From Missions to Mission to Beyond Missions: The Historiography of American Protestant Foreign Missions Since World War II

Dana L. Robert

n 1964,R. Pierce Beaver, professorof historyof missions at unity. Similarly, American secular historians were captivated by I the University of Chicago Divinity School, wrote From an interpretation of Protestant missions as a symbol of American Missions toMission. In his book, this eminent American mission identity. Importantto both secular and churchhistorians was the historian reviewed the early part of the twentieth century and transition from missions to mission, from a pluralistic enterprise saw a Christianity that had ridden to success on the coattails of to the symbol of either national or ecclesiastical cooperation. But, Euro-Americanimperialismandprestige. Two worldwars,how­ as the social changes that Beaver described in 1964 accelerated ever, had demonstrated to growing nationalistmovements in the throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, both the religious vision developing world that Christianity was not part of a superior and the secular vision narrowed. By the late 1960s, there was culture and that, furthermore, it was an agent of colonialism. scarcely a work written on American Protestant missions that Beaver wenton to analyze the currentclimatefor world missions, did not focus on their role in promoting imperialism. Historical which included militant nationalism, urbanization, seculariza­ concernfor mission died like the chairs of missiology in mainline tion, repudiation of the West, and revivals of non-Christian Protestantinstitutions: interestwaseithergoneor confined to the religions. To move forward in such a context, he said, missions negative. must begin to cooperate among themselves and with younger, The 1980s witnessed an explosion of renewed scholarly non-Western churches on behalf of Christ's mission. Beaver saw interest in the history of American Protestant missions. The embodied in the World Council of Churches the beginning of acknowledgment of pluralism both in American society and new approaches to mission that would stress reconciliation over within American Protestantism freed mission history from its competition, and peace and justice issues alongside proclama­ captivity to unity. Intellectual historians discovered a full range tion. Missions from the West should become a common world­ of American mission theory that had lain forgotten in mission wide enterprise; pluralism must give way to unity. libraries for decades. Feminist historians recognized the domi- Beaver's small volume, its prescience notwithstanding, il­ lustrates the danger of historians drawing on the past in order to predict thefuture. The ecumenical movement that Beaver touted as the source of new forms of mission had within ten years so For many seminaries and modified the definition of mission that confusion over its mean­ ing was Widespread in mainline churches. When Beaver retired churches, "foreign missions" from the University of Chicago in 1971, his post was eliminated, became "universal mission," a practice followed in numerous mainline institutionsduring the only to evaporate 1970s. "Foreignmissions" had become "universalmission," only to evaporate into generalizations. Oddly enough, the North into generalizations. American evangelical missionaries whom Beaver described in 1964 as "sectarian and partisan," and as disrupting the unity of mission "for the first time in three hundred years" (p. 98), nance of women in the missionary movement and used the surpassed mainline missionaries in number and vigor. Today, ample documentation provided by mission sources to uncover with pluralism celebrated and competition among religions hidden angles on the history of American women. The "sectar­ fierce, with nondenominational missions dwarfing the efforts of ian" evangelicals that Beaver had excoriated in 1964 reached the old mainline, with indigenous Pentecostalism exploding in such a level of institutional maturity and ecclesiastical domi­ nooks and crannies around the world, theprospect for mission in nance that critical historical analysis became both possible and the twenty-first century is dynamic and diverse but bears little necessary. Church historians realized that missions were a cen­ resemblance to the top-down, unified witness Beaverenvisioned tral preoccupation not only of the mainline but of ethnic Ameri­ in 1964. It is the thesis of this essay that we have moved from cans, women, assorted subcultures, and Roman Catholics as "mission" to "beyond missions." welL From the ashes of "mission" reemerged "missions," a lively The road from "missions" to "mission" and "beyond mis­ and diverse enterprise, no longer able to fit comfortably into the sions," traveled so painfully by American Protestantism since outgrown garb of denominational history, Christian unity, or World War II, has been trod as well by the historians of North American identity. American missions. Mission history prior to World War II was Before the historiographic trail from mission singular to largely a denominational affair, told from the perspective of missions plural is explored, a caveat is in order. This article seeks efforts by individual denominations to spread their form of to cover only "foreign" missions, defined as those efforts to Christianity around the globe.' Beaver and other mission histo­ spread Protestant Christianity from North America to cultures rians of the post-World WarII generation envisioned the Protes­ and contexts outside its borders. The United States as a mission tant foreign mission enterprise through the lens of ecumenical field itself, including outreach to immigrants and to indigenous peoples of North America, deserves another full essay and cannot be considered adequately without including Roman Ca­ Dana L. Robert, a contributing editor, is Associate Professor of International tholicism. Arguments can be made that foreign missions should Mission, Boston University School ofTheology, Boston. include missions to native Americans prior to the conquest of

146 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH their territory by the United States, or that the convenient but International Bulletin missiologically archaic term "foreign" should be replaced by the nongeographic term "cross-cultural." However, for the sake of of Missionary Research convenience and to remain true to the way that American Prot­ Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the estants have generally used the term "foreign," this study will Missionary Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary exclude the historiography of North America as itself a mission Research 1977. Renamed INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH field. 1981.

Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by Missions and the Mission of America Overseas Ministries Study Center 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, U.S.A. The search for national identity, for a central unifying idea of Telephone: (203) 624-6672 what it means to be an American, dominated the work of Ameri­ Fax: (203) 865-2857 can intellectual historians during the mid-twentieth century as they addressed the subject of Protestants andforeign missions. Editor: Associate Editor: Assistant Editor: When the field of American intellectual history emerged be­ Gerald H. Anderson James M. Phillips Robert T. Coote tween the two world wars, historians anchored the meaning of Contributing Editors America to its concept of national mission. Unable to base their Catalino G. Arevalo, S.J. Dana L. Robert unity on common ethnic backgrounds, Americans apparently David B. Barrett Lamin Sanneh drew their identity from common purpose-shared commit­ Samuel Escobar Wilbert R. Shenk ment to democracy, voluntarism, individual rights, and free Barbara Hendricks, M.M. Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P. enterprise. Norman A. Horner Charles R. Taber With the United States entering the fray against both Fas­ Graham Kings Tite Tienou cism and Communism, Ralph Gabriel published The Course of Gary B. McGee Ruth A. Tucker American Democratic Thought?To Gabriel and his followers, the Mary Motte, F.M.M. Desmond Tutu public function of the mission idea was so compelling that it Lesslie Newbigin Andrew F. Walls diverted attention from its historic roots in American Protestant C. Rene Padilla Anastasios Yannoulatos missions to non-Christians. When Gabriel, Perry Miller, and others created "American intellectual history" in the 1930s and Books for review and correspondence regarding editorial matters should be 1940s, they loosened the idea of mission from its theological addressed to the editors. Manuscripts unaccompanied by a self-addressed, context, secularized it, and made it the basis for Protestant­ stamped envelope (or international postal coupons) will not be returned. dominated national identity. For American intellectual histori­ Subscriptions: $18 for one year, $33 for two years, and $49 for three years, ans, to be an American meant de facto to adopt the Protestant postpaid worldwide. Airmail delivery is $16 per year extra. Foreign sub­ worldview. To follow the Protestant worldview meant to be in scribers must pay in U.S. funds only. Use check drawn on a U.S. bank, mission. Therefore, the syllogism concluded, to be an American Visa, MasterCard, or International Money Order in U.S. funds. Individual was to participate in mission. Foreign missions, in the plural, copies are $6.00; bulk rates upon request. Correspondence regarding sub­ became a manifestation of the singular mission of America. scriptions and address changes should be sent to: INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF By the mid-twentieth century, intellectual historians had MISSIONARY RESEARCH, P.O. Box 3000, Denville, New Jersey 07834, U.S.A. subsumed the specifically religious dimensions of the American Advertising: mission impulse under the issue of nationalism. In 1952, Perry Ruth E. Taylor Miller, whohadrescuedtheintellectuallife of AmericanPuritans 11 Graffam Road, South Portland, Maine 04106, U.S.A. from oblivion, published the important essay "Errand into the Telephone: (207) 799-4387 Wilderness," in which he traced the origins of American identity

Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in: Bibliografia Missionaria Christian Periodical Index By the late 1960s most Guide to People in Periodical Literature works on American Guideto Social Science and Religion in Periodical Literature Missionalia Protestant missions focused Periodica Islamica only on their role in Religious and Theological Abstracts Religion Index One: Periodicals promoting imperialism.

Opinions expressed in the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. to the Puritans' desire to propagate pure religion through emi­ gration from Europe." The abundance of land, however, worked Copyright© 1994by Overseas MinistriesStudyCenter.All rightsreserved. against disciplined purity and created the national mission from the failure of the religious one. Adapting to their environment, Second-class postage paid at New Haven, Connecticut. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF the American Puritans did not abandon their "errand into the MISSIONARY RESEARCH, P.O. Box 3000, Denville, New Jersey 07834, U.S.A. wilderness" but transformed it into the process of Americaniza­ tion. Miller's essay symbolized for a generation of thinkers the ISSN 0272-6122 essential unity of American tradition and identity, and the cap­ tivity of religious motivations to secular ones. Following World War II, a new generation of church histo-

October 1994 147 rians deepened the focus on mission's relationship to national­ in fact the result of "cognitive dissonance" by Congregational­ ism. With the World Council of Churches being founded in 1948 ists, who soughtto compensatefor their loss of powerat homeby as the "United Nations of Christendom," the 1950s was the extending it abroad to places like the Pacific Islands. One of the heyday not only of "consensus history" but of the Protestant finest examinations of missionary involvement in American ecumenical movement, a powerful force that deeply influenced foreign policy was Joseph Grabill's study of the Protestant mis­ mainline church historians. Although they acknowledged that sionary impact on the Near East. Running against the current of spiritual motives were primary in Protestant mission, church seeing missions as supportive of American imperialism, Grabill historians like R. Pierce Beaver, William Richey Hogg at South­ argued that missionaries promoted internationalism and the ern Methodist University, and Robert T. Handy at Union Theo­ protection of minorities in the Ottoman Empire." logical Seminary nevertheless examined missions through the Othermore recent monographs on American missions' rela­ prismof unity, either in terms of national identity or as a basis for tionshipto nationalismandimperialismincludeRosa del Carmen ecumenical cooperation.4 Bruno-jofre's study of Methodist mission education in Peru." Robert Handy's interest in church-state relations, the ecu­ Based on primary sources and written by a Peruvian, Methodist menical movement, and in other Protestant efforts to initiate the Education inPeru argues thatMethodisteducationalmissionaries kingdom of God on earth, such as the social gospel and home imported American ideologies couched in theological formula­ missions, made him a perceptive analyst of Protestant mission's tions and the theories of John Dewey. In 1986, Kenton Clymer contribution to nationalism. Handy explored how turn-of-the­ produced a finely nuanced study of American missionary atti­ century Protestants used foreign missions to propagate so-called tudes toward American colonialism and Filipino culture." Christian civilization. Missions became an imperialistic crusade Following the pattern set by intellectual historians, the his­ to spread Western civilization throughout the world, as well as toriography of American Protestants and foreign missions the motivating force behind the ecumenical movement. Mission­ evolved from identifying the Protestant missionary impulse as oriented Protestants "felt themselves part of one crusade for the the source of American identity (from missions plural to mission singular), to mission as the source of both ecclesiastical and national unity, and from nationalism to imperialism. Given the Robert Handy explored how historical reality that Americans engaged in political imperial­ ism far less than Europeans, who carved out empires in Asia, Protestants used foreign Africa, and Latin America, it has been important to define the missions to propagate precise relationship between missionary activity and imperial­ ism. Two valuable articles have been written on the nature of IIChristian civilization." American missionary imperialism in general. The first of these was by Arthur Schlesinger,[r.; his essay "The Missionary Enter­ prise and Theories of Imperialism" equated American missions evangelization, the Christianization, and the civilization of the with cultural imperialism." Missionaries may not have person­ world." In the first twenty years of the twentieth century, Protes­ ally wielded economic or political power, he argued, but they tants, according to Handy, "easily idealized the culture and represented the purposeful aggression of American culture democracy of America. There was a considerable transfer of againstthe ideas and culturesof otherpeople. In 1982,WilliamR. religious feelings to the civilization and the nation." Missionary Hutchison reasoned that the broad support of Americans for forces had unwittingly become involved in "religious national­ foreign missions at the turn of the century was because of the ism.:" shared belief that "Christianity as it existed in the West had a The idea that Protestant foreign missions were a tool of 'right' not only to conquer the world, but to define reality for the nationalism and, by extension abroad, imperialism, proved to be peoples of the world.v" Apologists for American missions were an irresistible thesis that has generated numerous monographs not so much agents of American colonialism as the ideologues of from the late 1950s until the present. After consensual interpre­ the movement, providing a "moral equivalent" for American tations of American history were challenged by the social up­ imperialism. heavals of the 1960s, and the ecumenical movement splintered The tendency inherited from intellectual history to evaluate on the shoals of secularized theologies and political disunity, Protestant foreign missions in relation to American nationalism mission increasingly became a metaphor not for national virtue has had both strengths and weaknesses as an interpretive frame­ but for imperialistic excesses. The mission of America and, by work. The greatest strength has been its refusal to evaluate the association, Protestant foreign missions no longer represented mission movement apart from the larger stream of American America's virtue but its fatal flaw. history. American missionaries, after all, retained American Monographson Americanmissionsandimperialismtended attitudes no matter where they worked. The benefits, however, to focus on a particular geographic region or moment in history. must be held in tension with the weaknesses of nationalist One of the earliest works to explore the foreign policy implica­ missionhistory. For onething,nationalistmissionhistoryhas too tions of missionary nationalism was an excellent book produced often turned the mission impulse into a hireling at the service of in 1958 on China by Paul H. Vargo Varg concluded that the national identity. In the 1950s, parallel support for national and struggle initiated by missionaries between Chinese and Western church unity made missionaries into heroes, the shock troops of culture was so severe that "American nationalism threatened to the eminentlycompelling"Americanway";by the late 1960s,the triumph over the religious.:" In 1961,Kenneth MacKenzie wrote missionary had becomethe villainof Americanforeign policy. In about the Philippines, showing how foreign missions were a either case, until the 1980s missionary thought and activity was reason for President McKinley's decision to keep the Philippines seldom studied in its own right, nor was the role of the mission­ as a colonyin 1898.7 The role of NewEngland in earlynineteenth­ aryas transmitter of cross-cultural information to America taken century missionary imperialism was explored by John A. An­ seriously. In sinologist John K. Fairbank's words, "The invisible drew 111.s Andrew argued that American foreign missions were man of American history" was the missionary."

148 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH Another weakness of nationalist mission history was that its can missionthought,butit traced a key ideafrom its originsin the focus on national identity led it to concentrate on the so-called late nineteenth-century evangelical mainline to conservative mainline churches as the "thought leaders" of American Protes­ groups in the present. In 1970 the publication in Holland of J. A. tantism. Consensus intellectual history was biased toward texts DeJong's workon millennialismandmissions traced a particular produced primarily by white male New Englanders, to the theme in mission thought prior to the beginning of explicitly exclusion of women, conservative evangelicals, Anabaptists, American foreign missions." Charles Chaney in 1976 published African-Americans, Pentecostals, and other groups deemed a thorough study of mission thought in the seventeenth and marginal or insignificant. Popular piety was ignored in favor of eighteenth centuries." In 1977 appeared a seminal essay by formal theological and political pronouncements. Intellectual missiologistand historian Charles Forman of Yale, "A History of sources superseded other forms of documentation, with the ForeignMissionTheory."23 In the missionlibraryof YaleDivinity social biography of the missionary force seldom examined ex­ School, Forman had discovered 150 serious works written by cept where it fed nationalist identity or Christian unity, as in the American mission theorists between 1890 and 1950, virtually case of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions." none of which had been read by academic historians. Roger One of the most egregious failures of nationalist mission history was, surprisingly enough, its parochialism. With the exception of studies of the ecumenical movement or of mission­ Between 1890 and 1950, ariesin China, rarelywasProtestantmissionaryactivityassessed in relation to the mission work of other nations, or in relation to some 150 serious works the indigenous cultures and religions impacted by the mission­ were written by American ary. Seldom was the question raised about how people of other cultures viewed the mission enterprise; indigenous converts mission theorists, but became by implication "running dogs" of American imperial­ virtually all were unread by ism. In effect, the study of Protestant foreign missions tended to academic historians. function as a subsidiary of a political agenda, eitherin the service of national identity or in the debunking of the same. Bassham placed American mission thought in its global context Discovery of Mission Theory in a work on ecumenical, evangelical, and Roman Catholic mission theology since World War 11.24 By virtue of their pattern of using selected mission thought as a The academic study of American mission theory received a basisfor constructing national identity, until the 1980sAmerican major boost in 1977 when missiologist Gerald H. Anderson intellectual historians seemed uninterested in the full range of revived the periodical Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary mission thinking, regardless of its undeniable importance for Research Library, which in 1981became the INTERNATIONAL BULLE­ American history and culture. The causes for neglect were sev­ TIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH. Anderson had written a doctoral eral: the captivity of missions to the national mission of America; dissertation in 1960 that was the first comprehensive study of the embarrassment of secular historians at ideas smacking of twentieth-century Protestantmission theory."With a historian's either conservative Christianity or "proselytization"; and the trainingandsensibilities,Andersonbegana series on the legacies neglect of cross-cultural issues in historical studies generally. of major mission theorists of the nineteenth and twentieth centu­ Interest in mission theory was confined to the missiologists, who ries, recruiting experts to write biographical sketches of such were seldom in dialogue with intellectual historians. The note­ mission thinkers as E. Stanley Jones, Daniel Fleming, Rufus worthy exception was Beaver, whose commitment both to Anderson, and A. J. Gordon. The series continues today, and missiology and to history resulted in writings with "crossover" every quarter the mission thought of another hitherto neglected value. In the 1950s he produced two of the earliest articles missiontheorist is broughtto light. Probably more than anything addressing American mission theory from a historical perspec­ else, the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN'S legacy series has created schol­ tive." arlyinterestin missiontheoryamongmissiologistsandevangeli­ In 1967, Beaver collected the works of the most important cal church historians. Besides the series, the INTERNATIONAL BULLE­ nineteenth-century mission theorist, Rufus Anderson of the TIN publishesotherarticles relevantto Americanmissiontheory.26 American Board." In rediscovering Anderson, Beaver uncov­ In 1988, Anderson's own article "American Protestants in Pur­ ered the source of much mission theory that Americans had long suit of Mission: 1886-1986" appeared in a centennial volume for taken for granted, particularly the indigenous church principles the American Society of Church History." His article was a of self-support, self-government, and self-propagation. Another helpful overview of both mission thought and activity over a valuable source book for mission thought was Beaver's collec­ century. One further recent Anderson article requires mention, tion of early American missionary sermons." In 1968he contrib­ "Mission Research, Writing, and Publishing: 1971-1991," which uted a groundbreaking overview of American missionary moti­ provides an overview of the entire field of mission research, vation." Although outside the scope of this article, Beaver also including mission history." Currently Anderson is editing a wrote pioneer scholarly works on the relationship of missions to biographical dictionary of Christian missions. Scheduled for American Indians." publication by Simon & Schuster, it will be the first-ever work of In the 1970s,a smattering of works on the history of mission its kind. thought appeared to whet the appetite of historians. In 1970 Mission theory moved out of the missiological ghetto and Denton Lotz wrote a dissertation at the University of Hamburg, into mainstream history with the 1987 publication of William R. "The Evangelization of the World in This Generation': The Hutchison's eagerly awaited history of American Protestant Resurgence of a Missionary Idea Among the Conservative mission theory." As an intellectual historian rather than a Evangelicals." While Lotz's dissertation was never published, it missiologist, Hutchison examined mission theory "as Ameri­ wasimportantbecausenot only did it dealseriouslywithAmeri­ can." While granting integrity to the body of mission thought,

October 1994 149 Hutchison's book flowed out of intellectual history's quest for overview of the subject is Walter Williams's exploration of the national identity. Errand to the World represented the first book­ way in which missions in various denominations stimulated lengthattempt to grapple with a full range of mission thought. Its interest in Africa among African-Americans and thus prepared sources were nevertheless limited almost entirely to "hightexts" the way for pan-Africanism." Sylvia Jacobs edited a volume that from the Reformed tradition,broadlydefined. Hutchison'sbook, included articles on African-American missionaries, motiva­ while a brilliantpieceof work, shouldbe viewed as thebeginning tions, and missionary ideology." The third important book of rather than the end of mainstream historical research into Prot­ 1982 on African-Americans was edited by David W. Wills and estant mission theory. Richard Newman." Their volume contained valuable essays on Hutchison's focus on the"Americanness" of Protestant mis­ prominentantebellummissionaries,suchas DanielCoker,Francis sion thought has been shared by historians of non-Western Burns, Alexander Crummell, and Lott Carey. Wills and Albert Christianity. In 1970 Norman Etherington wrote "An American Raboteau are coediting "African-American Religion: A Docu­ Errand into the South African Wilderness." Etherington applied mentary History Project," which will contain considerable infor­ his extensive knowledge of South African mission history to mation on African-American contact with Africa, including for­ show how American Board efforts to evangelize the Zulus in the eign missions. 1830s were an attempt to reproduce "the American experience Although brief overviews exist in broader denominational among the primitive peoples of Africa."? An important example histories, book-length treatments of African-American missions of viewing American missions as quintessentially Americanwas by denomination are rare. An exception is Sandy D. Martin's an essay by Scottish professor Andrew Walls, "The American history of black Baptist missions to Africa." In 1989, James T. Dimension in the History of the Missionary Movement.":" Walls Campbell wrote a dissertation on the relationship betweenblack is probably the most profound analyst of global Protestant mis­ Americans and South Africans, the role of the African Methodist sion history today, and his article analyzed the particularities of both American thought and culture as evident in Protestant missions. The history of Protestant mission theory in its fullness is just Until 1990 there was coming into its own; increasingly, secular scholars are realizing virtually no examination of that they cannot generalize aboutmissionariesbutmusttake into account the ideological tradition out of which they operated, not Protestant evangelical to mention their social location. The historical studyof Protestant missions as a whole. mission theory has its limitations, however. For one thing, as essentially an exercise in intellectual history, it faces the same problems of sources as does nationalist mission history. Another Episcopal Church in educating South Africans, and debates over problem is its tendency not to be grounded in study of actual "industrial education" for blacks." Biographies of important missionary practice. Until studies of mission theory can be cross­ black denominational mission leaders that have appeared re­ checked with how such theories played themselves out in differ­ cently are of James Theodore Holly, founder of the Episcopal ent mission fields, and in comparison with non-American Church in Haiti; Lott Carey, first African-American missionary missiologies, the full implications of mission thought are un­ to Liberia; Alexander Crummell, Episcopal missionary; Henry knowable. Lacking also have been historical examinations of McNeal Turner, African Methodist Episcopal bishop and pan­ mission theory in the broader context of American theology. As Africanist; and William Sheppard, Presbyterian missionary to in the case of nationalist mission historiography, the focus of the the Congo." study of Protestant mission theory so far has been largely limited Many ethnic Protestant denominations such as Lutherans, to understanding American identity. Mennonites, and Moravians have received more attention for their work with immigrants or their substantial work with Na­ Protestant Missions and Pluralism tive Americans than for overseas missions." With overseas mis­ sion work organized relatively late, the historiography of tradi­ One fruitful by-product of the collapse of consensus over Ameri­ tionally ethnic denominations is not as well developed as that of can identityin the 1960sand 1970swasthe unshacklingof foreign the Protestantmainstream. Nevertheless, a numberof full-length missions from national purpose. Historians began to realize that accounts appearedin the1970sand 1980s.3YArticles on particular foreign missions were not activities confined to male New En­ aspects of these missions are occasionally found in denomina­ gland Congregationalists in the early nineteenth century but tional periodicals and newsletters.'? were intrinsic even to apparently marginal Protestant groups, ethnic minorities, and women. By the 1980s, pluralistic mission Missions and Evangelicalism history became possible, with the relationship of various groups One of the most important directions in the pluralization of to nationalism only one of the questions asked of the data. Ethnic Protestant mission history has been recent study of twentieth­ and genderanalysis, the techniques of social and cultural history, century evangelicals. Although evangelicals have been the most and increased historical awaren~ss by denominations ranging active proponentsof foreign missions since 1945,until1990there from Mennonites to Southern Baptists to Nazarenes to Assem­ was virtually no examination of evangelical missions as a whole. blies of God produced a range of new studies, although it must The reason for such neglect was probably that most critically be said that most of the denominational literature is still being trained church historians were biased toward church unity and neglected by the academy. saw twentieth-century evangelicals to be fissiparous and on the margins of American history. The first attempt at a general Missions and Ethnicity interpretation appeared as the result of a conference sponsored In 1982, three books appeared on the mission history of African­ by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, pub­ Americans. Despite its coverage of a narrow time period, the best lished in 1990underthe title Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals

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School of l n sercuh u ral SJudiu 13800 Biola Avenue, LaMirada, California 90639 andForeign Missions, 1880-1980. The volume contained valuable phyis primarilya sourceofspiritualinspiration,andthe activistic essays on conservative evangelical mission theory, evangelical orientation that provides support for missions but considers missionaries in several parts of the world, and a very important historical analysis to be a waste of time. An important exception essay on conservative missions by American historian Joel A. to the biography-as-hagiography tendency with a focus on Carpenter." Probably the greatest contribution of Earthen Vessels evangelicals was Ruth Tucker's biographical history of missions was that it opened the way tor further studies on the topic of published in 1983.52 evangelicalismand missions. It also included an article by Grant The biggest problem in writing twentieth-century evangeli­ Wacker that explored the views of liberal Protestants toward cal history is that of sources. Activistic evangelicals are notori­ other religions." ously poor at keeping records, especially when their theology There have been several good studies of twentieth-century predisposes them to look toward an imminent second coming of evangelicals in actual mission situations, although what exists is Christ. The age of the telephone has also preempted traditional only a drop in the bucket of what is possible." The most detailed source material such as letters, personal journals, and regular analysis of an evangelical/fundamentalist mission in relation to mission correspondence. Fortunately, places like the Billy Gra- the indigenous culture in which it worked is David Sandgren's study of the Africa Inland Mission in Kenya." Sandgren's re­ searchwas remarkable in its use of oral interviews obtained from indigenous converts, but its use of missionary documentation The future of world was narrow. The area in which the study of evangelical missions Protestantism belongs more has excelled is in-house denominational or parachurch institu­ to Pentecostalism than to tional histories. Although the in-house materials are of varying quality and are usually pioneer attempts to chart the basic the old "mainline." parameters of the mission society's work, some of them contain critical insights." In 1993, the Wesleyan/Holiness Studies Center at Asbury ham Center Archives at Wheaton College and the Assemblies of Theological Seminary held a conference on the theme "Mission God Archives are collecting oral histories of evangelical and in the Wesleyan/Holiness Traditions," which should result in a Pentecostal missionaries. Another important resource is the Ida volume on the Holiness movement in American missions, to be Grace McRuer Missions Resource Centre, sponsored by edited by David Bundy. When Pentecostalismemerged from the missiologist Jon Bonk at Providence College and Seminary in Holiness movement, it carried with it the Holiness movement's Otterburne, Manitoba. The center collects ephemeral material commitment to missions. At present, no survey of Pentecostal such as fund-raising literature and prayer letters sent free of mission history exists, although the fine work of Gary McGee on charge by nearly six hundred evangelicalmission organizations. the Assemblies of God must be mentioned." An in-house peri­ odical that frequently contains high-quality articles on Pentecos­ Missions and Women tal mission history is Assemblies of God Heritage, edited byarchi­ Aside from work on evangelicals, the greatest amount of recent vist Wayne Warner. Finally, reference must be made to the historicalwork on a subgroup in Protestantmissions has beenon Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, which con­ women. Since the late nineteenth century, women have been in tains valuable entries on Pentecostal missionaries, mission orga­ the majority in the mission field, and in all denominational nizations, and mission theory." traditions they have dominated educational and social work, as The surge of interest in evangelical history in general has well as mission support in local churches. In terms of the trans­ stimulated a number of works on the "home base," the context mission of American culture abroad, the role of missionary outof which twentieth-centuryconservativeProtestantmissions women has been paramount. Although the early twentieth cen­ emerged. Bible schools provided most of the training for evan­ tury saw a massive amount written by women on women and gelical missionaries, and Virginia Lieson Breretonexplored their missions, little of this penetrated the male-dominated history history in 1990.48 Timothy Weber examined the ideological de­ profession. The bias toward intellectual history also kept the velopments that produced the turn-of-the-century conservative contributions of missionary women hidden from view because missionary movement, including missions to the [ews." Dana women tended to produce "popular" writing. Robert's doctoral dissertation on mission theorist Arthur T. Once again missiologist R. Pierce Beaver pioneered the way Pierson, published in Korean in 1988, looked at the transition for historians when he wrote All Loves Excelling: American Protes­ from denominational missions to faith missions during the same tant Women in World Mission. 53 An institutional history of the time period." women's missionary movement, Beaver'sbookreflected his bias Evangelical and Pentecostal mission history from many toward Christianunity and therefore concentrated on women in angles will continue to increase in importance as interpreters the mainline churches and the movement toward ecumenism. gain historical distance from the topic, and as it becomes self­ Consequently,therewasno referenceto twentieth-centuryevan­ evident that the future of world Protestantism belongs more to gelical or Pentecostal women in the first edition. A revised Pentecostalism than to the old "mainline." The story of how edition issued in 1980 claimed that the women's missionary Pentecostalism has affected missionary activity and emerging movement was "the first feminist movement in North America" indigenous Christianity is just beginning to be told." Topics in but failed to define feminism or put the material into the context the greatest need of future research include evangelical mission­ of women's history. Beaver's volume is still useful as an institu­ ary attitudes toward other cultures and religions, the relation­ tional overview of mainline women in mission in the nineteenth shipbetweenAmericanand non-Westernevangelicals,andstud­ and early twentieth centuries. ies of evangelical work "in the field." The most serious barriers Bythe late 1970sfeminist historians hadbegunto appreciate to evangelical mission history are the tendency toward the importance of studying missionary women for understand­ hagiography among evangelicals, for whom missionary biogra­ ing gender relations in America. As a popularmovementinvolv­

152 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH ing millions of women, the women's missionary movement the first book on women in mission to cover twentieth-century became a filter through which women historians could analyze evangelical women. the roles of Protestantwomenin America. BarbaraWelteropened Denominational historians have produced material of qual­ the topic with her essay "She Hath Done What She Could: ity on women and missions in their own tradition. Noteworthy Protestant Women's Missionary Careers in Nineteenth-Century among these are studies of missionary women in the Southern America."?' Welter argued that although women's careers as Baptist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Methodist, Congrega­ missionarieswerevariedandfulfilling, missioncareersfor women tional, and Canadian Methodist denominations." A number of typified the phenomenon of men's abandoning an occupation to denominational women's organizations have issued popular womenwhentheylost interestin it.In 1980,Joan Jacobs Bromberg books containing biographical sketches of prominent missionar­ issued a study of the Judson family, Adoniram and his three ies or home base leaders." One of the most illuminating bio­ wives Ann, Sarah, and Emily. Adoniram and Ann Judson were graphical studies of women leaders at the homebase is LouiseA. the pioneer missionaries of the Congregationalists and later the Cattan'streatmentofHelenBarrettMontgomeryandLucy Water­ Baptists." Although Brumberg's group biography was an im­ bury Peabody. The two American Baptist women were impor­ portant social study of evangelicalism, its chief importance was tant American leaders of the ecumenical women's missionary in showing how missionary wives as role models contributed to movement in the twentieth century." the self-understanding of American Protestant women. The discovery of women missionaries by feminist historians In 1984, Jane Hunter forcefully demonstrated the value of has been valuable for American history. Analysis of women examining women missionaries as representatives of American missionaries permits study in a microcosm of self-conscious, female culture in a doctoral dissertation, that was later pub­ articulate groups of women who either deliberately or despite lished. Relying on the correspondence and journals of mainline themselves were bearers of American culture to other groups. China missionaries, Hunter uncovered how female missionaries Feminist history of the women's missionary movement has been were representative of the struggle of middle-class Protestant outstanding in its sensitivity to cultural issues, even though the women between public outreach and private home life. Women explanatory category of separate male and female "spheres" has missionaries were "the most successful emissaries" of American probablybeenoveremphasized. Missionarywomenrepresented cultureabroad."Continuingthe explorationofmissionarywomen Protestant Christianity both in its most self-denying and in its as "civilizers," or promotersofWestemcultureandsocial change, mostculturallyimperialistic forms. The weakness of the feminist Leslie A. Flemming in 1989edited a volume onwomen mission­ history approach toward missionary women, however, parallels aries and social change in Asia." the weakness of nationalist mission history. Religious piety has The largestcontingentofAmericanProtestantwomenabroad sometimes been treated as a screen for domesticity or for social in the earlynineteenthcenturyweretheCongregationalmission­ controlof non-Westernwomen,or as culturalimperialism,rather ary women in Hawaii. The Hawaii women were in a unique thanbeing taken seriously onits ownterms, thus reflecting a bias position to reproduce New England female culture in a con­ against considering religiosity as a category separate from race, trolled setting where it could be studied, and ample documenta­ tion through correspondence exists. Studies of these women began to appearin the 1980s.CharMillerdiscussed the impactof Missionary women domestic responsibilities on their missionary work in "Domes­ ticity Abroad: Work and Family in the Sandwich Island Mission, represented Protestant 1820-1840."58 A book-length examination of the stresses and Christianity both in its strains of missionary life, particularly of enforced domesticity and gender discrimination, appeared in 1989 by Patricia most self-denying and in Grimshaw." The most recent and well-nuanced examination of its most culturally the Hawaiian missionary wives, particularly sensitive to their imperialistic forms. religious motivations, is Mary Zwiep's 1991 study of the first group of Congregational missionary women." Consideration of the home base of the woman's missionary class, or gender. Feminist analysis of women missionaries has movement began with the publication of a book by Patricia Hill, concentrated on American gender identity and ideology, much the first in-depth analysis of the mainline women's missionary as nationalist history focused on American identity. movement at its height." Hill argued that the success of the Unsurprisingly, feminist historians have studied almost exclu­ women's missionary movement was based on its gender-based sively mainline Protestant women during the height of the ideology, and the collapse of the movement occurred when imperialist era. Except for self-avowed evangelical historians, professionalization and secularization undercut its distinctive the twentieth-century conservative evangelical woman has been rationale. The most important inter-Protestant women's organi­ relegated to marginality, as retrograde in the development of the zation at the height of the missionary movement was undoubt­ women's movement. edly the Young Women's Christian Association. The history of A recent theme in women's missionary history is to move the missionary wing of the YWCA has been ably chronicled by away from preoccupation with how missionaries did or did not Nancy Boyd." reflect the domestic women's movement and social change, Gender analysis from a conservative evangelical perspec­ toward examination of women's motivations, piety, and mission tive first appeared in 1988, when Ruth Tucker produced a bio­ theory bothin their ownright and in relation to the total mission­ graphical history of women missionaries." Although Guardians ary enterprise. Although written in different styles and for of the Great Commission is anecdotal rather than systematic, it different audiences, MaryZwiep's and Ruth Tucker's aforemen­ contains helpful observations on domesticity, gender relations, tioned works are examples of this approach. Emphasizing a and mission theory scattered throughout the biographical comparative approach so as to analyze how social context af­ sketches. The greatest significance of Tucker's book is that it was fected the developmentof women's mission theory, missiologist

October 1994 153 and historian Dana Robert has produced several articles in tory of Presbyterian missions. Both Presbyterian and Mennonite preparation for a forthcoming history of American women's mission historians hope to meet with colleagues in the Third mission theory." World to stimulate the collaborative writing of mission history The examination of American women's mission history by from both sides. non-Westerners is another new development that promises to The advent of denominational oral history projects in the help historians evaluate American culture and theology from the 1980s has pulled together some of the resources necessary for so-called receiving end. The December 1986 issue of Indian fresh evaluations of twentieth-century denominational history. Church History Reviewfocused on the roles of women missionar­ The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, for example, has ies in India." Kwok Pui-lan's recently published study of Chi­ been engaged in an oral history project on women in mission. nese womenand their appropriationof Christianity is a model of Denominational church history magazines have frequently pub­ how Western missionary women's materials need to be used to lished articles on particular aspects or fields of American mission evaluate the missionary movement from broader perspectives history and are one of the best sources for local studies."The role than those defined by American agendas." of American denominations in specialized forms of mission is another area needing research." Missions and Denominationalism A subsidiary focus of the emerging interest in denomina­ Finally, in the discussion of the pluralization of Protestant mis­ tional history is the renewed appreciation for missionary biogra­ sionary history, it is important to revisit the idea of mainline phy. From the time of David Brainerd's diary in the eighteenth denominational history. Now that the hold of nationalist inter­ century, to Harriet Newell's journal in the nineteenth, to the pretations of mainline mission history has been broken, the time numerous biographies of Ann and Adoniram Judson in the has come to look at the mission work of Methodists, Presbyteri­ nineteenth and twentieth, missionary biography has inspired ans, American Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, and oth­ Protestants to become missionaries. Evangelical Christians con­ ers withneweyes. Howdid denominational mission movements tinue to read missionary biographies of twentieth-century he­ not only reflect American identity and create church unity but roes." Historians are realizing, however, that missionarybiogra­ change over time in connection with the wider debates in Ameri­ phy is not necessarily hagiography; critically done, it can illumi­ can Christianity? How have missions transmitted knowledge of nate aspects of American identity, cross-cultural relations, and other cultures back to American Protestants? How have the theological development. A case in point is CharMiller's biogra­ social-reform agendas of the mainline been evaluated by indig­ phy of the Bingham family of Hawaii over multiple genera­ enous historians? Rather than seeing Protestant mission as a tions." Where, we might ask, is the study of the Dulles family, monolith, were there differences among denominations that led which beganwith Myronand HarrietWinslow in Ceylon in 1819 to differing relationships with non-Christian cultures and reli- and continued into India, culminating in John Foster Dulles as secretary of state under President Eisenhower? Where is the critical study of the Samuel Moffetts or the Horace Underwoods, Rare is the denominational whose families have spent a century in Korea? In addition to the missionary dynasties, the lives of "ordi­ history that integrates the nary" missionaries should be mined for the perspective they contributions of men and provide on American history. Privately printed and limited­ edition missionary journals are sometimes issued by family women into a balanced members. Important missionaries sometimes write their autobi­ whole. ographies.TThese first-person accounts are the primary sources of twentieth-century missions and should be collected by librar­ ies interested in mission history, but frequently they are not gions? How has the drastic change in mission thought and the considered of sufficient interest to justify the expense. Some decline of the mainline missionary force since the 1950s affected missionarybiographies are publishedby university presses with the vitality and self-understanding of American Protestantism? an interest in particular geographic areas. Probably the part of From the perspective of the twenty-first century, how should the world that has generated the largest number of mainline historians evaluate the record of mainline missions in the twen­ missionarybiographies is China."EdwinMellen Press publishes tieth century, the most productive century in mission history a mission series that includes scholarly missionary biographies thus far? Rare is the denominational mission history that inte­ and collections of writings." Autobiographies and biographies grates the contributions of men and women into a balanced of leading home-base leaders and ecumenists have also found a whole, or that considers missions as essentially a relationship market.80 Among missionarybiography, denominationalhistory between different cultures rather than implicitly an imposition magazines, and archival projects, there is reason to hope that by one on another. mainline mission history is at the beginning of a much-needed The rewriting of mainline denominational mission history is renaissance. one of the key tasks for mission history in the 1990s. Beginnings have been made, but much more needs to be done. The interest Mission History in International Perspective in taking a new look at mainline mission history was exemplified by a recent volumeof reprinted essays edited by church historian The study of Protestant foreign missions has been important to Martin E. Marty." In 1992,Ian Douglas completed a dissertation American history because it has shown how commitment to the on Episcopal mission structures and theology covering the mid­ spread of Christian faith has helped to shape American identity, twentieth century." Also in 1992 appeared Gerald De Jong's both in religious and in secular realms. The continued impor­ study of the Reformed Church in China." James Cogswell, tance of mission history, however, lies not only in what it will former associate general secretary for overseas ministries of the reveal about changing American self-perceptions butin its func­ National Council of Churches, is writing a comprehensive his­ tion as a bridge to understanding the United States in relation to

154 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH BUILDING BRIDGES Pi ~ fJ FGOSPEL... the rest of the world. The triumphalistic tendency to see the American missionaries as agents of modernization." H. K. world as the playground of Yankees is being left in the past. New Barpujari developed an important study of Baptist missionaries world realities demonstrate that American Protestantism's im­ among the Assamese. He showed how through their mission portance for the future might lie not so much in its own destiny work, translation work, and study of the people's culture, mis­ but in the role it has played in the rise of Christianity in the non­ sionaries played a vital role in the identity formation and rejuve­ Western world. Even as Protestantism struggles to hold its own nation of the Assamese in Northeast India." Studies of mission­ in the West, the growth of the church in Africa, Asia, and Latin aries by indigenous scholars demonstrate convincingly how the America is shifting the dynamic center of Christianity to the values and practices offered by missionaries were used by con­ Southern Hemisphere. Future considerations of American Prot­ verts for their own ends; converts were not passive victims of a estant foreign missions must take into account that the old Rome monolithic American imperialism." is giving way to the new; Boston and Nashville are yielding to The influenceof Americanmissionaries on indigenousevan­ Seoul and Nairobi. gelism and church-planting in non-Western cultures is another Increasingly, the significance of missions for American his­ topic addressed by indigenous church historians. To take the tory lies in international relationships. Scholars should no longer influence of American Protestant missions on South African study missionaries without recognizing how they were affected churches as but one example, two works by South Africans have by indigenous peoples, or how the cultures in whichtheyworked traced the influence of conservative American missionaries on shaped their mission theories. Historians should study how the the founders of black Zionist churches." A Rhodes University interaction of Christianity with other religions has shaped its dissertation dealing with the American sources of Indian message in different settings. Since American Protestantism Pentecostalism in South Africa was written by Gerald John resides in a global village, it must be studied in relation to Pillay." In 1992, the influence of American Methodism on black European, African, Asian, and Latin American Christianity. We Methodism in South Africa was explored in an article by South indeed have moved "beyond missions." African missiologist Daryl M. Balia. Balia showed how the fa­ Indigenous historians of Christianity bring their own agen­ mous revivals of American Methodist William Taylor were in das to the source material and can thereby enrich with new fact dependent on the indigenous preacher Charles Pamla." perspectives American self-understanding. One theme that in­ Increasingly, works on church-planting written by indigenous ternational scholars have isolated from their study of American historians show that American missionaries interacted with and Protestant missions is the role played by missions among the were dependent on indigenous Christians for their success in larger forces of modernization in non-Western cultures; Ameri­ evangelism. The "lone ranger" Western missionary capable of can missions were frequently an important path to Westerniza­ single-handedly evangelizing thousands of people was a rare or tion and/or nationalism." Ethicist Masao Takenaka examined nonexistent phenomenon. how American missionaries contributed to the transition from The new era of world Christianity demands that American feudalism during the Meiji Restoration in japan." In 1967, histo­ mission history be considered as part of a whole, as part of the rian Sushi! Madhava Pathak studied the interplay between Hin­ dynamic interplay of cultures and religions that characterizes duism and Protestant missionary thinking, including the social ourworld today. The global nature of Christianity in many ways modernization and Hindu renaissance stimulated by Christian­ gives a greater urgency to the studyof Protestant mission history ity."Sociologist Chung Chai-sik has written on how progressive than it has had previously. There is a greater legitimacy in the Koreans in the late nineteenth century deliberately accepted academy to studying American foreign missions today than

Noteworthy Announcing and published by Edinburgh University Press, the first issue includes articles by Andrew Walls, Kwarne Bediako, Edmond The World Council of Churches has announced that the next Tang, J. I. H. McDonald, and R. P. Tiongco. The journal Conference on World Mission and Evangelism will begin on welcomes contributions from scholars all over the world. November 25,1996,in Salvador, Bahia,in northeastern Brazil. Subscriptions may be sent to: Edinburgh University Press, 22 The focus of the conference for five hundred or more partici­ George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LF,Scotland. pants will be the relationship between Gospel and culture, Since 1988 the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RE­ under the theme "Called to One Hope: The Gospel and Di­ SEARCH has been indexed in the H. W. Wilson Company's verse Cultures." One of the issues to be addressed at the Humanities Index, which is published in print and as an elec­ conference willbe the debate aboutproselytismand"competi­ tronic database on CD-ROM, on-line, and on magnetic tape. tive mission," according to Ana Langerak, who is executive Now, in response to the users of the Humanities Index,the full director ofthe World Council ofChurches' Unit II-Churches text of the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN is available as part of the in Mission: Health, Education, and Witness. electronic formats of this index. Beginning with the January The Edinburgh Review of Theology and Religion is a new 1994issue, articles are scanned electronically at the time they journal designed to reflect the challenges to Western-domi­ are indexed, recorded as ASCIIsearchable text,and then made nated theology from the religious cultures of the non-Western available to Humanities Indexsubscribers on CD-ROM,on-line, world, the encounter of the Christian faith with other faiths, and on magnetic tape. and the rethinking in the socialsciencesbroughtby the impact The full text of the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY ofnon-Western cultures. Edited by ProfessorJames P.Mackey RESEARCH can be found also in Information Access Company

156 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH there was twenty five years ago, a factor perhaps of the dawning their place as part of a larger world that they helped to create, but realizationthatChristianityis globaland thatmissionhistorycan that they can neither organize nor control. provide an entree into the larger reality. Increasingly, Protestant foreign missions are being studied Directions for Further Research by internationalteams of scholars whobringwiththemexpertise in various languages and histories that American historians The journey from "mission" to "beyond missions," from unitary often lack. One example of the team-based approach is the interpretation of the American missionary enterprise toward projected eight-volume study to be called "Christianity in Its decentralized and pluralistic interpretations, is a welcome trend Religious Contexts," to be edited by patristics scholar Frederick in the historiography of American Protestant missions since Norrisalong withsevenothers.The projectseeksto examinehow World War II. A rebirth of mission history that includes denomi­ Christian mission has interacted with other religions, and how national missions butis more inclusive than the old formulas has other religions shaped Christianity at points of initial contact. the potential to reimage the history of American Protestantism. Missiologists Andrew Walls of the Centre for the Study of The essence of American Protestantism-a crucial source of its Christianityin the Non-WesternWorld(UniversityofEdinburgh) vitality-has lain in what William Hutchison and others have and Lamin Sanneh of Yale Divinity School have held a series of called its activism; at many times in American history, Protestant consultations bringing together American with European mis­ activism and missions were coterminous. Even in periods of sion historians, along with secular historians in related fields. relatively reduced missionary activity, foreign missions repre­ Sinologist Daniel Bays of the University of Kansas is heading a sented the cutting edge of theological application, international project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts to create a database relations, andconscious culturalinteractionon the partof Ameri­ of pre-1949 Christianity in China. Chinese and American schol­ can Protestants. ars are working collaboratively to make the database possible, In addition to what it shows about American Protestantism, which, when completed, will be a valuable addition to what mission history can be used as a prism through which to illumi­ exists in Westernmissionarchives. In anothermajorPew-funded, nate many aspects of American culture. Freed from its prison as team-based project, Indologist Robert Frykenberg of the Univer­ a subject of interest only in theological seminaries and Bible sity of Wisconsin is coordinating research into Christianity in colleges, the history of Protestant missions needs to be taken in South India, including transcultural interactions betweenIndian new directions, some of which have already been suggested by and Western Christians. Although American Protestant foreign the scholarship reviewed above. In internationalperspective, the missions constitute only one aspect of the projects listed here, study of American foreign missions provides a bridge to Asia, they will be analyzed in broadercontexts and by people from the Africa, and Latin America. Just as transatlantic dialogue with so-called receiving end as well as the sending end of missionary Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mediated activity. cultural change and provided a mirror for American self-under­ In the nineteenth century, foreign missions captured the standing, so has traffic with Asia, Africa, and Latin America imagination of American Protestants and turned their eyes to­ increasingly defined North America in the twentieth century. ward the rest of the world. In the twentieth century, North Notonlyhavemissionaries carried Americancultureabroad,but American Protestantismbecame oneof the most powerfulforces they also havebeen the chief interpreters of non-Western culture for world mission in the history of Christianity. In the twenty­ in churches and communities throughout the heartland of first century, American Protestant foreign missions must take America. There is urgent need to study missionaries as messen­

databases available through various on-line services including church's influential early leaders, located in Kansas City, Dialog. Please contact on-line services directly for more infor­ Missouri, at the Nazarene international headquarters. The mation. Readers can also find the text in reference databases in institutewill carry out research on worldevangelizationstruc­ many academic and public libraries. Contact your local library tures and methods to address issues confronting the church in to find out if it offers an InfoTrac database. the twenty-first century. Robert H. Scott, former director of The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Division for the Nazarene World Mission Division, has been named direc­ Global Mission, has completed its project "Women in Global tor of the new institute. Mission: An Oral History," which includes 97 narratives of Lutheran women missionaries who served overseas between Personalia 1930 and 1980. The taped narratives have been transcribed, Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, has ap­ lightly edited, and individually bound in 81/2-by-11-inch type­ pointed CarlosF.Cardoza-Orlandi,a native ofPuerto Rico,as script volumes. Copies ofthese interviews have been deposited Assistant Professor of World Christianity, as of September with each ELCA seminary library and at Fuller Theological 1994.An ordained minister of the Disciples of Christ, he is a Seminary, School of World Mission, Day Missions Library at Ph.D. candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. Yale Divinity School, and the BillyGraham Center Library at David Adeney, former missionary to China before World Wheaton College. War II with China Inland Mission, died May 13, 1994, in TheChurchofthe Nazarenehas establisheda research think Berkeley,California. He was 82.He also formerly directed the tank, the Hiram F. Reynolds Institute, named for one of the missions department for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

October 1994 157 gers of non-Western culture, critics of American foreign policy, tionship of missions to interfaith understanding is needed to and mirrors reflecting American identity for the "folks back correct the unidimensional portrait that now exists. home." Study of mission institutions in their social contexts is an­ In significant ways, foreign missionaries have created other area desperately needing research. In the early twentieth America's image of the rest of theworld in the twentieth century. century, American mainline Protestants supported seven inter­ The number of missionary children who have become seminary denominationalwomen'sinstitutionsofhigherlearningin China, professors, shapers of American foreign policy, or leaders in Japan, and India, as well as thousands of lower-level schools. international business has often been noted but seldom studied. Western medical practice was mediated to the rest of the world As multicultural elites, foreign missionaries have played a major by missionaries, and mission discoveries in the field helped to role out of proportion to their actual numbers in the conduct of changetheWesternunderstandingof diseaseand treatment. The the United States abroad. The American obsession with commu­ impact of missionary institutions on their social, economic, and nism in the 1950s, for example, needs to be studied in relation to cultural contexts on both sides of the water has yet to be ana­ the missionary mediators who were critics of anti-Christian or lyzed, although a beginning is being made in current doctoral­ Marxist political systems. The influenceofanti-Communistformer level research. Missionary institutions are an unexplored source China missionaries should be balanced against that of a mission­ of important transcultural interactions and social change. aries who supported the nationalist struggles of indigenous As areas of further research into American Protestant for­ peoples, such as the efforts of Ho Chi Minh. The "missionary eign missions are mapped out, and the complex and diverse factor" in mid-twentieth-century foreign policy is but one area picture of American Protestant missions takes shape, the histo­ that needs critical scholarly analysis. riographic task will of necessity revolve around interpretation. Taken in its fullness, what has the mission impulse meant for The developmentofinternationalethicalmovementsaround American Protestantism and for American culture, society, and such issues as world peace and human rights cannot be under­ theology? How has the mission experience, broadly defined, stood apart from missionary influence. Another neglected area affected the larger course of American history and of world of research in mission history is the role played by foreign history? In 1964, R. Pierce Beaver unrealistically prophesied in missions in the pacifism and focus on world friendship that From Missions to Mission a future for Protestant missions that emerged between the two world wars. The extensive dialogue flowed from ecumenical unity and confidence. But despite his between Protestant women in the United States and Japan prior failure as a prophet, his assessmentof missionaryhistoriography to World War II is but one small example of an important but made in 1968 still stands today. Writing for a study called unstudied contribution of foreign missions to internationalism. Reinterpretation in American Church History, Beaver noted of The full story of missions and refugee relief has never been told. American mission history that interpretation needed to take Missions have frequently been analyzed in relation to American place before reinterpretation could occur." nationalism. Unexamined but equally important is the contribu­ A generation after Beaver, the tools for interpretation are tion made by missions to internationalism and America's ability being shaped and honed. The historiographic task began with to transcend its own narrow self-interest. denominational missions and from there proceeded to mission. In the theological arena, the nexus among mission theory, Following a narrowing of historical interest in mission, mission missionary thought, and Americanunderstanding of non-Chris­ studies collapsed in the late 1960s. The last decade has seen a tian religions has been seriously neglected. Changing American revival of mission history with the growing realization that it has attitudes to non-Christian religions could be charted by review­ the potential to enliven numerous other fields of inquiry and to ing missionary literature of the past century. Although formal provide an entree into non-Western Christianity. At last the interfaith dialogue would not exist without the centuries of historiography of Protestant foreign mission is maturing, grow­ missionary effort that have gone before, theologians, philoso­ ing through adolescence into adulthood, through and beyond phers, and comparativists seldomacknowledge that the ground­ missions to perspectives that may reveal the global historical work for their study was laid by the very missionaries they significance of American Protestant foreign missions for the first sometimes denigrate." Sound historical scholarship on the rela­ time.

Notes------­ 1. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A Historyofthe Expansion ofChristianity, 7 5. Robert Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937-45). Even Latourette's Realities (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 135, 139. magisterial history of the expansion of Christianity, which sought to 6. Paul H. Varg, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats: The American transcend denominational boundaries, is largely a compilation of Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890-1952 (Princeton: various denominational histories. Princeton Univ. Press, 1958), p. ix. 2. Ralph Henry Gabriel, TheCourse ofAmerican Democratic Thought: An 7. KennethMacKenzie, TheRobe andtheSword: TheMethodist Church and Intellectual History Since1815 (New York: Ronald Press, 1940). the Rise of American Imperialism (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs 3. Miller's essay was reprinted in a book of his essays entitled Errand Press, 1961). intotheWilderness (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap Press, 8. John A. Andrew III, Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New 1956). England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800-1830 (Lexing­ 4. See R. Pierce Beaver, Ecumenical Beginnings in Protestant World Mis­ ton: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1976). sion: A History of Comity (New York: Thomas Nelson & Son, 1962); 9. Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and theNear East: Missionary William Richey Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations: A HistoryoftheInter­ Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927 (Minneapolis: Univ. of Min­ national Missionary Council and Its Nineteenth Century Background nesota Press, 1971). (New York: Harper, 1952);Robert T. Handy, We Witness Together: A 10. Rosa del Carmen Bruno-Iofre, Methodist Education in Peru: Social History of Cooperative HomeMissions (New York: Friendship Press, Gospel, Politics, and American Ideological and Economic Penetration, 1956). 1888-1930 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1988).

158 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH 11. Kenton Clymer, Protestant Missionaries in thePhilippines, 1898-1916: ries," Journal ofPresbyterian History47, no. 2 (1969):124-48; and "The An Inquiry into the American Colonial Mentality (Urbana: Univ. of Churches and the Indians: Consequences of 350 Years of Missions," Illinois Press, 1986). in American Missions in Bicentennial Perspective, ed. Beaver(Pasadena, 12. Arthur Schlesinger,[r., "The Missionary Enterprise and Theories of Calif.: William Carey Library, 1977), pp. 275-331. Imperialism," in TheMissionary Enterprise in China andAmerica, ed. 21. J. A. Dejong, As the Waters Cover theSea: Millennial Expectations in the John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974),pp. 336­ RiseofAnglo-American Missions, 1640-1810 (Kampen: Kok, 1970). 73. 22. Charles Chaney, The Birth of Missions in America (South Pasadena, 13. WilliamR.Hutchison, "AMoralEquivalentfor Imperialism:Ameri­ Calif.: William Carey Library, 1976). cans and the Promotion of 'Christian Civilization,' 1880-1910," in 23. CharlesForman, "A Historyof ForeignMissionTheory," in American Missionary Ideologies in theImperialist Era: 1880-1920, ed. Hutchison Missions in Bicentennial Perspective, ed. R. Pierce Beaver (Pasadena, and Torben Christensen (Aarhus, Denmark: Christensens Calif.: William Carey Library, 1977), pp. 69-140. Bogtrykkeri, 1982), pp. 167-78, quotation on p. 174. 24. Roger Bassham, Mission Theology, 1948-1975: Years of Worldwide 14. Among secular historians, sinologists have made the greatest use of Creative Tension: Ecumenical, Evangelical, RomanCatholic (Pasadena, American missionary documentation to illuminate their field of Calif.: William Carey Library, 1979). research and thus represent an exception to the academic neglect of 25. Gerald H. Anderson, "The Theology of Missions: 1928-1958" (Ph.D. missions. Some of the bestscholarly studies of American missionar­ diss., Boston Univ., 1960). ies both collectively and individually are by sinologists. In particu­ 26. For example, see Dana L. Robert, "The Origin of the Student Volun­ lar, the research of Harvard professorJohn King Fairbankand of his teer Watchword," International BulletinofMissionary Research 10, no. students and followers represents the finest body of work that 4 (1986): 146-49; Nathan D. Showalter, "Crusade or Catastrophe? analyzes the role of missions in relation to foreign policy, American The Student Missions Movement and the First World War," ibid. 17, nationalism, internationalism, and cultural interaction. Fairbank's no. 1 (1993):13-17. interestin the "missionaryfactor" transformedthe historyof United 27. Gerald H. Anderson, "American Protestants in Pursuit of Mission: States-China relations. For valuablestudies of American Protestant 1886-1986," in A CenturyofChurch History: TheLegacy ofPhilipSchaff, missions in China, see, for example, Paul A. Cohen, China and ed. Henry Warner Bowden (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Press, 1988), pp. 168-215, reprinted in the International Bulletin of Antiforeignism, 1860-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963); Missionary Research 12, no. 3 (1988):98-118. Kwang-Ching Liu, ed., American Missionaries in China: Papers from 28. Gerald H. Anderson, "Mission Research, Writing, and Publishing: Harvard Seminars (Cambridge: Harvard Univ., East Asian Research 1971-1991," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 15, no. 4 Center, 1966);James C. Thomson, While China Faced West: American (1991):165-72. Reformers inNationalist China, 1928-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. 29. WilliamR.Hutchison, Errand totheWorld: American Protestant Thought Press, 1969);Shirley S.- Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The and Foreign Missions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987). Chinese Y.M.C.A., 1895-1926 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 30. Norman Etherington, "An American Errand into the South African 1970); Sidney A. Forsythe, An American Missionary Community in Wilderness," Church History 39, no. 1 (1970) : 62-71. China, 1895-1905 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971); Jessie 31. Andrew Walls, "The American Dimension in the History of the Gregory Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, 1850-1950 (Ithaca, Missionary Movement," in Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals and N.Y.:Cornell Univ. Press, 1971);John K. Fairbank, ed., TheMission­ Foreign Missions, 1880-1980, ed. Joel Carpenter and Wilbert Shenk ary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 1-25. Press, 1974); Ellsworth C. Carlson, TheFoochow Missionaries, 1847­ 32. Walter L. Williams, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1880(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974);PhilipWest, Yenching 1877-1900 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1982). University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952 (Cambridge: 33. Sylvia M. Jacobs, ed., Black Americans andtheMissionary Movementin Harvard Univ. Press, 1976); James Reed, TheMissionary Mind and Africa(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982).Jacobs has written American East Asia Policy, 1911-1915 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. articles on the missiological contributions of African-American Press, 1983);Suzanne Wilson Barnett and John King Fairbank, eds., women, including "Three Afro-American Women: Missionaries in Christianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings (Cam­ Africa, 1882-1904," in Women inNew Worlds: Historical Perspectives on bridge: Harvard Univ., Committee on American-East Asian Rela­ theWesleyan Tradition, vol. 2,ed. RosemaryKeller, LouiseQueen,and tions of the Department of History, with the Council on East Asian Hilah Thomas (Nashville: Abingdon, 1982), pp. 268-80; and "Their Studies, 1985); Jessie Gregory Lutz, Chinese Politics and Christian 'Special Mission': Afro-American Women as Missionaries to the Missions: The Anti-Christian Movements of 1920-28 (Notre Dame, Congo, 1894-1937," in Black Americans, ed. Jacobs, pp. 155-76.) Ind.: Cross Cultural Publications, 1988). 34. David W. Wills and Richard Newman, eds., Black Apostles at Home 15. See CliftonPhillips, "The StudentVolunteerMovementand Its Role and Abroad: Afro-Americans and theChristian Mission from theRevolu­ in China Missions, 1886-1920," in TheMissionary Enterprise in China tion to Reconstruction (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982). andAmerica, ed. JohnK.Fairbank(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 35. Sandy D. Martin, Black Baptists and AfricanMissions: TheOriginsofa 1974),pp. 91-109; ValentinH. Rabe, TheHomeBase ofAmerican China Movement, 1880-1915 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1989). Missions, 1880-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978). 36. James T. Campbell, "Our Fathers, Our Children: The African Meth­ 16. R. Pierce Beaver, "North American Thought on the Fundamental odistEpiscopalChurchin the UnitedStatesandSouthAfrica" (Ph.D. Principles of Missions During the Twentieth Century," Church diss., StanfordUniv., 1989).Seealso an earlierdissertationby Josephus History21, no. 4 (1952):3-22; "Eschatology in American Missions," R. Coan, "The Expansion of the Missions of the African Methodist in Basileia. Walter Freytag zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. J.Hermelinkand H. Episcopal Church in South Africa, 1896-1908" (Ph.D. diss., Hartford J. Margull (Stuttgart: Evang. Missionsverlag, 1959), pp. 60-75. Seminary, 1961). 17. R. Pierce Beaver, ed., To Advance the Gospel: Selections from the 37. David M. Dean, Defender of the Race: James Theodore Holly, Black WritingsofRufus Anderson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1967). Nationalist Bishop (Boston: Lambeth Press, 1979); Leroy Fitts, Loft 18. R. Pierce Beaver, ed., Pioneers in Mission: The Early Missionary Carey: FirstBlack Missionary toAfrica(Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, Ordination Sermons, Charges, andInstructions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: 1978); Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civi­ Eerdmans,1966). lization andDiscontent (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989);John R. 19. R. Pierce Beaver, "Missionary Motivation Through Three Centu­ Oldfield, Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) and theCreation ofan Afri­ ries," in Reinterpretation inAmerican Church History,ed. Jerald Brauer can-American Church in Liberia (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 113-51. 1990);StephenWard Angell, Bishop HenryMcNealTurnerandAirican­ 20. R. Pierce Beaver, Church, State,and the American Indians (St. Louis, American Religion in the South (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1966); "Methods in American 1992);William E. Phipps, TheSheppards andLapsley: Pioneer Presbyte­ Missions to the Indians in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centu­ riansin theCongo (Louisville, Ky.: Presbyterian Church, USA, 1991).

October 1994 159 38. For example, see Ann Fienup-Riordan, The Real People and the Chil­ of Late-Nineteenth-Century American Evangelicalism" (Ph.D. diss., dren ofThunder: TheYup'ik Eskimo Encounter withMoravian Missionar­ Yale Univ., 1984); published in Korean by Yangsuh Publishing iesJohn and EdithKilbuck (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Company, 1988. An earlier dissertation on the origin of faith mis­ 39. SeeG. W.Peters, Foundations ofMennonite Brethren Missions (Hillsboro, sions was Marybeth Rupert, "The Emergence of the Independent Kans.: Kindred Press, 1984);Elaine Rich, MennoniteWomen: A Story Missionary Agency as an American Institution, 1860-1917" (Ph.D. of God's Faithfulness, 1683-1983 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1983); diss., Yale Univ., 1974). Theron Schlabach, Gospel Versus Gospel: Mission and the Mennonite 51. See, for example, an unpublished paper by Daniel H. Bays, "The Church, 1863-1944 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1980); George F. Impact of Early Pentecostalism on Established American Missions in Hall, TheMissionary Spirit in theAugustanaChurch (Rock Island, Ill.: China," written for the conference "Pentecostal Currents in the Augustana Historical Society, Augustana College, 1984);Albert T. American Church" held at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Ronk, History of Brethren Missionary Movements (Ashland, Ohio: California, in March of 1994. Brethren Church, 1971); and James C. Juhnke, A People of Mission: 52. Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Historyof General Conference MennoniteOverseas Missions (Newton, Christian Missions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1983). Kans.: Faith and Life Press, 1979). 53. R. Pierce Beaver, All Loves Excelling: American Protestant Women in 40. For example, see Martin Schrag, "Societies Influencing the Brethren World Mission (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1968),republished in Christ Toward Missionary Work," NotesandQueries in Brethren in as American Protestant Women in World Mission: History of the First ChristHistory, January 1967, pp. 1-12. Feminist Movement inNorthAmerica (GrandRapids, Mich.:Eerdmans, 41. Joel A. Carpenter, "Propagating the Faith Once Delivered: The 1980). Fundamentalist Missionary Enterprise, 1920-1945," in Earthen Ves­ 54. Barbara Welter, "SheHathDone What SheCould: ProtestantWomen's sels, ed. Carpenter and Wilbert Shenk (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Missionary Careers in Nineteenth-Century America," American Eerdmans, 1990),pp. 92-132. Quarterly 30 (Winter 1978) : 624-38. 42. Grant Wacker, "Second Thoughts on the Great Commission: Liberal 55. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Mission for Life: The Story of the Family of Protestants and Foreign Missions, 1890-1940," in Earthen Vessels, ed. Adoniram Judson, the Dramatic Events of the First American Foreign Carpenter and Shenk, pp. 281-300. , Mission,andtheCourse ofEvangelical Religion in theNineteenth Century 43. See, for example, Allen V. Koop, American Evangelical Missionaries in (New York: Free Press, 1980). France, 1945-1975 (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1986). 56. Jane Hunter, TheGospel ofGentility: American Women Missionaries in Ralph Covell's Mission Impossible: The Unreached Nosu on China's Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1984), p. Frontier (Pasadena, Calif.:HopePublishingHouse,1990)reflects one xiv. aspect of the work of Conservative Baptists in the 1940s. 57. Leslie A. Flemming, ed., Women's Workfor Women: Missionaries and 44. David Sandgren, Christianity and the Kikuyu: Religious Divisions and Social Change in Asia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989).Of particular Social Conflict (New York: P. Lang, 1989). importance to the question of women's missions and social change 45. The following is a list of some of the better histories of evangelical were the articles by Flemming, "New Models, New Roles: U.S. mission agencies: Baker J. Cauthen et al., Advance: A History of Presbyterian Women Missionaries and Social Change in North Southern BaptistForeign Missions (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1970); India, 1870-1910"; and Marjorie King, "Exporting Femininity, Not Robert L. Niklaus, John S. Sawin, and Samuel J. Stoesz, All forJesus: Feminism: Nineteenth-CenturyU.S.Missionary Women's Efforts to God at Workin theChristian andMissionary Alliance overOneHundred Emancipate Chinese Women." Years (Camp Hill,Pa.: Christian Publications, 1986);Robert Wood, In Womenandsocial change wasalso the focus of an article by Alison These Mortal Hands: The Story of the Oriental Missionary Society, the R. Drucker, "The Influence of Western Women on the Anti­ FirstFifty Years (Greenwood, Ind.: OMS International, 1983);J. Fred Footbinding Movement, 1840-1911," in Women in China: Current Parker, Mission tothe World: A HistoryofMissions in theChurch ofthe Directions inHistorical Scholarship, ed. Richard W. Guisso and Stanley Nazarene Through 1985 (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing Johannesen (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1981),pp. 179-99. House, 1988);Gary B.McGee, ThisGospel Shall BePreached: A History 58. Char Miller, "Domesticity Abroad: Work and Family in the Sand­ andTheology ofAssemblies ofGodForeign Missions, 2 vols. (Springfield, wich Island Mission, 1820-1840," in Missions and Missionaries in the Mo.: Gospel Publishing House, 1986-89); Edwin L. Frizen, [r., Sev­ Pacific, ed. Miller (New York: E. Mellen Press, 1985),pp. 65-90. enty-Five Years ofIFMA, 1917-1992 (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey 59. Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in Library, 1992);Lester A. Crose, Passport foraReformation: A Historyof Nineteenth-Century Hawaii (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1989). theChurch of God Reformation Movement's Missionary Endeavors Out­ See also her earlier article "Christian Woman, Pious Wife, Faithful sideN.America (Anderson,Ind.: WarnerPress, 1981);A.J.Broomhall's Mother, Devoted Missionary: Conflicts in Roles of American Mis­ seven-volume history of the China Inland Mission, Hudson Taylor sionary Women in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii," Feminist Studies9, and China's Open Century (London: Hodder & Stoughton and the no. 3 (1983): 489-521. Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1981-1989);H. Wilbert Norton, To 60. Mary Zwiep, Pilgrim Path: TheFirstCompany ofWomen Missionaries to Stir theChurch: A BriefHistoryof theStudent Foreign Missions Fellow­ Hawaii (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1991). ships,1936-1986 (Madison, Wis.: Student Foreign Missions Fellow­ 61. Patricia Hill, The World TheirHousehold: TheAmerican Woman's For­ ship, 1986);David M. Howard, The Dream That Would Not Die: The eignMissionMovementand CulturalTransformation, 1870-1920 (Ann BirthandGrowth oftheWorld Evangelical Fellowship, 1846-1986(Exeter, Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1985). England: PaternosterPress; GrandRapids,Mich.:Baker BookHouse, 62. Nancy Boyd, Emissaries: The Overseas Workof the American YWCA, 1986). 1895-1970 (New York: Woman's Press, 1986). 46. See McGee, This Gospel Shall Be Preached. Articles of interest by 63. Ruth Tucker, Guardians oftheGreat Commission: TheStoryofWomen in McGee include "The Azusa Street Revival and Twentieth-Century Modern Missions (Grand Rapids,Mich.:Zondervan, AcademieBooks, Missions," International BulletinofMissionary Research 12,no. 2(1988): 1988). 58-61; and "Assemblies of God Mission Theology: A Historical 64. See Catherine B. Allen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman's Perspective," ibid. 10, no. 4 (1986): 166-70. Missionary Union (Birmingham, Ala.: Woman's Missionary Union, 47. Stanley M. Burgess, Gary B. McGee, and Patrick H. Alexander, 1987),a history of the powerful women's auxiliary of the Southern Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, Baptist Convention. Allen also wrote an excellent biography of Mich.: Zondervan, Regency Reference Library, 1988). Lottie Moon, "patron saint" of Southern Baptist missions, TheNew 48. Virginia Lieson Brereton, Training God's Army: The American Bible LottieMoonStory (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1980).Episcopal mis­ School, 1880-1940 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990). sionary women received treatment in Mary Sudman Donovan's 49. Timothy Weber, Livingin the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Different Call: A Historyof Women's Ministries in the Episcopal Church, Premillennialism, 1875-1925 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979). 1850-1920 (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse, 1986). Lois A. Boyd and R. 50. Dana L. Robert, "Arthur Tappan Pierson and Forward Movements Douglas Brackenridge produced the insightful Presbyterian Women

160 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH in America: Two Centuries of a Quest for Status (Westport, Conn.: Pathfinders: Antebellum Quaker Women in East Central India," Greenwood Press, 1983), which explored the role of women's mis­ Quaker History,Fall 1992, pp. 87-106; Dennis C. Dickerson, "Bishop sions in the Presbyterian context. Of predecessor denominations to Henry M. Turner and Black Latinos: The Mission to Cuba and the United Methodist Church, Audrie Reber wrote Women Unitedfor Mexico," AME Church Review, January-March 1993, pp. 51-55. Mission: A History of the Women's Society of World Service of the 74. A large recent history of missions to seamen includes a section on Evangelical United Brethren Church, 1946-1968 (Dayton, Ohio: Board American activity in this field; see Roald Kverndal, Seamen's Mis­ of Missions of the United Methodist Church, 1969); and Ethel Born sions: TheirOriginand Early Growth (Pasadena, Calif.: WilliamCarey wrote ByMy Spirit: TheStoryofMethodist Protestant Women inMission, Library, 1986). 1879-1939 (Cincinnati: Women's Division of the General Board of 75. See, for example, Elizabeth Elliot, Shadow oftheAlmighty:TheLifeand Global Ministries, 1990). Barbara Brown Zikmund's edited volume Testament of Jim Elliot (New York: Harper Collins, 1989); Olive Hidden Histories in the United Church of Christ (New York: United FlemingLiefeld, Unfolding Destinies: TheUntoldStoryofPeter Fleming Church Press, 1984) contains an article by Zikmund and Sally A. andtheAucaMission(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1990); Mary Dries entitled "Women's Work and Woman's Boards." An impor­ H. Wallace, comp., Profiles of Pentecostal Missionaries (Hazelwood, tant recent book on Canadian Methodists is Rosemary R. Gagan's Mo.: World Aflame Press, 1986); Anna Marie Dahlquist, Burgess of Sensitive Independence: Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Guatemala (Langley, B.C.: Cedar Books, 1985); Andres Kung, Bruce Canada and the Orient, 1881-1925 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Univ. Olson,Missionary orColonizer? (Chappaqua, N.Y.: Christian Herald Press, 1992). Books, 1981). 65. These include Catherine Allen, Laborers Together with God: 22 Great 76. Char Miller, Fathers and Sons: The Bingham Family and the American Women inBaptist Life(Birmingham,Ala.:Woman'sMissionaryUnion, Mission (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1982). 1987); Octavia W. Dandridge, A History of the Women's Missionary 77. See, for example, John Leighton Stuart, Fifty Years in China (New Society of the African Methodist Church, 1874-1987 (New York, NY: York: Random House, 1954); Ralph E. Dodge, The Revolutionary Women'sMissionarySociety, 1987);and TheyWentOut NotKnowing: Bishop Who Saw God at Workin Africa: An Autobiography (Pasadena, An Encyclopedia of One Hundred Women in Mission (New York, NY: Calif.: William Carey Library, 1986); Don Richardson, Peace Child Women's Division; Cincinnati: United Methodist Church, General (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1974); Loren Cunningham, Is that Board of Global Ministries, 1986).Heroes oftheFaith (Springfield, Mo.: ReallyYou, God? (Seattle: Baker Books Chosen Books, 1984). Assemblies of God Division of Foreign Missions, 1990), stories of 78. A few that have been published in recent years include E. G. Ruoff, Assemblies of God missionaries, is an example of a book that ed., Death Throes ofa Dynasty: Letters and Diaries of Charles and Bessie contains information on both men and women. Ewing, Missionaries to China (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 66. Louise A. Cattan, Lamps Are for Lighting: The Story of Helen Barrett 1990); Elsie Landstrom, ed., Hyla Doc: Surgeon in China Through War Montgomery and Lucy Waterbury Peabody (Grand Rapids, Mich.: and Revolution, 1924-1949 (Fort Bragg, Calif.: Q.E.D. Press, 1991); Eerdmans, 1972). See also William H. Brackney, "The Legacy of Ralph Covell, W.A. P. Martin: Pioneer ofProgress in China (Washing­ Helen B. Montgomery and Lucy W. Peabody," International Bulletin tonD.C.: ChristianUniv. Press, 1979);EdwardV. Gulick, Peter Parker ofMissionary Research 15, no. 4 (1991): 174-78. and the Openingof China (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1973); 67. Dana Robert, "Evangelist or Homemaker? Mission Strategies of Adrian A. Bennett, Missionary Journalist in China: Young J. Allen and Early Nineteenth-Century Missionary Wives in Burma and Ha­ His Magazines, 1860-1883 (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1983); waii," International Bulletin ofMissionary Research 17, no. 1 (1993): 4­ Stephen Endicott, James G. Endicott: Rebel Out of China (Toronto: 12. A recent article in the journal of the South African Missiological Univ. of Toronto Press, 1980); Irwin T. Hyatt, [r., Our Ordered Lives Society, "Mount Holyoke Womenand the DutchReformed Mission­ Confess: Three Nineteenth-Century American Missionaries in East ary Movement, 1874-1904," Missionalia, August 1993, pp. 103-23, Shantung (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976). explores how American women's mission theory, piety, and culture 79. See DanielM. Davies,TheLifeandThought ofHenryGerhard Appenzeller influenced the missionary culture of white South Africans. (1858-1902): Missionary to Korea (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 68. Itincluded articlesby Indianscholarssuchas S. ImmanuelDavid, "A 1988);CharMiller, ed., Selected WritingsofHiramBingham, Missionary Mission of Gentility: The Role of Women Missionaries in the Ameri­ totheHawaiian Islands, 1814-1869: ToRaise theLord's Banner (Lewiston, can ArcotMission, 1839-1938," pp. 143-52. A studyof the interaction N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1988). Mellen Press also plans to publish between Indian and American missionary women was done by Appenzeller's collected writings. American CharlotteStaelin, "TheInfluence of Missions on Women's 80. See, for example, C. Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865-1955 Education in India: The American Marathi Mission in Ahmadnagar, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1979); and John Coventry Smith, 1830-1930" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1977). From Colonialism to World Community: TheChurch's Pilgrimage (Phila­ 69. See Pui-lan Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860-1927 (At­ delphia: Geneva Press, 1982). lanta: Scholars Press, 1992). 81. American historians who are fluent in languages other than English 70. Martin E. Marty, ed., Missions andEcumenical Expressions (New York: are also beginning to evaluate the influence of American missionar­ K. G. Saur, 1993). Unfortunately the articles in Marty's volume are ies in disseminatingmodernideas thatimpacted largerissuesin non­ mostly concerned with the "old" issues of American identity and Westerncultures. For example,historian Richard Elphickis working imperialism. on a manuscript that analyzes how missionaries inserted liberal 71. Ian Douglas, "Fling Out the Banner: The National Church Ideal and ideas into twentieth-century South African political discourse. the Foreign Mission of the Episcopal Church" (Ph.D. diss., Boston A critical usage of mission sources can also reveal how indigenous

Univ. 1992). See his related article" I A Light to the Nations': Episco­ Christians opposed mission policy and learned from the unwitting pal Foreign Missions in Historical Perspective," AnglicanandEpisco­ missionaries ways to promote their own independent agendas. See palHistory61, no. 4 (1992) : 449-81. the case studyby Myra Dinnerstein, "TheAmerican Zulu Mission in 72. Gerald De Jong, The Reformed Church in China, 1842-1951 (Grand the NineteenthCentury: Clash overCustoms," Church History45, no. Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992). 2 (1976): 235-46. 73. See, for example, Mark Douglas Norbeck, "False Start: The First 82. Masao Takenaka, Reconciliation and Renewal in Japan (New York: Three Years of Episcopal Missionary Endeavor in the Philippine Friendship Press, 1957). Islands, 1898-1901," Anglicanand Episcopal History, June 1993, pp. 83. SushilMadhavaPathak,American Missionaries andHinduism: A Study 215-36; Dana L. Robert, "Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Mis­ of Their Contacts from 1813 to 1910 (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, sions to Russians in Manchuria, 1920-1927," Methodist History,Janu­ 1967). ary 1988, pp. 66-83; "TheUnited PresbyterianChurchin Mission: An 84. Chai-sik Chung, "Tradition and Ideology: Korea's Initial Response HistoricalOverview," Journal ofPresbyterian History57 (Fall 1979,full to Christianity from a Religious and Sociological Perspective," Asia issue); "Whom Shall I Send?" American Baptist Quarterly, September Munhwa4 (1988) :115-46. Anotherarticle by Chungon the themes of 1993 (full issue); Peggy Brase Siegel, "Moral Champions and Public missions, Westernization, and interfaith relationships is "Confu-

October 1994 161 cian-Protestant Encounter in Korea: Two Cases of Westernization 88. GeraldJohn Pillay, "A Historico-TheologicalStudyofPentecostalism and De-Westernization," in Confucian-Christian Encounters inHistori­ as a Phenomenon Within a South African Community" (Ph.D. diss., calandContemporary Perspective, ed. Peter K. H. Lee (Lewiston, N.Y.: Rhodes Univ., 1983). E. Mellen Press, 1991), pp. 399-433. 89. Daryl M. Balia, "Bridge over Troubled Waters: Charles Pamla and 85. H. K.Barpujari, TheAmerican Missionaries andNorth-East India, 1836­ the Taylor Revival in South Africa," Methodist History,January 1992, 1900(Delhi: Spectrum Publishers, 1986). pp. 78-90. For an analysis of how the Taylor revival fit into the 86. Unlike mission history that sought to show "results," critical studies Africansocial context,see the earlierarticleby Wallace G.Mills, "The by indigenous historians familiar with American and indigenous Taylor Revival of 1866 and the Roots of African Nationalism in the sources sometimes demonstrate that the influence of decades of Cape Colony," Journal of Religion in Africa8, no. 2 (1976) : 105-22. mission work was modest. In her study of American Board mission­ 90. Negativeuse of missionary historyis sometimes takenas the starting aries among the Bulgarians, for example, Tatyana Nestorova shows point for reflection by theological pluralists. See, for example, John that Bulgarians took from the missionaries what would promote Hick, "The Non-Absoluteness of Christianity," in TheMyth ofChris­ their national interest and ignored what else the missionaries had to tianUniqueness: Toward aPluralistic Theology ofReligions, ed. Hick and offer (American Missionaries Among the Bulgarians: 1858-1912 [Boul­ Paul F. Knitter (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1987), pp. 16-36. der, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1987]). Ideological use of mission history fails to acknowledge that a source 87. Christiaan Rudolph De Wet, "The Apostolic Faith Mission in Africa, of the Western pluralistic theological enterprise was the mission 1908-1980:A Case Study in ChurchGrowthin a SegregatedSociety" experience itself. (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Cape Town, 1989);G. C. Oosthuizen, TheBirth 91. R. Pierce Beaver, "Missionary Motivation Through Three Centu­ of Christian Zionism in South Africa,(KwaDlangezwa, South Africa: ries," in Reinterpretation in American Church History, ed. Jerald C. Univ. of Zululand, 1987). Brauer (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 113-151.

My Pilgrimage in Mission Eugene Hillman, C.S.Sp.

his autobiographical sketch, divided neatly into four me to the Holy Ghost Fathers. Faithful to the vision of their T parts, hardly embraces the realities, the complexities, founders, theyemphasizedcommitmentto theleast, the lost, and and the mysteries of my life experienced as a river of six decades the left-out populations of our planetary village. flowing too rapidly. The parts overflow into one another. Ambi­ After a standard seminary training thatwas oriented toward guities, uncertainties, and lacunae abound. The names of se­ the pastoral ministry in American suburbia, I was hardly pre­ lected persons, standing symbolically for many others, are in­ pared for cross-cultural ministry in Africa. Lacking any formal cluded. These provide a thread of grateful acknowledgments missionary preparation by seminary faculty members with mis­ running through the four sections. After all, our relationships sionary experience themselves, I read whatever I could find on with others, and what we learn from them, are the major influ­ the meaning and methods of missionary activity. The writings of ences in our lives. Yves Congar, Henride Lubac, PierreCharles,Jean Danielou, and Anscar Vonier were my best sources, together with some encyc­ My First Naivete licallettersby two popes dealing explicitly with the meaning and methods of missionary ministry in the Catholic tradition. An early influence on my choice of vocation, my ecumenical The most exciting aspect of this self-education was the interests, and focus on Africa was a warm relationship with my discovery of anthropology and the rich meanings of the word next-door neighbors during the days of my childhood. The "culture." lowe this disclosure to a Fordham University profes­ Reverend and Mrs. Leroy Ferguson were the only African­ sor of anthropology,J.FranklinEwing, whoselecturesI attended Americans living on our streetin Boston. Further down the street in 1951,a few months before I was sent to Tanganyika Territory, was our friendly dentist, Dr. Hersh, who introduced me to the now Tanzania. He directed my introductory readings in anthro­ wonders of the synagogue, where he demonstrated for me his pology until I found myself, years later, carried along enthusias­ skills as a cantor. My ecumenical feelings were further enhanced tically by such writers as Monica Wilson, Victor Turner, and by my Baptist uncle Herbert Montgomery and my Episcopalian Clifford Geertz. These were complemented by the anthropolo­ cousin Laura Hillman. With such friends and relatives, I could gists I met in Africa doing their original field research: Alan neverbelieve thatanypeopleshouldbe discriminatedagainston Jacobs among the Masai, and Robert Gray among the Batem. the basis of race or religion, nor could I imagine that Catholics My first appointment was to teach theology in a Catholic were somehow more saved than these others. seminary on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. As I had done no While in high school I decided, with a rationale I cannot now formal theological studies beyond the master of divinity level, reconstruct, to become a missionary in Africa. This decision led my only claim to expertise was a serious research paper I had written as a seminarian, "On the Morality of Boxing." This was published in Theological Studies (1951), creating an impression Eugene Hillman,a priest oftheCongregation oftheHolyGhost, is Professor of that I mightbe capable of teaching moral theology. Instead, I was Humanities at SalveRegina Universityin Newport, Rhode Island. assigned to teachcourses in Old Testament, liturgy, ecclesiastical

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