Religion, Gender, and Bodies: Women’s Polyvalent Roles and Experiences in the Biopolitics of Taiwan’s Presbyterian Missions

The Presbyterian missions and medical missions in 19th-century Taiwan were successful enterprises that over time developed into the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, which stands today as the largest Christian minority church in this country. Through a Foucauldian biopolitical perspective, this paper analyzes the roles of female missionaries in the management of bodies and the subjective experiences of both foreign and Native women in the missions. Going beyond descriptive narratives and control-versus-agency reductionist frames, the paper points the polyvalent semantics of such roles and experiences. It also explores the complex relations between the women’s biopolitical functions, the PCT’s industrial type of biopolitical apparatus, and the biopolitical regimes of the late Qing dynasty and the Japanese colonial government in the early 20th century. The conclusions remark on the analytical relevance of biopolitical perspectives in the study of gender and body-related phenomena in Christian missions and Christian religions beyond Western societies.

Implications of Acts 1:8 for Ghanaian Neo-Pentecostal Missiology

The book of Acts is often referred to by many scholars and preachers when discussing Christian missions with emphasis on Acts 1:8 as the centrality of the book. Unfortunately, very little exegetical study is done on the text by scholars in relation to missions. It appears that Luke fails to provide a detailed blueprint strategies or approaches to the command for missions (witnessing) in the text. This article therefore considers Acts 1:8 exegetically to establish its missionary importance. In the light of this, the article assesses the mission strategies of the Early Church, Historic Missions and Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches in Ghana. The article contends that, a reflection on the current trend of Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic approaches or strategies to missions in Ghana gives a valuable insight of a departure from the early missionary strategies in general. The article acknowledges that, the recent widespread involvement of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the use of radio, social media, television, open-air crusades, street evangelism, preaching in buses, prayer and prophetic meetings/conventions, medical outreach work and social welfare are ways to fulfill missions in the light of Acts 1:8. The article also highlights the need to broaden the understanding and task of Christian missions to meet the challenges of the recent changing Ghanaian Christian religious landscape. Keywords: Missions, Missiology, Neo-Pentecostal Churches, Early Church,Strategy, Book of Acts, Historic Churches.

Missio Dei as the Main Project: Project Management Model for Mission of God

The emergence of the concept of Missio Dei (Mission of God) from the perspective of the International Missionary Council (IMC) arguably demonstrated that the role of the Triune God in his own mission was undeservedly marginalized for decades, if not centuries preceding 1952. Over the past decades there has been a sustained research activity conceptualizing Missio Dei, and at the same time renewing missiological interest in other Christian missions. However, to the author’s awareness, there has been very little or no effort to introduce or use known project models that can be utilized to show coherence or collaboration of missions towards the project of fulfilling the objective of Missio Dei. Through a desk-top literature review, this paper proposes the use of a project management model to properly conceptualize the location of Missio Dei as a main project that includes other network of missions as sub-projects within its framework. The Triune God is here identified as Project managers while human participants are seen as project stakeholders. Christian missions include Missio Christos, Missio Spiritus, Missio Hominum and Missio Ecclesiae as sub-projects. The proposed model will demonstrate the coordination and collaboration of missions in the broader context of Missio Dei and further assist with a proper understanding of roles that each mission is, or should play, in achieving the objective of Missio Dei. While efforts are being made here to propose a project management model for Missio Dei, further research is needed to determine whether this proposal will yield an in-depth understanding of Missio Dei as a missiological paradigm in conjunction with the role of other missions.

Women in Southern African History

Women have played complex roles in the history of Southern Africa, a vast region that comprises diverse local histories as well as social and cultural forms. The diversity of the region has been both integrated and fragmented through historical connections, which have centered on South Africa as a subimperial power. Prior to colonial conquest and the impact of Christian missions and European trade, gender relations varied, partly due to an array of social and kinship systems. Overall, however, the position of women in southern African societies deteriorated after colonization. Economic, political, and cultural dynamics impacted on gender relations through the interaction of European and indigenous patriarchy, colonial rule, and capitalist modes of production, which reinforced and transformed one another, evolving into new structures and forms of domination. The paradox of similarities due to settler colonialism and differences in respect of timing and pathways to decolonization impacted upon the trajectories of postcolonial gender politics and the representation of women in the postcolonial political structures of southern Africa. Despite initial differences regarding legal gender equality, everywhere that liberation movements in power established themselves in the region, discourses of “African culture and tradition” became pertinent. Colonial customary laws and powers given to traditional leaders remain at the heart of contemporary battles over gender equality and social justice.

Regeneration of Empire: Agrarian Vision and Philanthropic Colonisation in H. Rider Haggard's Novels

<p>This thesis focuses on H. Rider Haggard’s fictional use of philanthropic colonisation to illustrate his vision of agriculturally regenerating the British Empire. Haggard’s panacea for poverty, unemployment, urban crowding, and tenuous control of imperial holdings relies on returning people back to the land. Retraining people to become farmers is the solution to all these issues; philanthropic colonisation is the mode through which his vision would come to fruition. Between 1896-1919, Haggard’s depictions of Empire shift from semi-stable to precarious—a sign of his public work as an agricultural reformer influencing his fiction. I argue in this thesis that focusing on three novels, The Wizard (1896), The Ghost Kings (1908), and When the World Shook (1919), written during Haggard’s work as an agricultural reformer, provides a scope in which to watch Haggard’s agrarian vision develop, climax, and fade. I analyse Haggard’s use of philanthropic colonisation to reflect the desired virtues of his agrarian vision as well as the charitable endeavours which expand or prolong the Empire’s reach. Chapter one, “‘The Rider Haggard of the New Crusade:’ Philanthropy and Declining Civilisations,” traces the degradation of Haggard’s hopes to regenerate the Empire through philanthropic colonisation. In The Ghost Kings, Haggard uses Rachel’s charity to extend the Empire and to demonstrate the effect one individual’s virtue can make in saving or destroying a civilisation; in When the World Shook, Haggard shows the depth of imperial corruption through the decay of Christian missions. Through Arbuthnot and Oro, Haggard struggles to understand the fate of the Empire; using both characters to grasp the concept of civilisation, Haggard concludes that although the Empire has serious flaws, it is ultimately worth trying to save. Chapter two, “Zealot, Renegade, and Reformer: Haggard’s Vision for the Empire,” uses Gerald Monsman’s idea of Haggard as a “heretic in disguise” to look at how Haggard utilises Christian missionary characters to propagate ideas of imperial regeneration. The move between zealot, renegade, and reformer character types reveals Haggard’s developing sense—from the late 1890s through to 1919—that the Empire needs to be rejuvenated. Chapter three, “The Role of Condescension in Interracial Friendship,” explores how Haggard’s vision of a rebirth for the Empire is endangered by interracial friendships. Friendship strips away the prescribed roles given to both coloniser and native, allowing for something more intimate to develop. Thus, any interaction between a white and black person was socially scripted—language borrowed from philanthropic condescension. It is the act of condescension that enables interaction between a coloniser and native; only when deviating from prescribed roles does friendship become a possibility.</p>

Regeneration of Empire: Agrarian Vision and Philanthropic Colonisation in H. Rider Haggard's Novels

<p>This thesis focuses on H. Rider Haggard’s fictional use of philanthropic colonisation to illustrate his vision of agriculturally regenerating the British Empire. Haggard’s panacea for poverty, unemployment, urban crowding, and tenuous control of imperial holdings relies on returning people back to the land. Retraining people to become farmers is the solution to all these issues; philanthropic colonisation is the mode through which his vision would come to fruition. Between 1896-1919, Haggard’s depictions of Empire shift from semi-stable to precarious—a sign of his public work as an agricultural reformer influencing his fiction. I argue in this thesis that focusing on three novels, The Wizard (1896), The Ghost Kings (1908), and When the World Shook (1919), written during Haggard’s work as an agricultural reformer, provides a scope in which to watch Haggard’s agrarian vision develop, climax, and fade. I analyse Haggard’s use of philanthropic colonisation to reflect the desired virtues of his agrarian vision as well as the charitable endeavours which expand or prolong the Empire’s reach. Chapter one, “‘The Rider Haggard of the New Crusade:’ Philanthropy and Declining Civilisations,” traces the degradation of Haggard’s hopes to regenerate the Empire through philanthropic colonisation. In The Ghost Kings, Haggard uses Rachel’s charity to extend the Empire and to demonstrate the effect one individual’s virtue can make in saving or destroying a civilisation; in When the World Shook, Haggard shows the depth of imperial corruption through the decay of Christian missions. Through Arbuthnot and Oro, Haggard struggles to understand the fate of the Empire; using both characters to grasp the concept of civilisation, Haggard concludes that although the Empire has serious flaws, it is ultimately worth trying to save. Chapter two, “Zealot, Renegade, and Reformer: Haggard’s Vision for the Empire,” uses Gerald Monsman’s idea of Haggard as a “heretic in disguise” to look at how Haggard utilises Christian missionary characters to propagate ideas of imperial regeneration. The move between zealot, renegade, and reformer character types reveals Haggard’s developing sense—from the late 1890s through to 1919—that the Empire needs to be rejuvenated. Chapter three, “The Role of Condescension in Interracial Friendship,” explores how Haggard’s vision of a rebirth for the Empire is endangered by interracial friendships. Friendship strips away the prescribed roles given to both coloniser and native, allowing for something more intimate to develop. Thus, any interaction between a white and black person was socially scripted—language borrowed from philanthropic condescension. It is the act of condescension that enables interaction between a coloniser and native; only when deviating from prescribed roles does friendship become a possibility.</p>

Erratum: The importance and challenges of money in Christian missions

No abstract available.

Chronicles of Bailundo: a fragmentary account in Umbundu of life before and after Portuguese colonial rule

Abstract‘Chronicles of Bailundo’ is a fragmentary account of life in Bailundo, Central Angola. The manuscript, whose authorship and exact date are unknown, is available at the archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) at Houghton Library, Harvard University. It was written in Umbundu, the vernacular spoken in Bailundo, by North American Congregational missionaries between 1903 and the 1930s. Although the source mentions no dates, it refers roughly to the period between the seventeenth century and the gradual establishment of Portuguese colonial rule and Christian missions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It gives access to both the Umbundu then spoken in Bailundo and the perspective of Umbundu-speaking subjects on what it was like to live in this polity. The source addresses socio-cultural, political and economic aspects of life in Bailundo as well as significant historical events, such as the Bailundo War (1902–03). The text in Umbundu, published as supplementary material with this article, has been transcribed, translated into Portuguese and English, and annotated. The version published following the main introduction of the article presents an annotated sample of the source in English. The full version, published as supplementary material, comprises the complete original in Umbundu, its complete annotated translation into English, and a complete annotated translation into Portuguese. The article addresses the authorship, contents, form and context of production of the source.