Journal articles on the topic 'Methodist Church Education'

From the middle of the nineteenth century, educational opportunities at the older English universities were gradually extended beyond the limits of the Church of England, first with the abolition of the university tests and then with the opening of higher degrees to Nonconformists. Wesleyan Methodists were keen to take advantage of this new situation, and also to safeguard their young people from non-Methodist influences. A student organization was established in Oxford in 1883, closely linked to the city centre chapel and its ministers, and this Wesley Guild (later the Wesley Society, and then the John Wesley Society) formed the heart of Methodist involvement with the university's undergraduates for the next century. The article explores the background to the guild and its development in the years up to the First World War, using it as a case study for the engagement of Methodism with higher education in this period.

Over the past 30 years, the effects of globalization, climate change and multiple military coups have reshaped the Fijian landscape. The “lines in the sand” around issues of land ownership, rising tides and Fijian identity have complicated the relationship between the Fijian Methodist Church and the land which grounds its culture. The historical fissures between the majority Methodist indigenous church and Fiji’s large Hindu population continue to place the rights of first peoples in tension with rights of ethnic and religious minorities, even as the country’s secular government stresses the possibility of harmony. In recent years, the church’s primary responses to these demographic, political and environmental changes have been homiletic and hermeneutic. In spite of declining membership and reduced political influence, the church’s present experience has been re-read as a “New Exodus” journey toward a promised land. This theme of “New Exodus” has become a dominant trope in sermons, church education events and Fijian Methodist self-understanding. A more complicated hermeneutic, however, mines the biblical theme of exile to describe the current situation. In iTaukei (indigenous Fijian) understanding, the ‘vanua,’ or land, connotes the traditional culture of those who live on that land. As change impacts the culture of indigenous village life, the land itself is understood to change. Though 80% of Fijian land is tribally held, many Fijian Methodists experience the land on which they have lived for generations as suddenly unfamiliar. My paper will explore these disparate biblical readings of the Fijian Methodist experience through a homiletic analysis of four Fijian sermons, pointing to the importance of pulpit rhetoric in creating new conceptions of place and direction in a world where familiar markers are washing away.

An ethnic awareness survey was used to evaluate ethnocentrism in a national sample of denominational lay leaders, clergy, and college students of the Free Methodist Church of North America Those found to demonstrate the greatest degree of ethnocentricity were individuals with little or no college education and/or nonprofessionals from smaller churches. Those demonstrating the least degree of ethnocentricity were college graduates, pastors, conference superintendents, those from inner-city churches, and those involved in professional occupations. Among college students in the sample, senior level students were significantly less ethnocentric with respect to the questionnaire scales than their freshman counterparts. Level of education and the demographic nature of the respondent's church and home environment seemed to override the purely theological dimensions of religious and church involvement. The result is a discrepancy between the theological ideals of a church or faith and the way in which social values and attitudes are expressed in day-to-day settings.

The focus of this paper, the impact of the institutionalized pilgrimages of the Methodist Church Ghana (MCG), reckoned as a “Communitas” experience, affords Church Members an avenue for diverse religious experiences. Focus group discussions, interviews and participant observation were used to collect primary data from 134 respondents. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Findings revealed that visitors at the pilgrim sites experience healing, transformation and bonding, among other things. The communitas experiences have far reaching effects, but there is a need for education on the Church’s accepted practices at the pilgrim sites.

AbstractThe article tracks the development of a new ecclesial strapline for the British Methodist Church in the period between 2007 and 2014 and assesses the initial impact of the identity on education and ecumenism. It argues that the theme and practice of holiness has been underplayed and underdeveloped in the discourse to find a fresh expression of Methodism’s calling but that there are surprisingly creative elements latent in the expression, especially in a new era of ecumenical relations.

AbstractThis article invites reflection on the theological purposes of the education of church leaders. It is conceived as a piece of practical theology that arises from the challenge to the Wesley House Trustees in Cambridge to reconceive and re-articulate their vision for theological education in a time of turbulence and change. I reflect on Wesley House’s inheritance as a community of formation (paideia) and rigorous scholarship (Wissenschaft); and on the opportunities offered for the future of theological education in this context by a serious engagement with both the practices and concepts of phronēsis and poiēsis and a dialogical understanding of biblical wisdom, as Wesley House seeks to offer itself as a cross-cultural community of prayer and study to an international Methodist constituency.

By the early twentieth century the Canadian women’s missionary movement had collectively become the largest women’s organization in North America. The Women’s Missionary Society of the Methodist Church of Canada (WMS), established in 1880, founded three girl’s schools in Japan to help meet the need for female education and to evangelize through these students. One of these schools was Shizuoka Eiwa Jo Gakkō of Shizuoka, whose first principal was Martha Jane Cunningham, a WMS missionary from Halifax, Nova Scotia. This article tells her life-story.

Abstract Han Jie (韩杰) belonged to the Flower Miao, a sub-group of the Miao in southwest China. When foreign missionaries began to evangelize among the Miao of China in the early twentieth century, they emphasized education and set up numerous schools to teach literacy. Learning literacy was not just an educational achievement, it allowed the Miao to imagine that they could have a better way out and be more than just poor farmers. Han Jie was the first generation of graduates of British Methodist Church schools, and he went on to set up more schools in remote areas, thus spreading literacy among poor Miao. Through contact and communication with different denominations, Han Jie felt that the Miao people needed an independent, self-reliant church；accordingly he poured his energy into increasing the sense of autonomy among the Flower Miao through evangelization and education. This paper examines the influence of Christian introduction to Miao identity and Miao ethnic relations through the biography of Han Jie. I argue that the history of religious proselytization transformed the Miao, their relations with their church ultimately determining their relations with the Chinese state as well. Thus Christian evangelization played a pivotal role in shaping Miao identity under the Nationalist regime of the Republic of China.

Before the war there were private and "old field" public elementary schools, and also private, individual- and church-supported high-schools called academies, seminaries, or institutes. Some even used the word college. Geology and mineralogy were taught in some of the academies, depending upon the availability of teachers; most had the typical classical education of the day. There were four colleges: Franklin [the University of Georgia], Mercer [Baptist], Oglethorpe [Presbyterian], and Emory [Methodist]. All had geology in the curriculum, either as a distinct one-semester course [combining the present-day physical and historical geology] or as part of a course in natural history. None was a center of great scientific strength, although both Franklin and Oglethorpe had the services of Joseph LeConte for a short while. Brief biographies of John R. Cotting, James Jackson, Joseph Jones, William L. Jones, Joseph LeConte, Alexander Means, Josiah Meigs, George W. W. Stone, Joseph Willett, and James Woodward are included.

Religion law – the law of the state on religion – has been taught for generations in the law schools of continental Europe, though its introduction in those of the United Kingdom is relatively recent. By way of contrast, within the Anglican Communion there is very little teaching about Anglican canon law. The Church of England does not itself formally train clergy or legal officers in the canon and ecclesiastical laws that they administer. There is no requirement that these be studied for clerical formation in theological colleges or in continuing ministerial education. The same applies to Anglicanism globally – though there are some notable exceptions in a small number of provinces. This is in stark contrast to other ecclesiastical traditions: the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist and United churches all provide training for ministry candidates in their own systems of church law, polity or order. However, no study to date has compared the approaches of these traditions to the teaching of church law today. This article seeks to stimulate an ecumenical debate as to the provision, purposes, practices and principles of the teaching of church law across the ecclesiastical traditions of global Christianity. It does so by presenting examples of courses offered (institutions, purposes, subjects, methods and levels), the educative role of church law itself, requirements under church law for church officers to study the subject, and parallels from the secular world in terms of debate in the academy and practice on the nature of legal education, particularly the role played in it by the Critical Legal Studies movement.1

The city of Charleston, South Carolina, illustrates how educators can use people- and place-based case studies as pedagogical tools to reconstruct a Southern public and historic landscape. Teaching the Foundations of Education course in the city of Charleston makes the history that frames contemporary educational issues such as (re)segregation more visible. In the wake of the recent tragedy at the historic African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in Charleston that claimed nine lives at the hands of Dylann Roof, place and local history help make a silent history more pronounced. A history of resistance and an ongoing struggle for freedom is inscribed into Charleston's landscape as much as the colonial and antebellum grandeur that captures the imagination, and dollars, of a thriving tourism industry. The public and historic landscape, in short, is in and of itself an educative space that allows educators and students to disrupt popular narratives by making the invisible more visible.

Background: Sierra Leone situated in west Africa. It lies between Guinea and Liberia. The country has a population of about seven million people. The country is divided into four regions, they are as follows-western area with Freetown being the capital city, southern province with Bo being the headquarter, northern province with Makeni being the headquarter and eastern province with Kenema being the headquarter. The country is divided into twelve district. Kissy is situated in the eastern part of Freetown. The population of Kissy is about four hundred and fifty thousand people. There are five public hospitals and small health centers. United Methodist Church Hospital is located at the heart of Kissy. Education on supportive care is very important in all hospitals and health centers so that health care workers can apply it when necessary. Supportive care are given to improve the quality of life of patients who have serious or life threatening disease. The goal of supportive care is prevention, treats as early as possible the symptoms of the disease, side effects caused by treatment of a disease, psychological, social and spiritual problems related to a disease or its treatment also called comfort care, palliative care and symptom management. Aim: 1. To raise public education on supportive care. 2. To help the participants understand the importance of supportive care to patients with life threatening disease. Methods: This study was based on interviewing forty health care workers comprises of the following people nurses, caregiver, social workers, community health officers, chaplain and volunteers from the three institutions and community. United Methodist church Nursing School, Kissy Nicole Terrace Health Center Kissy, Kissy Health Center and Kissy Mess-Mess: nurses (3); social workers (2); care givers (2); and community health officers (3). Nicole Terrace Health Center: nurses (3); social workers (2); care givers (2); and community health officers (3). Kissy Health Center: nurses (3); social workers (2); care givers (2); and community health officers (3). Kissy Mess-Mess: volunteers (5) and chaplains (5). Results: During my interview with the different categories of people in the different health institutions and community, I discussed with them supportive care its importance and the impact it creates in the life of a patient with life threatening disease. It was a one-to-one interview and information received was recorded. According to my evaluation, I observed that, none of them have knowledge about supportive care and the impact it creates in the life of patients with life threatening disease. The findings of my research indicate that all the people in the different institutions and community have no knowledge about supportive care. Conclusion: Since supportive care helps to improve the quality of life of patients who have serious life threatening disease, education on the issue of empowering the following people involved in providing supportive care, namely, nurses, care givers/volunteers, chaplain and social workers, will help to prolong the lives of patients with life threatening diseases.

The story of Adult education in Nigeria is not complete without the activities of itinerant Islamic scholars and traders dating as far back as the 14th century. The Methodist mission, the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S) and other Christian churches pioneered what can be termed as “modern literacy” in Nigeria. The major difference between the activities of Islamic missionaries and Christian missionaries is the acceptance of western education in the south and its rejection in the north. Despite this early involvement in literacy activities, illiteracy still persists in Nigeria. Literacy developments efforts in Nigeria include collaboration with UNESCO in the establishment of an Adult Literacy Institute in Ibadan. In 1965, the University of Ibadan started the training of professional adult educators. Other initiatives include pre-primary education, primary education, the first three years of secondary education (JSS), and literacy for adolescents, adults and women’s education. To help improve literacy development situation, the International Community on Education has put forward a 12 points benchmark on literacy delivery. With the current rate of illiteracy and the fact that the deadline of 2015 which was earlier scheduled for halving the illiterates population could not be met, the credibility of the government activities, most especially in the area of funding, commitment, programmes, strategies and the institutions established on the success or otherwise on the benchmarks as far as Nigeria is concerned has been called into question. Using relevant literature on the topic and personal experience of the researcher, this paper is written, to access Nigeria’s performance in the realization of these benchmarks. However, it established the problems and offers possible recommendations that if applied, would put the country on track again as post 2015 literacy development strategy.

The history of the Dunham family goes back to the researches of Kingsley Dunham's grandfather, Rev. Charles Dunham (1848–1942), a Methodist Minister and diarist who, at the age of 72, brought together facts and recollections of the Dunham family. Apparently the family migrated from East Anglia and settled in the Bedford area for 200 years, centred on the village of Shillington. By the middle of the nineteenth century the family were bootmakers and shoemakers and moved to north London. Kingsley Dunham's father, Ernest Pedder Dunham, was trained in estate management at the Duke of Bedford's office in Trafalgar Square, and in 1904 he was given a position in the Pitt-Rivers estate office at Hinton St Mary, Dorset. To here he brought his bride, Edith Agnes Humphreys, to live at Newton House, Sturminster Newton. The first child, Kingsley Charles Dunham, was born on 2 January 1910. The family's time in Dorset was short, because Ernest Dunham's post came to an end in 1913 and be obtained a new appointment at Lord Boyne's estate office at Brancepeth near Durham. Although this estate was later sold to the Duke of Westminster, Ernest Dunham stayed on as agent throughout his career. Kingsley Dunham's mother Edith was a trained schoolteacher and chapel organist, and she gave him the foundations of his education and an introduction to music. Aged seven years he joined the school on the estate, Brancepeth Village School. Here he was well prepared to sit for a County Scholarship in the spring of 1921, when he was 11 years old. Dunham won the scholarship and entrance to the Durham Johnston School, a notable secondary school in the district. The teaching at the Johnston School was extremely efficient and he flourished, developing a particular interest in physical science and mathematics. His hobby was music and he was taught the organ at Durham Cathedral by the Canon Precentor, A.D. Culley. He was also a chorister at St Brandon's Church, Brancepeth, for five years, where, despite his Methodist background, the liturgy of the Anglican prayerbook made a deep and lasting impression. He was head of school in 1927 and sat for a Durham University Open Foundation Scholarship, winning a junior award. Thus, early in October 1927, aged 171/2, Dunham went up to Hatfield College, University of Durham, a scholar and later organ scholar. He was advised to read honours in chemistry with two auxiliary subjects, for which he chose physics and geology. The chemistry course was enjoyable, but the real joy was the geology course, with lectures on physical fundamentals given by Professor Arthur Holmes (FRS 1942) and practical work and fieldwork with Dr William Hopkins. The geology course and particularly the fieldwork proved to be life changing. At the end of the first year, Dunham was encouraged to continue with geology and found himself the only honours candidate in geology in his year, with almost individual attention from Professor Holmes and Dr Hopkins.

This paper examines the ideology of the German Neukirchen Mission and its implication on education in Tana River County, Kenya 1887 to 1986. Western education and Christianity in Africa were introduced by Christian missionaries from Europe as early as the 16th century but took root in around the mid-nineteenth century. In Tana River, several missionary organizations ventured in the area notably the Methodist Missionary Society (MMS), the German Neukirchen Mission (GNM), the Holy Ghost Fathers (HGF) and the Swedish Mission. They all gave up in the area due to a multiplicity of hardships save for the GNM which hang on and continued with evangelization and education. Consequently, there is need to look at the ideology of the GNM that influenced its resolve to persist in an area shunned by its contemporaries. An understanding of GNM’s ideology would come in handy in helping to improve education standards in the area bearing in mind that the same problems that bedeviled the region have to a large extent remained to date The study had three objectives which were: to identify the educational institutions opened by the GNM in Tana River County 1887-1986; to establish the hardships experienced by the GNM in Tana River County in the period 1887-1986 and to examine the ideology which influenced GNM’s activities in Tana River County in the period 1887-1986. The time frame was 1887 to 1986. This period covers the time the GNM arrived in Tana River to the year the first secondary school was established at Ngao i.e 1986. Ngao served as GNM’s mission base or station since the arrival of the missionaries in the region. The study was historical in nature and utilized a historical research design. Sources of data were both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources were mainly drawn from the Kenya National Archives (KNA) and schools and churches in Tana River. Document analysis was also utilized as a data collection method. The research instruments were interview schedules and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). Respondents to these research instruments were retired educationists, civil servants and politicians, church leaders and village elders selected through purposive and snowball sampling techniques; all totaling 33. Collected data was analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methods while documents were analyzed through external and internal criticism. The study found out that the GNM established 31 primary schools 28 of which are still operational. The GNM missionaries experienced several challenges among them deportation during the two World Wars, frequent Somali attacks, floods, poor transport network, malaria infections and inadequate finances. The ideology was examined under five perspectives namely The Great Commission, Faith Mission, Reformed Theology, Social Darwinism and Socio-Political and Economic view point. The study recommends improvement of road and school infrastructure, investing more on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, opening of a secondary school wing in every primary school, delocalization of teachers and establishment of an institution of higher learning in the area.

The Wesleyan Church in the second half of the nineteenth century exhibited a high degree of anti-Catholicism, a phenomenon which had intensified with the ‘Romanising’ influence of the Tractarian movement in the Church of England. To many Wesleyans Roman and Anglo-Catholicism seemed synonymous and the battleground of faith was to be elementary education. The conflict began earlier in the century. When in 1848 Roman Catholic schools made application to the government for grants similar to those offered to the Wesleyans there was an immediate split in Wesleyan ranks. At the Conference in Hull in 1848 Beaumont, Osborn and William Bunting attacked their leadership. They claimed that Methodists should not accept grants in common with Catholics. Jabez Bunting, the primary Wesleyan spokesman of his age, was however rather less critical of the Roman Catholic Church than he had been previously and clearly advocated the continuation of the grant:

The Byzantine mission of saint brothers Cyril and Methodius had a major impact on the spiritual history of Great Moravia. In the centuries that followed, their works paved the way for the political and historical development of the Slavic nations, mainly in South-East and East Europe. The mission, which reached Great Moravia in 863, had several dimensions. The most important were evangelism and the cultural and civilizational dimensions. Translations of the Gospel and liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic intensified the religious life of our ancestors and laid the foundations of literature and culture for almost the entire Slavic world. From this point of view, research should be focused on the role and reflection of this historical and cultural heritage in the ecclesiastical and spiritual, national and cultural life of the Slavic nations. The aim of this article is to assess the significance of Christian and Byzantine cultural values in terms of the collective Slavic identity. The Cyrillo-Methodian idea manifests itself in the history of the Slavic world as a complex but solid foundation, capable of renewing the sleeping or inhibited energy and values in the areas of faith, culture, literature, arts, education, upbringing, as well as national consciousness.

ABSTRACTCan the Catholic Church be fundamentalist? Contemporary scholarship has shown that fundamentalism can take other forms than scriptural literalism. It consists in a rationalizing of traditional certainties in the face of pluralism and change. Its Catholic form could be described as “morphological,” residing in the structures of authority and power. Protestant reactions to Dominus Iesus missed the fundamentalist logic implicit in its synthesis of christology and ecclesiology. They praised the reaffirmation of Christocentrism but were dismayed that Methodists and Muslims were portrayed as inferior for essentially the same reasons. The document not only fails to reflect Vatican II's program for decentralizing authority but also overlooks the implications of Nostra Aetate 4 for interfaith dialogue. Its assertion of soteriological and theological superiority raises ethical questions. Dialogue is a religious act of welcoming the Stranger. Its refusal contains a potential for violence.

Ann Griffiths, an 18th-century farm wife and hymn writer, is well-known in her native Wales, though relatively unstudied in English. Even in translation her hymns and letters offer a strikingly beautiful as well as informative window into the Trinitarian spirituality of 18th-century Welsh Methodism. Historically, her Trinitarianism is notable in that it is largely assumed and primarily based in the economic Trinity, and yet, is nonetheless profound in its orthodoxy given the Trinitarian controversy of the long century prior. More than mere historical curiosity, however, Griffiths’s writing is particularly intriguing on two points that can edify the church today. First, she writes with considerable theological depth despite a lack of education, religious or otherwise, and second, her theology is both technically rich as well as profoundly devotional.

The purpose of the study is the analysis of scientific communication of modern theological Rus-sian educational institutions. An understanding of the content, goals and prospects of the corporate culture of modern ecclesiastical education is facilitated by the analysis of scientific communication. The most common form of scientific communication are conferences. Among them, one can single out large-scale forums uniting representatives of clerical and secular educational institutions, public organ-izations, libraries, museums: Cyril and Methodius readings, Christmas readings, Оrthodox book day. Readings are a unique platform for discussing scientific research in the field of humanitarian knowledge, as well as discussing issues of intercultural and interfaith dialogue. More specialized con-ferences devoted to the discussion of exclusively scientific issues are held by theological educational institutions, such as: Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University (Moscow), Russian Christian Hu-manitarian Academy (St. Petersburg), Perervinsky Theological Seminary (Moscow), Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary. One of the forms of work of theological educational institutions is the holding of methodological seminars for teachers: for example, “Problems of the methodology of theological and patristic studies” (Moscow Theological Academy), “Preparation and creation of an educational-methodical complex” (St. Petersburg Theological Academy). Another form of realization of scientific communications is the work of scientific circles and communities, for example, such as the Sociology of Religion laboratory at the St. Tikhon Orthodox Humanitarian University, the “Russian Thought” seminar at the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy. An important form of scientific communication is the activity of scientific periodicals. Most theological educational institutions actively lead groups on social net-works. In communities, you can find invitations to open and interesting lectures, master classes, meet-ings of discussion clubs on acute social issues, which are held on their own sites. The forms of scientific communications of theological educational institutions are effective, but also not free from problems. In the modern church higher education, first of all, the pedagogical poten-tial develops, and the scientific one remains in second place. This state of affairs is determined by the general church situation, in which church research centers as such are absent, and theological schools have the responsibility, first of all, to educate and educate future priests. Promising for the develop-ment of scientific communications is the interaction of secular and church pedagogy in the methodo-logical field; joint research projects and publications with representatives of secular science.

The reception of relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches by the Ukrainian national consciousness was largely formed by a romantic myth. It appeared in the works by Taras Shevchenko, in the documents of the the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. According to this myth, the Church Union of Brest (1596) was the result of the colonial policy of the Polish government and the intrigues of the Jesuit priests. In fact, the influence of the royal administration on the religious life of the inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian state was extremely limited. „Henrician Articles” of 1573 forced the king to adhere to religious tolerance and to recognize the nobility’s right to free choice of religion. The Roman Catholic clergy, for the most part, did not want to grant Christians the Eastern rite of parity. The Society of Jesus, which formed a separate province in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1574, was guided not by political but by religious motives. Benedict Herbest (1531–1598) already in his work „Wypisanie drogi” („The Desribing of The Way”, 1566) discusses the prospect of restoring unity with the Orthodox Ruthenians. In the book „Wiary Kościołu Rzymskiego wywody” („The Arguments of the Roman Church’ Belief”) he explains Ruthenia’s departure from unity with Rome by lack of education and low religious consciousness. Piotr Skarga (1536–1612) wrote the book „O jedności Kościoła Bożego” („About the God’s Church’s Unity”, 1577), when he had not great authority in the Church and when he was little known in society. At the Brest synod in 1596 Skarga was not a participant and organizer, but only an observer and chronicler. Both Herbest and Skarga were only inflammatory polemicists who responded to the challenge of the Reform by calling for the consolidation of the Church in a single organism. The romantic myth is refuted by a closer acquaintance with their works and life experience.

Pyotr Danilovich Draganov (February 1 (13), 1857 – February 7, 1928), a native of Bessarabia, Russian philologist, historian, ethnographer, bibliographer, and teacher. Born into a family of Bulgarian colonists in the village Comrat of Bessarabian region, he graduated from the Bulgarian Central School in Comrat (1875), then studied at the Chișinău progymnasium, the provincial gymnasium (1875–1877) and the Kharkov gymnasium (1877–1880). After graduating from the gymnasium, he entered the Faculty of History and Philology of the Imperial Kharkov University (1880–1882), then continued his studies at the Imperial St. Petersburg University, graduating in 1885 with a candidate’s degree. In 1885–1887, he taught general history and Church Slavonic language at the St. Cyril and Methodius Male Gymnasium (Thessaloniki, Macedonia). In 1888, he was appointed teacher of the Russian language and literature of the Comrat real school. Since 1893, he taught Russian at the Chișinău Women’s Gymnasium. In 1896, he became a junior assistant librarian at the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg, in charge of the category of Slavs and Galician-Russian books of the Manuscript Department of the library. Due to the difficult financial situation, he had to resign from the library and return to teach Russian at the Comrat real school. In 1906–1912, P.D. Draganov worked as an inspector of a real school in Astrakhan, director of a teacher’s seminary in the village Rovnoe of the Samara province. In 1913, he returned to Bessarabia and was appointed director of the male gymnasium in Cahul. When Bessarabia was occupied by Romania, the Romanian authorities issued a decree on the preservation of the gymnasium and proposed to P.D. Draganov to remain its director. However, he decided to return to his native Comrat, where he taught Bulgarian at the Comrat real school until retirement. P.D. Draganov is the author of over 100 historical, literary, ethnographic, philological, bibliographic and critical works. His articles were published in the “Journal of the Ministry of Public Education”, “Historical Bulletin”, “Izvestia of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in the Department of Russian Language and Literature”, “Russian Philological Bulletin” and others. Some of his works have remained unpublished. Most of P.D. Draganov’s studies focus on Bessarabian and Balkan themes. He wrote many works about A.S. Pushkin. Draganov was the founder of Macedonian studies in Russia. One ofhis most important works is “The Macedonian-Slavic Collection” (Issue 1. St. Petersburg, 1894), which received many reviews. Another well-known work of his is the compilation “A.S. Pushkin in Fifty Languages, i.e. Translations from A.S. Pushkin into 50 languages and dialects of the world. A Bibliographic Wreath on the Monument to A.S. Pushkin, Woven for the Centenary of His Birth, May 26, 1799 – May 26, 1899 with a Portrait of the Poet” (St. Petersburg, 1899). Draganov also participated in the compilation of the Bulgarian-Russian Dictionary, published the first universal index Bessarabiana, where he listed the sources and literature published over 100 years since the annexation of Bessarabia to Russia. Among the numerous works by P.D. Draganov, there are studies about Rusins.

This article explores the long history of both industrial and theological education and ministerial formation that since the 1850s has included, inter alia: Healdtown and Lesseyton; Kamastone; D’urban (Peddie); Bollihope; Fort Hare and Rhodes Universities; the Federal Theological Seminary and John Wesley College; and Kilnerton, Pretoria. Taken together, the story of these places speaks of the Methodist Church’s long-standing commitment to invest in the education and formation of those who respond to God’s call to the ordained and other ministries (Seth Mokhitimi Methodist Seminary 2018). Compared with Healdtown and Kilnerton, Lesseyton institution is less well known and appreciated. Nevertheless, it played a significant role in South African education in the Eastern Cape and particularly in industrial training and education for ministry within the Methodist Church. This provides the focus for this article.

Ecclesiological research on queer sexuality in South Africa has often been restricted to studying heteronormative church policies and doctrines as well as their implementation. This has confined possibilities of transforming church into a specifically queer affirming and more generally socially just space, to a matter of policy change. Similarly, transformation in higher education research in South Africa previously adopted a “transformation by numbers” approach centred on policy change. However, urgent calls to decolonise higher education has highlighted the limits of this “inclusive” approach and shifted the field’s focus to an approach that interrogates the “institutional culture” of organisations to understand the ways in which such cultures might epistemologically and functionally preclude inclusion. Drawing on the case study of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA), this paper proposes the extension and appropriation of the concept of “institutional culture” as it is used within higher education research for ecclesiological research, in order to expand queer possibilities of being a more socially just church.

This paper reflects on the approach of Reverend Linda Mandindi to ministry in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA). Special emphasis is given to the contribution he made as ninth president of the Black Methodist Consultation (BMC). I will highlight Rev. Mandindi’s journey in the ministry, his struggle to candidate for the ministry, and the ways in which he dealt with ethnic and cultural challenges of being a black minister in a church predominantly led by white people. Rev. Mandindi’s narrative demonstrates the liberating work of the church to black people, whom it empowered through gospel spirituality and education. The article presents a truncated biography in the context of the historic evolution of the BMC, its contribution to the transformation of the MCSA, and ultimately to our nation. I have divided this paper into four sections. First, I briefly discuss the founding of the BMC. Second, I look at Rev. Mandindi the man, with specific emphasis on his development as a progressive pastor and leader with a keen understanding of the political and religious landscape of South Africa. Third, I seek to appraise Rev. Mandindi’s work and legacy. I conclude the paper by looking at the challenge that Rev. Mandindi’s legacy presents to the MBC and the MCSA.

We are born, we touch the lives of others, we die – and then we are remembered. For the purpose of this article, I have assessed from obituaries the average lifespan of the clergy (ministers) in the Methodist Church of South Africa (MCSA), who died between 2003 and 2014. These obituaries were published in the Yearbooks of the MCSA from 2004 to 2015. I also give attention to how the deceased ministers are remembered. The average lifespan of Methodist ministers is 72 years, and it is likely to increase to 74 years by 2023. This article discusses the implications of Methodist ministers’ average lifespan and suggests that the clergy should be encouraged and enabled to retire at the age of 60 years. The following 12 themes (or missional lessons), mainly answering the question of how the clergy are remembered, emerged from the qualitative analysis of obituaries: they were gifted preachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ; they lived a balanced life; they were humble servants in Jesus’ vineyard; they were sensitive storytellers with a deep sense of humour; they were community builders; they were leaders and meticulous in administration; they were prayer warriors; they loved and valued education; they were disciplined and principled; they enjoyed music; they worked hard for an everlasting peace on earth; and they were zealous stewards of God’s creation.

In this article, we used the capability approach as normative grounding to analyse a particular faith-based intervention targeting ‘youth at the margins’ – in this instance, marginalised migrant youths from Zimbabwe living in Johannesburg, South Africa. We used Albert Street School (AS School), run by Johannesburg’s Central Methodist Church, as our case study to show how this faith-based organisation, through its focus on education, created not only spaces for marginalised youths to aspire towards a better life but also practical opportunities to convert their aspirations into action. Drawing on first-hand accounts of 12 Zimbabwean migrant youths who had completed schooling at AS School, as well as of representatives of both the school and the CMC, the article first sketches the Zimbabwe-South Africa migration context post 2000. A discussion then follows of AS School as a faith-based intervention which addresses the constrained capability for education amongst marginalised migrant youths.

This essay investigates the rise and sudden fall of Vanderbilt’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit around the time of World War I, and illustrates how it serves as an example of general trends in higher education that were occurring in other universities across America while being decidedly exceptional. With information pulled almost entirely from primary sources such as Chancellor James H. Kirkland’s handwritten letters and contemporary issues of The Hustler, it becomes clear that the administration saw the ROTC program as a way to replace the Methodist Episcopal Church, South as a source of moral education while establishing an ideological bulwark against perceived Bolshevik influences. While Kirkland was successful in bringing an ROTC unit to campus like many of his counterparts at other universities, Vanderbilt’s story is almost entirely unique in that the students revolted en masse, ending the program only a few short years after it had been established. In examining the evidence, it was Kirkland’s personality that led to his administration’s hasty implementation of the program, forcing seemingly un- necessary mandatory military training on the student body without considering its opinion first, a student body already weary from wartime training in a program called the Students’ Army Training Corps. In a gritty battle of wills between the Chancellor and the student body, the lifeblood of any ROTC unit, these students stuck to their guns and refused to participate, and the administration simply had to accede to their demands. As soon as it appeared, Vanderbilt’s first ROTC unit vanished.

There’s no reason to think that Jesus wouldn’t have Facebooked or twittered if he came into the world now. Can you imagine his killer status updates? Reverend Schenck, New York, All Saints Episcopal Church (Mapes) The fundamental problem of religious communication is how best to represent and mediate the sacred. (O’Leary 787) What would Jesus tweet? Historically, the quest for sacred connections has relied on the mediation of faith communication via technological implements, from the use of the drum to mediate the Divine, to the use of the mechanical clock by monks as reminders to observe the canonical hours of prayer (Mumford). Today, religious communication practices increasingly implicate Web 2.0, or interactive, user-generated content like blogs (Cheong, Halavis & Kwon), and microblogs like “tweets” of no more than 140 characters sent via Web-based applications like text messaging, instant messaging, e-mail, or on the Web. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project’s latest report in October 2009, 19% of online adults said that they used a microblogging service to send messages from a computer or mobile device to family and friends who have signed up to receive them (Fox, Zickuhr & Smith). The ascendency of microblogging leads to interesting questions of how new media use alters spatio-temporal dynamics in peoples’ everyday consciousness, including ways in which tweeting facilitates ambient religious interactions. The notion of ambient strikes a particularly resonant chord for religious communication: many faith traditions advocate the practice of sacred mindfulness, and a consistent piety in light of holy devotion to an omnipresent and omniscient Divine being. This paper examines how faith believers appropriate the emergent microblogging practices to create an encompassing cultural surround to include microblogging rituals which promote regular, heightened prayer awareness. Faith tweets help constitute epiphany and a persistent sense of sacred connected presence, which in turn rouses an identification of a higher moral purpose and solidarity with other local and global believers. Amidst ongoing tensions about microblogging, religious organisations and their leadership have also begun to incorporate Twitter into their communication practices and outreach, to encourage the extension of presence beyond the church walls. Faith Tweeting and Mobile Mediated Prayers Twitter’s Website describes itself as a new media service that help users communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to the question, “What are you doing?” Some evangelical Christian groups harness these coincident messaging flows to create meaningful pathways for personal, intercessory and synchronised prayer. Using hashtags in a Twitter post creates a community convention or grouping around faith ideas and allows others to access them. Popular faith related hashtags include #twurch (Twitter + church), #prayer, #JIL (Jesus is Lord) and #pray4 (as in, #pray4 my mother). Just as mobile telephony assists distal family members to build “connected presence” (Christensen), I suggest that faith tweets stimulating mobile mediated prayers help build a sense of closeness and “religious connected presence” amongst the distributed family of faith believers, to recreate and reaffirm Divine and corporeal bonds. Consider the Calvin Institute of Worship’s set up of six different Twitter feeds to “pray the hours”. Praying the hours is an ancient practice of praying set prayers throughout certain times of the day, as marked in the Book of Common Prayer in the Christian tradition. Inspired by the Holy Scripture’s injunction to “pray without ceasing” ( 1 Thessalonians 5:17), users can sign up to receive hourly personal or intercessory prayers sent in brief verses or view a Tweetgrid with prayer feeds, to prompt continuous prayer or help those who are unsure of what words to pray. In this way, contemporary believers may reinvent the century-old practice of constant faith mediation as Twitter use helps to reintegrate scripture into people’s daily lives. Faith tweets that goad personal and intercessory prayer also makes ambient religious life salient, and preserves self-awareness of sanctified moments during normal, everyday activities. Furthermore, while the above “praying the hours” performance promotes a specific integration of scripture or prayer into individuals’ daily rhythms, other faith tweets are more focused on evangelism: to reach others through recurrent prayers or random inspirational messages sent throughout the day. For instance, as BBC News reports, religious leaders such as Cardinal Brady, head of Ireland’s Catholic Church, encourage parishioners to use Twitter to spread “the gift of prayer”, as they microblog their daily prayers for their friends and family. Cardinal Brady commented that, “such a sea of prayer is sure to strengthen our sense of solidarity with one another and remind us those who receive them that others really do care" (emphasis mine). Indeed, Cardinal Brady’s observation is instructive to the “Twitness” of faithful microbloggers who desire to shape the blogosphere, and create new faith connections. “JesusTweeters” is a faith-based social networking site, and a service which allows users to send out messages from any random tweet from the Bible Tweet Library, or their own personal messages on a scheduled basis. The site reports that over 500 members of JesusTweeters, each with an average of 500 followers, have signed up to help “spread the Word” worldwide through Twitter. This is an interesting emergent form of Twitter action, as it translates to more than 2.5 million faith tweets being circulated online daily. Moreover, Twitter encourages ‘connected presence’ whereby the use of microblogging enables online faith believers to enjoy an intimate, ‘always on’ virtual presence with their other congregational members during times of physical absence. In the recently released e-book The Reason Your Church Must Twitter, subtitled Making Your Ministry Contagious, author and self-proclaimed ‘technology evangelist’ Anthony Coppedge advocates churches to adopt Twitter as part of their overall communication strategy to maintain relational connectedness beyond the boundaries of established institutional practices. In his book, Coppedge argues that Twitter can be used as a “megaphone” for updates and announcements or as a “conversation” to spur sharing of ideas and prayer exchanges. In line with education scholars who promote Twitter as a pedagogical tool to enhance free-flowing interactions outside of the classroom (Dunlap & Lowenthal), Coppedge encourages pastors to tweet “life application points” from their sermons to their congregational members throughout the week, to reinforce the theme of their Sunday lesson. Ministry leaders are also encouraged to adopt Twitter to “become highly accessible” to members and communicate with their volunteers, in order to build stronger ecumenical relationships. Communication technology scholar Michele Jackson notes that Twitter is a form of visible “lifelogging” as interactants self-disclose their lived-in moments (731). In the case of faith tweets, co-presence is constructed when instantaneous Twitter updates announce new happenings on the church campus, shares prayer requests, confirms details of new events and gives public commendations to celebrate victories of staff members. In this way, microblogging helps to build a portable church where fellow believers can connect to each-other via the thread of frequent, running commentaries of their everyday lives. To further develop ‘connected presence’, a significant number of Churches have also begun to incorporate real-time Twitter streams during their Sunday services. For example, to stimulate congregational members’ sharing of their spontaneous reactions to the movement of the Holy Spirit, Westwind Church in Michigan has created a dozen “Twitter Sundays” where members are free to tweet at any time and at any worship service (Rochman). At Woodlands Church in Houston, a new service was started in 2009 which encourages parishioners to tweet their thoughts, reflections and questions throughout the service. The tweets are reviewed by church staff and they are posted as scrolling visual messages on a screen behind the pastor while he preaches (Patel). It is interesting to note that recurring faith tweets spatially filling the sanctuary screens blurs the visual hierarchies between the pastor as foreground and congregations as background to the degree that tweet voices from the congregation are blended into the church worship service. The interactive use of Twitter also differs from the forms of personal silent meditation and private devotional prayer that, traditionally, most liturgical church services encourage. In this way, key to new organisational practices within religious organisations is what some social commentators are now calling “ambient intimacy”, an enveloping social awareness of one’s social network (Pontin). Indeed, several pastors have acknowledged that faith tweets have enabled them to know their congregational members’ reflections, struggles and interests better and thus they are able to improve their teaching and caring ministry to meet congregants’ evolving spiritual needs (Mapes).Microblogging Rituals and Tweeting Tensions In many ways, faith tweets can be comprehended as microblogging rituals which have an ambient quality in engendering individuals’ spiritual self and group consciousness. The importance of examining emergent cyber-rituals is underscored by Stephen O’Leary in his 1996 seminal article on Cyberspace as Sacred Space. Writing in an earlier era of digital connections, O’Leary discussed e-mail and discussion forum cyber-rituals and what ritual gains in the virtual environment aside from its conventional physiological interactions. Drawing from Walter Ong’s understanding of the “secondary orality” accompanying the shift to electronic media, he argued that cyber-ritual as performative utterances restructure and reintegrate the minds and emotions of their participants, such that they are more aware of their interior self and a sense of communal group membership. Here, the above illustrative examples show how Twitter functions as the context for contemporary, mediated ritual practices to help believers construct a connected presence and affirm their religious identities within an environment where wired communication is a significant part of everyday life. To draw from Walter Ong’s words, microblogging rituals create a new textual and visual “sensorium” that has insightful implications for communication and media scholars. Faith tweeting by restructuring believers’ consciousness and generating a heightened awareness of relationship between the I, You and the Thou opens up possibilities for community building and revitalised religiosity to counteract claims of secularisation in technologically advanced and developed countries. “Praying the hours” guided by scripturally inspired faith tweets, for example, help seekers and believers experience epiphany and practice their faith in a more holistic way as they de-familarize mundane conditions and redeem a sense of the sacred from their everyday surrounds. Through the intermittent sharing of intercessory prayer tweets, faithful followers enact prayer chains and perceive themselves to be immersed in invariable spiritual battle to ward off evil ideology or atheistic beliefs. Moreover, the erosion of the authority of the church is offset by changed leadership practices within religious organisations which have experimented and actively incorporated Twitter into their daily institutional practices. To the extent that laity are willing to engage, creative practices to encourage congregational members to tweet during and after the service help revivify communal sentiments and a higher moral purpose through identification and solidarity with clergy leaders and other believers. Yet this ambience has its possible drawbacks as some experience tensions in their perception and use of Twitter as new technology within the church. Microblogging rituals may have negative implications for individual believers and religious organisations as they can weaken or pervert the existing relational links. As Pauline Cheong and Jessie Poon have pointed out, use of the Internet within religious organisations may bring about an alternative form of “perverse religious social capital building” as some clergy view that online communication detracts from real time relations and physical rituals. Indeed, some religious leaders have already articulated their concerns about Twitter and new tensions they experience in balancing the need to engage with new media audiences and the need for quiet reflection that spiritual rites such as confession of sins and the Holy Communion entail. According to the critics of faith tweeting, microblogging is time consuming and contributes to cognitive overload by taking away one’s attention to what is noteworthy at the moment. For Pastor Hayes of California for example, Twitter distracts his congregation’s focus on the sermon and thus he only recommends his members to tweet after the service. In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, he said: “If two people are talking at the same time, somebody’s not listening”, and “You cannot do two things at once and expect you’re not going to miss something” (Patel). Furthermore, similar to prior concerns voiced with new technologies, there are concerns over inappropriate tweet content that can comprise of crudity, gossip, malevolent and hate messages, which may be especially corrosive to faith communities that strive to model virtues like love, temperance and truth-telling (Vitello). In turn, some congregational members are also experiencing frustrations as they negotiate church boundaries and other members’ disapproval of their tweeting practices during service and church events. Censure of microblogging has taken the form of official requests for tweeting members to leave the sanctuary, to less formal social critique and the application of peer pressure to halt tweeting during religious proceedings and activities (Mapes). As a result of these connectivity tensions, varying recommendations have been recently published as fresh efforts to manage religious communication taking place in ambience. For instance, Coppedge recommends every tweeting church to include Twitter usage in their “church communications policy” to promote accountability within the organisation. The policy should include guidelines against excessive use of Twitter as spam, and for at least one leader to subscribe and monitor every Twitter account used. Furthermore, the Interpreter magazine of the United Methodist Church worldwide featured recommendations by Rev. Safiyah Fosua who listed eight important attributes for pastors wishing to incorporate Twitter during their worship services (Rice). These attributes are: highly adaptive; not easily distracted; secure in their presentation style; not easily taken aback when people appear to be focused on something other than listenin; into quality rather than volume; not easily rattled by things that are new; secure enough as a preacher to let God work through whatever is tweeted even if it is not the main points of the sermon; and carried on the same current the congregation is travelling on. For the most part, these attributes underscore how successful (read wired) contemporary religious leaders should be tolerant of ambient religious communication and of blurring hierarchies of information control when faced with microblogging and the “inexorable advance of multimodal connectedness” (Schroeder 1). To conclude, the rise of faith tweeting opens up a new portal to investigate accretive changes to culture as microblogging rituals nurture piety expressed in continuous prayer, praise and ecclesial updates. The emergent Twitter sensorium demonstrates the variety of ways in which religious adherents appropriate new media within the ken and tensions of their daily lives. References BBC News. “Twitter Your Prayer says Cardinal.” 27 April 2009. ‹http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8020285.stm›. Cheong, P.H., A. Halavis and K. Kwon. “The Chronicles of Me: Understanding Blogging as a Religious Practice. Journal of Media and Religion 7 (2008): 107-131. Cheong, P.H., and J.P.H. Poon. “‘WWW.Faith.Org’: (Re)structuring Communication and Social Capital Building among Religious Organizations.” Information, Communication and Society 11.1 (2008): 89-110. Christensen, Toke Haunstrup. “‘Connected Presence’ in Distributed Family Life.” New Media and Society 11 (2009): 433-451. Coppedge, Anthony. “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter: Making Your Ministry Contagious.” 2009. ‹http://www.twitterforchurches.com/›. Dunlap, Joanna, and Patrick Lowenthal. “Tweeting the Night Away: Using Twitter to Enhance Social Presence.” Journal of Information Systems Education 20.2 (2009): 129-135. Fox, Susannah, Kathryn Zickuhr, and Aaron Smith. “Twitter and Status Updating" Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009. Oct. 2009 ‹http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2009/PIP_Twitter_Fall_2009_web.pdf›. Jackson, Michele. “The Mash-Up: A New Archetype for Communication.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14.3 (2009): 730-734. Mapes, Diane. “Holy Twitter! Tweeting from the Pews.” 2009. 3 June 2009 ‹http://www.nbcwashington.com/.../Holy_Twitter__Tweeting_from_the_pews.html›. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, 1934. Patel, Purva. “Tweeting during Church Services Gets Blessing of Pastors.” Houston Chronicle (2009). 10 Oct. 2009 ‹http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6662287.html›. O’Leary, Stephen. ”Cyberspace as Sacred Space: Communicating Religion on Computer Networks.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64.4 (1996): 781-808. Pontin, Jason. “Twitter and Ambient Intimacy: How Evan Williams Helped Create the New Social Medium of Microblogging.” MIT Review 2007. 15 Nov. 2009 ‹http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/19713/?a=f›. Rice, Kami. “The New Worship Question: To Tweet or Not to Tweet.” Interpreter Magazine (Nov.-Dec. 2009). ‹http://www.interpretermagazine.org/interior.asp?ptid=43&mid=13871›. Rochman, Bonnie. “Twittering in Church, with the Pastor’s O.K.” Time 3 May 2009. ‹http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1895463,00.html›. Schroeder, Ralph. “Mobile Phones and the Inexorable Advance of Multimodal Connectedness.” New Media and Society 12.1 (2010): 75-90. Vitello, Paul. “Lead Us to Tweet, and Forgive the Trespassers.” New York Times 5 July 2009. ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/technology/internet/05twitter.html›.

The following papers were presented to the Canadian Society of Church History in 2010, but were not made available for publication: Bruce Douville, “‘We’re Pushers of Christ’: Yorkville as a Mission Field, 1966-1971″; Chris Miller, “‘We are Christians and we are citizens’: Negotiating the Boundaries of Religious Identity within the United Church of Canada’s China Campaign, 1968-1969″; Marlene Epp, “Recipes for Religion: Foodways, Cookbooks and Mennonite Identity”; Barbara Murison, “‘Shaped by their Scottish education’: Enlightenment, Evangelicalism and the Ministers of Early Nova Scotia”; Robert Dennis, “Faith on the Prairies: Roman Catholic Engagement with the CCF during the 1930s and 1940s”; Richard Allen, “‘God’s truth comes to us in fragments’: Salem Bland and the Stormy Passage of a Liberating Mind, 1903-1950″; Andrew Eason, “A Cradle of Empire? The Salvation Army and Imperialism, 1878-1914″; Richard Enns, “‘Then shall the wilderness be glad and blossom as the rose’: Presbyterian Hopes for Indian Education at Regina, 1891-1910″; Rhonda Semple, “Connecting Through Disconnections: Cultural and Religious Meanings in London Missionary Society Work in Almora, UP, India”; Robynne Rogers Healey, “‘I am getting a considerable of a Canadian they tell me’: Connected Understandings in the Nineteenth-Century Quaker Atlantic”; James Tyler Robertson, McMaster University, “Band of Brothers: Connection and Tension within Methodism during the War of 1812″; Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Cross-Cultural Catholic Cooperative Development: From Antigonish to Guatemala”; Catherine LeGrand, “Development, Liberation Theology and the Peasant Movement for Agrarian Reform: Quebec Catholic Missionaries in Honduras, 1955-1975″; Ruth Compton Brouwer, “‘Reason over Passion’: CUSO’s Divided Response to the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970″; and Donna Kerfoot, “Caroline Fry: A Practical Theology of the Sacraments.”

Image 1: A Little Free Library. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.IntroductionLittle Free Libraries give people a reason to stop and exchange things they love: books. It seemed like a really good way to build a sense of community.Dannette Lank, Little Free Library steward, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, 2013 (Rumage)Against a backdrop of stagnant literacy rates and enduring perceptions of urban decay and the decline of communities in cities (NCES, “Average Literacy”; NCES, “Average Prose”; Putnam 25; Skogan 8), legions of Little Free Libraries (LFLs) have sprung up across the United States between 2009 and the present. LFLs are small, often homemade structures housing books and other physical media for passersby to choose a book to take or leave a book to share with others. People have installed the structures in front of homes, schools, libraries, churches, fire and police stations, community gardens, and in public parks. There are currently 50,000 LFLs around the world, most of which are in the continental United States (Aldrich, “Big”). LFLs encompass building in multiple senses of the term; LFLs are literally tiny buildings to house books and people use the structures for building neighbourhood social capital. The organisation behind the movement cites “building community” as one of its three core missions (Little Free Library). Rowan Moore, theorising humans’ reasons for building, argues desire and emotion are central (16). The LFL movement provides evidence for this claim: stewards erect LFLs based on hope for increased literacy and a desire to build community through their altruistic actions. This article investigates how LFLs build urban community and explores barriers to the endeavour, specifically municipal building and right of way ordinances used in attempts to eradicate the structures. It also examines local responses to these municipal actions and potential challenges to traditional public libraries brought about by LFLs, primarily the decrease of visits to public libraries and the use of LFLs to argue for defunding of publicly provided library services. The work argues that LFLs build community in some places but may threaten other community services. This article employs qualitative content analysis of 261 stewards’ comments about their registered LFLs on the organisation’s website drawn from the two largest cities in a Midwestern state and an interview with an LFL steward in a village in the same state to analyse how LFLs build community. The two cities, located in the state where the LFL movement began, provide a cross section of innovators, early adopters, and late adopters of the book exchanges, determined by their registered charter numbers. Press coverage and municipal documents from six cities across the US gathered through a snowball sample provide data about municipal challenges to LFLs. Blog posts penned by practising librarians furnish some opinions about the movement. This research, while not a representative sample, identifies common themes and issues around LFLs and provides a basis for future research.The act of building and curating an LFL is a representation of shared beliefs about literacy, community, and altruism. Establishing an LFL is an act of civic participation. As Nico Carpentier notes, while some civic participation is macro, carried out at the level of the nation, other participation is micro, conducted in “the spheres of school, family, workplace, church, and community” (17). Ruth H. Landman investigates voluntary activities in the city, including community gardening, and community bakeries, and argues that the people associated with these projects find themselves in a “denser web of relations” than previously (2). Gretchen M. Herrmann argues that neighbourhood garage sales, although fleeting events, build an enduring sense of community amongst participants (189). Ray Oldenburg contends that people create associational webs in what he calls “great good places”; third spaces separate from home and work (20-21). Little Free Libraries and Community BuildingEmotion plays a central role in the decision to become an LFL steward, the person who establishes and maintains the LFL. People recount their desire to build a sense of community and share their love of reading with neighbours (Charter 4684; Charter 8212; Charter 9437; Charter 9705; Charter 16561). One steward in the study reported, “I love books and I want to be able to help foster that love in our neighbourhood as well” (Charter 4369). Image 2: A Little Free Library, bench, water fountain, and dog’s water bowl for passersby to enjoy. Image credit: Nadine Kozak.Relationships and emotional ties are central to some people’s decisions to have an LFL. The LFL website catalogues many instances of memorial LFLs, tributes to librarians, teachers, and avid readers. Indeed, the first Little Free Library, built by Todd Bol in 2009, was a tribute to his late mother, a teacher who loved reading (“Our History”). In the two city study area, ten LFLs are memorials, allowing bereaved families to pass on a loved one’s penchant for sharing books and reading (Charter 1235; Charter 1309; Charter 4604; Charter 6219; Charter 6542; Charter 6954; Charter 10326; Charter 16734; Charter 24481; Charter 30369). In some cases, urban neighbours come together to build, erect, and stock LFLs. One steward wrote: “Those of us who live in this friendly neighborhood collaborated to design[,] build and paint a bungalow themed library” to match the houses in the neighbourhood (Charter 2532). Another noted: “Our neighbor across the street is a skilled woodworker, and offered to build the library for us if we would install it in our yard and maintain it. What a deal!” (Charter 18677). Community organisations also install and maintain LFLs, including 21 in the study population (e.g. Charter 31822; Charter 27155).Stewards report increased communication with neighbours due to their LFLs. A steward noted: “We celebrated the library’s launch on a Saturday morning with neighbors of all ages. We love sitting on our front porch and catching up with the people who stop to check out the books” (Charter 9673). Another exclaimed:within 24 hours, before I had time to paint it, my Little Free Library took on a life of its own. All of a sudden there were lots of books in it and people stopping by. I wondered where these books came from as I had not put any in there. Little kids in the neighborhood are all excited about it and I have met neighbors that I had never seen before. This is going to be fun! (Charter 15981)LFLs build community through social interaction and collaboration. This occurs when neighbours come together to build, install, and fill the structures. The structures also open avenues for conversation between neighbours who had no connection previously. Like Herrmann’s neighbourhood garage sales, LFLs create and maintain social ties between neighbours and link them by the books they share. Additionally, when neighbours gather and communicate at the LFL structure, they create a transitory third space for “informal public life”, where people can casually interact at a nearby location (Oldenburg 14, 288).Building Barriers, Creating CommunityThe erection of an LFL in an urban neighbourhood is not, however, always a welcome sight. The news analysis found that LFLs most often come to the attention of municipal authorities via citizen complaints, which lead to investigations and enforcement of ordinances. In Kansas, a neighbour called an LFL an “eyesore” and an “illegal detached structure” (Tapper). In Wisconsin, well-meaning future stewards contacted their village authorities to ask about rules, inadvertently setting off a six-month ban on LFLs (Stingl; Rumage). Resulting from complaints and inquiries, municipalities regulated, and in one case banned, LFLs, thus building barriers to citizens’ desires to foster community and share books with neighbours.Municipal governments use two major areas of established code to remove or prohibit LFLs: ordinances banning unapproved structures in residents’ yards and those concerned with obstructions to right of ways when stewards locate the LFLs between the public sidewalk and street.In the first instance, municipal ordinances prohibit either front yard or detached structures. Controversies over these ordinances and LFLs erupted in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, in 2012; Leawood, Kansas, in 2014; Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2015; and Dallas, Texas, in 2015. The Village of Whitefish Bay banned LFLs due to an ordinance prohibiting “front yard structures,” including mailboxes (Sanburn; Stingl). In Leawood, the city council argued that an LFL, owned by a nine-year-old boy, violated an ordinance that forbade the construction of any detached structures without city council permission. In Shreveport, the stewards of an LFL received a cease and desist letter from city council for having an “accessory structure” in the front yard (LaCasse; Burris) and Dallas officials knocked on a steward’s front door, informing her of a similar breach (Kellogg).In the second instance, some urban municipalities argued that LFLs are obstructions that block right of ways. In Lincoln, Nebraska, the public works director noted that the city “uses the area between the sidewalk and the street for snow storage in the winter, light poles, mailboxes, things like that.” The director continued: “And I imagine these little libraries are meant to congregate people like a water cooler, but we don’t want people hanging around near the road by the curb” (Heady). Both Lincoln in 2014 and Los Angeles (LA), California, in 2015, cited LFLs for obstructions. In Lincoln, the city notified the Southminster United Methodist Church that their LFL, located between the public sidewalk and street, violated a municipal ordinance (Sanburn). In LA, the Bureau of Street Services notified actor Peter Cook that his LFL, situated in the right of way, was an “obstruction” that Cook had to remove or the city would levy a fine (Moss). The city agreed at a hearing to consider a “revocable permit” for Cook’s LFL, but later denied its issuance (Condes).Stewards who found themselves in violation of municipal ordinances were able to harness emotion and build outrage over limits to individuals’ ability to erect LFLs. In Kansas, the stewards created a Facebook page, Spencer’s Little Free Library, which received over 31,000 likes and messages of support. One comment left on the page reads: “The public outcry will force those lame city officials to change their minds about it. Leave it to the stupid government to rain on everybody’s parade” (“Good”). Children’s author Daniel Handler sent a letter to the nine-year-old steward, writing as Lemony Snicket, “fighting against librarians is immoral and useless in the face of brave and noble readers such as yourself” (Spencer’s). Indeed, the young steward gave a successful speech to city hall arguing that the body should allow the structures because “‘lots of people in the neighborhood used the library and the books were always changing. I think it’s good for Leawood’” (Bauman). Other local LFL supporters also attended council and spoke in favour of the structures (Harper). In LA, Cook’s neighbours started a petition that gathered over 100 signatures, where people left comments including, “No to bullies!” (Lopez). Additionally, neighbours gathered to discuss the issue (Dana). In Shreveport, neighbours left stacks of books in their front yards, without a structure housing them due to the code banning accessory structures. One noted, “I’m basically telling the [Metropolitan Planning Commission] to go sod off” (Friedersdorf; Moss). LFL proponents reacted with frustration and anger at the perceived over-reach of the government toward harmless LFLs. In addition to the actions of neighbours and supporters, the national and local press commented on the municipal constraints. The LFL movement has benefitted from a significant amount of positive press in its formative years, a press willing to publicise and criticise municipal actions to thwart LFL development. Stewards’ struggles against municipal bureaucracies building barriers to LFLs makes prime fodder for the news media. Herbert J. Gans argues an enduring value in American news is “the preservation of the freedom of the individual against the encroachments of nation and society” (50). The juxtaposition of well-meaning LFL stewards against municipal councils and committees provided a compelling opportunity to illustrate this value.National media outlets, including Time (Sanburn), Christian Science Monitor (LaCasse), and The Atlantic, drew attention to the issue. Writing in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf critically noted:I wish I was writing this to merely extol this trend [of community building via LFLs]. Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things. (Friedersdorf, n.p.)Other columnists mirrored this sentiment. Writing in the LA Times, one commentator sarcastically wrote that city officials were “cracking down on one of the country’s biggest problems: small community libraries where residents share books” (Schaub). Journalists argued this was government overreach on non-issues rather than tackling larger community problems, such as income inequality, homelessness, and aging infrastructure (Solomon; Schaub). The protests and negative press coverage led to, in the case of the municipalities with front yard and detached structure ordinances, détente between stewards and councils as the latter passed amendments permitting and regulating LFLs. Whitefish Bay, Leawood, and Shreveport amended ordinances to allow for LFLs, but also to regulate them (Everson; Topil; Siegel). Ordinances about LFLs restricted their number on city blocks, placement on private property, size and height, as well as required registration with the municipality in some cases. Lincoln officials allowed the church to relocate the LFL from the right of way to church property and waived the $500 fine for the obstruction violation (Sanburn). In addition to the amendments, the protests also led to civic participation and community building including presentations to city council, a petition, and symbolic acts of defiance. Through this protest, neighbours create communities—networks of people working toward a common goal. This aspect of community building around LFLs was unintentional but it brought people together nevertheless.Building a Challenge to Traditional Libraries?LFL marketing and communication staff member Margaret Aldrich suggests in The Little Free Library Book that LFLs are successful because they are “gratifyingly doable” projects that can be accomplished by an individual (16). It is this ease of building, erecting, and maintaining LFLs that builds concern as their proliferation could challenge aspects of library service, such as public funding and patron visits. Some professional librarians are in favour of the LFLs and are stewards themselves (Charter 121; Charter 2608; Charter 9702; Charter 41074; Rumage). Others envision great opportunities for collaboration between traditional libraries and LFLs, including the library publicising LFLs and encouraging their construction as well as using LFLs to serve areas without, or far from, a public library (Svehla; Shumaker). While lauding efforts to build community, some professional librarians question the nomenclature used by the movement. They argue the phrase Little Free Libraries is inaccurate as libraries are much more than random collections of books. Instead, critics contend, the LFL structures are closer to book swaps and exchanges than actual libraries, which offer a range of services such as Internet access, digital materials, community meeting spaces, and workshops and programming on a variety of topics (American Library Association; Annoyed Librarian). One university reference and instruction librarian worries about “the general public’s perception and lumping together of little free libraries and actual ‘real’ public libraries” (Hardenbrook). By way of illustration, he imagines someone asking, “‘why do we need our tax money to go to something that can be done for FREE?’” (Hardenbrook). Librarians holding this perspective fear the movement might add to a trend of neoliberalism, limiting or ending public funding for libraries, as politicians believe that the localised, individual solutions can replace publicly funded library services. This is a trend toward what James Ferguson calls “responsibilized” citizens, those “deployed to produce governmentalized results that do not depend on direct state intervention” (172). In other countries, this shift has already begun. In the United Kingdom (UK), governments are devolving formerly public services onto community groups and volunteers. Lindsay Findlay-King, Geoff Nichols, Deborah Forbes, and Gordon Macfadyen trace the impacts of the 2012 Localism Act in the UK, which caused “sport and library asset transfers” (12) to community and volunteer groups who were then responsible for service provision and, potentially, facility maintenance as well. Rather than being in charge of a “doable” LFL, community groups and volunteers become the operators of much larger facilities. Recent efforts in the US to privatise library services as governments attempt to cut budgets and streamline services (Streitfeld) ground this fear. Image 3: “Take a Book, Share a Book,” a Little Free Library motto. Image credit: Nadine Kozak. LFLs might have real consequences for public libraries. Another potential unintended consequence of the LFLs is decreasing visits to public libraries, which could provide officials seeking to defund them with evidence that they are no longer relevant or necessary. One LFL steward and avid reader remarked that she had not used her local public library since 2014 because “I was using the Little Free Libraries” (Steward). Academics and librarians must conduct more research to determine what impact, if any, LFLs are having on visits to traditional public libraries. ConclusionLittle Free Libraries across the United States, and increasingly in other countries, have generated discussion, promoted collaboration between neighbours, and led to sharing. In other words, they have built communities. This was the intended consequence of the LFL movement. There, however, has also been unplanned community building in response to municipal threats to the structures due to right of way, safety, and planning ordinances. The more threatening concern is not the municipal ordinances used to block LFL development, but rather the trend of privatisation of publicly provided services. While people are celebrating the community built by the LFLs, caution must be exercised lest central institutions of the public and community, traditional public libraries, be lost. Academics and communities ought to consider not just impact on their local community at the street level, but also wider structural concerns so that communities can foster many “great good places”—the Little Free Libraries and traditional public libraries as well.ReferencesAldrich, Margaret. “Big Milestone for Little Free Library: 50,000 Libraries Worldwide.” Little Free Library. 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