The Missionary Movement in African and World History: Mission Sources and Religious Encounter

Abstract

This article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 12 March 2014. It highlights the evolution of Ecclesiastical History to include the study of Christianity in the global south and shows how recent developments in the study of African and world history have produced a dynamic and multi-faceted model of religious encounter, an encounter which includes the agency of indigenous Christians alongside the activities of missionaries. Investigating the contribution of faith missionaries to the production of colonial knowledge in Belgian Congo, the article challenges stereotypes about the relations between Pentecostalism and modernity, and between mission and empire. Throughout, consideration is given to the range of missionary sources, textual, visual, and material, and their utility in reconstructing social differentiation in African societies, particularly in revealing indigenous African criticism of ‘custom’.

"He Has Rescued Me from Danger"

“…I have personally encountered this fervor myself in Ethiopia and other African countries throughout my travels and among African diasporic Christians in the United States. Christianity is increasingly centered in the Global South, and even early agents of Christianization in Africa included Africans themselves (Maxwell 2015).…”

The economics of missionary expansion: evidence from Africa and implications for development

“…Protestant mission societies initially depended on the financial support from congregations and philanthropists in Europe and the US (Miller 2003;Quartey 2007). Cash-strapped mission committees relied on print propaganda, which sensationalized images of tropical missionary benevolence to elicit funding from Western readers (Pietz 1999;Maxwell 2015). Those donations paid for the missionaries' homeland training, the sea journey to Africa and initial set-up costs (Johnson 1967).…”

Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania

“…Recent accounts unanimously describe Nanpei as a man of 'extraordinary influence', 'Pohnpei's most astute politician and skilled entrepreneur' (Ehrlich 1978b:14;Petersen 2007:327). All highlight his agency in exploiting the opportunities offered by recent changes to Pohnpeian society, especially the presence of Christian missionaries (for comparable cases see Maxwell 2015;Yates 2013). They also interpret his success as evidence, not of the demise of Pohnpei's traditional chiefly system, but of its inbuilt flexibility: 'Nanpei was proof of the system adapting to modern changes as it drew him in and employed his talents' (Ehrlich 1978b:224; see also Petersen 2007:327-328).…”