Eric Reinders
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520241718
- eISBN:
- 9780520931084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520241718.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
To the Victorians, the Chinese were invariably “inscrutable”. The meaning and provenance of this impression—and, most importantly, its workings in nineteenth-century Protestant missionary encounters ...
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To the Victorians, the Chinese were invariably “inscrutable”. The meaning and provenance of this impression—and, most importantly, its workings in nineteenth-century Protestant missionary encounters with Chinese religion—are at the center of this book, which looks at how missionaries' religious identity, experience, and physical foreignness produced certain representations of China between 1807 and 1937. The book first introduces the imaginative world of Victorian missionaries and outlines their application of mind-body dualism to the dualism of self and other. It then explores Western views of the Chinese language, especially ritual language, and Chinese ritual, particularly the kowtow. This work offers surprising and valuable insight into the visceral nature of the Victorian response to the Chinese—and, more generally, into the nineteenth-century Western representation of China.Less
To the Victorians, the Chinese were invariably “inscrutable”. The meaning and provenance of this impression—and, most importantly, its workings in nineteenth-century Protestant missionary encounters with Chinese religion—are at the center of this book, which looks at how missionaries' religious identity, experience, and physical foreignness produced certain representations of China between 1807 and 1937. The book first introduces the imaginative world of Victorian missionaries and outlines their application of mind-body dualism to the dualism of self and other. It then explores Western views of the Chinese language, especially ritual language, and Chinese ritual, particularly the kowtow. This work offers surprising and valuable insight into the visceral nature of the Victorian response to the Chinese—and, more generally, into the nineteenth-century Western representation of China.
Willem van Vlastuin
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195373431
- eISBN:
- 9780199871681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195373431.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
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 ...
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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
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).
Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231138659
- eISBN:
- 9780231511094
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231138659.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
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 ...
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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
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.
Stacilee Ford
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789888083114
- eISBN:
- 9789882207639
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888083114.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
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 ...
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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
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.
Brian Stanley
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691196848
- eISBN:
- 9781400890316
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691196848.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Sarah E. Ruble
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807835814
- eISBN:
- 9781469601601
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807837429_ruble
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
In the decades after World War II, Protestant missionaries abroad were a topic of vigorous public debate. From religious periodicals and Sunday sermons to novels and anthropological monographs, ...
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In the decades after World War II, Protestant missionaries abroad were a topic of vigorous public debate. From religious periodicals and Sunday sermons to novels and anthropological monographs, public conversations about missionaries followed a powerful yet paradoxical line of reasoning, namely that people abroad needed greater autonomy from U.S. power and that Americans could best tell others how to use their freedom. This book traces and analyzes these public discussions about what it meant for Americans abroad to be good world citizens, placing them firmly in the context of the United States' postwar global dominance. Bringing together a wide range of sources, it seeks to show how discussions about a relatively small group of Americans working abroad became part of a much larger cultural conversation. The author concludes that whether viewed as champions of nationalist revolutions or propagators of the gospel of capitalism, missionaries—along with their supporters, interpreters, and critics—ultimately both challenged and reinforced a rhetoric of exceptionalism that made Americans the judges of what was good for the rest of the world.Less
In the decades after World War II, Protestant missionaries abroad were a topic of vigorous public debate. From religious periodicals and Sunday sermons to novels and anthropological monographs, public conversations about missionaries followed a powerful yet paradoxical line of reasoning, namely that people abroad needed greater autonomy from U.S. power and that Americans could best tell others how to use their freedom. This book traces and analyzes these public discussions about what it meant for Americans abroad to be good world citizens, placing them firmly in the context of the United States' postwar global dominance. Bringing together a wide range of sources, it seeks to show how discussions about a relatively small group of Americans working abroad became part of a much larger cultural conversation. The author concludes that whether viewed as champions of nationalist revolutions or propagators of the gospel of capitalism, missionaries—along with their supporters, interpreters, and critics—ultimately both challenged and reinforced a rhetoric of exceptionalism that made Americans the judges of what was good for the rest of the world.
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520218451
- eISBN:
- 9780520922792
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520218451.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
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 ...
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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
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.
Birgit Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823239450
- eISBN:
- 9780823239498
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823239450.003.0018
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
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 ...
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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
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.
Reddy: Nursing and Empire
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625072
- eISBN:
- 9781469625096
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625072.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
Nursing and Empire draws on archival research and life history interviews to focus on the migration and settlement of the Indian nurses who formed the first female dominated migration pattern from ...
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Nursing and Empire draws on archival research and life history interviews to focus on the migration and settlement of the Indian nurses who formed the first female dominated migration pattern from India to the United States during the Cold War. Reddy argues that this movement must be understood as part of the shifts within Anglo-American capitalist imperialism that have tied the development of nursing labor in India to processes of U.S. social formation since the nineteenth century. The book thus begins with the movement of US based single female Protestant medical missionaries to India in the nineteenth century and then details the remaking of the colonial medical mission through the Jim Crow segregation and “open door imperialism” of the Rockefeller Foundation between World Wars I and II. Framed within this context, Reddy positions Indian nurse immigration as one outcome of shifts within the international division of nursing labor at the onset of the American Century. Throughout this historical sweep, Nursing and Empire also contains a detailed analysis of the shifting stigmatization and rising status of Indian nursing labor through hierarchies of race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, and religion. The result is an immigration study that examines the position of Indian nurses within labor markets as well as inside and outside of kinship networks and variously constructed communities.Less
Nursing and Empire draws on archival research and life history interviews to focus on the migration and settlement of the Indian nurses who formed the first female dominated migration pattern from India to the United States during the Cold War. Reddy argues that this movement must be understood as part of the shifts within Anglo-American capitalist imperialism that have tied the development of nursing labor in India to processes of U.S. social formation since the nineteenth century. The book thus begins with the movement of US based single female Protestant medical missionaries to India in the nineteenth century and then details the remaking of the colonial medical mission through the Jim Crow segregation and “open door imperialism” of the Rockefeller Foundation between World Wars I and II. Framed within this context, Reddy positions Indian nurse immigration as one outcome of shifts within the international division of nursing labor at the onset of the American Century. Throughout this historical sweep, Nursing and Empire also contains a detailed analysis of the shifting stigmatization and rising status of Indian nursing labor through hierarchies of race, class, caste, gender, sexuality, and religion. The result is an immigration study that examines the position of Indian nurses within labor markets as well as inside and outside of kinship networks and variously constructed communities.
Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520260559
- eISBN:
- 9780520945920
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520260559.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Hyaeweol Choi
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520098695
- eISBN:
- 9780520943780
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520098695.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This book traces the genealogy of modern womanhood in the encounters between Koreans and American Protestant missionaries in the early twentieth century, during Korea's colonization by Japan. The ...
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This book traces the genealogy of modern womanhood in the encounters between Koreans and American Protestant missionaries in the early twentieth century, during Korea's colonization by Japan. The author shows that what it meant to be a “modern” Korean woman was deeply bound up in such diverse themes as Korean nationalism, Confucian gender practices, images of the West and Christianity, and a growing desire for selfhood. Her historically specific, textured analysis sheds new light on the interplay between local and global politics of gender and modernity.Less
This book traces the genealogy of modern womanhood in the encounters between Koreans and American Protestant missionaries in the early twentieth century, during Korea's colonization by Japan. The author shows that what it meant to be a “modern” Korean woman was deeply bound up in such diverse themes as Korean nationalism, Confucian gender practices, images of the West and Christianity, and a growing desire for selfhood. Her historically specific, textured analysis sheds new light on the interplay between local and global politics of gender and modernity.
Prema A. Kurien
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479804757
- eISBN:
- 9781479845477
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479804757.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
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 ...
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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
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.
Shellen Xiao Wu
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780804792844
- eISBN:
- 9780804794732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804792844.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
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 ...
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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
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.
Alan Levenson
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774051
- eISBN:
- 9781800340688
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774051.003.0030
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
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 ...
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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
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.
Sumathi Ramaswamy
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226476575
- eISBN:
- 9780226476742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226476742.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
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 ...
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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
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.
J. Joseph Errington
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195324983
- eISBN:
- 9780199869398
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195324983.003.0010
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Sociolinguistics / Anthropological Linguistics
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 ...
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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
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.
David Gilmartin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- July 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198081685
- eISBN:
- 9780199097661
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198081685.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Indian History, History of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Ayfer Karakaya-Stump
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474432689
- eISBN:
- 9781474476799
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474432689.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Summary of main arguments
Summary of main arguments
James L. Heft, Reuven Firestone, and Omid Safi (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199769308
- eISBN:
- 9780190258283
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199769308.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Constructive interreligious dialogue is only a recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, most dialogue among believers was carried on as a debate aimed either to disprove the claims of the ...
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Constructive interreligious dialogue is only a recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, most dialogue among believers was carried on as a debate aimed either to disprove the claims of the other, or to convert the other to one's own tradition. At the end of the nineteenth century, Protestant Christian missionaries of different denominations had created such a cacophony amongst themselves in the mission fields that they decided that it would be best if they could begin to overcome their own differences instead of confusing and even scandalizing the people whom they were trying to convert. By the middle of the twentieth century, the horrors of the Holocaust compelled Christians, especially mainline Protestants and Catholics, to enter into a serious dialogue with Jews, one of the consequences of which was the removal of claims by Christians to have replaced Judaism, and revising text books that communicated that message to Christian believers. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many branches of Christianity, not least the Catholic Church, are engaged in a world-wide constructive dialogue with Muslims, made all the more necessary by the terrorist attacks of September 11. In these new conversations, Muslim religious leaders took an important initiative when they sent their document, “A Common Word Between Us,” to all Christians in the West. It is an extraordinary document, for it makes a theological argument (various Christians in the West, including officials at the Vatican, have claimed that a “theological conversation” with Muslims is not possible) based on texts drawn from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qurʾan, that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers share the God-given obligation to love God and each other in peace and justice.Less
Constructive interreligious dialogue is only a recent phenomenon. Until the nineteenth century, most dialogue among believers was carried on as a debate aimed either to disprove the claims of the other, or to convert the other to one's own tradition. At the end of the nineteenth century, Protestant Christian missionaries of different denominations had created such a cacophony amongst themselves in the mission fields that they decided that it would be best if they could begin to overcome their own differences instead of confusing and even scandalizing the people whom they were trying to convert. By the middle of the twentieth century, the horrors of the Holocaust compelled Christians, especially mainline Protestants and Catholics, to enter into a serious dialogue with Jews, one of the consequences of which was the removal of claims by Christians to have replaced Judaism, and revising text books that communicated that message to Christian believers. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many branches of Christianity, not least the Catholic Church, are engaged in a world-wide constructive dialogue with Muslims, made all the more necessary by the terrorist attacks of September 11. In these new conversations, Muslim religious leaders took an important initiative when they sent their document, “A Common Word Between Us,” to all Christians in the West. It is an extraordinary document, for it makes a theological argument (various Christians in the West, including officials at the Vatican, have claimed that a “theological conversation” with Muslims is not possible) based on texts drawn from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qurʾan, that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim believers share the God-given obligation to love God and each other in peace and justice.
Richard Bassett
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300178586
- eISBN:
- 9780300213102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300178586.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, Military History
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 ...
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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
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.