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Alternative Viewpoint: Edwards and Revival

Willem van Vlastuin

in Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America's Theologian

This chapter evaluates Edwards from four perspectives—the spiritual (Edwards’s metanarrative of history is a spiritual history directed to revival and the millennium), the historical (Edwards had ... More

This chapter evaluates Edwards from four perspectives—the spiritual (Edwards’s metanarrative of history is a spiritual history directed to revival and the millennium), the historical (Edwards had real-world impact on the modern Protestant missionary movement), the Reformed (Calvin stressed the hiddenness of the kingdom of Christ, while Edwards said the kingdom will be visible within history), and the systematic (Edwards seems to make the work of the Spirit more important than the work of Christ).Less

The Great Awakening of the Protestants and the Anglicans

Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon

in Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East

This chapter begins in the mid-eighteenth century, when imperialism grew and along with it the new ideas of the Enlightenment to inspire the Great Awakening. Beginning with the preaching and writing ... More

This chapter begins in the mid-eighteenth century, when imperialism grew and along with it the new ideas of the Enlightenment to inspire the Great Awakening. Beginning with the preaching and writing of Reverend Jonathan Edwards in New England, reform ideas spread to Britain, emphasizing the need to bring the whole world to Christianity. The Great Awakening inspired the foundation of a number of new Protestant missionary societies. These include the London Missionary Society (1795), the Scottish (Edinburgh) and Glasgow Missionary Society (1796), the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS, 1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (1817–1818). In America, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was established in 1812. German Evangelicals and American Baptists (1814), Methodists, and Episcopalians (1821) also began to send missions abroad.Less

“American Girls” in Three Acts: Encounters in Nineteenth-Century Macao and Hong Kong

Stacilee Ford

in Troubling American Women: Narratives of Gender and Nation in Hong Kong

This chapter provides a discussion on encounters in nineteenth-century Macao and Hong Kong. The three acts referred to in the title represent three case studies and types of cultural encounters that ... More

This chapter provides a discussion on encounters in nineteenth-century Macao and Hong Kong. The three acts referred to in the title represent three case studies and types of cultural encounters that took place in the nineteenth century and that foreshadowed what followed. Harriett Low narrates aspects of women's lives within the merchant community of Macao, and Henrietta Shuck bridges the gap between Macao and Hong Kong, offering a glimpse into early Protestant missionary encounters in both places. Low's and Shuck's articulations of the pedagogical impulse serve as prelude to later manifestations of the phenomenon in Hong Kong. It starts by presenting the growth of the US presence in Chinese trade. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of American prostitutes, who have left traces and clues about their lives rather than complete narratives. It appears to show that Belle Emerson, like Low and Shuck, was also concerned about being “useful” in a foreign land. Women's narratives run against the macro grain of trade, empire, and nation building yet they also reveal how individual women colluded in such enterprises.Less

That the World May Believe: Christian Mission to the Modern World

Brian Stanley

in Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History

This chapter explores how the Catholic and Protestant churches respectively reconceived their theologies of mission in the final four decades of the twentieth century. Particular attention is devoted ... More

This chapter explores how the Catholic and Protestant churches respectively reconceived their theologies of mission in the final four decades of the twentieth century. Particular attention is devoted to the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65, the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1968, and the Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization convened by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in 1974. It was not accidental that this process of fundamental revision was concentrated on the 1960s and 1970s—decades that witnessed the rapid dismantling of the Western colonial empires, the emergence of the “Third World” as an ideological bloc, and the highly charged political atmosphere of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. Neither the Catholic nor the Protestant missionary movements were the offspring of colonialism, but both regularly employed the language of global Christian dominion and both tried to use colonial governments to forward their evangelistic objectives. It was thus inevitable that the anticolonial invective of these decades should not leave the churches' overseas missionary activities unscathed. These years were also an era of social and intellectual ferment in European societies. Movements of revolutionary protest against established institutions and their perceived role in the perpetuation of structural injustice and international capitalism swept through university campuses. The historic churches and their governing hierarchies were often caught in the gunfire. Their formulation of their role in the world and even of their message itself could not be unaffected.Less

Reinventing Mount Lebanon

in The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon

This chapter investigates how Mount Lebanon was reinvented in sectarian terms by rival elites after the Europeans and Ottomans decided to partition it along religious lines in 1842. It explores how ... More

This chapter investigates how Mount Lebanon was reinvented in sectarian terms by rival elites after the Europeans and Ottomans decided to partition it along religious lines in 1842. It explores how the elites began to politically reconstitute themselves in allegedly traditional sectarian terms while the very basis of tradition—absolute Ottoman sovereignty, which existed “for all time”—was being undermined at every turn. The chapter contends that an informal subjecthood to European powers developed alongside formal subjecthood to a changing Ottoman state. It explains that although the Sultan remained sovereign over Mount Lebanon, the presence of Jesuit and American Protestant missionaries, and of agents such as Richard Wood, tacitly widened the domain of obedience to include France and Great Britain.Less

“There is a spirit in that image”: Mass-Produced Jesus Pictures and Protestant-Pentecostal Animation in Ghana

Birgit Meyer

in Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality

This chapter addresses Pentecostal ambivalence toward and contestation of Jesus pictures in southern Ghana. These are massively present in public space, entailing a “pentecostalization” of Ghana's ... More

This chapter addresses Pentecostal ambivalence toward and contestation of Jesus pictures in southern Ghana. These are massively present in public space, entailing a “pentecostalization” of Ghana's public sphere. Misgivings about these pictures can be traced back to the anti-iconic semiotic ideology of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries, who drew strict boundaries between subject and object, spirit and matter, attacking indigenous religion as “heathendom,” “idolatry,” and “Devil worship.” The pictures are considered harmless “symbols” for the pious, which publicly display their Christian identity, yet they are seen as liable to slip into “icons” that may be hijacked by the Devil-a radical reversal through which what is meant to display visually the outreach of Christianity may actually be subverted.Less

A Dual Quarrel of Images On the Middle Volga: Icon Veneration in the Face of Protestant and Pagan Critique

Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz

in Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective

This chapter explores the use of icons in the Russian republic of Marii El, where many inhabitants have preserved traces of pre-Christian religious practices, notably in the veneration of distinctive ... More

This chapter explores the use of icons in the Russian republic of Marii El, where many inhabitants have preserved traces of pre-Christian religious practices, notably in the veneration of distinctive natural objects in sites held to be sacred. For the Protestant missionaries active in the republic today, the use made of icons by Russian Orthodox Christians has to be condemned as an extension of such pagan superstitions. Many people nonetheless use icons publicly and maintain “icon corners” in their homes.Less

Syrian Christian Encounters with Colonial Missionaries and Indian Nationalism

Prema A. Kurien

in Ethnic Church Meets Megachurch: Indian American Christianity in Motion

This chapter presents the complex history of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian denomination, which is essential to understanding many of the contemporary features of the church. Early Syrian Christians ... More

This chapter presents the complex history of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian denomination, which is essential to understanding many of the contemporary features of the church. Early Syrian Christians in Kerala considered themselves to be “Hindu in culture, Christian in religion, and Oriental in worship.” The chapter draws on archival and secondary research to examine how Syrian Christians were viewed and treated very differently by Portuguese Catholic and British Protestant missionaries during the colonial period and how their self-understanding, practices, and communities were fundamentally transformed by these encounters. It discusses the factors that led the leaders of the church to initiate a reformation of the liturgy and practices of the church and break away from Syrian Orthodox leadership and control to form a separate and autonomous Indian denomination in 1889. It also examines the influence of Indian nationalism and the Indian independence struggle on the church.Less

Lost and Found in Translation: Geology, Mining, and the Search for Wealth and Power

Shellen Xiao Wu

in Empires of Coal: Fueling China's Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920

Chapter Three discusses missionary translations of geology works in the nineteenth century. In the act of translation, geology became further entangled with the role of science in imperialism and the ... More

Chapter Three discusses missionary translations of geology works in the nineteenth century. In the act of translation, geology became further entangled with the role of science in imperialism and the wealth and power of the West. Nineteenth century missionary translations of science in the treaty ports tell only a small part of the story. Focusing on the deficiencies of these translations would only miss the greater accomplishment of these foreign and Chinese translators of Western science texts as cultural intermediaries. These late nineteenth century translations introduced the field of geology to the Chinese public, but in the tumultuous political and economic environment of the late Qing period it was mining and control over mining rights that added urgency to the adoption of modern geology.Less

Christopher Clark The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941: (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); pp. 340

Alan Levenson

in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 11: Focusing on Aspects and Experiences of Religion

This chapter highlights Christopher Clark's The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941. This meticulously researched, clearly written history provides the ... More

This chapter highlights Christopher Clark's The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941. This meticulously researched, clearly written history provides the first objective and properly contextualized account of the attempts of one fringe group to bring another fringe group into the bosom of the Church. Anyone desiring a reliable institutional history of the missionary Protestant campaign to convert Prussian Jewry will not need to look beyond this work. The author demonstrates the effect of changing imperial policies, the agenda of the Church at large, and the general economic conditions of Prussia on the fate of the mission to the Jews. Clark examines missionary schools and missionary journals and the distribution of Christian texts and reports on the conversions of nominal Christians to true believers—tales that were directed at the Jews as well as at a Germany that was becoming rapidly secular. Moreover, he subtly places the missionary movement on a continuum from antisemitism to philosemitism.Less

The Global Pandit

Sumathi Ramaswamy

in Terrestrial Lessons: The Conquest of the World as Globe

This chapter opens with a circa 1815 moment in Meerut in north India when a devout Christian named Mary Martha Sherwood (1775–1851) presents a makeshift globe to a young Brahman plagued by doubt ... More

This chapter opens with a circa 1815 moment in Meerut in north India when a devout Christian named Mary Martha Sherwood (1775–1851) presents a makeshift globe to a young Brahman plagued by doubt about his ancestral beliefs. The result of this brief but consequential transaction was transformative, as the Brahman abandons his inherited faith and undergoes baptism with the new name of Anand Masih. He subsequently becomes a teacher of terrestrial lessons to a new generation of native pupils in mission schools. Against this backdrop, this chapter further elaborates upon the Protestant missionary as a cartographic evangelist, even as it tracks the advance of the terrestrial globe in pedagogic contexts across northern India in the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century when colonial rule both expanded and consolidated itself in this part of the subcontinent that was formerly the heartland of the vast Mughal Empire. This discussion also brings to the fore the enigmatic figure of “the global pandit,” an intellectual belonging to a formidable caste which had the most at stake in upholding the ancestral and the antiquated and yet without whose consent and participation the new Empire of Geography could not take hold. Less

Postscript: Making Contact between Consequences

J. Joseph Errington

in Consequences of Contact: Language Ideologies and Sociocultural Transformations in Pacific Societies

In Tonga over the last two hundred years, lea faka'eiki, or “Tongan chiefly language”, has undergone change. At the time of initial sustained Western contact with Tonga in the late 18th century, the ... More

In Tonga over the last two hundred years, lea faka'eiki, or “Tongan chiefly language”, has undergone change. At the time of initial sustained Western contact with Tonga in the late 18th century, the documented targets of the two levels of lexical honorification constituting lea faka'eiki were human leaders who partook of the divine or sacred to varying degrees. Today, in contrast, the dominant language ideology in Tonga, reflected in the work of Tongan and non-Tongan scholars alike, associates the lexical honorifics with the constitutionally ratified secular governmental authority of the king and titled nobles. This chapter describes and explains the process through which this transformation has taken place. It argues that the move from sacred to secular is a result of collaboration between British Protestant missionaries and traditional and governmental Tongan leaders, who have mapped a British concept of constitutional monarchy onto the concept of a traditional Tongan polity to give the Tongan government the authority of both. This transformation resulted from a Gramscian collaboration of church and state to produce a particular political hegemony.Less

Voting, Religion, and the People’s Sovereignty in Late Colonial India

David Gilmartin

in Religious Interactions in Modern India

The chapter discusses the connections between religion and popular sovereignty during the late colonial period in relation to voting. The author explores two key aspects of the legal contradictions ... More

The chapter discusses the connections between religion and popular sovereignty during the late colonial period in relation to voting. The author explores two key aspects of the legal contradictions embedded in elections, the legal concept of ‘undue influence’ and the relationship between conscience, community, and free choice. The paradoxes of sovereignty were increasingly transposed into the self, conceived as an inner struggle between conscience and free choice, on one side, and the coercive pressures of society, on the other. The chapter also discusses several election cases in India and Burma starting in the 1920s, in which issues of ‘undue influence’ were raised, and explicates the difficulties of distinguishing religion as a form of external power exerted by religious authorities, from free devotional commitment to a religious community. Emphasizing the Protestant missionary background of the ideas of a moral self, conscience, and free choice, the author asserts that such ideas resonated with many Indian Protestant missionary.Less

Conclusion

Ayfer Karakaya-Stump

in The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics and Community

Summary of main arguments

Towards a Twentieth-century Navy: The Siege at Pekin

Richard Bassett

in For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619-1918

This chapter describes the Austrian navy's involvement in events in China at the turn of the century. By this time, the activities of the Protestant missionaries in the region were deeply resented by ... More

This chapter describes the Austrian navy's involvement in events in China at the turn of the century. By this time, the activities of the Protestant missionaries in the region were deeply resented by the Chinese authorities and population. The growth of a patriotic secret society, the infamous “Boxers” (righteous society of fists) dedicated to the protection of Chinese values in the face of Western influence, was the catalyst for the conflict and the attempts to storm Western legations. These were protected by detachments from eight nations and, while the siege lasted, news of these events came to dominate the headlines of the European newspapers. The Austrian role in the siege was modest. The chapter also discusses the modernization of the Imperial and Royal Navy in an attempt to be the leading naval power of the Adriatic in the face of rising Italian competition.Less