Missionary History

Critical comments from one member of the Siamese elite in the second half of the nine- teenth century on the merits of the form of government of the United States of America published in a newspaper called Bangkok Recorder led to the dissemination of liberal concepts in Thailand for the first time in its history. In his published articles, Dan Beach Bradley, an American missionary and the publisher of Bangkok Recorder, mentioned freedom, equality, constitutional and republican government, free press, liberal mind, and meritocracy. The dis- semination of these liberal concepts marks the beginning of liberalism in Thailand.

This article problematizes the concept of ‘mission’ in international interventions, who is entitled to missionize and how the missionized subject is conceptualized. By looking at the international missions in Kosovo (those of the UN and particularly the EU), we problematize how the EU mission in Kosovo is entrenched in a trajectory of ‘missionizing’ that makes it bear the stigma of a structure non-responsive and non-sensitive to the local. Employing Derrida’s deconstruction, we explain that the criticism (academic, dogmatic, ideological and empirical) of international missions relates not so much to how they operate in their host countries, or to the policy choices they make. Rather, looking at the path dependency of missions in the Western historical and civilizational trajectory, we maintain that the problem derives from the idea and very concept of ‘mission’ as intervention in itself.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. Her family was of Albanian descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love of Christ. At the age of eighteen, she left her parental home in Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India.

Espoir utopique d’une période, le thème de la « conversion de l’Angleterre » a structuré de nombreuses initiatives missionnaires du catholicisme anglais entre les années 1830 et 1990. Le présent article s’intéresse plus particulièrement à la campagne pour la « conversion de l’Angleterre » entre les années 1838 et 1914 et aux liens qui unirent autour d’elle catholicismes français et anglais. Nous présenterons les deux grandes archiconfréries de prière qui animèrent cette campagne avant de conclure sur les raisons qui poussèrent à son renouvellement au sortir de la Grande Guerre.

This is a paper about the role of religion in the practice of humanitarian/devel- opment work, and the role of humanitarian/development work in the practice of religion. It contends that these are overlapping and indeed mutually constitutive categories. Two arguments are developed in support of that proposition.

The first main argument concerns twentieth century shifts in the Christian con- cept of mission, in particular its transformation from the salvation of souls (conver- sion) to the betterment of people’s temporal lives (social service and humanitarian action). This includes the cessation of proselytization in favour of corporeal works of mercy, as well as the secularization of missionary societies and movements into development agencies and NGO’s, many of which downplay their religious origins. Sœur Emmanuelle (the paper’s case-study) is an exemplary figure in this evolution : she both propelled and was propelled by mission’s evolution toward the secular materialist priorities around which religion, humanitarianism, and development have converged.

The second main argument concerns the blurring of lines, the overlapping of identities between institutionally separate actors, and the dissolving of distinctions between the categories of religious and non-religious. That boundary is prob- lematized as Christian faith reveals itself to have been an important catalytic and federative force in development projects with Cairo’s garbage collectors, including at the level of « non-religious » actors like the World Bank and its consultant engineers. In fact, Christian connections could be most effectual when least conspicuous – and become on the contrary a barrier to cooperation when too explicit. For instance, some overtly secular but sociologically Christian associations supporting sœur Emmanuelle play their religiosity up (in private) or down (in public) depending on the audience (of donors). An overtly « religious » group (Catholic Relief Services) refused to fund Zabbaleen development projects because supporting projects spearheaded by a nun and targeting a primarily Christian group would lend itself to accusations of sectarian favouritism.

Anand Amaladass SJ, "Mission der Kirche definiert von der Kultur eines Missionslandes: Am Beispiel eines missverstandenen Genies in der Missionsgeschichte Indiens: Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656)" in Glaube in der Welt von Heute: Theologie und Kirche nach dem Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil: Festschrift für Elmer Klinger, edited by Thomas Franz and Hanjo Sauer (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 2006): vol. 2 Diskursfelder: 306-318.

The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which working-class Kānaka Hawai’i (Native Hawaiian) immigrants in the nineteenth century repurposed and repackaged precontact Hawai’i strategies of accommodation and resistance in their migration towards North America and particularly within California.  The arrival of European naturalists, American missionaries, and foreign merchants in the Hawaiian Islands is frequently attributed for triggering this diaspora.  However, little has been written about why Hawaiian immigrants themselves chose to migrate eastward across the Pacific or their reasons for permanent settlement in California.  Like the ali’i on the Islands, Hawaiian commoners in the diaspora exercised agency in their accommodation and resistance to Pacific imperialism and colonialism as well.  Blending labor history, religious history, and anthropology, this thesis adopts an interdisciplinary and ethnohistorical approach that utilizes Hawaiian-language newspapers, American missionary letters, and oral histories from California’s indigenous peoples.  I argue that precontact strategies were critical to preserving and holding onto an ethnic Hawaiian identity in encounters with merchants, missionaries, and indigenous peoples in California throughout the 1800s.

For today’s Namibia the dealing with its own past is still relevant, as well as for other former colonies. In this context, the experiences of the colonial era still play an important role, which is closely related to the struggle for independence and questions of nation building. As in many former colonies there was a lack of inner connections and overarching national and cultural identities, so it was necessary to seek for commonalities or, if required, to construct them. Thereby, however, it turned out that these were often of colonial origin. In particular, the former colonial language and the Christian religion were central components of these Commonalities. But here the question arises as to what extent these elements are in fact due to the colonial era. So the changes and developments in terms of language and religion are not due solely to the colonial era, but also to the work of Christian missionaries, which reached the country decades before the colonialists and shaped the country far beyond the colonial period. In addition to these aspects of language and religion the missionaries also performed a enormous influence on the knowledge within the colonies and about them. Especially the school system and the associated access to this knowledge thus represents another essential aspect of sustainable influence of German Missionaries in Southwest Africa, which affected the further development of the country during the colonial period and beyond. The aim of this work is to show that it was the missionary work and thus the political and social influence of missionaries, which fundamentally changed the country and influenced its post-colonial history and development. The focus should thereby be primarily set on the work of the missionaries in precolonial South West Africa, because here the first touch of the Indigenous and European cultures took place, which laid the foundation for further developments in the fields of language, religion and education policy.

In this chapter, I will discuss the use of visual representations or photographic descriptions by the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) as proofs of their proselytizing efforts. More specifically, I will limit my research to the missionaries of the “Asiatic Turkey Mission”, namely Western Turkey Mission (1819), Central Turkey Mission (1847) and Eastern Turkey Mission (1836), whose proselytizing efforts centralized its work on behalf of Armenians in “Asiatic Turkey.” I will argue that bodily conditions of targeted constituencies and their physical surroundings (rooms, houses, villages) were reconceived and re-conceptualized by missionaries as material representations and mirrors of religious and moral progress. This was usually done in the genre of before-and-after photographs, one criticizing or pitying the former “wretchedness” of people, and the other appraising how they “grew finer.” Assuming that sincere belief, or for that matter conversion, is a delicate matter to present evidence for, these visual representations or descriptions were useful tools to convince the world of believers and benevolent contributors that these people were genuinely “civilized” into good Christians and were leading a Christian life.

The Dutch scholar Karel Steenbrink, Professor Emeritus of Intercultural Theology at Utrecht University, published three volumes on Catholics in Indonesia. A documented history. The first volume appeared in 2003 and treats the period from 1808 to 1903. The second volume of K. Steenbrink was written with the cooperation of his wife Paule Maas, and is entitled Catholics in Indonesia, 1808-1942,  Volume 2, The spectacular growth of a self-confident minority, 1903-1942: a documented history. In 2015 Steenbrink came out with his third volume with the significant title Catholics in Independent Indonesia: 1945-2010.Karel Steenbrink’s effort to write the first comprehensive history of the Catholic Church in Indonesia in three volumes, based on years of intensive research, deserves high recognition and praise. His publications are not only a great service to the Catholic Church in Indonesia, but also the whole of Indonesian society and for the history of Christianity in Asia.

Although Switzerland was never formally a colonial power, it was attached to many quasi-colonies such as settlements of Swiss missionary societies, which were financed and managed with money, personnel, and ideas from Switzerland. Including these settlements into Swiss social history narratives holds a lot of innovative analytical potential, as this article seeks to illuminate. It highlights the connections between 19th century philanthropic struggles against poverty in Switzerland and efforts to proselytise 'hindu heathens' in India. These historical connections did, however, not result in shared historical experiences and forms of consciousness among Swiss 'proletarians' and 'Christian Hindus' in India. Although people on both sides of the 'imperial divide' were subjected to similar forms of bourgeois 'civilizing missions', they were also divided according to social, gender, and racial hierarchies.

Sir George Williams had a profound impact on the youth and business people of the 19th century.  Out of this renewal movement was birthed the YMCA movement which has reached around the globe.  This article explores the faith and values that shaped this world-changer.

The failure of successive New Zealand regimes, both local and central government, to commemorate the true story of what happened in the modest Taranaki township of Waitara, resulting in two decades of devastation underscored by events at Parihaka in 1880, is a shame on the nation.

A rethinking of the events that led up to the first shots in the Land Wars in 1860 and the man, Te Witi Te Rangitaake (Wiremu Kingi)  who tried to stand by a promise to protect his family land only to be delivered of it through and illegal declaration of martial law.

This paper explores how the Canadian missionaries had been influenced by the WWII crisis in 1938-39 before the large-scale international support appeared for China’s resistance of the Japanese invasion, which happened only after the Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7, 1941. By description of the case of Anglican missionary doctor Richard Brown (1898-1963), the so-called “unsung Canadian hero” in Chinese battlefield by historian Min-sun Chen,  this paper analyses how Dr. Brown changed his approach to mission as a result of the cruel war taking place in his mission field Henan, how he developed an understanding of Christian mission as a response to “people’s need” and acted as a Canadian missionary doctor in the frontline of the North China battlefield, how his church reflected about this changing notion of the mission from 1938  to 1939, and, finally, how he redefined his multiple identities as a Canadian, a missionary, and a doctor in war-time China, and influenced Chinese life in a variety of ways. I will first describe the story of Dr. Brown’s three-month service in the battlefield of Border Regions from April to July 1938. Then I will narrate his continuous work to establish the Southeast Shanxi International Peace Hospital in Liaozhou from August 1938 to January 1939. Finally I will analyze how the circumstances of war changed this Canadian missionary doctor’s approach to mission, and provide a viewpoint of how his modified understanding of mission enabled him to acquire influence in multiple spheres of Chinese life.

The widely renowned Bandel Basilica1 or the Basilica of the Holy Rosary located on the banks of river Hooghly is the oldest church2 in the region of eastern India, which came into being as a result of the Portuguese settlement in Hooghly in the 16th century, but subsequently played a major role in the life of the local Catholic community that developed in the southern part of Bengal. However, precious little attention has been paid so far to it in the historical literature dealing with Christians in the region. This paper intends to explore how from humble beginnings in the 16th century the church was elevated to the status of a Basilica and also how the church aided the formation of a Catholic community in Bandel.

This essay reappraises the origins of French Quakerism based on new archival research conducted on both sides of the Channel. It identifies 34 Quaker missionaries in 17th- and early 18C France, sheds new light on the French reception of Quakerism and suggests possible connections with non-violent, charismatic movements in Languedoc.

This monograph narrates the history of catholic mission in East Africa and Germany during the colonial period featuring chapters on the missionary movement in 19th and 20th c. Germany, the negotiation of a missiony contact zone, education policies, church building and "africanisation" of the mission church in East Africa, and missionary media work in Europe.

The prism of professionals and their professional associations has provided scholarship with an entry point to interrogate the complex social dynamics that existed in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China. Much of this work, however, has been focused on men. Informed by sociological approaches and paying due attention to the cultural and social contexts of late Qing and early Republican China, this paper analyses the historical circumstances, training programmes, and educational processes surrounding women doctors in the medical profession in Fujian 福建at the turn of the twentieth century. It scrutinises the process of this emergence and suggests that intimate female-dominated communities and networks in the early stages of women’s involvement in the medical profession were critical in cultivating the conditions for the engagement of women in later professional associations, and in the profession more generally.

Dr. E Stanley Jones through his Kingdom of God perspective had a lasting impact on racism both in India and North America.  Through his formation in India of the Christian Ashram movement in 1930 and transplanting it worldwide, Jones modeled a christian community in which divisions of class and cash had no place.  His book on his good friend Gandhi was instrumental in encouraging Martin Luther King Jr in the formation of the nonviolent civil rights movement.

Materials and observations gathered during the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1734-1743) then composed by G.F. Müller make up two foundational works, which describe Muslim everyday life, belief and practices, and quantitative data on the history of the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Siberian administrative district in the mid-18th century. The first is Müller’s work, Opisanie Sibirskikh Narodov - "Description of the Siberian Peoples," which contains his firsthand accounts of Muslim beliefs and practices. The second is Müller's accounts of Muslim's and other native peoples in Siberia - Opisanie Sibirskogo Tsarstva – “Description of the Siberian Realm,” which contends that Kuchum, as leader of the Khanate of Sibir’, sought to spread Islam amongst the native peoples of western Siberia in cross-border raids.

The idea that certain iTaukei (formerly ‘Fijian’) clans are descended from the Jews, particularly through a Lost Tribe of Israel, is very strong among some contemporary clans and church groups in Fiji. The importance of the Lost Tribes was reinforced in the 1987 coups, when it formed part of the political rhetoric of the coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, who was also a lay preacher of the Methodist Church. In order to understand such claims, I review the historical record from 1835 to Cession in 1874 to evaluate when the idea of the Lost Tribes began to be used and, more broadly, the extent to which Christianity was the language for engagement and/or resistance between missionaries and Fijians. At the same time, I explore the developing missionary discourses and their relationship with newly emerging ideas about the science of origins. The evidence indicates that, as certain ideas became routinised around the time of Cession, Christianity and science together provided a grammar that enabled many Fijians to strongly identify with the Old Testament.

Avec Londres et Paris, Bâle constitua, à partir du milieu du 19ème siècle, l'un des « centres » de la première diaspora africaine en Europe de l'Ouest. Toutefois, l'origine de cette étonnante présence d'Africains à Bâle n'est pas due aux activités du commerce international qui préoccupaient tant les métropoles de l'Ouest. À Bâle, ce sont les piétistes qui jouèrent le rôle principal dans la création d'une communauté africaine. On peut, en effet, déjà parler d'une véritable communauté, dans la mesure où non seulement les Africains se connaissaient, mais où ils partageaient aussi un sort commun et effectuaient une grande partie de leurs activités ensemble. En revanche, il serait certainement exagéré de qualifier cette communauté de « diaspora » au sens strict du terme. Cette expression ne serait appropriée que si un nombre important d'Africains, originaires d'une seule région, s'était établi de façon permanente dans cette ville, ce qui ne fut pas le cas. Quelques-uns parmi ceux qui résidèrent à Bâle – surtout à partir des années 1850 – venaient de l'Afrique de l'Ouest, mais la plupart était originaire des régions soudanaise et éthiopienne. Une fraction assez considérable de ces Africains mourut à Bâle, mais plus de la moitié retourna finalement dans son pays d'origine. L'observation suivante est importante, puisqu'elle indique une autre spécificité bâloise qui la distingue de Paris ou de Londres : non seulement la motivation. Une étude proposant des biographies des Africains vivant à Paris ou Londres montre qu'une majorité d'entre eux était des anciens esclaves, des serviteurs de personnalités impliquées dans l'expansion commerciale française ou anglaise, ou encore des ressortissants des premières colonies. - Article : Les Africains de Bâle du 19ème siècle, in: Thomas David et al. (eds.): De la traite des Noirs à la fin du régime de l'Apartheid : trois siècles de relations entre la Suisse et l'Afrique (XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), Münster: Lit-Verlag 2005, 209-225

The Russian Orthodox mission to Alaska can be understood in terms of liberative mission. The article shows how the missionaries succeeded in allowing Christianity to become indigenized in native Alaskan cultures, rather than attempting to make the indigenous peoples Russian. It did this through an attention to the narratives, religious and otherwise, of the Alaskan peoples and by allowing these narratives to address and be addressed by the Christian narrative. Current anthropological research points to the depth of the roots of this indigenization, and how it helped in the identity formation of the native peoples especially after the sale of Alaska to the United States when their identity was under severe external threat. The Russian Orthodox mission to Alaska provides a good historical case study of how the gospel can be indigenized in a way that empowers people and suggests a tradition available to Orthodox churches today as they seek to become more mission-minded.

This edited collection brings together interdisciplinary scholars from history, theology, folklore, ethnology and meteorology to examine how David Cranz’s Historie von Grönland (1765) resonated in various disciplines, periods and countries. Collectively the contributors demonstrate the reach of the book beyond its initial purpose as a record of missionary work, and into secular and political fields beyond Greenland and Germany. The chapters also reveal how the book contributed to broader discussions and conceptualizations of Greenland as part of the Atlantic world. The interdisciplinary scope of the volume allows for a layered reading of Cranz’s book that demonstrates how different meanings could be drawn from the book in different contexts and how the book resonated throughout time and space. It also makes the broader argument that the construction of the Artic in the eighteenth century broadened our understanding of the Atlantic.