This selection of texts introduces students and researchers to the multi- and interdisciplinary field of mission history. It apprises them with current discussions, insights and theories. The four parts of this book acquaint the readers with methodological considerations and recurring themes in the academic study of the history of mission. Part one revolves around methods, part two documents approaches, while parts three and four consist of thematic clusters, such as mission and language, medical mission, mission and education, women and mission, mission and politics, and mission and art. The text-selection represents a wide variety of disciplines, authors and backgrounds. The texts were chosen because they address the complexities involved in studying the history of Christian mission. Critical Readings in the History of Christian Mission is suitable for course-work and other educational purposes.
Martha Frederiks is Professor for the Study of World Christianity at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is a contributing editor of the series Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History (Leiden: Brill), co-editor of Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity and with Lucien van Liere editor-in-chief of Exchange: Journal of Contemporary Christianities in Context (Leiden: Brill).
Dorottya Nagy is Professor of Theology and Migration at the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam (PThU), the Netherlands. Migration studies and awareness for responsible methodology lie at the heart of her academic interests. She is president of the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies (CEEAMS) and editor of its journal. Together they published Religion, Migration, and Identity. Methodological and Theological Explorations (Leiden: Brill, 2017) and World Christianity. Methodological Considerations (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
VOLUME 1
Introduction
âDorottya Nagy and Martha Frederiks
Part 1: Methods
1 Recent Trends in the Historiography of Christianity in Southern Africa
âNorman Etherington
2 Writing of Past Times: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Mission History
âAndrea Schultze
3 âTrained to Tell the Truthâ: Missionaries, Converts, and Narration
âGareth Griffiths
4 The Quest for Muted Black Voices in History: Some Pertinent Issues in (South) African Mission Historiography
âTinyiko Sam Maluleke
5 Sources in Mission Archives
âAdam Jones
6 The Midwest China Oral History Collection
âJane Baker Koons
7 From Beyond Alpine Snow and Homes of the EastâA Journey Through Missionary Periodicals: The Missionary Periodicals Database Project
âTerry Barringer
8 Missionaries as Social Commentators: The Indian Case
âGeoffrey A. Oddie
9 Thinking Missiologically about the History of Mission
âStanley H. Skreslet
10 Jesuit Scientific Activity in the Overseas Missions, 1540â1773
âSteven J. Harris
11 The Global âBookkeepingâ of Souls: Quantification and Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Missions
âMartin Petzke
12 The Visual Embodiment of Women in the Korea Mission Field
âHyaeweol Choi
13 On Using Historical Missionary Photographs in Modern Discussion
âPaul Jenkins
14 The Anthropology of Christianity: Unity, Diversity, New Directions
An Introduction to Supplement 10
âJoel Robbins
15 Expanding Mission Archaeology: A Landscape Approach to Indigenous Autonomy in Colonial California
âLee M. Panich and Tsim D. Schneider
16 Schooling on the Missionary Frontier: The Hohi Mission Station, New Zealand
âIan W. G. Smith
17 Objects of Expert Knowledge: On Time and the Materialities of Conversion to Christianity in the Southern New Hebrides
âJean Mitchell
VOLUME 2
Part 2: Approaches
18 Eusebius Tries Again: Reconceiving the Study of Christian History
âAndrew F. Walls
19 From Missions to Mission to beyond Missions
The Historiography of American Protestant Foreign Missions since World War II
âDana L. Robert
20 The Overly Candid Missionary Historian: C. G. A. Oldendorpâs Theological Ambivalence over Slavery in the Danish West Indies
âAnders Ahlbäck
21 The Colonization of Consciousness
âJohn and Jean Comaroff
22 Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity
âRyan Dunch
23 The Culture Concept and the Mission of the Roman Catholic Church
âMichael V. Angrosino
24 The Problem of Colonialism in the Western Historiography of Christian Missions
âJane Samson
25 Theology and Mission between Neocolonialism and Postcolonialism
âJoerg Rieger
26 Translating the Word: Dialogism and Debate in Two Gikuyu Dictionaries
âDerek Peterson
27 The Gospel, Language and Culture: The Theological Method in Cultural Analysis
âLamin Sanneh
28 Women and Cultural Exchanges
âPatricia Grimshaw and Peter Sherlock
29 Understanding the World-Christian Turn in the History of Christianity and Theology
âPaul Kollman
30 Transcontinental Links, Enlarged Maps, and Polycentric Structures in the History of World Christianity
âKlaus Koschorke
31 World Christianity as a Theological Approach: A Reflection on Central and Eastern Europe
âDorottya Nagy
VOLUME 3
Part 3: Themes I
Mission and Language
32 Bunyan in Africa
Text and Transition
âIsabel Hofmeyr
33 Translation Teams
Missionaries, Islanders, and the Reduction of Language in the Pacific
âJane Samson
34 Christianizing Language and the Dis-placement of Culture in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea
âBambi B. Schieffelin
35 Exploring Nineteenth-Century Haida Translations of the New Testament
âMarcus Tomalin
Mission and Politics
36 Race, History, and the Australian Faith Missions
âJoanna Cruickshank
37 British Missions and Indian Nationalism, 1880â1908: Imitation and Autonomy in Calcutta and Madras
âChandra Mallampalli
38 Medical Missionaries and Modernizing Emirs in Colonial Hausaland: Leprosy Control and Native Authority in the 1930s
âShobana Shankar
Mission and Social Change
39 Christian Mind and Worldly Matters
Religion and Materiality in Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast
âBirgit Meyer
40 Mission or Empire, Word or Sword? The Human Capital Legacy in Postcolonial Democratic Development
âTomila Lankina and Lullit Getachew
41 A Saturated History of Christianity and Cloth in Oceania
âMargaret Jolly
Missionaries
42 Christian Missionaries as Anticolonial Militants
âKaren E. Fields
43 Saint Apolo from Europe, or âWhatâs in a Luganda Name?â
âEmma Wild-Wood
44 âCultureâ as a Tool and an Obstacle: Missionary Encounters in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan
âMathijs Pelkmans
45 âItâs Really Where Your Parents Wereâ: Differentiating and Situating Protestant Missionary Childrenâs Lives, c. 1900â1940
âHugh Morrison
Mission, Women and Gender
46 âGod and Nature Intended You for a Missionaryâs Wifeâ: Mary Hill, Jane Eyre and Other Missionary Women in the 1840s
âValentine Cunningham
47 Female Emancipation in an Imperial Frame: English Women and the Campaign against Sati (Widow-Burning) in India, 1813â30
âClare Midgley
48 Married to the Mission Field: Gender, Christianity, and Professionalization in Britain and Colonial Africa, 1865â1914
âElizabeth Prevost
VOLUME 4
Part 4: Themes II
Mission, Education, and Science
49 From Heathen Kraal to Christian Home: Anglican Mission Education and African Christian Girls, 1850â1900
âModupe Labode
50 From Transformation to Negotiation: A Female Mission in a âCity of Schoolsâ
âJulia Hauser
51 Some Reflections on Anthropologyâs Missionary Positions
âJohn W. Burton with Orsolya Arva Burton
52 Natural Science and Naturvölker: Missionary Entomology and Botany
âPatrick Harries
Mission, Health, and Healing
53 The Medical Mission Strategy of the Maryknoll Sisters
âSuzanne R. Thurman
54 Converting the Hospital: British Missionaries and Medicine in Nineteenth-Century Madagascar
âThomas Anderson
55 Chinese Perspectives on Medical Missionaries in the 19th Century: The Chinese Medical Missionary Journal
âGao Xi
56 Language, Medical Auxiliaries, and the Re-interpretation of Missionary Medicine in Colonial Mwinilunga, Zambia, 1922â51
âWalima T. Kalusa
Mission and Other Faith Traditions
57 Towards a Missionary Theory of Polytheism: The Franciscans in the Face of the Indigenous Religions of New Spain
âSergio Botta
58 Some Hindu Perspectives on Christian Missionaries in the Indic World of the Mid Nineteenth Century
âRichard Fox Young
59 Methodists and Muslims in the Gambia
âMartha T. Frederiks
60 Evangelicalism, Islam, and Millennial Expectation in the Nineteenth Century
âAndrew Porter
62 The Indian Conquest of Catholic Art. The Mughals, the Jesuits, and Imperial Mural Painting
âGauvin Alexander Bailey
63 The Truth-Showing Mirror: Jesuit Catechism and the Arts in Mughal India
âGauvin Alexander Bailey
64 Africanising Christian Imagery in Southern African Missions
âElizabeth Rankin
Index of Names
Researchers and students interested in the history of Christian Mission and its methodological aspects, working in the field of the early modern and modern global history, colonial history, missiology, World Christianity, gender studies, missionary linguistics, and the anthropology of Christianity.