Protestant Missions and Local Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

by Nielssen, Hilde; Okkenhaug, Inger Marie; Skeie, Karina Hestad

• ISBN13: 9789004202986
• ISBN10: 9004202986
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-30
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub

Summary

This book makes visible an important but largely neglected aspect of Christian missions: its transnational character. An interdisciplinary group of scholars present case-studies on missions and individual missionaries, unified by a common vision of expanding a Christian Empire to the ends of the world . Examples range from Madagascar, South-Africa, Palestine, Turkey, Tibet, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada and Britain. Engaging in activities from education, health care and development aid to religion, ethnography and collection of material culture, Christian missionaries considered themselves as global actors working for the benefit of common humanity. Yet, the missionaries came from, and operated within a variety of nation-states. Thus this volume demonstrates how processes on a national level are closely linked to larger transnational processes.

Author Biography

Hilde Nielssen, Dr. Polit. (2004) in Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, researcher at the Department of Linguistics, Literary and Aesthetic Studies at University of Bergen. Her research ranges from museums and colonial culture to spirit possession rituals in Madagascar, and her publications include Ritual Imagination. Tromba possession among the Betsimisaraka of Eastern Madagascar (Brill, forthcoming 2011). Inger Marie Okkenhaug, Ph.D., associate professor in history at Volda University College: She has co-edited several volumes and is the author of one book and numerous articles on women, missions and, welfare in the Middle-East. Her current research deals with missions, gender and relief in Armenia, Turkey and Syria, 1900-1950. Karina Hestad Skeie, Dr. Art. (2005) in History of Religions, University of Oslo, Associate Professor in Intercultural Studies at NLA University College, Bergen. She works on religion and mission in Highland in Madagascar and Norway. Her publications include Building God's Kingdom in Highland Madagascar (Brill, forthcoming 2011).

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
James Sibree and Lars Dahle: Norwegian and British missionary ethnography as a transnational and national activity	p. 23
The many Purposes of Missionary Work Annie Royle Taylor as Missionary, Travel Writer, Collector and Empire Builder	p. 43
The Missionary's Progress. Evolving Images of 'Self' and 'Other' in the Career of Jakob Spieth (1856-1914)	p. 71
'Self' and 'Other' as Biblical Representations in Mission Literature	p. 87
Confessionalised Medicine. The Norwegian Missionary Society's Leprosy Narratives from Madagascar 1887-1907	p. 101
On Difference, Sameness and Double Binds. Ambiguous Discourses, Failed Aspirations	p. 131
Mission Appropriation or Appropriating the Mission? Negotiating Local and Global Christianity in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Madagascar	p. 157
A "Good and Blessed Father". Yonan of Ada on Justin Perkins, Urmia (Iran), 1870	p. 187
Refugees, Relief and the Restoration of a Nation: Norwegian mission in the Armenian Republic, 1922-1925	p. 207
Mission by Other Means? Dora Earthy and the Save the Children Fund in the 1930s	p. 233
When Missions Became Development: Ironies of "NGOisation" in Mainstream Canadian Churches in the 1960s	p. 259
Re-imagining 'metropole' and periphery' in mission history	p. 293
List of Contributors	p. 317
Index	p. 321
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