Religious Mission Research Articles

The Changing Face of the Holy Roman Empire

Few institutions have possessed as enduring importancein Europe's history as the Holy Roman Empire. Dating its foundation to Charlemagne's coronation in 800, it survived for a millennium, being dissolved only in 1806 in the face of the overwhelming threat from Napoleonic imperialism. Its geographical extent was equally remarkable: at its peak, imperial territory stretched eastward from the North Sea as far as Poland, and southward from the shores of the Baltic deep into the Italian Peninsula. Around 1800, shortly before its nemesis, the Empire was Europe's second largest polity, with a territorial area of around 687,000 square kilometers. It was eclipsed only by Russia, which during the later-seventeenth and eighteenth century had expanded spectacularly. Its population too was impressive: with around twenty-nine million inhabitants, its only rivals were France and Russia. Claiming descent from ancient Rome, the Empire long embodied the idea of a unified Christendom, while its defensive role against Ottoman expansion from the late fifteenth century onward sustained its religious mission even after the Protestant Reformation. Yet it is often squeezed out of accounts of Europe's past, an exclusion which is particularly evident for the early modern centuries.

Editor’s Introduction

Editor’s Introduction

The Mission: Human Capital Transmission, Economic Persistence and Culture in South America

This article examines the long-term consequences of a historical human capital intervention. The Jesuit order founded religious missions in 1609 among the Guarani, in modern-day Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Before their expulsion in 1767, missionaries instructed indigenous inhabitants in reading, writing and various crafts. Using archival records, as well as data at the individual and municipal level, I show that in areas of former Jesuit presence — within the Guarani area — educational attainment was higher and remains so (by 10%-15%) 250 years later. These educational differences have also translated into incomes that are 10% higher today. The identification of the positive effect of the Guarani Jesuit missions emerges after comparing them with abandoned Jesuit missions and neighboring Franciscan Guarani missions. The enduring effects observed are consistent with transmission mechanisms of structural transformation, occupational specialization and technology adoption in agriculture.

SickKids. The History of The Hospital for Sick Children by David Wright

172 BOOK REVIEWS the management of specific diseases. The reader will be impressed by the high quality of the research and the urgent import of the findings. Much of the history has been assembled from relatively inaccessible sources, some of which are in danger of being lost, in all the relevant languages. At the same time, there is the strong sense that there remains much to consider with respect to the future of vaccination. MICHAEL BENNETT UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA David Wright, SickKids. The History of The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). ISBN: 978-1-4426-4723-7 (HB). B&W illustrations and tables. xiv + 462pp. Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children is internationally renowned and claims to be the largest children’s hospital in the world (p.4). This new history, by eminent medical historian Professor David Wright, is attractively designed and illustrated. It reflects the generous resources allocated to it, including research assistance. Wright closely collaborated with the hospital (which has copyright in the book) and had, as he acknowledges with gratitude, ‘unfettered access to hospital resources’ (p.xi). He notes one irritant that is all too common for historians of medicine: having to adhere to ethical protocols designed for clinical research. Hence his sixteen oral history interviews had to be anonymous regardless of the interviewees’ wishes. The hospital admitted its first patient in 1875 and, faced with the task of summarising 140 years, Wright adopted the creative approach of writing chapters around key issues. Some detail falls between the cracks, but the key themes are well explored. The chosen themes mostly allow a focus on patients and, to a lesser extent, the multiple communities which make up a hospital’s culture. One fascination with these themes is that, apart from local detail, most equally apply to any large public hospital in the western world during the same period. Thehospital’sinitialyearswasdominatedbyElizabethMcMaster. She is ‘widely regarded’ (p.31) as the Hospital’s founder, and saw it as a ‘religious mission’ (p.45). She and her Ladies Committee were eventually ousted by John Ross Robertson. A newspaper tycoon, the word ‘tyrant’ seems unavoidable when describing him. Robertson’s Health & History ● 19/2 ● 2017 173 control of the hospital was enforced by ‘enormous’ donations (p.62), although the key source of finance was, Wright points out, the government. In the mid-century, the hospital was dominated by Dr Alan Brown, one of the ‘god-doctors’ during the era of more ‘scientific’ and very patriarchal medicine. As so often happened, his domination lasted too long, eventually resulting in retrograde policies especially for women and the psycho-social welfare of patients. Part of the interest of the hospital in the early- to mid-twentieth century was its location in the poorest part of Toronto. The hospital accordingly had a major role assisting refugees, notably Eastern European Jews. Its employment policies, however, were both antiSemitic and racist until more recent decades. Financially, the hospital benefited enormously from its entrepreneurship in developing a popular baby food, and in various ways from its close connection to the University of Toronto.As in other postcolonial societies, Canada’s aboriginal population is the major exception to its trope of progress. Wright’s thematic chapters are roughly chronological. They range from treating children with deformities requiring surgery, the hospital’s commitment to providing safe milk, and the polio epidemic (symbolised by the ‘iron lungs’ which Wright suggests had ‘relatively little impact’ [p.161]), to more recent developments in genetic medicine and e-health. Other chapters focus on issues indirectly affecting treatment, notably the severe restrictions on visiting children who were public patients (those with tuberculosis, he writes, could endure hospitalisation, and thus little contact with their families, for four years!); the ‘Rabbit-Warren’ of the buildings (Chapter 9); and, in the 1980s, the building of the hospital’s renowned atrium, an architectural statement of its entering a new era. The chapter themes become more complex as the evidence base grows with the hospital, and diverse threads—such as Chapter 11’s medical insurance and the ‘sisterhood of nursing’—don’t always merge well together. The recent corporatisation of the hospital is more lightly touched upon, as is...

The Negative Effects of Social and Educational Policy Changes on the Religious Mission of Catholic Secondary Schooling in Zambia’s Southern Province: A Historical Analytical Perspective from 1964 to Date

The Negative Effects of Social and Educational Policy Changes on the Religious Mission of Catholic Secondary Schooling in Zambia’s Southern Province: A Historical Analytical Perspective from 1964 to Date

Origine des animaux sur pied, circuit de la viande : la formation des assemblages osseux dans le contexte d’une fête traditionnelle à Sumba (Indonésie). Une enquête ethnoarchéologique

Les études anglo-saxonnes sur l’économie du feasting nous ont rendu attentifs à l’existence, dans des sociétés non-étatiques à organisation hiérarchisée ou stratifiée, de formes d’élevage dans lesquelles l’utilisation rituelle des principaux animaux domestiques joue un rôle central. Les travaux les plus marquants ont concerné essentiellement des sociétés sud-est asiatiques (Hayden, 2001, 2003 et 2009 ; Adams, 2016). Le cochon et le buffle y sont les principaux animaux domestiques. Ils sont considérés comme des bien rituels et ne sont abattus et consommés, sauf exception notable, qu’en contexte festif. Les choix en matière de gestion des cheptels sont conditionnés par la nécessité de satisfaire aux besoins du rituel. L’abattage est saisonnier et la consommation sur l’année est donc irrégulièrement répartie. Les animaux abattus lors des fêtes sont fournis pour partie par l’organisateur et pour partie par ses parents biologiques et ses affins. Si l’essentiel de la viande est consommé sur place, une partie significative fait cependant l’objet d’un partage et d’une consommation «décentralisée » . La circulation centripète des bêtes sur pied et la circulation centrifuge des parts de viande se fait selon les lignes de la parenté. Le rituel primant sur toute autre considération, certains aspects considérés ailleurs comme cruciaux ne jouent ici qu’un rôle secondaire. C’est le cas, par exemple, des contraintes liées à la reproduction des cheptels. Si les travaux ethnoarchéologiques cités nous livrent une bonne caractérisation générale de l’économie du feasting, ils n’évoquent que de manière indirecte les conséquences archéologiques de cette manière de concevoir le rôle des animaux domestiques. C’est cette lacune qui a motivé l’organisation de notre projet, dont l’un des objectifs est de mener une analyse détaillée de la circulation des bêtes sur pied et du circuit de la viande partagée dans le cadre de l’économie du feasting. Cet article présente une analyse détaillée d’une fête en particulier qui s’est déroulée en juin 2016 dans le village de Tarung (île de Sumba, Indonésie). Il débouche sur une amorce de réflexion épistémologique sur les conditions de production des interprétations dans le domaine de l’archéozoologie des sociétés de la Préhistoire récente.

Focus on key strategies to increase enrollment even in the face of adversity

In 2012, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints made the announcement that male disciples of the Church should serve their two years on a religious mission of conversion at age 18, rather than the previous age of 21. In a state where 50 percent of all high school students are Mormon, the sudden loss of a huge population of potential incoming college students was a matter of major concern for most institutions.

The Catholic school and social justice in Africa: a Zambian case study

This paper will argue that the state-aided Catholic school in Zambia has contributed significantly to the development of the country over the years. However, because of its enmeshment in the state system of education it has inadvertently become an instrument of underdevelopment. It is structurally complicit in alienating some of the poorest sectors of society, which runs counter to its professed religious mission. This essay presents the Zambian situation as a case study where it is contended that in order to understand the current situation there is need to see it in the light of its history. The discussion is intended to explore how faith-based educational settings within the state systems in Africa may become complicit in sustaining forms of oppression. It will include a consideration of how, as part of this, religion has been reduced historically through being too closely allied to a modernisation framework generating the illusion of promoting social justice. The article notes that in the light of better historical appreciation of the issue there is need for a review of the faith-based school’s pedagogy.

The Role of Race in Legitimizing Institutionalization: A Comparative Analysis of Early Child Welfare Initiatives in the United States

In 1888, two conferences addressed the institutionalization of children. At the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, philanthropists determined that American and western European immigrant children whose parents were unable or unwilling to care for them should be protected from institutionalization and placed in foster homes. Conversely, the philanthropists and religious missionaries who met at the annual Lake Mohonk Conference concluded that American Indian children should be institutionalized in off-reservation boarding schools. Although both groups of children were depicted as a threat to social order at the conferences, presenters at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections used new theories of childhood development to oppose the institutionalization of American and western European children. At the Lake Mohonk Conference, presenters used theories of American Indians’ racial inferiority to justify American Indian children’s institutionalization in off-reservation boarding schools.

Catholic education in Zambia: mission integrity and politics

This article provides the history of Catholic state-aided schooling in Zambia for over a century. It notes how the Catholic Church came to view its school to be a pivotal means of church development. By cooperation with the state it entered more fully into the nation’s future by offering high-quality state-sponsored schooling. This proved to engender its acceptance because this is what the younger generation of Zambians treasured. Progressively, the Catholic school faced a major challenge by becoming embedded in a paradigm of learning that ran counter to its religious mission. It will be argued that this dilemma remains and that the future of the Catholic school in Zambia and beyond pivots on a satisfactory outcome if it is to make a distinctive contribution.

Congregational Aid: North American Protestant Engagement in International Relief and Development

A review of large North American Protestant congregations (n = 423) engaging in global relief and development, or ‘holistic mission’ (HM), suggests that half engage in HM activities per year, with the majority of those activities focused on human and physical sectors. Most activities are led by religious NGOs or missionaries and about half are short-term. A mix of proximity, poverty, population, and policy variables direct short- and long-term aid. Findings provide a benchmark for enhancing learning and partnerships among churches, NGOs, and development scholars, ultimately enhancing the efficacy of Protestant aid.

The Distinctiveness of the Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus has a number of features making it distinctive among the religious orders of the Catholic Church. The ten founders all held university degrees, which meant that they established a tradition of a high regard for learning and of articulated procedures, as exemplified in the Formula instituti (the rule of the order) and in the Constitutions. The high degree of authority enjoyed by the superior general was not only itself distinctive, but it led to a distinctly international character to the Jesuit missions. Once the Society undertook the staffing and management of schools, its distinctiveness only increased and led to its having, besides its religious mission, also a cultural and a civic mission.

No “Slippery Slope”? An Empirical Case Study on the Effect of Secular Science Textbooks on Student Religiosity in a Christian Private School

ABSTRACTIn context of legal battles over science textbooks in both public and private schools, this empirical case study examines student religiosity scores over a 3-year period following a school-wide curricular change from Christian-published to secular science textbooks in a K-12 Christian private school. The study found no statistically significant change in student religiosity scores for two subscales (organizational and non-organizational religiosity; p = .799, p = .232, respectively); however, for the third subscale, intrinsic religiosity, a statistically significant increase in student religiosity was reported (p ≤ .001). The study suggests that the curricular change had no discernible negative affect on student religiosity scores. Moreover, the study suggests that Christian private schools may utilize secular science textbooks and remain faithful to their religious missions, especially when coupled with teacher training in faith-learning integration.

Congregational Aid: North American Protestant Engagement in International Relief and Development

A review of large North American Protestant congregations (n = 423) engaging in global relief and development, or ‘holistic mission’ (HM), suggests that half engage in HM activities per year, with the majority of those activities focused on human and physical sectors. Most activities are led by religious NGOs or missionaries and about half are short-term. A mix of proximity, poverty, population, and policy variables direct short- and long-term aid. Findings provide a benchmark for enhancing learning and partnerships among churches, NGOs, and development scholars, ultimately enhancing the efficacy of Protestant aid.

Reguliertes Abenteuer: Missionarinnen in Südafrika nach 1945 by Martina Gugglberger

Reviewed by: Reguliertes Abenteuer: Missionarinnen in Südafrika nach 1945 by Martina Gugglberger Martina Cucchiara Martina Gugglberger, Reguliertes Abenteuer: Missionarinnen in Südafrika nach 1945. L’Homme Schriften. Reihe zur Feministischen Geschichtswissenschaft 22. Vienna: Böhlau, 2014. 276 pp. In this noteworthy monograph, Martina Gugglberger seeks to illuminate the personal histories and experiences of European women religious missionaries after 1945. The author based her work on interviews with twenty-three Austrian and German Catholic sisters from the congregation of the Schwestern vom Kostbaren Blut, who have lived and worked as missionaries in South Africa for decades. These mostly elderly sisters represent the last generation of European women who joined new Catholic religious congregations dedicated to charitable works in large numbers during the monastic spring in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. In this buoyant age of monastic revival, the abbot Franz Pfanner (1825–1905) founded the order of the Missions-schwestern vom Kostbaren Blut in 1885, and hundreds of German and Austrian women subsequently joined the congregation through the 1960s, when the prevalence of religious vocations declined sharply. By the 1970s, few women were entering religious life, and it was only then that scholars in the emerging fields of women and gender studies hesitantly began to turn their attention to the complex roles of women in organized religion. Since then, historians have struggled with the question of why so many women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries joined the patriarchal Catholic (and Protestant) churches that seemed to oppress rather than liberate [End Page 159] them. Offering satisfactory answers has proven quite difficult, and despite a growing body of research on the topic, in many ways the scholarship on women religious has not moved far beyond the somewhat laconic assertion Martha Vicinus made thirty years ago that “religion opened and closed doors for single women.” Martina Gugglberger, too, focuses on the question of why the women she interviewed took the veil. She writes early on that “Kern der Untersuchung war es, Bilder und Vorstellungen zu eruieren, die die Motivationen für ein Leben als Missionsschwester zeithistorisch begreifbar machen” (16). Although the author’s conclusions are familiar in that the stories of the women missionaries take on the gestalt “eines ‘regulierten Abenteuers’, im Spannungsfeld zwischen individuellen and gesellschaftlichen Begrenzungen und Ausbrüchen,” her substantial chapter on the missionaries’ early lives, their “Herkunftsraum,” is nonetheless a highlight of the monograph (16). Gugglberger’s skillful and sensitive presentation of her interviewees’ early life stories that ended in the cloister addresses a significant gap in the scholarship on religious women, that is, the woeful lack of autobiographical sources on individual sisters. Readers will no doubt study with great interest her detailed descriptions of the women’s rural upbringing that was commonly shaped by “hard work and deep religious attitudes” and the deleterious impact of World War II on already limited educational and professional opportunities and marriage prospects (97). In this often bleak postwar era, many adolescent girls found refuge first in vibrant Catholic youth groups in their villages and then within the “stützende Gemeinschaft von jungen Frauen” in the cloister (175). For women who felt drawn to religious life, the Missionsschwestern vom Kostbaren Blut’s missionary school in Neuenbeken near Paderborn was an accredited Oxford Centre that offered attractive educational opportunities to its candidates for sisterhood. But Martina Gugglberger found that not all missionaries were created equal; unlike the mostly German graduates of Neuenbeken, who usually entered the teaching profession and were well prepared for further university studies abroad, young Austrian women who entered the congregation’s cloister Wernberg in Austria did not achieve the same level of education and usually found themselves employed in lower positions within the congregation in (housekeeping, clerical tasks, farming, and other manual labor). The uneven education the sisters received in Europe perhaps accounts for why quite a few of the sisters the author interviewed were ill prepared for [End Page 160] missionary work. Severe language barriers, feelings of incompetence, overwork, and disappointment about their work assignments caused some to suffer severe breakdowns and psychological crises. This is an important insight that speaks to the potential of oral histories to introduce intriguing nuances to a...

Membaca Tantangan Kerukunan Antaragama di Indonesia

<p>The article briefly maps and analyzes a number of obstacles in creating interreligious harmony in Indonesia. It also offers potential solutions to be practically implemented. The writers observe that there are a number of problems which become obstacles to build interreligious harmony such as economic and political problems, dispute over territory, the difference of ideological doctrines, role of the mass media, provocative and unfair (biased) journalism, and the clash among religious missionaries of each religion when they encounter one with another in the field. In the last part of the article the writers provides an illustration on how interreligious harmony has been impressively implemented in Bali. The writers argue that interreligious life in Bali is a robust example for interreligious harmony. In addition, a number of experts consider the dynamic of interreligious life in Bali a remarkable model of how social harmony is well managed within a plural society. One may assume that Bali is an ideal miniature of interreligious harmony in Indonesia. Therefore, it should be imitated and implemented in other regions of our country.</p>

Conceptual Pathways to Ethnic Transcendence in Diverse Churches: Theoretical Reflections on the Achievement of Successfully Integrated Congregations

The concept of ethnic transcendence—defined as the process of co-formulating a shared religious identity among diverse members that supersedes their racial and ethnic differences through congregational involvement—captures a critical aspect of successfully integrating different racial and ethnic groups into a single, commonly shared, multi-ethnic congregation. Drawing on classic theoretical resources from Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, this paper expands on previous scholarship by conceptually articulating two different paths for the achievement of ethnic transcendence in multiracial congregations. In the first path, ethnic transcendence supports and encourages congregational diversification by inspiring members and mobilizing them to contribute their efforts to accomplish a common religious mission. In the second path, the achievement of ethnic transcendence involves the sublimation of congregational members’ religious selves to an overarching moral collective. Both paths involve privileging religious identities in favor of a particularistic ethnic or racial identity. Moreover, through both paths, the development of congregationally specific religious identities results in joining with co-members of different ethno-racial ancestries as a type of spiritually-derived kinship. Due to the fact that ethnic transcendence is an interactive process, congregational diversity is a bi-directional phenomenon representing the extent to which members allow for the integration of separate ethnicities/races into a common congregation through idealized and richly-symbolic notions of connection and belonging to a congregation. Overall, this paper suggests a heuristic framework that productively expands the concept of ethnic transcendence, allows an approach for observing cross-ethnic/inter-racial organizational processes, and ultimately contributes toward understanding how congregations (whether church, temple, or mosque) pursue alternative identity reconstruction projects to sustain cohesive collective identities.

Daughters of Charity: Women, Religious Mission, and Hospital Care in Los Angeles, 1856–1927. By Kristine Ashton Gunnell. Chicago: DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute, 2013. xi + 259 pp. $18.99 paper.

Daughters of Charity: Women, Religious Mission, and Hospital Care in Los Angeles, 1856–1927. By Kristine Ashton Gunnell. Chicago: DePaul University Vincentian Studies Institute, 2013. xi + 259 pp. $18.99 paper.

THE MISSIONARY WOMEN IN THE INLAND OF AUSTRALIA AND THE AUSTRALIAN INLAND MISSION AS REPRESENTED IN BETH BECKETT’S LIFE MEMOIR

This article looks at the gender dimension of religious missions administered by the Presbyterian Church in the inland Australia as represented in Beth Beckett’s life memoir written in 1947-1955. It is aimed at obtaining general ideas on the involvement of women, as the wives of missionaries, Focusing on the experience of Beth Beckett, it argues that her position as a wife of a missionary is problematic: on the one hand she did transgress the traditional idea of staying home wife by choosing to travel along with her husband, but at the same time, she was still bound by the domestic side of the job.

Masters and students: Jesuit mission ethnography in seventeenth-century New France

The word can suggest a distant and dangerous attempt to obtain information for the benefit of the home left behind. However, the term also applies to the movement of information in the opposite direction, as the primary motivation of those on religious missions is not to learn about another culture, but rather to teach their own particular worldview. In Masters and Students, Micah True considers the famous Jesuit Relations (1632-73) from New France as the product of two simultaneous missions, in which the Jesuit priests both extracted information from the poorly understood inhabitants of New France and attempted to deliver Europe's religious knowledge to potential Amerindian converts. This dual position of student and master provides the framework for the author's reflection on the nature of the Jesuits' facts about Amerindian languages, customs, and beliefs that are recorded in the Relations. Following the missionaries through the process of gaining access to New France, interacting with Amerindian groups, and communicating with Europe about the results of their efforts, Masters and Students explores how the Relations were shaped by the distinct nature of the Jesuit approach to their mission - in both senses of the word.