scholarly journals Thirty Years of Mission in Taiwan: The Case of Presbyterian Missionary George Leslie Mackay

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 190
Author(s):  
Magdaléna Rychetská
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Mission History ◽  
Taiwanese People ◽  
Folk Hero

The aims of this paper are to analyze the missionary endeavors of the first Canadian Presbyterian missionary in Taiwan, George Leslie Mackay (1844–1901), as described in From Far Formosa: The Islands, Its People and Missions, and to explore how Christian theology was established among and adapted to the Taiwanese people: the approaches that Mackay used and the missionary strategies that he implemented, as well as the difficulties that he faced. Given that Mackay’s missionary strategy was clearly highly successful—within 30 years, he had built 60 churches and made approximately 2000 converts—the question of how he achieved these results is certainly worth considering. Furthermore, from the outset, Mackay was perceived and received very positively in Taiwan and is considered something of a folk hero in the country even today. In the present-day narrative of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, Mackay is seen as someone whose efforts to establish an independent church with native local leadership helped to introduce democracy to Taiwan. However, in some of the scholarship, missionaries such as Mackay are portrayed as profit seekers. This paper seeks to give a voice to Mackay himself and thereby to provide a more symmetrical approach to mission history.

scholarly journals Tiyo Soga (1829–1871) at the intersection of ‘universes in collision’

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham A. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Black Consciousness ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Mission History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Influence

Tiyo Soga, the first black minister ordained in Scotland by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1856, was, by any standards, a conflicted character. He stood both in and between two worlds and suffered from the vulnerability that emerged from his dual allegiances. Yet he made a significant contribution to the mission history of South Africa, particularly through his early influence on the development of black consciousness and black nationalism, which were to make significant contributions to black thinking in the 20th century. Soga’s life and ministry are set in the context of Michael Ashley’s concept of ‘universes in collision’.

An Introduction to Christian Theology

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Plantinga ◽  
Thomas R. Thompson ◽  
Matthew D. Lundberg
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology

The Old Man in Purgatory: The Indian Part in Yeats's Vision of Salvation

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Yeeyon Im
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
Selfless Action

This essay examines Yeats's Purgatory via A Vision, in an attempt to understand his view of salvation in particular relation to Indian philosophy. Read from a Christian perspective, Purgatory may be a work far from purgation, as T. S. Eliot once complained. I wish to show in this essay that Purgatory indeed places emphasis on purgation by a negative example, if in a different way from the Catholic one. Yeats denies the linear eschatology of Christian theology as well as its doctrine of salvation in eternal heaven. In A Vision, Yeats explains his view of the afterlife of the soul, which involves purgation through ‘the Dreaming Back’. The special treatment of the Old Man renders Purgatory a meta-purgatorial play that mirrors the Dreaming Back of his mother's spirit in the Old Man's, intensifying the theme of purgation. Purgatory effectively dramatizes the inability to forgive and cast out remorse: the impossibility of nishikam karma, or selfless action, to borrow Sanskrit terms, which is essential for Yeatsian salvation. Finally, I would also emphasize Yeats's deviation from the Hindu wisdom, which makes Yeats's vision uniquely his own.

From Missionary Translation to Local Theological Inquiry: A Narrative History of the Lisu Bible

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-219
Author(s):  
Aminta Arrington
Keyword(s):  
Minority Group ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Village Elders ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Bible Reading

The Lisu are a largely Christian minority group in south-west China who, as an oral culture, express their faith more through a set of Christian practices done as a group and less through bible reading as individuals. Even so, the Lisu practice of Christianity specifically, and Lisu culture more generally, was profoundly impacted by the written scriptures. During the initial evangelisation of the Lisu by the China Inland Mission, missionaries created a written script for the Lisu language. Churches were constructed and organised, which led to the creation of bible schools and the work of bible translation. In the waves of government persecution after 1949, Lisu New Testaments were hidden away up in the mountains by Lisu Christians. After 1980, the Lisu reclaimed their faith by listening to the village elders tell the Old Story around the fires and reopening the churches that had been closed for twenty-two years. And they reclaimed their bible by retrieving the scriptures from the hills and copying them in the evening by the light of a torch. The Lisu bible has its own narrative history, consisting of script creating, translating, migrating, and copying by hand. At times it was largely influenced by the mission narrative, but at other times, the Lisu bible itself was the lead character in the story. Ultimately, the story of the Lisu bible reflects the Lisu Christian story of moving from missionary beginnings to local leadership and, ultimately, to local theological inquiry.

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