Race,Caste, and Christianity

Race and caste are two important historical and social categories that had a significant role during the European colonial period and in the colonies. Christian missionary activities during the colonial period often colluded with the colonial institutions in perpetuating certain accepted worldviews that benefited the colonial authorities. The central argument of this paper is to highlight the impact of a racialized worldview that was prevalent among European colonial powers, its transmission to the colonial context, and its continuing social legacy within Christianity. This paper, through a post-colonial analysis of British mission history and its work in a South Asian context, raises some pertinent questions regarding the tacit role of race and caste in the Christianizing mission. It also argues the need for careful post-colonial analysis of mission practices to challenge reactivation of entrenched structures of discrimination and prejudice.     

Personality and Dissonance Among Mormon Missionaries

The distinguishing characteristics of dissonant missionaries were identified by examining the responses of 58 current and former Mormon missionaries to a questionnaire about missionary service, a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Denial scale, and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) Compulsive and Submissive/Aggressive special scales. The participants, 12 women and 46 men, were mailed the materials after being identified by their friends or acquaintances as current or former missionaries. Women had less satisfying missionary experiences than men and were more likely to report a loss of self-esteem due to missionary service, but were not more dissonant missionaries than men. Missionaries with lower scores on the Denial, Compulsive, and Submissive/Aggressive scales were more likely to question mission policies than subjects with higher scores. Thus, it appears that Denial, Compulsive, and Submissive/Aggressive scale scores can identify potentially dissonant missionaries.     

From great commission to inclusive education: a tangible illustration of missionaries’ legacy

This article analysed missionaries’ roles in the development of general and special education by examining the relationship between the Great Commission and education and the biblical perspective on disabilities as the foundational links between their work and inclusive education. While missionaries have not been directly involved in the practices of inclusive education today, their work in initiating and formalising special education services has facilitated a more welcoming attitude toward individuals with disabilities, and propelled governments around the globe to make special and inclusive education a public responsibility when socio-political environments demand it. To provide a concrete illustration, this article used Hong Kong as an example by examining missionaries’ key involvements and impact in its development of public education from the early colonial era to today’s inclusive education. The missionaries’ legacy in Hong Kong’s inclusive education development lay in their nurturing of Christian educators as supported by a high number of public Christian schools and Christian educators advocated for inclusive education, and in their efforts to formalise special education during the early colonial era (175).     

The Holy Spirit in Mission

God initiated mission and intends to achieve it by work of the Holy Spirit. Thus, mission—which God commands his church to accomplish—belongs to God, not to human agency. Prior to ascending to heaven, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to his disciples, and asked them to wait in Jerusalem. This Holy Spirit is given to enable them to be witnesses of Jesus from Jerusalem to the end of the world. This implies that the church has to partner with the Holy Spirit to fulfil this mission. Missionaries need to consciously work together with Spirit and be directed and guided by the Spirit.     

Christian protesters for democracy in Taiwan: a study of two American missionaries under Taiwanese martial law

Christians played a significant role in the course of Taiwan’s self-determination movements and the pro-democratic Tangwai movement during the 1960s and 1970s. While most researchers laid their focus on the Presbyterian Church ministers, the stories of Methodist pastor Milo Thornberry and Catholic priest Ronald Boccieri have rarely been mentioned. Thornberry helped Peng Ming-min to escape the country and Boccieri sheltered Chen Chu in his parish church. Consequently, the two American missionaries were listed as personae non gratae and expelled from the island by the Kuomintang (nationalist) regime. Although they were involved in the respective political incidents to different degrees, they had some things in common: compassion for native Taiwanese, concern for social justice and human rights, and conviction in witnessing to the gospel by non-violent action and fighting against injustice. This article uses interviews, autobiographies, memoirs, Foreign Ministry archives and newspapers to recount their stories that have not appeared in the historiography of their churches. It discusses how the Catholic and Methodist Churches maintained harmonious relations with the government for the benefit of their evangelistic work during the period of martial law. Finally it looks into the reasons why the two missionaries dared to disobey their churches’ official positions and the Washington government’s instruction that expatriates in Taiwan should not interfere in local politics.     

The Apostolic Faith Mission

The Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) is a classical Pentecostal church born in May 1908, influenced by the April 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. It was also born two years before the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. Between then and now, the AFM followed a lone mission and evangelism journey outside the World Missionary conferences and the conferences on World Mission and Evangelism. Although the AFM grew from South Africa to six continents, its growth was encumbered by racist and colonial perspectives of mission and evangelism. Its first wave of missions was led by Indigenous South Africans at the Revival in Doornfontein and those from the neighbouring countries who worked in mines in South Africa. The second wave included organized missions by white South Africans, who unfortunately had to pull back from Southern African countries because of intensified struggles for liberation. The third wave was by local congregations that formed hubs for missions to specific countries (India and Pakistan). The fourth wave was by Zimbabweans who left their country because of difficult economic conditions. The isolation of the black churches in South Africa based on the influence of apartheid policies allowed black members to develop their own local ecumenical perspectives, which enabled them to have a broader understanding of mission and evangelism. This helped the church to move into the ecumenical world following the unity of the church.     

Freedom of Religion and The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark

This article investigates how Africans in Zululand, South Africa, viewed Lutheran missionaries in the 1950's. The main source is a thorough report Zulu pastor S. A. Mbatha gave in answer to a survey initiated by the Swedish missionary Helge Fosseus in 1957. Fosseus wanted to find out more about the causes of increasing African resistance to mission, church and Christianity. Mbatha replied that missionaries were seen by Africans as enemies in that they shared white South African society's prevailing attitude toward blacks. Missionaries were characterized as exploiters and betrayers. This negative image contrasts strongly with the picture the missionaries painted of themselves as Africans' friends and allies in the struggle against increasing discrimination. The last part of the article discusses possible causes for the large difference between the missionaries' self-understanding and the Africans' image of the missionaries.     

Generations of Catholics in Eastern Africa: A Practice‐Centered Analysis of Religious Change

This article considers how well Martin Riesebrodt's practice‐centered theory of religion addresses religious change among Catholics in eastern Africa. Two arguments are advanced using a generational change scheme. First, Riesebrodt's focus on religious practices assists in understanding many changes that African Catholics and their communities have experienced over time. It acknowledges believers’ perspectives and the impact of missionaries, and it generates comparative insights across different cases. However, Riesebrodt's approach has limitations when developing a comparative perspective on historical transformation in these communities. Therefore, his focus on the objective meaning of interventionist religious practices needs supplementing: (1) capturing religious change within a given religion requires attention both to practices and their subjective appropriation by believers, and (2) in the forging of collective identities, theological reflection by elites helped connect Catholic practices to preexisting worldviews and Catholic practices marked generational change by distinguishing Catholics from other African Christians.     

The Ahmadiyya and the Study of Comparative Religion in Indonesia: Controversies and Influences

As an organization of foreign origin, the existence and contribution of the Ahmadiyya in Indonesia has been a subject of debate. Some scholars ignore it completely as unimportant, while others consider that it has had significant influence. The contribution of the Ahmadiyya to Indonesian Islam most asserted by the movement itself is its efforts to check and respond to Christian missionary activity. In what way has the movement actually made a contribution to that effort? How widespread is the influence of the Ahmadiyya in the discourse on Christianity, in particular, and the study of comparative religion, in general, in Indonesia? Why has the Ahmadiyya paid more attention to the issue of Christianity than other Muslim groups? This article aims to answer these questions by analysing literature on Christianity written and distributed by the Ahmadiyya in Indonesia and the effect this has had on relations between Islam and Christianity in two fields – religious mission and academia. The article presents three propositions. First, Ahmadiyya literature, with its apologetic, polemical and controversial character, had a significant influence on the academic study of comparative religion during two periods of instability: the late colonial era and the first two decades after the declaration of independence in 1945. Second, Ahmadiyya literature on Christianity has been most influential through the way it sets out to create a sense of the superiority of Islam and its compatibility with modernity. Third, for the Ahmadiyya, the issue of Christianity, particularly the death of Jesus, has been used as evidence that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the second Messiah.     

The Search for a Current Mission Model in Cambodia

This paper is a contribution to the debate on the current mission model of the church in Southeast Asia. Scholars from St Elizabeth University in Bratislava, Slovakia, have performed qualitative research to examine the present mission model in Cambodia. Research was conducted on a sample of Catholic missionaries who have worked in Cambodia for a longer period of time. On the basis of this qualitative study, we have outlined and proposed some characteristics for today’s mission model in that country. Features included and emphasized dialogue with Buddhism, formation of spiritually mature people, social promotion and social inclusion, community development, the shift in inculturation regarding value systems, working in small groups, and reconciliation between ethnic communities.     

“Doing Gender” and “Doing Religion” in Science: A Cross-National Examination

Women tend to be both underrepresented in science and overrepresented in organized religion, yet the connection between these two phenomena is rarely examined. With survey data collected among 6,537 biologists and physicists from four national contexts—the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and India—we test whether science as a social field shapes religious expressions and attitudes differently for men and women. Findings reveal a religious gender gap in India and Italy but not in the United States and the United Kingdom. Further, except in Italy, men had higher odds of perceiving religion and science to be in conflict, believing that their colleagues have a negative attitude about religion, and reporting that science made them less religious. Evidence suggests that men in science may disproportionately internalize normative pressures to masculinize by eschewing religion. Our findings have implications for selection into academic science and the practice of religion among men and women in science.     

The Theological Misappropriation of Christianity as a Civilizing Force

The theological misappropriation of Christianity as a civilizing force occurs when individuals convert to Christianity due to deception that ignores the faith-based aspect of Christianity. The history of Western education in India illustrates the hidden curriculum that Christian missionaries employed to disrupt the Indian educational system. This unnerving pedagogy points to the need for a postcolonial theoretical framework that relates the inescapable hybridity of religion and culture where Orientalism has the potential to occur. To press the ongoing urgency of this discussion, I convey how the history of British India connects to my lived-reality as an American Hindu. Overall, I point to hybridity as a lived paradox of ambiguous conflict that embraces interfaith relations. I offer implications for Christian missionaries today to foster authentic interfaith connections without engaging in colonizing ideologies.     

Moratorium and reconciliation in a post-missionary era

The moratorium on Western missionary labour and financial resources has been a matter of lively interest over the past five decades. Postcolonial theologians and missiologists have blamed Western missionaries for introducing Christianity without paying attention to existing cultures of local people. Despite this, the work of Western missionaries has undeniably contributed to evangelization and the advancing of Western civilization in Africa. In this context, this paper considers Colin Morris’s views on the moratorium to prevent sending missionaries and financial resources from the West. Based on an examination of his views, it analyzes two elements that shape the discourse on the moratorium in the post-missionary era: the impact of the moratorium on Christian mission and the need for reconciliation and partnership between the churches in the global North and the global South. This paper concludes that we must promote the interdependence and mutuality of churches in the global North and the global South if the Christian imperative of making disciples of all nations is to be fulfilled.     

Teaching Religion in Indonesia: A Report on Graduate Studies in Java

Established in 2000–2001, the Center for Religious and Cross‐cultural Studies (CRCS) is the only master's level religious studies program at a non‐religiously affiliated university in Indonesia. In many respects, the program is experimental, operating within the dynamic political and religious environment of the Muslim world's youngest and largest democracy. Like other large democracies such as India or the United States, the Indonesian government and courts have their challenges and opportunities in navigating a multiplicity of religions. In Indonesia, this took on particular urgency in the context of religiously‐charged conflict in the 1990's and early 2000's which helped lead to the establishment of the CRCS. This paper seeks to explore how students and key faculty relate to the program's mission and approach to the study of religion while tracing the development of religious studies as a discipline in Indonesia. Special attention is paid to the political and, at times, controversial aspects of approaching religion with secular and pluralistic frameworks and language. It was informed by interviews and surveys conducted between January and May of 2010.     

Mission and Reconciliation

Mission and reconciliation are intrinsically connected because of the inherent vocational objectives of the two in human life. Both are meant to lead to some tangible transformation in the human ecosystem that fosters collegiality and fraternity between and among humans regardless of humanly set boundaries of race, culture, religion, and social classification. Both doubtless come with the massive task of making the objectives experienced by people. Neither are one-off assignments, but require lifetime engagement because of human frailty and susceptibility to do harm whether consciously or unconsciously, particularly the dimension of mission that focuses on reconciliation. Bringing about reconciliation is cumbersome in nature because it involves multilayered analysis and multidimensional approaches. These enable the processes to be deep and broad to avoid a situation where the healing being gained relapses and the building blocks of wholeness collapse. Achieving reconciliation between the victim and the perpetrator or the oppressed and the oppressor is often the most difficult task. Reconciliation is not as easy as it is expressed in biblical narratives. Jesus Christ's mission was to reconcile the world and humanity with the Godhead, and this was accomplished on the cross. That sounds more like a one-off task for Christ, but it was brought about by the ultimate sacrifice. His dying on the cross reminds everyone involved in the mission of reconciliation that it comes with enormous sacrifice, which may lead to the supreme price in some cases. This article engages with different themes, including African concepts of building and sustaining reconciliation and the reconciled as life-giving mission.     

Pushing against Gender Barriers

This article presents the case study of Lilija Otīlija Grīviņa's calling to China. Her ministry is one example of how the practice of mission facilitates self-identification, as a person responds to the call of God regardless of their gender. The major sources of the study are archive materials from the Liebenzell Mission and the Latvian Lutheran Church, as well as Grīviņa's newsletters published in Chinas Millionen. To provide theological background for the missionary service of women, the study also looks at the work of German missiologists Gustav Warneck and Theodore Christlieb. The research uses a main historical comparative methodology to uncover the development of thought of women missionaries in the specific historical context.     

A Scottish Millennial Mission to Jews

This paper investigates how the missionaries of the Church of Scotland sought to convert the Jews in Hungary. The research studies carefully Adolph Saphir's change of faith, his theological views, and his work. His family was the first “fruit” of Scottish missionary activity among the Hungarian Jews in 1843. After scrutinizing his conversion, the study proceeds to map his sphere of work as a missionary. In particular, it examines his millennial views, which gave the impetus to his missionary activity. Finally, the paper demonstrates that he became an ardent supporter of mission to the Jews not only in Britain but also in Central Europe.     

Race,Religion, and Ethics in the Modern/Colonial World

The concept of religion as an anthropological category and the idea of race as an organizing principle of human identification and social organization played a major role in the formation of modern/colonial systems of symbolic representation that acquired global significance with the expansion of Western modernity. The modern concepts of religion and race were mutually constituted and together became two of the most central categories in drawing maps of subjectivity, alterity, and sub‐alterity in the modern world. This makes the critical theory of religion highly relevant for the theory of race, and both of them crucial for ethics. It follows from this, not only that religion and race have been profoundly intertwined in modernity, but also that any ethics that seeks to take seriously the challenges created by modernity/coloniality has to be, at least to some extent, decolonial.     

关于湖北磨盘山神权社会的考察

关于明清之际欧洲传教士在华活动的研究,学人一般把目光投向学术层面,研究的对象多是在中西文化交流中做出过重要贡献的传教士。事实上,传教士作为一个群体来到中国,其最终目的是传播基督福音,他们不仅在中国的京城及重要城市建立了传教会,还把影响扩展到偏远的乡村,因而当中国政府用武力实行禁教的时候,乡村教会成为传教士和基督徒的避难所。明清全国乡村天主教的发展以鄂北的磨盘山最为典型,本文将此作为特殊的个案进行讨论,希望从中找出中国乡村天主教发展的若干特点。通过调查研究,作者发现,乡村天主教在清朝禁教期间并没有绝迹,而是一直延续到近代社会。因而,基督教来华历史的四个时期的划分对于天主教来说似乎不太客观。     

Exceptionalism or Chinamerica: Measuring Religious Change in the Globalizing World Today

Religion is changing fast in this era of globalization. Major global trends include the growth of Muslims, the shrinking percentage of unaffiliated, and the rapid rise of Christianity in global China. By 2030, China is likely to become the largest Christian country in the world while retaining large numbers of Buddhists, Muslims, and folk religious believers. To capture religious changes more accurately, social scientists of religion must sharpen their measurement tools regarding religiosity; pay more attention to the reality of nonalignment among religious identity, belief, and practice; and acknowledge the reality of nonexclusive/multiple religious beliefs, practices, and identities. Scholars must also take responsibility for developing a clear and nuanced definition of religion, abandon exceptionalist thinking, and seek to discover common patterns of religious change across societies. Conceptual and measurement tools at the disposal of social scientists of religion should enable us to perceive and understand the converging changes of religion in China, the United States, and other societies, without ignoring their historical differences and contemporary particularities.