Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795–1850

by Sujit Sivasundaram

• ISBN13: 9780521188883
• ISBN10: 0521188881
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Nineteenth-century historians have described how science became secular and how scientific theories such as evolution justified colonialism. This book changes this narrative by offering the first account of the relationship between nineteenth-century science and Christianity outside the Western world. At focus are the intrepid missionaries of the London Missionary Society who reverently surveyed the oceans and islands of the Pacific and instructed converts to observe nature in order to interpret God's designs. Sujit Sivasundaram argues that the knowledge that these missionaries practiced functioned as a popular science that was inextricably linked with religious expansion.

Table of Contents

The light of the sun: stimulus for mission

The growth of the mind: nature and mission education

The seed of the soul: conversion illustrated by nature

The body that will bloom: death and its theology of nature

The plants of the land: building settlements of civilisation

The idol of weeds: the exchange and display of nature

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