Sponsoring Castro’s Refugees

This chapter covers evangelical churches’ responses to Cuban refugees between 1959 and 1965, which constituted the first large-scale refugee resettlement initiative by a large evangelical denomination, as well as a well-established public-private partnership between the US government and evangelical churches. Evangelicals, particularly Southern Baptists, provided relief for and sponsored Cuban refugees as an outgrowth of their anticommunism as much as out of their religiously motivated missionary zeal. The Southern Baptist Convention—the nation’s largest Protestant denomination—resettled more than a thousand Cuban refugees. Southern Baptist refugee sponsors provided a roof to sleep under, furnished refugees’ new homes with blankets and kitchen appliances, secured employment for the families’ breadwinners, and enrolled Cuban children in school and the adults in English language classes. While not involved in resettlement, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God shared the Southern Baptists’ missionary zeal and catered to Cuban refugees’ material and spiritual needs.

African Traditional Oath-Swearing: An Evaluation from a Ghanaian Pentecostal Perspective

Although it has been acknowledged that the early European Christian missionaries to Africa have contributed significantly to the emergence and growth of Christianity on the continent, it is also obvious that the ethnocentric tendencies that accompanied their missionary zeal caused them to demonize many aspects of the African cultures. This demonization led to a long-standing debate among African Christians themselves on whether one can be truly African and truly Christian. Despite the fact that the situation seems to have improved greatly in contemporary times, one of the key areas of contention within African Christianity, which has persisted to date, is the chieftaincy institution. To the best of my knowledge however, not much has been researched in this field from Pentecostal perspectives. Using personal observations and participation in Christian Royal conferences as well as personal conversations with some Pentecostal church leaders and some royals in Ghana, this paper examines the functions of the traditional oath swearing for Christians who are chiefs. The paper argues that although, the oath swearing by itself is not inimical to Christian beliefs, Christians who swear oaths should be mindful of the deity invoked in the swearing process. The paper also recommends that to be able to transform unethical and unscriptural aspects of traditional practices and make disciples of all nations, Pentecostal Christians should not be ignorant of traditional practices within their communities. These include the traditional oath swearing, which is the focus of this paper. The paper is therefore an attempt to initiate an important dialogue among African Pentecostals, both scholars and practitioners, on the subject of Christianity and chieftaincy within contemporary times.

Maps Matter. The 10/40 Window and Missionary Geography

The 10/40 Window map is used by evangelical missionary societies to promote mission in Northern Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia. It has been widely popular among Christians worldwide, but has also suffered sustained criticism. The map itself, however, has received no scholarly attention. This article investigates the 10/40 Window map through the lens of the concept of territoriality. Using insights from the field of critical cartography, it argues that the map is pivotal in directing missionary zeal, but that in turn it has also reshaped missionary thinking. This is so because the actual map’s metageographical proportions, its cartographic language and the accompanying rhetoric communicate several novel key propositions about mission. The overall argument of this article is that maps are not innocuous illustrations, but indeed that maps matter a great deal and that missionary geography should be taken seriously.

Early Modern Views on Language and Languages (ca. 1450–1800)

The Early Modern interest taken in language was intense and versatile. In this period, language education gradually no longer centered solely on Latin. The linguistic scope widened considerably, partly as a result of scholarly curiosity, although religious and missionary zeal, commercial considerations, and political motives were also of decisive significance. Statesmen discovered the political power of standardized vernaculars in the typically Early Modern process of state formation. The widening of the linguistic horizon was, first and foremost, reflected in a steadily increasing production of grammars and dictionaries, along with pocket textbooks, conversational manuals, and spelling treatises. One strategy of coping with the stunning linguistic diversity consisted of first collecting data on as many languages as possible and then tracing elements that were common to all or to certain groups of languages. Language comparison was not limited to historical and genealogical endeavors, as scholars started also to compare a number of languages in terms of their alleged vices and qualities. Another way of dealing with the flood of linguistic data consisted of focusing on what the different languages had in common, which led to the development of general grammars, of which the 17th-century Port-Royal grammar is the most well-known. During the Enlightenment, the nature of language and its cognitive merits or vices became also a central theme in philosophical debates in which major thinkers were actively engaged.

Introduction

The introduction places the missionary-Waorani story within the context of the history of American evangelicalism. The iconic narrative of the five men slain in Ecuador stands in a tradition of two centuries of missionary zeal and sacrifice memorialized in print that began with David Brainerd (1718–47). His diaries, edited by Jonathan Edwards as An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, inspired generations of believers. Other memoirs followed, establishing the missionary narrative as an influential genre of religious biography. Such books presented missionaries, especially those who died in pursuit of their calling, as saints, heroes, or martyrs. They also were products of their times. The Triumph of John and Betty Stam, about a missionary couple murdered in China in 1934, included a note of victory that reflected the influence of Keswick holiness. Widespread interest in the “Ecuador martyrs” twenty-two years later, demonstrated the staying power of the missionary narrative and the increased cultural visibility of theologically conservative Protestants as they left separatist fundamentalism for a “new” evangelicalism. The missionary-Waorani encounter also had an unexpected, almost miraculous sequel that became part of the accepted history even if elements of it were romanticized and misleading.

A Son of the Manse with a Missionary Zeal

This introductory chapter opens by exploring Gordon Brown’s upbringing as ‘a son of the Manse’ and his burning desire for social justice. This chapter reveals a clear lineage between the young socialist tramping the streets of Edinburgh and the man who would end up becoming Britain’s most powerful Chancellor of the Exchequer. Driven by his Christian faith, the influence of his parents, and a deep compassion for the most vulnerable in society, Brown took his mission to change the world very seriously indeed. As this book will go on to show, Brown’s steadfastness to end global poverty would see the former Chancellor and Prime Minster design a model of political economy that not only oriented Britain towards the ‘opportunities’ presented by globalisation, but one that could also be exported to meet the challenges faced by some of the poorest countries in the world.

The Multiple Publics of a Transnational Activist: Abdürreşid İbrahim, Pan-Asianism, and the Creation of Islam in Japan

The Russian Muslim Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857-1944) was not only a successful journalist and reform-minded Islamic scholar. He was also a transnational activist who became influential in different local contexts, notably Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. During his four-month stay in Japan in 1909, he cooperated with Japanese pan-Asianists and helped found the first pan-Asianist society, which focused on building ties between Japan and Asia’s Muslims. Researchers have predominantly regarded İbrahim as a pioneering figure in an emerging anti-Western coalition of pan-Islamists and pan-Asianists, or as a Muslim missionary aspiring to convert Japan to Islam. This article will demonstrate, however, that İbrahim’s pro-Japanese pan-Asianism, as well as his missionary zeal, should both be read as flexible stances in reaction to the expectations of different publics. An ostentatious pan-Asianism and the exaggeration of his missionary success equally served the transnational activist to attract attention and assert his importance in varying local contexts.

The Role of a Writer: Reflections of a Novelist

Chinua Achebe is an iconic name in Africa as well as world literature. He is a writer committed to the social uplift of marginalized and downtrodden people. He believes that serious writer should have a sense of responsibility to enhance the quality of humanity by way of exposing all manmade suppression and oppression in society. Achebe is a crusader against colonialism that enslaved the African countries and their people. He is opposed to the injustice and atrocities perpetrated by colonial rulers, and he wants to awaken the African people to rise up against the onslaught of colonialism in future. The present work serves as an inspiring guide to the African people and writers to pursue the spirit of struggle to gain self dignity and recognition. He writes with a missionary zeal and exhorts the writers to use their art as a weapon to assert their confidence and past glory. For him, art is a means to bring about change in society. His works have served as a teacher for his readers. So, Achebe has become a novelist cum teacher, especially for African people, and in general for his readers all over the world.

Imperial Mission, ‘Scientific’ Method: an Alternative Account of the Origins of IR

This article offers an alternative account of the origins of academic IR to the conventional Aberystwyth-centred one. Informed by a close reading of the archive, our narrative proposes that the ideas and method of what was to become IR were first developed in South Africa. Here, we suggest how the creation of a racially-ordered state served as a template for the British Commonwealth and later the World State. We draw further on the British dominions’ tour of Lionel Curtis, founder of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), between September 1909 and March 1911, to indicate how Edwardian anxieties about the future of empire fuelled the missionary zeal of imperial enthusiasts, who placed enormous trust in the ‘scientific method’ to create a unified empire. This method and the same ideas were to become central features of the new discipline of IR. By highlighting the transnational circulation of these ideas, we also provide an alternative to the nationally-limited revisionist accounts.