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This chapter argues that Protestant Christian women in the West were intrigued by the purdah system in India, partly because it resonated with patterns of gender segregation with which they were familiar. The aspects of the gender ideology embodied in purdah that were retained in the new hybrid discourse of femininity resulting from the interaction between Protestant missionaries and representatives of elite Indian culture are examined. This is followed by an analysis of the history of the zenana missions, tracking the changes in the strategies for the reform of Indian women and their relationship to the Indian home as the focus of missions shifted from elite to low-caste women.

This chapter examines the ecumenical movement. The twentieth century has sometimes been denominated by historians of Christianity as “the ecumenical century.” Narratives of the ecumenical movement typically begin with the World Missionary Conference, held in Edinburgh in June of 1910, which assembled some 1,215 Protestant delegates from various parts of the globe to devise a more effective common strategy for the evangelization of the world. Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, the Edinburgh conference has been widely identified as the birthplace of the formal ecumenical movement. Without it, there would be no World Council of Churches. Yet serious attempts to bridge divisions between Protestant Christians were already under way in India and China before 1910. Furthermore, the World Missionary Conference was precisely that—a gathering of mission executives and missionaries convened to consider questions of missionary policy. Delegates represented missionary agencies rather than churches, and discussion of questions of doctrine and church order was forbidden, in deference to the Church of England, whose endorsement would not have been given if the conference had been expected to discuss matters of faith and order with Nonconformists. The chapter then looks at the failure and success of the ecumenical movement.

Because Protestant Christians are sensitive about issues on salvation by grace through faith, they tend to become discriminating in measuring one's development in terms of Christian maturity or “progress”. Protestants have encouraged Christian education not only through Sunday schools but also through showing their support through higher education institutions. Nonetheless, we observe that Protestants are relatively unenthusiastic about a concrete plan that would promote spiritual growth. Generally, there are several different forms of vocations that Christians may adopt and they may adopt these artfully by incorporating skill, taste, aesthetics, and other such measures in various aspects of their Christian life.

This chapter explores how semiotic differentiation, class, and denominationalism have influenced the rapid postwar urbanization of Seoul and the rapid growth of Protestant Christianity in South Korea. It argues that these views of the city manifest as perspectives on other Christians—or, in a sense, “Christian others”—those who claim one's own Christian faith but appear alien or antithetical to it. Specifically, it considers how these views are related to worship styles that invoke, for Protestant Christians, other kinds of Protestant churches and practices in Seoul. It also examines how the preaching and prayer of other Christians are intertwined with specific times and places in the expanding city. It suggests that active differentiation of worship style by congregants contributes to the emergence of new religious institutions in particular times and places in the postwar urban migration to Seoul.

This chapter examines the process in which capitalism unfolded in Korea through ideas and institutions developed by the Protestant Christian Church after 1885. Focusing on the Nevius Plan, which encouraged the construction of financially self-sustaining churches throughout Korea, and the Industrial Education Departments (IEDs), the chapter considers how the Protestant Christian Church supplied language and practices that exposed Koreans to the principles of capitalism. It shows how the Nevius Plan introduced Korean followers to a new language of money, work, and economy, while IEDs became places where young Koreans actually experienced the principles of capitalism by learning business skills and how to manufacture various goods. It argues that Protestant Christianity offered a cultural matrix through which Koreans could acquire knowledge about how to have meaningful social lives and navigate a path to modernity.

This chapter looks at the people who were part of the fundamentalist movement—who they were, what they believed, and what set them apart from other Protestant Christians. The fundamentalist movement was created in the 1920s by Protestants who feared that America's churches had drifted away from the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. They proudly called themselves fundamentalists, and their opponents called them that, too. The chapter then shows that the defining characteristics of global fundamentalism have often been said to include a penchant for reading texts literally, a proclivity for mixing politics and religion, a determination to resist modernity, and a predilection for militancy. As it turns out, none of the supposed characteristics of global fundamentalism can be neatly applied to the fundamentalists of the 1920s and 1930s.

This chapter examines the question of what might constitute “Japanese Christianity” that surfaced in the 1930s at a time of military aggression on the Asian continent. It considers how increased political controls and mobilization of the populace, recognizable as fascism, were swept up into ideology that promised the “overcoming of modernity” and the purification of the national body. The first generation of Protestant Christians, who were born into samurai families before Christianity’s relegalization in 1873, were passing from the scene, and the generation that was assuming leadership had been born into the ideology of the “emperor system.” The chapter explores the viability of Christianity as it traveled to new situations through second-generation Japanese Christians, such as Yoshida Etsuzō, who published the Christian magazine called Voice at the Lakeside and used it in an attempt to define a Christianity viable in Japan.

This book charts the history of early evangelicalism that flourished during the transatlantic revivals of the eighteenth century, coinciding with the emergence of the Enlightenment in America and Europe. As a religious movement, evangelicalism crossed nations and encompassed different traditions within Christianity. The book examines hymns, historical works, poems, political pamphlets, revival accounts, sermons, and theological treatises published by those responsible for the growth of evangelicalism, along with their conversion experiences and diaries that chronicle their spiritual development. It also provides biographical sketches of several important religious figures and presents excerpts from Protestant Christians such as George Whitefield, Samuel Finley, James Robe, Joseph Bellamy, and Jedidiah Morse.