Journal articles on the topic 'Christian missionaries'
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Hanciles, Jehu J. "Migrants as Missionaries, Missionaries as Outsiders: Reflections on African Christian Presence in Western Societies." Mission Studies 30, no. 1 (2013): 64–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341258.
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Abstract This paper makes the case that human migration has played a vital and transformational role in the development and expansion of the Christian movement throughout its history. But it mainly focuses on the unprecedented rise of global migratory flows in the last four to five decades to explicate this link. According to recent data, Christians account for almost half of all international migrants. This, combined with the predominance of south-north migration, explains the remarkable rise of immigrant Christian churches (or communities) in many Western societies. While many of these immigrant Christian communities and their pastors exhibit strong missionary consciousness and commitment, they encounter formidable challenges in the area of cross-cultural outreach. These stem from complex factors, including racial rejection, widespread anti-immigrant sentiments, and aggressive secularism. But this paper argues that perhaps the most significant obstacle stems from the disengagement and rejection that Christian immigrants experience in their encounter with homegrown churches. A brief examination of the key link between human migration and biblical faith is used as a basis for reflections on the challenges that confront African immigrant churches in Western societies. Five such challenges are highlighted and biblical insights (from Acts 6) are presented.
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Vallgårda, Karen. "Were Christian Missionaries Colonizers?" Interventions 18, no. 6 (January 11, 2016): 865–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369801x.2015.1131179.
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Murthy, Jayabalan. "Christianity and Its Impact on the Lives of Kallars in Tamil Nadu Who Embraced the Faith, in Comparison to Those Who Did Not: Special Reference to Kallar Tamil Lutheran Christians in Tamil Nadu." Religions 14, no. 5 (April 27, 2023): 582. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel14050582.
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The German and Swedish Lutheran Mission was a major and pioneering Protestant mission society that started its mission work in Tamil Nadu. The Halle Danish, Leipzig mission, and Church of Sweden mission societies had a larger mission field in Tamil Nadu. Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Christians are intimately associated with the German Lutheran Mission and Swedish Mission. The first German Lutheran missionaries, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau, came to India in 1706. From then on, many Lutheran missionaries came to Tamil Nadu. Afterwards Tamil Nadu became a thriving Christian center for decades, with a strong Christian congregation, church, and several institutions. The majority of these Christians are descendants of Dalits (former untouchable Paraiyars) and Kallars who embraced Christianity. From a life of near slavery, poverty, illiteracy, oppression, and indignity, conversion to Christianity transformed the lives of these people. Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Dalits and Kallars found liberation and have made significant progress because of the Christian missionaries of the Church of the German and Swedish Mission. Both the German and Swedish Mission offered the Gospel of a new religion to not only the subaltern people but also the possibility of secular salvation. The history of Lutherans needs to be understood as a part of Christian subaltern history (Analysing the Indian mission history from the native perspective). My paper will mainly focus on Tamil Lutheran Dalit and Kallar Christians. In this paper, I propose to elucidate the role of German and Swedish Lutheran missionaries in the social, economic, educational, and spiritual life of Tamil Lutheran Dalits and Kallars. Due to the page limit, I am going to mainly focus on Swedish Mission and Kallar Lutheran Christians.
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Maxwell, David. "The Missionary Home as a Site for Mission: Perspectives from Belgian Congo." Studies in Church History 50 (2014): 428–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400001881.
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Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant missionaries considered themselves exemplars of the Christian home. They devoted considerable energy to writing about domesticity and to constructing model homes in the mission field. In spite of their good intentions there was often a large gap between their ideals and the realities of life on mission stations. By means of a case study of a Pentecostal faith mission in Katanga, Belgian Congo, this essay demonstrates how models of the Western Christian home were unsustainable and examines the manner in which missionaries coped with unfulfilled domestic dreams. It shows how Western notions of the Christian home were undermined by the harshness of the tropical environment, the disparity in numbers between male and female missionary vocations, and the persistence of African notions of domesticity. The missionaries endured the material and emotional deprivations of life in the bush through faith in a providential God and by constructing intimate but tense relationships with African Christians. The essay begins with a discussion of some of the most pertinent scholarship on missionaries and domesticity.
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Rinawaty, Rinawaty, and Hannas Hannas. "Christian Misionaries Responsibilities in Preaching." Journal DIDASKALIA 2, no. 1 (April 17, 2019): 6–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.33856/didaskalia.v2i1.100.
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Preaching the Word of God or sermonizing is God's commandment which must be done by every believer. Missionaries are people who are specifically called to convey the truth of the Word of God, through sermons, Bible study and living testimonies that glorify God. Missionaries experience obstacles in preaching because of many factors, such as: lack of mastery in hermeneutic and homiletical skills and ignoring the communication skill. Therefore the text assessment will be shallow and its relevance at the present time has not been well delivered. Those limitations must be the missionaries’ main concern besides spiritual qualifications that are equally important.
The research found several important things, such as: the right definition for Christian missionaries, Christian missionaries’ responsibilities and Christian missionaries’ preaching in the perspective of a communication skill. This research was conducted in qualitative methods that provide descriptions and histories with social sciences, theology, communication approaches.
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Iqbal, Masud, and Thameem Ushama. "Chattogram Hill Tracts Under the Alleged Threat: An Overview." Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal 9, no. 11 (November 14, 2022): 105–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.911.13349.
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This article describes the plots of Christian missionaries and NGOs in Chattagram Hill Tracts. Some selected methods of NGOs are highlighted by mentioning international propaganda. The activities of Christian missionaries have been analysed since before the British colonial rule. The relationship of the missionaries with the British rulers is brought out in the light of the analysis. It reveals the deep conspiracy behind the evangelism of Christian missionaries and the human services of NGOs. The secret missions of intelligence agencies are highlighted. The Chittagong Hill Tracts-related nefarious scheme and propaganda have been exposed. The political step of the Christian mission is also brought to light. The conspiracies collaborating with some tribal groups and intelligence agencies are discussed. It also unveils the incitement of anti-Islamic movements among the Christian missionaries and NGOs among the tribal people of CHT.
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Pascal, Eva M. "Missionaries as bridge builders in Buddhist kingdoms: Amity amid radical difference." Missiology: An International Review 47, no. 1 (January 2019): 64–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0091829618814836.
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Buddhism and Christianity are major world religions that both make universal and often competing claims about the nature of the world and ultimate reality. These claims are difficult to reconcile and often go to the core of Buddhist and Christian worldviews. This article looks at the age of encounter in the early modern period for ways Christians and Buddhists forged friendship through common spiritual commitments and action. Beyond seeking theological and philosophical exchange, convergences along spirituality and practice proved important vehicles for friendship. With the examples of Christian–Buddhist friendship from historical case studies, this article explores the ways contemporary Christian expressions of spiritual practice and advocacy allows Christians to connect with Buddhists. Early modern encounters have important lessons for furthering Christian–Buddhist friendship that may also be applied to other religious traditions.
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Rigdon, Susan. "Communism or the Kingdom: 'Saving' China, 1924-1949." Social Sciences and Missions 22, no. 2 (2009): 168–213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187489309x12517973174365.
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AbstractThis paper identifies commonalities between Marxian economic principles and the socio-economic goals of Social Gospel missionaries in China in the quarter century between 1924 and 1949. It argues that the unbreachable divisions between missionaries, including those who advocated for a "Christian communism," and the communist party were rooted, on the Christian side, in a rejection of violence and coercive methods of policy implementation rather than in opposition to socialism. On the communist side opposition was not to specific tenets of Christianity but to foreign-funding and leadership and to the perception of American Christians as agents of an imperialist country.
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Huang, Ziqi, Haixia Zhao, and Fan Yang. "Missionary’s Envision of Children in Late Qing China: Children’s Education and the Construction of Christian Discourse in Child’s Paper." Religions 15, no. 2 (February 16, 2024): 232. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel15020232.
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In the late Qing Dynasty, religious periodicals by Western missionaries were made legal in China, and subsequently became an important manner of their missionary cause. Among them, Child’s Paper 小孩月报 (1875–1881) by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham, a Protestant missionary from the United States, endeavoured to convert child readers by carrying children’s stories of moral and emotional education. By concentrating on the educational elements of Child’s Paper, this article inspects how conversion was achieved via the intertextual interpretation of Christian doctrines within these educational elements. Specifically, how the image of little Christians and urchins, respectively, represents salvation and redemption in Christian morals. This article holds that the missionaries’ stress on the authority of Christian discourse in the education of Chinese children makes evident an increasing emphasis on the reformative effects of Christianity on Chinese children. Moreover, the conversion-education efforts by missionaries also construed helping Chinese children gain a cross-cultural perspective on Western religion, and arguably inspired later Chinese intellectuals’ to create newspapers for the purpose of the pre-primary education of Chinese children.
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Lange, Mirja Dorothee. ""What Is so Amazing about All This?": Buddhist Criticism of Christianity in Sixteenth-/Seventeenth-Century Japan." Buddhist-Christian Studies 43, no. 1 (2023): 163–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/bcs.2023.a907577.
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abstract: The first Christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the middle of the sixteenth century. They missionized quite a number of Japanese people but also angered many through their disrespectful behavior and destruction of temples and shrines. Less than 100 years later, Japan closed its borders, persecuted Christians, and banned Christianity in total. The reasons for this drastic step weren't solely political but also theological. Theological arguments concerning theism, eschatology, ethics, and theology of religion are found in official edicts, in "disputes" between Christian missionaries and Buddhist scholars, as well as in theological treatise. One of the reoccurring arguments against Christianity includes the description of the arrogant behavior of the missionaries. According to the documents, they displayed an attitude of knowing everything concerning the world next to the ignorant Buddhists. This exclusivist mindset wasn't compatible with the order of Japan and the three teachings. In the eyes of the authorities, this doctrine secured peace and ensured domestic stability. Especially the Japanese and former Christian Fabian Fucan, as well as the Buddhist monk Suzuki Shōsan, adduce various Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist teachings against the charge of ignorance. Conversely, Fucan's writing, as well as the edicts, records of religious "disputes," and other treatises, include the accusation that Christianity does not contain any new doctrine advancing the local one. Moreover, it is stated that Christian salvation exclusivism suggests a powerless God, and the missionaries were described as hypocrites and liars, as they did not keep their commandments.
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MAARAVARMAN, Dr M. "Christian Contribution To Tamil Literature." Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education (TURCOMAT) 12, no. 10 (April 28, 2021): 5119–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.17762/turcomat.v12i10.5293.
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The Christian missionaries studied Tamil language in order to propagate their religion. Henrique Henrique’s, Nobili, G.U. Pope, Constantine Joseph Beschi, Robert Caldwell, Barthalomaus Zieganbalg, Francis Whyte Ellis, Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai, Henry Arthur Krishna Pillai, Vedanayagam Sastriyar, Abraham Pandithar had been the Christian campaigners and missionaries. Pope was along with Joseph Constantius Beschi, Francis Whyte Ellis, and Bishop Robert Caldwell one of the major scholars on Tamil. Ziegenbalg wrote a number of texts in Tamil he started translating the New Testament in 1708 and completed in 1711.They performed a remarkable position to the improvement of Tamil inclusive of the introduction of Prose writing.Christian Priest understood the need to learn the neighborhood language for effective evangelization. Moreover, they centered on Tamil literature in order to recognize the cultural heritage and spiritual traditions. The Priest learnt Tamil language and literature with an agenda and no longer out of love or passion or with an intention of contributing to the growth of the language.Tamil Christian Literature refers to the various epic, poems and other literary works based on the ethics, customs and principles of Christian religion. Christians both the catholic and Protestant missionaries have also birthed literary works. Tamil-Christian works have enriched the language and its literature. Thorough the variety and quality of classical Tamil literature, Tamil language is described as the great classical traditions and literatures of the world.In 2004, the government of India declared Tamil language as classical language
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Snow, Don, and Chen Nuanling. "Missionaries and written Chaoshanese." Global Chinese 1, no. 1 (April 1, 2015): 5–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2015-1001.
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AbstractFrom the 1870s into the 1920s, Baptist and Presbyterian missionaries in the Chaoshan region devoted a substantial amount of time and effort to creating a body of Christian texts in written forms of Chaoshanese, and also educating Chinese Christians in this written language. However, the strategies used by these two Protestant groups differed sharply, with the Baptists taking a culturally conservative approach and the Presbyterians adopting a much more radical one. This paper reconstructs the story of written Chaoshanese as used by Protestant missionaries, examining what these “written Chaoshanese” varieties consisted of, and the degree to which they differed from other written forms of Chinese. It also considers what insights this case study may contribute to our understanding of the factors that drive or retard the growth of written vernaculars.
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Nguyen, Quang Hung, Nikolay N. Kosarenko, Elmira R. Khairullina, and Olga V. Popova. "The Relationship between the State and the Catholic Church in Postcolonial Vietnam: The Case of Christian Village of Phung Khoang." Bogoslovni vestnik 79, no. 2 (2019): 521–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.34291/bv2019/02/nguyen.
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Christian missionaries found Vietnam a spiritual country, and many Vietnamese converted to Christianity. On the other hand, during history, the Christian religious identity has brought various tensions due to the issues of colonialism, nationalism, and communism. Most Vietnamese Christians lived in pure Christian villages (lang cong giao toan tong) or mixed villages with Christians accounting for about a half of the population (lang cong giao xoi do). They have played an important role in the social, economic and cultural life of these villages. This article presents the historical background of a mixed village called Phung Khoang, contrasting the Christian vs. non-Christian cultural-religious views, and then discussing both the collaboration and tension played out over various historical periods.
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Kwiyani, Harvey. "Every Christian Migrant a Potential Missionary: Reflections on the Missiology of the Redeemed Christian Church of God." International Bulletin of Mission Research 47, no. 2 (April 2023): 204–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23969393221121145.
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This essay explores a key theme that undergirds Jehu Hanciles’s scholarship—that every Christian migrant is a potential missionary. Using the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) from Nigeria as an example and attempting to discern the RCCG’s popular missiology, the essay grounds Hanciles’s theories to discuss the missionary potential of African Christians scattered around the world. The explosion of the RCCG as a worldwide denomination has been driven by the dispersion of Nigerian Christians from their home country and not necessarily by the sending of missionaries. It thus shows how every Christian migrant can indeed be a missionary.
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Brandner, Tobias. "Chinese Missionaries in Cross-Cultural Overseas Mission: Emergence of a New Missionary Nation?" International Bulletin of Mission Research 47, no. 3 (June 22, 2023): 356–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23969393221138714.
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This article traces the emergence of Chinese Christians’ participation in cross-cultural overseas mission. It shows how Chinese Christians emerge as a significant new force in world mission and how they navigate their path between China’s growing economic clout and repressive religious policies at home and in most of their targeted destinations. Based on contacts with Chinese missionaries and mission trainers and facilitators, it identifies different groups engaged in mission and analyzes motives in the Chinese missionary endeavors and how the presence of Chinese Christian missionaries adds a different layer to the complexities of Chinese overseas activities.
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Pierard, Richard V. "Missionaries as Role Models in the Christian Quest for Justice." Missiology: An International Review 21, no. 4 (October 1993): 469–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182969302100409.
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Although some fail to understand the Christian commitment to justice, the history of missions is replete with instances of believers who put their faith in action. Where they labored, they challenged existing social customs and even defied European colonial authorities and white settler interests. Examples cited include missionaries who fought inhumane practices such as the caste system, widow burnings, and footbinding. Among those who stood against unjust power structures were John Philip in South Africa, William Knibb in Jamaica, the Rhine Mission workers in Southwest Africa, and Timothy Richard in China. Missionaries are appropriate role models for Christians who are seeking after justice.
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Sharp, Larry W. "Developing a Commitment to Social Justice Issues in Evangelical Missionary Children: The Role of the Culture, the Home, and the Missionary School." Missiology: An International Review 19, no. 2 (April 1991): 171–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182969101900205.
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A sample of 533 adult children of missionaries was studied in an effort to determine just how these Christians developed a commitment to issues of social justice. Several correlates were examined, and the research reveals the important role of the local culture and the Christian home, but exposes the MK school for its detracting role in social justice issues. Implications exist for missionaries, mission executives, and anyone concerned with the process of developing concern for the disadvantaged of this world.
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Pervaiz, Huma. "Unravelling the Dynamics of Christian Missionary Evangelical Activities in Colonial Punjab (1849-1947)." Al-Irfan 8, no. 15 (June 30, 2023): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.58932/mulb0010.
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The article focused on the evangelical activities of Christian missionaries to convert the natives to Christianity in colonial Punjab, with particular reference to Lahore and Sialkot districts. With the annexation of Punjab in 1849, the cultural and social ethos took a surprising turn, and a new community of converted Christians started to form progressively. This new societal drive was unique because it attracted individuals from affluent backgrounds and triggered mass conversion in socially and economically side-lined communities of Punjab. After annexation, missionaries flocked to Punjab from all parts of India. Most missionaries, who moved to Punjab, were either associated with the American Presbyterian Church or the Church Missionary Society of England (CMS) and the Church of Scotland. Nonetheless, along with these two mission societies, other established missions in India also contributed to converting natives to Christianity, though to a lesser extent. In the conversion process, missionaries used institutions, e.g., schools, colleges, and medical centres, but they also employed different conversion techniques already being deployed in other parts of India. The primary aim of the missionaries was to convert a large part of Punjabi society to Christianity by employing various techniques of evangelicalism. The conversion among lower caste degraded the image of Christianity and further handicapped further activities of missionaries.
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Sanneh, Lamin. "Pluralism and Christian Commitment." Theology Today 45, no. 1 (April 1988): 21–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/004057368804500103.
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“In the early centuries, the new Christian religion moved forward like an oriental caravanserai, with its complex baggage of exotic teachings, baffling mysteries, and an eclectic ethical code. In the jumble and tumble of social encounter, Christians spoke a bewildering variety of languages. … Christian missionaries assumed that since all cultures and languages are lawful in God's eyes, the rendering of God's word into those languages and cultures is valid and necessary. … Far from suppressing indigenous cultures, the effect of missionary translation has been to stimulate indigenous renewal.”
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Mohr, Adam. "Missionary Medicine and Akan Therapeutics: Illness, Health and Healing in Southern Ghana's Basel Mission, 1828-1918." Journal of Religion in Africa 39, no. 4 (2009): 429–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/002242009x12529098509803.
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AbstractThe Basel missionaries in southern Ghana came from a strong religious healing tradition in southwest Germany that, within some circles, had reservations about the morality and efficacy of biomedicine in the nineteenth century. Along with Akan Christians, these missionaries in Ghana followed local Akan healing practices before the colonial period was formalized, contrary to a pervasive discourse condemning local religion and healing as un-Christian. Around 1885, however, a radical shift in healing practices occurred within the mission and in Germany that corresponded to both the Bacteriological Revolution and the formal colonial period. In 1885 the first medical missionary from Basel arrived in Ghana, while at the same time missionaries began supporting biomedicine exclusively. This posed a great problem for Akan Christians, who began to seek Akan healers covertly. Akan Christians argued with their European coreligionists that Akan healing was a form of culturally relative therapy, not a rival theology.
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MIAZIN, Nikolai A. "SINGAPORE: ASIATIC ANTIOCH OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH." Southeast Asia: Actual Problems of Development, no. 4(60) (2023): 253–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.31696/2072-8271-2023-4-3-60-253-264.
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Singapore was founded in 1819, with Protestant and Catholic missionaries working in the city from the beginning. In the first hundred years, the percentage of Christians grew to 5%, and over the next century to 19%, with most of the growth occurring at independence. State policy allowed the spread of Christianity, provided that religious figures did not participate in political life. Among the three major ethnic communities, the Chinese were the most favorably disposed to Christianity. Singapore is now a symbol of success and prosperity for the entire Southeast Asian region, international Christian conferences are held in Singapore, and the city's megachurches, which have serious organizational and financial resources, send missionaries to other countries.
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Kruithof, Maryse. "Localising Christianity." Social Sciences and Missions 30, no. 1-2 (2017): 9–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18748945-03001012.
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Dutch missionaries active in nineteenth century Java (in the former Dutch Indies) found themselves in an exceptional position, namely on the borders between their own, the colonial, and local cultures. This gave them a unique perspective on a range of processes in the colony, but it also made their proselytizing task that much harder. They felt restricted by cultural barriers and constantly had to negotiate with all sides involved. This paper shows how both the missionaries and Javanese Christians negotiated in the transnational space in their attempt to intersect the Christian with the Javanese identity.
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Mckinney, Carol V. "Which Language: Trade or Minority?" Missiology: An International Review 18, no. 3 (July 1990): 279–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182969001800303.
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If pastors, church leaders, or missionaries promote use of the trade language in Christian contexts in an area where a minority language is the language best understood by church members, the result may be a linguistically neglected segment of people within the Christian church. This assertion is supported by data from two case studies in northern Nigeria. Responses to an interview schedule administered in one ethnic group indicated that 21 percent of those who claimed to be Christians lacked knowledge of Jesus. Suggestions are made for expanded use of local languages in Christian contexts.
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Lumintang, Merlin Brenda Angeline. "Forgotten Souls." Theologia in Loco 4, no. 1 (April 30, 2022): 75–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.55935/thilo.v4i1.247.
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The stories of the western male missionary are commonly and widely known in mission history. This article, however, reclaims the widely forgotten stories of women missionaries as authentic mission narratives relevant to the contemporary mission preaching conducted in the local Indonesian churches such as the Evangelical Christian Church in Minahasa. This article uses a feminist postcolonial perspective to argue that women missionaries are postcolonial subjects. It further uses their narratives to shape the local church's sermon as a "counter-testimony" to the grand Christian mission narratives that often forget women missionaries' voices and roles.
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KWOK, WAI LUEN. "Sola Scriptura's and the Chinese Union Version Bible's Impact upon Conservative Christian Leaders: The Case of Watchman Nee and Wang Mingdao." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 30, no. 1 (January 2020): 93–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s135618631900035x.
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AbstractThe majority of Chinese Christians can be considered to be theologically conservative. One distinctive feature of conservative theology is Biblicism, according to which Scripture occupies a central role. The Reformation principle of sola scriptura legitimises this conservative stance and calls for a stern application of this principle. As Biblicists, they are discontented with the ‘unbiblical’ practices and ministries of missionaries. On the other hand, missionaries have put forward the Union Version translation project on the basis of the principle of sola scriptura. This article investigates how Watchman Nee (1903–72) and Wang Mingdao (1900–91) were discursively influenced by the missionaries’ Union Version Bible translation project through their different understandings of sola scriptura. For missionaries, sola scriptura required the translation of a faithful and popular Chinese Bible, and Mandarin was deemed an appropriate language for the task. While Nee and Wang did not appreciate the missionary enterprise, for sola scriptura they valued the Chinese Union Version as an outstanding and up-to-date translation of the Scripture. For Nee and Wang, sola scriptura was not only a translation principle, but also a principle underpinning religious life. Conservative Christians’ devotional practice emphasises the memorising of biblical texts and verbalising them throughout the day. This practice resulted in the Union Version, which is written in eloquent modern Chinese, becoming an integral part of Chinese Christian practice rather than a mere translation. Though Nee and Wang accused missionaries of having betrayed the Reformation principle, they were still under its influence thanks to the Chinese Union Version Bible. Also, their teaching on biblical reading had similarities with the medieval monastic practice of lectio divina. In this sense, the Chinese Union Version Bible reveals an interesting integration of Chinese conservative Christian faith, missionary enterprise, sola scriptura, and a monastic style of spiritual practice within the Chinese Church.
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Nickel, Sandra. "Intertextuality as a Means of Negotiating Authority, Status, and Place—Forms, Contexts, and Effects of Quotations of Christian Texts in Nineteenth-Century Missionary Correspondence from Yorùbáland." Journal of Religion in Africa 45, no. 2 (November 20, 2015): 119–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12340039.
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From the early 1840s, Church Missionary Society agents were active in the Yorùbá mission in what today is Southwest Nigeria. Both European and African missionaries—often former slaves who had converted to Christianity—corresponded with the Society, and in their writing frequently used quotations from the Bible and other core Christian texts. These quotations were recontextualised (Fairclough 2003) in the missionaries’ writing and formed intertextual bonds (Blommaert 2005) between their correspondence and the original texts. For the missionaries these bonds provided solace and meaning in difficult situations, established their status and authority as proficient theologians in the face of their European audience, and explicitly linked them with the Christian narrative of ‘spreading the word’. Especially for the Yorùbá agents, this practice of creating intertextuality was a means of negotiating and affirming their African-Christian identity, thus establishing and expressing their new place in the Christian tradition.
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Yeh, Alice. "The Hermeneutics of Silk: China and the Fabric of Christendom according to Martino Martini and the Early Modern Jesuit “Accommodationists”." Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, no. 2 (April 2019): 419–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417519000100.
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AbstractAs Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century China struggled to translate Christian theology into Chinese terms and categories, they embarked on a project of purifying the “political” from the “superstitious.” Their project was structured by the unmentionable: the proscribed luxury of silk robes that facilitated the encounters between the missionaries and the native elite they most sought to convert. This article examines the manifold functions of silk and the problem of “accommodation” by turning to theBrevis relatio de numero et qualitate Christianorum apud Sinas(“Brief report on the number and quality of Christians in China”), a booklet authored by the Jesuit missionary Martino Martini (1614–1661). Written for European circulation, theBrevis relatiotouted the triumphs of the mission by incorporating the conceptual imaginary of “China” into the cosmo-political confines of the Euro-Christian world. This article shows how the basic Christian metaphor of horticultural fruitfulness was used to interpret silk and sericulture as material evidence that the Chinese mission field prefigured and promised, both spiritually and commercially, a profitable harvest.
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Dr. S. REDDEPPA, Dr S. REDDEPPA. "The Role of Christian Missionaries in Madras Presidency – A Historical Study." Indian Journal of Applied Research 4, no. 2 (October 1, 2011): 4–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.15373/2249555x/feb2014/68.
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Disomimba, Mohammad Nashief. "The Challenges Faced by Christian Missionaries and Maranao Muslims in Lanao del Sur, Marawi City: A Scientific Study." Asian Journal of Philosophy and Religion 1, no. 2 (November 1, 2022): 121–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.55927/ajpr.v1i2.1439.
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This paper utilized a content study to clarify the several challenges faced by Maranao Muslims in the Province of Lanao del Sur, Marawi city. The study focuses on the following activities conducted by Prelature Sisters in Marawi city, Parish in Balabagan, and in Malabang mentioning their challenges both Maranao Muslims and Christian missionaries. The tendency of giving priority of this study is to discuss the challenges faced by Christian Missionaries and Maranao Muslims in Lanao del Sur, Marawi city, to clarify the hidden reality of their challenges. To address this limitation, an analytical study is conceived to foreground the challenges of Christianization in the Province of Lanao del Sur.Descriptive Analysis used in this paper in order to describe the challenges faced by Christian Missionaries and Maranao Muslims, contextualizing and examining the factors that shaped challenges, synthesizing and understanding/confirming/clarifying the reality of challenges. One of the most important result of the study; the Filipino Muslims knew that the main purpose of existing of the Christian missionaries and Christian settlers in their areas through the Philippine Government is to Christianize them. The challenges faced by Maranao Muslims taught them to wake-up each other, and taught them to unite in order to stop the Christianization in the province of Lanao del Sur, and the Christianization program never success in Marawi City until now.
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Arrington, Aminta. "Christian Hymns as Theological Mediator: The Lisu of South-west China and Their Music." Studies in World Christianity 21, no. 2 (August 2015): 140–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/swc.2015.0115.
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The Lisu of south-west China were evangelised a hundred years ago by missionaries from the China Inland Mission and adopted Christianity in a people movement that permeated nearly their entire society. The missionaries recognised that the Lisu were a singing people, and translation of a hymnbook proceeded apace together with translation of the New Testament. Further, many Western hymns were translated using Lisu poetic forms. These translated Western hymns not only became the centrepiece for worship, but were also part of the daily rhythm of life for Lisu Christians. Though the missionaries departed more than seventy years ago, the hymns, still sung a capella in four-part harmony, have remained. While the bible remains somewhat out of reach for the vast majority of Lisu peasant farmers with low reading and writing skills, the hymnbook is well-known and well-worn, its contents easy to find and many of its most familiar hymns memorised. The various functions the hymns provide for Lisu Christians overlap and intersect at various levels of meaning and experience, which can be encapsulated into one central understanding: the Lisu hymns serve as a theological mediator for Lisu Christians, bridging the gap between the text-intensive religion that is Christianity and the oral world of Lisu culture. In the everyday arena, in the practical living out of what it means to be a Christian for a communal and still largely oral-preference people such as the Lisu, the Lisu Christian hymns are the centrepiece of worship and devotion, prayer and penitence.
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ELAZAR, GIDEON. "Nominalism: Negotiating ethnicity and Christian identity in contemporary Yunnan." Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 05 (May 31, 2019): 1415–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x17000610.
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AbstractThis article deals with the convergence of ethnicity and faith in the context of Christian Yunnan. Contemporary Evangelical missionaries working in Yunnan encourage the preservation of ethnic markers while attempting to create a form of ‘pristine faith’: a religiosity that severely limits the role of ethnicity in the construction of identity, emphasizing instead individualism and globalism—processes that may be beneficial for the Chinese state. My discussion here revolves around the distinction made by many Evangelical Christians in China between ‘true’ faith, based on an individual experience of salvation and rebirth, and ‘nominal’ faith, a traditional understanding of religion as an identity that is acquired at birth. Thus, minority Christians whose ancestors converted en masse prior to the 1949 revolution and retain a distinctly ethnic form of religiosity are often labelled ‘nominal’ by contemporary missionaries and converts. In contrast, the latter represent a faith that stems from personal experience and belongs to a global and transnational community, transcending the narrow limits of ethnic culture.
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Zhou, Wuna. "Central Hunan Lutheran Church’s Progress toward Self-Reliance (1902–1951): A Study Based on the Archives of the Norwegian Missionary Society." Religions 14, no. 9 (September 4, 2023): 1135. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel14091135.
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In 1902, the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS) sent its first missionaries to central Hunan, China, to preach and set up a local Lutheran Church. Missionaries in China traditionally had a sense of religious superiority. At that time, Chinese Christians were experiencing a series of national crises, and their desire for self-reliance correlated with a rise in the national consciousness. Hunan’s Christians demanded autonomy for the Church, causing tension with the Western missionaries’ sense of superiority. The Central Hunan Lutheran Church realized a balanced transfer of authority through contradiction and dialogue. The establishment of a Chinese and Western Council aided gradual realization of Hunan Christians’ demand for self-reliance, and in 1922, the rise of an anti-Christian movement with strong anti-imperialist sentiments triggered further moves toward Church independence. However, local churches faced many difficulties and progress was slow, owing to the economic situation, the lack of material foundation, local Christians’ weak theological foundation and a highly mobile population. This article examines how Christians in Hunan responded to the huge gap between their own will and the conditions they faced, illustrating the historical process of cross-cultural cooperation as cultures collided.
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Nengel†, John Garah, and Chigemezi Nnadozie Wogu. "Colonial Politics, Missionary Rivalry, and the Beginnings of Seventh-Day Adventist Mission in Northern Nigeria." Mission Studies 38, no. 2 (September 28, 2021): 213–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341791.
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Abstract When compared to its relative success in the Southern and Western parts of Nigeria, Seventh-Day Adventism (S.D.A.) had some difficulties in establishing its mission in the North from the 1930s onward. This paper argues that there were three reasons why S.D.A. missionaries found the North difficult. First, the S.D.A. joined the Christian missionary scene in Nigeria rather late. Second, due to colonial politics, which did not favor the proselytizing aims of Christian missionaries in the North, Adventist missionaries did not find it easy to immediately establish a mission. Third, the difficult beginnings in northern Nigeria can also be attributed to the relationship between S.D.A. missionaries and other mission bodies, which tended towards rivalry, as a result of the “spheres of influence” established by the colonial government.
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Zhou, Yun. "Envisioning an Ideal Christian Family in Republican China." Review of Religion and Chinese Society 8, no. 2 (December 17, 2021): 194–215. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22143955-08020006.
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Abstract Amid debates and discussions on the institution of the family in Republican China, foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians played an active role in promoting an ideal Christian family. This article investigates the three waves of prominent theological thinking that underpinned changing ideals of the Christian family throughout the Republican period: Chinese society’s encounter with the gendered ethics of the Christian community in the early Republican period, discussions of domesticity by Chinese Christians amid the social gospel movements of the 1920s, and discussions of domesticity during the National Christianizing the Home Movement. An exploration of Christian publications on domesticity points to a gendered perspective on women’s domestic roles as well as a male-dominated theological construct that attempted to reconfigure the notion of the Chinese Christian family. The discourse on the ideal Chinese Christian family had both secular and spiritual dimensions, shaped by the dynamic transnational flow of ideas and the development of local theological thinking.
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Presler, Titus Leonard. "At Play in the Fields of Missiology: Quincentennial Faces of Mission in the Films of Popular Culture." Missiology: An International Review 24, no. 4 (October 1996): 479–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/009182969602400402.
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The 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the Americas, which coincided with the arrival of the Christian gospel, prompted the issuing of several films in which Christian mission features prominently: The Mission, Black Robe, and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Rather than stereotyping either missionaries or indigenous peoples, the films offer complex and penetrating analyses that help to raise the level of popular perception and discussion of the missionary enterprise. They highlight the unique role missionaries have played in the interaction of Westerners with primal cultures. While widely criticized, missionaries may be American culture's best foil for exploring cross-cultural encounters.
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Chandra Sekhar, Chakali. "In Search of a Touchable Body: Christian Mission and Dalit Conversions." Religions 10, no. 12 (November 21, 2019): 644. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel10120644.
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This paper significantly wishes to unpack the social and cultural impact of the mass religious conversion movements in Rayalaseema society with specific reference to Dalits during the period 1850 to 1880. This paper will use the archival material such as missionary records, magazines, pamphlets, and books written by missionaries; further, it will also utilize oral interviews collected from the field. The mass conversion movements established a relationship between Dalits and missionaries and brought them together. In their efforts to create a new Christian community of Dalit converts, missionaries had interacted with Dalits, shared meal with them, stayed with them and transformed forbidden and “polluted” ghettos into social spaces. The present paper argues that the practices of the missionaries were liberating and humanizing for Dalits. It will examine how these practices led to unintended consequences. It needs to be remembered that the missionaries’ aim was not to abolish caste but to develop Christianity. How did the missionaries contribute to social interaction and build a spirit of solidarity among the Dalit converts? Based on specific situations, incidents, and examples recorded in the missionary archives and oral interviews, the article observes that community conversion movements destabilized the caste structure and brought significant changes in the social life of Dalits in colonial Rayalaseema.
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Xiao, Jie. "Literati Ingredients in the 17th-Century Chinese Christian Paintings." Religions 15, no. 4 (March 22, 2024): 383. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel15040383.
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In this paper, the modification methods of the Chinese Christian painting created by the missionaries in the late Ming Dynasty (1573–1644) were analyzed with the Chinese Catholic studies of the “Song nianzhu guicheng” and the “Tianzhu Jiangsheng Chuxiang Jingjie”. After carefully studying the differences between the Chinese Christian painting and the original European version, the study shows that these Chinese Christian paintings were integrated with the Chinese literati paintings’ elements and literati symbols, which include the “Yudiancun” (raindrop texture stroke), “Pimacun” (hemp-fiber texture stroke), “landscape screen” (painted screens with natural landscapes), and the mark of Chinese famous literati such as Dong Qichang. These adjustments conducted by missionaries aimed to make religious paintings more in line with literati aesthetics, which could build connections between the missionaries and the literati community for proselytization. However, the missionaries neglected that the literati community certainly would not sacrifice the existing social order and the vested interest brought by the current Confucian culture to support new ideas of “liberty” and “equality” in the Catholic doctrine, which caused a huge setback in the missionary work since the Nanjing Teaching Case in 1616. This research makes significant contributions to the understanding of cultural exchanges in the 17th century through a detailed exploration of the adjustments made by missionaries in the visual representations within Chinese Catholic literature.
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Jagriti and Madhumita Sengupta. "Health, Religion, and Politics: Re-assessing the Role of Christian Missionaries in Colonial Assam." Mission Studies 41, no. 1 (March 5, 2024): 3–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733831-12341942.
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Abstract Most studies of Christian missionaries in British Assam have focused on their role in promoting Christianity or education, not to mention their contributions to the development and standardization of local languages. There has been a singular lack of studies concerning the immense contributions made by the missionaries in setting up a healthcare infrastructure in the region. This absence has further distorted the debate on whether the missionaries operated as independent agents or as auxiliaries of the state. This paper dwells on the medical work carried out by the missionaries in British Assam and contends that the missionaries fulfilled multiple roles and functions in the province. We argue that the significance of the work of the missionaries is enhanced by the utter neglect of healthcare by the colonial state in the frontier region.
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Anderson, Allan. "Christian Missionaries and 'Heathen Natives': The Cultural Ethics of Early Pentecostal Missionaries." Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 22, no. 1 (May 2002): 4–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/jep.2002.22.1.002.
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Campbell, Gavin James. "“To Make the World One in Christ Jesus”." Pacific Historical Review 87, no. 4 (2018): 575–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/phr.2018.87.4.575.
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Scholarship on nineteenth-century missionary encounters emphasizes either how native converts “indigenized” Christian doctrine and practice, or how missionaries acted as agents of Western imperial expansion. These approaches, however, overlook the ways both missionaries and converts understood Protestant Christianity as a call to transnational community. This essay examines the ways that American Protestants and East Asian Christian converts looked for ways to build a transpacific communion. Despite radically different understandings of Christian scripture, and despite the geopolitics of empire, U.S. and East Asian Protestants nevertheless strove to bring together diverse theologies and experiences into a loosely defined, transnational Protestant community.
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Bazzana, Giovanni Battista. "Early Christian Missionaries as Physicians Healing and its Cultural Value in the Greco-Roman Context." Novum Testamentum 51, no. 3 (2009): 232–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156853609x407493.
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AbstractQ 10 shows some features that equate Jesus' missionaries to Greco-Roman medical practitioners. Moreover, some early Christian texts developed the same imagery, accompanying it with some hints of social critique. Conversely, under the early empire, the prestige and the privileges of doctors, who had good patronage connections, were significantly increased through imperial legislation. The Christian choice of representing missionaries as physicians may be understood by employing the anthropological category of “mimesis”. This entailed a critique of the patronage system and, hence, it arguably won the Christian mission a part of its success in some sectors of the ancient society.
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Guenther, Alan M. "Ghazals, Bhajans and Hymns: Hindustani Christian Music in Nineteenth-Century North India." Studies in World Christianity 25, no. 2 (August 2019): 145–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/swc.2019.0254.
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When American missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church arrived in India in the middle of the nineteenth century, they very soon published hymn-books to aid the Christian church in worship. But these publications were not solely the product of American Methodists nor simply the collection of foreign songs and music translated into Urdu. Rather, successive editions demonstrate the increasing participation of both foreigners and Indians, of missionaries from various denominations, of both men and women, and of even those not yet baptised as Christians. The tunes and poetry included were in both European and Indian forms. This hybrid nature is particularly apparent by the end of the century when the Methodist press published a hymn-book containing ghazals and bhajans in addition to hymns and Sunday school songs. The inclusion of a separate section of ghazals was evidence of the influence of the Muslim culture on the worship of Christians in North India. This mixing of cultures was an essential characteristic of the hymnody produced by the emerging church in the region and was used in both evangelism and worship. Indian and foreign evangelists relied on indigenous music to draw hearers and to communicate the Christian gospel.
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WEI-TSING INOUYE, MELISSA. "Cultural Technologies: The long and unexpected life of the Christian mission encounter, North China, 1900–30." Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 6 (August 2, 2019): 2007–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x18000525.
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AbstractThis article uses the case of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in China to argue that disruptive cultural technologies—namely organizational forms and tools—were just as significant within Christian mission encounters as religious doctrines or material technologies. LMS missionaries did not convert as many Chinese to Christianity as they hoped, but their auxiliary efforts were more successful. The LMS mission project facilitated the transfer of certain cultural technologies such as church councils to administer local congregations or phonetic scripts to facilitate literacy. Once in the hands of native Christians and non-Christians alike, these cultural technologies could be freely adapted for a variety of purposes and ends that often diverged from the missionaries’ original intent and expectation. This article draws on the letters and reports of missionaries of the London Missionary Society in North China from roughly 1900 to 1930—the period during which self-governing Protestant congregations took root in China and many places around the world. The spread of church government structures and a culture of Bible-reading enabled Chinese within the mission sphere to create new forms of collective life. These new forms of community not only tied into local networks, but also connected to transnational flows of information, finances, and personnel. Native Christian communities embraced new, alternative sources of community authority—the power of God working through a group of ordinary people or through the biblical text—that proved both attractive and disruptive.
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Turnbull, Stephen. "Diversity or Apostasy? The Case of the Japanese ‘Hidden Christians’." Studies in Church History 32 (1996): 441–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400015552.
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When Christian missionaries returned to Japan in 1859, after having been excluded from that country for over two centuries, they hoped that there might be some possibility of making contact with descendants of Japan’s original evangelized communities, and locating some folk memory of the so-called ‘Christian Century’, which had ended with the expulsion of European priests in 1614, and the persecution of native Christians. None of the newly arrived missionaries, however, had been prepared for the discovery of active secret communities who had maintained the Christian faith as an underground church for seven generations. Yet this was the revelation experienced by Father Bernard Petitjean of the French Société des Missions Étrangères in the porch of the newly consecrated church at Õura in Nagasaki, on 17 March 1865: Urged no doubt by my guardian angel, I went up and opened the door. I had scarce time to say a Pater when three women between fifty and sixty years of age knelt down beside me and said in a low voice, placing their hands upon their hearts: ‘The hearts of all of us here do not differ from yours.’
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Gibas, Piotr. "To eat or not to eat? : the curious affair of Western missionaries with Chinese food." Religio: Revue pro religionistiku, no. 2 (2023): [213]—237. http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/rel2023-2-2.
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What did Western Christian missionaries eat in China and why, for the most part, was it not Chinese food? This study focuses on two groups of missionaries and their foodways - the Portuguese Jesuits (Catholics) based in Macau between the 16th and 17th centuries, and the British and American Protestants in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 19th and early 20th centuries - and aims to reveal what they ate, what they refused to eat, and why. While examining ideological and cultural factors that modelled the diet of Christian missionaries, this study also analyzes Western ideas, perceptions, and phobias regarding Chinese food. While the Jesuits did have some religious concerns when approaching Chinese cuisine, they, for the most part, embraced it. The Protestants, on the other hand, who arrived much later and during the peak of Western domination in China, acted from a position of power and rejected local food on cultural and ideological grounds as inferior, unhygienic, and potentially poisonous. The early missionaries came to "sell" Christianity and were willing to negotiate their way with Chinese cuisine and culture, "christening" some aspects of them and adopting them as their own. In the age of imperialism, on the other hand, Christian missionaries intended to "civilize" the Chinese by imposing on them both their religious beliefs and their lifestyle, including their foodways.
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lepcha, Denis. "Impact of Christian Missionaries on Lepcha Culture." SALESIAN JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES 8, no. 1 (May 1, 2017): 113–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.51818/sjhss.8.2017.113-118.
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Schendel, Jörg. "Christian Missionaries in Upper Burma, 1853–85." South East Asia Research 7, no. 1 (March 1999): 61–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0967828x9900700103.
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Casson, John. "Missionaries, Mau Mau and The Christian Frontier." Studies in Church History. Subsidia 13 (2000): 200–215. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0143045900002878.
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In May 1955, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, visited Fort Hall in Kenya’s Kikuyu native reserve. The colonial government had declared a state of emergency nearly three years before in response to a secret and violent Kikuyu anti-colonial movement which it knew as Mau Mau. In the ensuing guerrilla war several thousand were killed, almost all of them Africans, and some eighty thousand Kikuyu were held in detention camps.
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Wallenböck, Ute, and Veronika Zikmundová. "Christian missionaries' ethnographic accounts of diets and foodways in the area of Kokonor during the late 19th century and early Republican time." Religio: Revue pro religionistiku, no. 2 (2023): [259]—279. http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/rel2023-2-4.
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The paper deals with the description of food(s) used in religious rituals and in daily life in the Kokonor area from the point of view of Christian missionaries. By looking at Christian missionaries' reports of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican time, light is shed on selected societies in the Kokonor region – namely the Tibetans and Mongolic groups, such as the Monguors – with an emphasis on these societies' diets and foodways. Food is at the core of everyday life, not speaking about festive occasions. Moreover, food and beverages with their symbolism constitute an important part of religious practice. On the basis of missionary reports, such as those by French Lazarist missionaries, missionaries of the Belgian Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae, and missionaries of the Societas Verbi Divini, besides the mundane description of daily food(s), we also highlight how special ingredients became an essential part of ritual offerings and how food exchange and shared eating was understood to create a bridge between humans and super-mundane beings.
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Mondal, Debabbrata. "Portrayal of the Matuas in the Christian Missionary Writings." Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Humanities 68, no. 2 (December 17, 2023): 241–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jasbh.v68i2.70366.
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The paper exposes the socio-economic condition of the early 20th-century Matua community of Bangladesh. It unfolds how the Matuas strived for elevation to the mainstream of national life. They desired for upliftment by securing their rightful and logical position in the broader arena dismantling untouchability and social exclusion imposed on them. They took education as the most suitable medium to make them worthy for every sphere of life. It tells the Australian Baptist missionaries’ outlook on the Matuas and their remarks on the Matuas’ uplifting activities as well as the Matuas’ gradually changing views on life and society. It reflects why the missionaries came to Orakandi. Every single issue of the community has been presented on the basis of the experiences of four missionaries who worked among the Matuas and/or collected a vast knowledge on this once despised backward class of people. Among the four missionaries, three are from the 20th century, and the rest one is from the 21st century and their four relevant books have been selected for this study. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (Hum.), Vol. 68(2), 2023, pp. 241-261