–1640, came to the conclusion that one of the ‘most striking characteristics of the English Puritans was their belief in the value of education as a weapon against the three great evils of Ignorance, Prophaneness and Idleness’. He found that a significant number of puritan gentry and merchants supported the ‘teaching of the three R's and religion to the many, and Latin and religion to the few’ through the many scholarships and foundations that appear in this period. One may, however, question Stone's contention that the Puritans' educational motives were tied to the inculcation of obedience to the established social and political order. It is more than likely that, by spreading the Word of God, defeating what he calls the aesthetic and emotional attractions of the counter-reformation, and establishing a truly protestant nation, Puritans sought to educate a breed of reformed men dedicated to the coming of the Kingdom of God in their own lifetime. This, conceivably, was what was meant by a genuinely learned and protestant society.

Resources for African Studies in Protestant Mission Societies in England

Resources for African Studies in Protestant Mission Societies in England

Colonialism and Christianity in West Africa: the Igbo case, 1900–1915

A critical examination of the forces behind Igbo acceptance of Christianity during the first decade of this century reveals that British military imperialism and other forms of colonial exploitation were in fact basic to the decision of many Igbo communities to embrace Christianity. The adoption of the Christian religion, especially by the male adults, may be seen as a clear method of adjusting to the new colonial regime in which Christianity offered visible social advantages. Communities which embraced the new religion believed that by associating with the Christian missionaries, they would perhaps escape various forms of colonial over-rule.The expansion of British political authority in the Igbo country, therefore, widened the frontiers of missionary enterprise. And as the Christian missions found the Igbos remarkably receptive to missionary propaganda, each was more than anxious to exert its denominational influence on the people. Thus interdenominational rivalry, especially between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, was acute. For various reasons, the Roman Catholic missionaries seem to have established a more preponderating influence than the other Protestant societies.

Protestant London, No Popery and the Irish Poor: II (1850—1860)

‘Wanted immediately, a member of the Church of England, of devoted missionary spirit, willing “to spend and to be spent” in labouring amongst a degraded metropolitan population, chiefly Irish. A fair knowledge of the Roman Catholic controversy is desirable Unexceptionable testimonials as to personal piety, energy, and general ability will be required.… An average salary at least will be given.’Rev. S.P.D. (1853).The Protestant societies engaged in evangelizing the Irish in London were mostly staffed by laymen, but had the enthusiastic aid and counsel of the Evangelical clergy, and were only some of the institutional strands in the Evangelical Vicar's encounter with urban poverty from the early 1830s, as the Evangelical urban parish was divided into units of manageable size, and developed lay forms of district-visiting to bring under parochial supervision the huge urban slum populations: or, as the Evangelicals put it themselves, as they brought a remedy to the material and spiritual destitution of the great godless cities, and to London, the greatest and least godly of any. The lay societies needed clerical approval, patronage and protection, and the Evangelical clergy worked as hard as their laymen.

African-Related Materials in European Missionary Archives

During the summer of 1966 this writer had the opportunity to investigate the archival holdings of four European Protestant missionary societies. The purpose of this investigation was to gather information on Protestant missionary influence on the development of the Merina Kingdom of Madagascar. During the course of this research I found that these archival holdings were not only a necessary source for my limited study. The information contained in these depositories was also a valuable source of intelligence on almost every aspect of life and labor in Africa from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Unfortunately, these sources have not been used as extensively as they might be. In part, this is due to the limited scope of much of the missionary correspondence, and the awesome task of extracting what the secular historian would consider relevant from the writings of individuals whose dominant concerns were theological and often polemic. Another, partial, explanation for the neglect of these sources --if one can use such a strong term -- stems from the general lack of information concerning these holdings and their availability to scholars. Although the most frequent users of the mission archives are missionaries themselves and church historians, the secular scholar is generally welcomed and eagerly aided by the professional staffs of the various institutions noted below. It is the intention of this brief article to indicate the location, facilities, and holdings of those four missionary archives which were used by this writer, and to furnish general information regarding other missionary organizations and depositories useful for the researcher.

Coalitions in Mixed-Sex Triads

In the experimental study of small little attention has been paid to the problem of differences in behavior between groups homogeneous and heterogeneous with respect to sex. A typical procedure, in fact, is to control for the effect of sex, as by constituting groups all of the same sex. There are, of course, sound reasons for this strategy, since the aim of the experimenter is to manipulate some stated interaction variable, like cohesiveness, communication net, etc. Nevertheless, not only are mixed-sex groups just as natural in their occurrence as any other combination of persons, but there are ample grounds for supposing that mixed-sex groups will act differently from same-sex groups. Differences between the sexes in social interests and values are summarized in Anastasi (1), from which data it is evident that males and females ought to contribute, on the average, different traits to mixed interaction situations. More directly relevant to the present study, however, are the marked differences appearing in a simple game situation (10), leading to the formulation of contrasting sex roles. Males were found to play competitively, with strong motivation to win, whereas females were more concerned with social and ethical considerations, oriented towards arriving at an outcome in the game maximally satisfactory (or fair) to all three participants. It is interesting, then, to ask what happens when these two strategies are placed in contact with each other (that is, by composing groups of both sexes). A second issue in the present case has to do with the relations between majority and segments of the group. It is surprising that this matter, too, has received very little experimental treatment. Most of the literature available deals with minority groups, in the sense of racial or religious affiliations within the dominant white, Protestant society. Bierstedt (3) has remarked upon the significance of majority behavior as a research problem, but he, also, is preoccupied with the intergroup relations in the sense just mentioned. The most directly pertinent study is that by Asch (2), who showed the powerful influence exerted by a majority in bringing about erroneous judgments by a (of one). Among the critical subjects,there were distinguished a group of yielders, who readily followed the suggestion provided by the

Ascetic Protestantism and the Development of Science and Technology

Affective neutrality is common to ascetic Protestantism and science; it should therefore reveal itself in a greater scientific and technological output of Protestant societies. Analysis of Sorokin's data on discoveries and inventions exposes their flaws. Tabulation of his figures in the form of population-productivity ratios reveals, contrary to Sorokin's interpretation of his data, the higher productivity of Protestant countries. Independent data confirm this and strongly suggest that a substantial proportion of Catholic countries' inventiveness came from people of Protestant background.

Meeting of the Committee of the Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty

Meeting of the Committee of the Protestant Society for the Protection of Religious Liberty