Secular Missionaries Research Articles

Good Samaritan has Arrived

The purpose of this article is to investigate the ongoing attempts by the West to colonize the Non-Western cultures by the means of religion. To this end, the missionary was and is without doubt the frontrunner for the standard of civilization, providing the pretext and fertile ground for the subsequent infiltration of the colonialist who was eager to carve an empire in the ‘discovered’ world - with the goal to exploit African resources for his own good. The exploitation of the resources in the colonized world was accompanied by the early religious Missionaries who set up secular missionaries. Their travels to other countries was not the bible but other documents of conquest such as dubious treaties, guns and trinkets to attract the unsuspecting colonized to be lured to them. Missionaries often aligned themselves with the powerful in order to achieve their prime objective of “saving souls” more rapidly. Colonization, civilisation and religion are means to the creation of imperialism. This article, to this end, will inquire the role of the non-Western world to resist attempts of there West to engage in practices of repeated colonization under the pretext of religion.

Mississippi missionaries’ workplace spirituality and organizational commitment (1698–1725): a case study

The relationship between workplace spirituality and organizational commitment in modern settings is often examined using models focused on personal and organizational performance. Meant for contemporary practices, such tools can enhance understanding of organizations in the historic record, benefiting not only historians but researchers who wish to ameliorate commitment in organizations. Utilizing a recent model focused on workplace spirituality and organizational commitment, this study examines the leadership of the Séminaire de Québec and the Séminaire des Missions Etrangères de Paris as well as their secular missionaries assigned to work in villages on the Mississippi River in the early eighteenth century. Analyses demonstrate that the inability to maintain communication, support, and community between leadership and missionaries greatly hampered commitment to the organization and to the Mississippi missions. Only Father Bergier remained strongly committed to his work and the Seminaries due to his personal sense of calling, devotion, leadership, and spirituality.

Aktualne zaangażowanie misyjne diecezji tarnowskiej w kontekście 225-lecia jej istnienia. Kościół, który jest w Tarnowie – posłania misjonarzy i ich konsekwencje

In the above presentation the Diocese of Tarnow has shown its commitment to the missionary work at the time of celebrating its 225 jubilee. It covers the last 38 years because during that time the bishops of Tarnow have regularly sent forth the missionaries to different countries. This commitment by reading the spirit and intentions of Vatican II, had been started by archbishop George Ablewicz and then continued by successive bishops of Tarnow: namely by bishop Joseph Życiński and the bishop Victor Skworc. So far they have sent forth 118 priests to three different continents. This act harmonizes with the fourth Synod of the Diocese of Tarnow which took place in 1986. Its main motto was “Ad imaginem Ecclesiae universalis”. This life of the particular Church which in Tarnow is following the example of the universal Church is mainly expressed by sending forth the missionaries and then in cooperation with them. Their work is a huge contribution to the evangelization of the few countries in Africa, South America and more recently Kazakhstan in Asia. Upon this commitment has been placed a seal of the martyrdom of one of the sons of the Diocese of Tarnow – namely the priest John Czuba, the fideidonist, who was killed in the Republic of Congo in 1998. The missionary cooperation of the Diocese is both spiritual and material. It is done thanks to the Diocesan Missionary Work. It is expressed in constant prayer for the missionaries undertaken especially by the rosary groups, but also by maintaining the missionaries, purchase of the means of transport for them or making investments, among which are: hospitals, schools, kindergartens or home for the street children. They are used by children and adults and the priest of Church of Tarnow tend them. At present in the Diocesan Missionary Work there are 46 missionaries from Tarnow region. They work in different parts of the world: 14 of them stay in Africa, 27 work in South America and 5 in Kazakhstan. This represents approximately 15 per cent of all fideidonists in Poland. To this number we may add the secular missionaries who work in the following countries: Cameroon – there is one missionary, the Central African Republic – there are two missionaries and two other volunteers in this very country.

Larry Grubbs . Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s . (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War.) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2009. Pp. viii, 243. $34.95.

Larry Grubbs . Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s . (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War.) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2009. Pp. viii, 243. $34.95.

Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s

Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s

The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order. By David Ekbladh. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 404p. $35.00. - Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s. By Larry Grubbs. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010. 256p. $34.95. - Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire and the Globalization of the New

The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order. By David Ekbladh. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 404p. $35.00. - Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s. By Larry Grubbs. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010. 256p. $34.95. - Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire and the Globalization of the New

Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s by Larry Grubbs (review)

Secular Missionaries: Americans and African Development in the 1960s by Larry Grubbs (review)

From self-reliant churches to self-governing communities: comparing the indigenization of Christianity and democracy in sub-Saharan Africa

Christian missionaries, especially from Anglo-American Protestant denominations, have been remarkably successful in their effort to plant ‘self-propagating, self-supporting, self-governing’ churches throughout the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Today's international non-governmental organizations and inter-governmental organizations engaged in development, humanitarian assistance, peace-building and human rights resemble ‘secular missionaries’ spreading their gospel of democracy, good governance, peace, justice and sustainable development. This article investigates the extent to which today's secular missionaries might learn from the indigenization of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. I conclude that an essential ingredient in the missionary strategy of evangelization is conspicuously absent in contemporary programmes of development, democratization, or peace-building. In particular, the extensive efforts devoted by Protestant missionaries to the translation of their Biblical message into local languages and symbolic repertoires bear little resemblance to efforts to transplant Western ideals of universal human rights or the institutional templates of democratic governance first developed in the United States and Western Europe.

Bringing“The Gospel of Modernization”to Nigeria: American Nation Builders and Development Planning in the 1960s

Drawing on recent studies of development discourse, this essay explores the impact of two American academics affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Nigerian economic planning in the 1960s. Their published and unpublished writings provide a dramatic demonstration of how development discourse skewed American and Nigerian perceptions of reality, contributing to the failure of nation building during the First Republic. American “secular missionaries” promoted a “gospel of modernization,” a vision of Nigeria as a self‐confident, unified nation‐state that would offer Africa a model for development. They predicted the Nigerian National Development Plan of 1962–68, funded by American aid and private investment, would provide a “significant historical demonstration” that American‐led modernization produces development and democracy. Instead, Nigeria's economy remained locked into neocolonial trade patterns, corruption blossomed, and ethnic conflict and political opportunism culminated in a bloody civil war from 1967 to 1970. Nigeria entered the twenty‐first century with a staggering external debt, widespread poverty, and painful dependence on the West.

Little Tin Gods: The District Officer in British East Africa

They were unlikely choices for revolutionaries and hardly the haughty autocrats the phrase “Little Tin Gods” conjures up. Yet many East African district officers felt it their duty to change the lives of the Africans they ruled, and against great odds they did. Sent out by their superiors in London and Nairobi as policemen and tax collectors, they saw themselves as secular missionaries for a superior culture. Working in the decade before the catastrophic first world war, they were the last generation of Europeans who easily believed their own superiority. Under pressure to produce revenue many district commissioners fostered economic development as a first step in reforming African society. They wished to develop an exchange economy based upon the fruits of a settled and productive peasantry working on its own land. They believed the Africans would adopt the basic values of hard work and even self-reliance, making an Edwardian revolution. If their assumptions about social change, economics, or even civilization itself seem unsophisticated, it is because they were amateurs. They had few resources beyond their own confidence and sense of mission. They began a revolution, but it was not the one they intended for they failed to retrieve colonial Kenya from the clutches of a handful of white settlers. Their vision of peaceful prosperity for the Africans was ultimately denied, and the hopes they raised became murderous frustrations. They offered Kenya an alternative course which imperialism could not accept.Kenya's first district officers came from diverse backgrounds, but most shared the middle class values they proposed for the Africans.