Competitive Religious Entrepreneurs: Christian Missionaries and Female Education in Colonial and Post-Colonial India

Abstract

The paper explores the long-term developmental legacies of Protestant missionary involvement in colonial India, specifically missionary effects on male-female inequalities in educational attainment. Our causal mechanisms draw on studies in the sociology and economics of religion that highlight the importance of the dynamics of religious competition for the provision of public goods. We argue that missionaries played a key role in the development of mass female schooling because of the competition among rival religious and secular groups that they spurred in education provision. We explore these causal mechanisms in a case study of the state of Kerala, and statistical analysis covering most of India's districts. For the statistical analysis, we assembled original district-level datasets covering colonial and post-colonial periods. Our data allow us to establish whether missionary effects hold after we account for other factors hypothesized to have a bearing on human development like British colonial rule, modernization, European presence, education expenditures, post-colonial democracy, Islam, caste and tribal status, and land tenure. Our analysis reveals that colonial-era Christian missionary activity is consistently associated with better female education outcomes in both the colonial and post-colonial periods.

Missionary Influence and Nationalist Reactions: The Case of Armenian Ottomans

“…One can also draw parallels between the Armenian case and other regions of the world where a competitive religious marketplace played a key role in bringing education to the masses. In Kerala, for example, missionary efforts to integrate education and focus on low-caste schooling fueled indigenous groups' efforts to do the same (Lankina and Getachew 2013;Bellenoit 2016;Deol 2000). In Egypt too, where British imperialism allowed for the freer evangelization of Muslims, Egyptian Muslim and Coptic Orthodox leaders were pressured into developing local alternatives to the social service projects offered by American missionaries (Sedra 2002;Sharkey 2013).…”

Indigenous Responses to Protestant Missionaries: Educational Competition and Economic Development in Ottoman Turkey

“…As a result, scholarship endorses a narrative that characterizes local populations as passive recipients of missionary technologies. One study that accounts for local actors is that of Lankina and Getachew [2013], who demonstrate that competition between different religious groups in Kerala triggered the expansion of the provision of female education by native reformers. This shows that the emulation or reflex dynamic identified in studies of interdenominational Christian competition can similarly be extended to indigenous actors.…”

“…As discussed above, a number of studies have also begun to recognize indirect channels, specifically the role of competition or emulation in popularizing the educational innovations introduced by Protestant missionaries for broader segments of the population [Lankina and Getachew 2013; Gallego and Woodberry 2010; Woodberry 2012; Trejo 2009; Woodberry and Shah 2004; Wantchekon, Klašnja and Novta 2014]. To date, there has been no attempt to measure the effects of these two channels separately.…”

Do Protestant Missionaries Undermine Political Authority? Evidence From Peru

“…Second, Protestant missionaries socially accustom converts to authority figures. Protestant missionaries have a particular tendency to rely on charismatic local leaders, often labeled “religious entrepreneurs.” Branded, among other things, as “benign and principled crusaders” (Lankina & Getachew, 2013, p. 103), they rely on strong personalities to spread the gospel. These leaders, as Reuschling (2005) notes, “have positional power as a result of their status, both assigned and ascribed, in evangelical organizations and churches” (p. 65).…”