Commissioned for Mission: the Co-Relation between Mission Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>In the 1993-4 Northern Hemisphere academic year, I had the privilege of studying at Birmingham University and the Mission Studies department of the Selly Oak Colleges. I also had the opportunity to peruse original letters and reports from London Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society missionaries who came to Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific Islands last century. The content of these documents revealed personal stories of dramatic proportions; childbirth, death, drownings, loneliness and cultural shock. Alongside the personal stories lay the pragmatic accounts of establishing schools and mission stations with appropriate accompanying statistics in order to ensure continued funding Interwoven throughout were intensely evangelical sentiments about the salvation of the heathen.</p>

Commissioned for Mission: the Co-Relation between Mission Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>In the 1993-4 Northern Hemisphere academic year, I had the privilege of studying at Birmingham University and the Mission Studies department of the Selly Oak Colleges. I also had the opportunity to peruse original letters and reports from London Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society missionaries who came to Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific Islands last century. The content of these documents revealed personal stories of dramatic proportions; childbirth, death, drownings, loneliness and cultural shock. Alongside the personal stories lay the pragmatic accounts of establishing schools and mission stations with appropriate accompanying statistics in order to ensure continued funding Interwoven throughout were intensely evangelical sentiments about the salvation of the heathen.</p>

Robert Morrison and the Anglo-Chinese College

Mainly based on archival materials of the London Missionary Society (LMS) and published materials dating from around the time the Anglo-Chinese College (ACC) was established in Malacca, this paper discusses the different roles played by Robert Morrison in connection with the ACC before and after its establishment – as founder, fundraiser, decision-maker and teacher. The paper explores why and how he established the ACC, as well as how he maintained, led and managed it. Difficulties facing the ACC in Malacca and its achievements are also described.*

The Role of the London Missionary Society and Church Missionary Society in the Abolition of Oozhiyam (Bonded Labor Service) in Kerala

Bonded labor is the most widespread form of slavery in the world. It is at once the most ancient and most contemporary face of human servitude. In India, 'labor' is more a social category than economics, where the division of labor and laborer is defined according to the caste. The caste system is not a scientific division of labor, which is, after all, necessary for the efficient functioning of any economy. It is an arbitrary, birth-determined hierarchy in which different types of laborers are graded one above the other and subject to a descending scale of civil disabilities that have nothing to do with efficiency or productivity. It is not a division based on choice, as individual sentiment, preference, or even actual skill, have no place in it. Caste slavery was an oppressive, discriminative, and exploitive system which existed in Kerala from an early medieval period onwards. In the social structure of Kerala, the bonded or forced labor system was an unavoidable factor of slavery. As the system of bonded labor was associated with feudalism, land-based social relations were formed in the state. The oozhiyam or bonded labor system, therefore strictly connected with the caste oriented slavery in Kerala. Under the system of oozhiyam, the economically under-privileged servants were obliged to render bonded services on all days of the week as required by the government officials and the higher castes. The main force behind this system was the coercive authority of the government and the privileged class. Nobody dared to evade the services demanded by the government. Only on the days of the oozhiyam services, the laborers received a minimum quantity of food to keep their body and soul together. This essay mainly focuses on the ameliorating activities of the Christian missionaries, such as the London Missionary Society (LMS) and Church Missionary Society (CMS), among the oppressed sections of the society of Kerala. In addition to the social legislations of the government, the intervention of Christian missionaries also helped in the permanent abolition of the system of oozhiyam in Kerala.

Mindolo Mission of the London Missionary Society: Origins, Development, and Initiatives for Ecumenism

This paper considers the origins and development of Mindolo Mission of the London Mission Society in Zambia. First, the factors that led to the formation of the mission are analyzed. Second, the paper traces the shifts in ownership of Mindolo Mission and the negotiations to attain church union and increased ecumenism resulting in the foundation of the Church of Central Africa in Rhodesia (CCAR), United Church of Central Africa in Rhodesia (UCCAR), the formation of Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (MEF) and the United Church of Zambia (UCZ). Third, the present paper discusses the ownership of the mission land. The paper concludes that Mindolo Mission is an offspring of the ecumenical movement and the churches who were the forerunners of the UCZ and the MEF.

Cultural Technologies: The long and unexpected life of the Christian mission encounter, North China, 1900–30

This article uses the case of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in China to argue that disruptive cultural technologies—namely organizational forms and tools—were just as significant within Christian mission encounters as religious doctrines or material technologies. LMS missionaries did not convert as many Chinese to Christianity as they hoped, but their auxiliary efforts were more successful. The LMS mission project facilitated the transfer of certain cultural technologies such as church councils to administer local congregations or phonetic scripts to facilitate literacy. Once in the hands of native Christians and non-Christians alike, these cultural technologies could be freely adapted for a variety of purposes and ends that often diverged from the missionaries’ original intent and expectation. This article draws on the letters and reports of missionaries of the London Missionary Society in North China from roughly 1900 to 1930—the period during which self-governing Protestant congregations took root in China and many places around the world. The spread of church government structures and a culture of Bible-reading enabled Chinese within the mission sphere to create new forms of collective life. These new forms of community not only tied into local networks, but also connected to transnational flows of information, finances, and personnel. Native Christian communities embraced new, alternative sources of community authority—the power of God working through a group of ordinary people or through the biblical text—that proved both attractive and disruptive.

Mary and William Pool and their (mostly her) Malagasy lichen and plant collections

William and Mary (née Crage) Pool spent the decade from 1865 to 1875 in Madagascar as missionaries employed by the London Missionary Society. For amusement, Mrs Pool collected lichen and plant specimens, which her husband eventually donated to Kew. Even though Mrs Pool collected most of these specimens, her husband invariably receives credit: his name appears on the labels of plants collected by her, and her collections are attributed to him in a number of contemporary publications.

Missionaries in the Manchu City (1864–1905)

The large transnational flows of people, ideas, and resources that characterized twentieth-century global modernity had early expressions within the imperial institutions (and aspiring or quasi-imperial institutions) of the nineteenth century. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rebellion, Qing imperial bureaucracy, and London Missionary Society all engaged in the same project of connecting individuals through national and transnational networks held together by charismatic ideas and institutional resources. For the five individuals whose lives intertwine in this chapter (Hong Xiuquan, Christian rebel; Zeng Guofan, Qing imperial official; Samuel Evans Meech, missionary; Lillie E. V. Saville, missionary doctor; and Wei Enbo, cloth merchant), these networks provided expanded opportunities to engage with the world and transform it to reflect a particular universalistic vision. As people sought to realize these distinctive visions and the charismatic worldviews they represented, they created and extended large organizational structures in which their ideals were embodied, but also attenuated.

Missionary Societies

While some of the global reach of Dissenting traditions is due to the vagaries of migration from Britain in the early modern period, much of it is also the result of the deliberate propagation of the faith in which the Missionary Societies, formed between the French Revolution and the early nineteenth century, were key. Older scholarship tended to celebrate evangelical Dissent as being central to this movement. More recent exploration has shown that unlike earlier Pietist and Anglican missionary activity, the Baptist Missionary Society (1792) and London Missionary Society (1795) had a global reach, rather than being limited to strong national/colonial networks. Given the independence from state control of these new societies, they were also entirely reliant on philanthropic giving to finance their activities.