This Globethics collection gathers interdisciplinary studies and research work from all continents, mainly on the history and theology of Christian missions, the mission of the Church, historical and contemporary theological, anthropological, (cross-) cultural, socio-political aspects, (inter-) religious and interdenominational perspectives and developments (trends) of missionary praxis and theory in local, regional and global contexts of Church history, the modern ecumenical movement and world Christianity.

Recent Submissions

  • Los vinos atlánticos

    Quero Toribio, Serafín (2022)
    This article deals with the wines elaborated with grapes that come from vineyards, whose growth and development has been influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. The geography of these wines includes the mouth of the Loire river, the estuary of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers in Bordeaux, the rivers Sil and Miño in Galice, Portugal, Huelva, the magic triangle of Jerez, the Canary Islands, the Azores, Madeira, Morocco, Uruguay and Brazil. The only thing that the Atlantic wines have in common is the ocean, since the climate, the soil and the grape varieties are different in each of the countries where these wines are produced. The Atlantic wines of America are called wines of the New World. One of the difference between the wines of the New World and those of the Old World is their alcohol degree and their moderate acidity.
  • The economic rationale for the provision of technical/vocational education (TVE) in colonial Ghana: Implications for practice

    Philip Oti-Agyen (University of the Free State, 2023-12-01)
    The paper examines the economic rationale for the provision of technical/ vocational education (TVE) in colonial Ghana.  It further highlights some key lessons drawn from the study, particularly, in term of the Ghanaian contemporary search for a more pragmatic policy formulation for TVE. Data were retrieved from primary sources in the form of archival materials and some secondary sources as well some interview sessions with two personalities who were actively involved in the provision of TVE during the period.   Chronological and thematic analysis of the data were utilized.  The study revealed that the missionary bodies and the colonial administration vigorously promoted TVE largely because of economic reasons.   It further argues that this level of vigor could not unfortunately keep pace with the developmental needs of the country due mainly to overriding interest in literary/grammar education, lack of entrepreneurial training for graduates of the TVE institutions and virtual non-existence of local industries to absorb these graduates.
  • Bursa Amerikan Kız Kolejinde eğitim

    Demirel, Muammer; Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi/Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü/Türkçe ve Sosyal Bilimler Eğitimi Anabilim Dalı/Sosyal Bilgiler Eğitimi Bilim Dalı.; 0000-0002-3592-6319; Köknar, Ezgi Sena (Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi, 2024-02-27)
    Bu tez çalışması Amerikalı misyonerler tarafından kurulan Bursa Amerikan Kız Kolejinin kuruluşunu, kuruluş amacını, misyonunu, eğitim ve öğretim faaliyetlerini, tanassur hadisesini ve kapatılışını incelemektedir. Araştırmanın yoğunluğunu Amerikan Board Teşkilatı ve misyonerlerinin Bursa’daki eğitim faaliyetleri oluşturmaktadır. Bu kapsamda tez çalışması başlıklara ayrılarak ele alınmıştır. Öncelikli olarak Bursa Amerikan Kız Kolejinin kuruluşu, misyonerlere destek veren Amerikan Board Teşkilatı’nın faaliyetleri, misyonerlerin Bursa’daki çalışmaları ve okulun kuruluşundaki tarihsel süreçten bahsedilmiştir. Bursa Amerikan Kız Kolejinde Eğitim Faaliyetleri kapsamında; Batı Türkiye Misyonu dâhilinde Bursa istasyonu için yıl sonlarında misyonerlik evine gönderilen veriler incelenmiş, okulda okutulan derslerden bahsedilmiş, okulda kız öğrencilerin nasıl yetiştirildiğine dair bilgiler verilmiştir. Bursa Amerikan Kız Kolejinde Çalışan Misyoner Öğretmenler başlığı altında; okuldaki eğitim kadrosundan, misyoner öğretmenlerin faaliyetlerinden ve aldıkları maaşlardan bahsedilmiştir. Son olarak ise Bursa Amerikan Kız Kolejinin kapatılma süreci incelenmiştir; okuldaki tanassur hadisesinin duyulması ile başlayan kapatılma süreci ele alınmıştır.
  • Arap Birliğini Doğuran Temel İdeoloji Üzerine Bir Değerlendirme: Arap Milliyetçiliği

    Halil Uğur Ay (Ekonomi ve Finansal Araştırmalar Derneği, 2018-04-01)
    Arap Birliği’nin kuruluşunun izleri 19. yüzyılda ortaya çıkan milliyetçilik akımına kadar götürülebilmektedir. Fransız Devrimi’nin doğurduğu yeni fikirler Napolyon’un 1798-1801 yılları arasında gerçekleşen geçici Mısır işgali ile Osmanlı Devleti’nin Arap vilayetlerinde yaygınlık kazanmaya başlamıştır. Sonrasında Mısır’dan Fransız güçlerinin çekilmelerine karşın Mehmet Ali Paşa yönetiminde girişilen reform hareketleri sonucunda Batılı fikirler etkinliğini artırmıştır. Aynı zamanda Osmanlı’nın Arap vilayetleri ile Batılı devletler arasında artan ticari ilişkiler ve misyoner eğitim faaliyetleri sonucunda bölgede Arap dili ve tarihine dair bilinçlenme artmaya başlamıştır. Bu şekilde bağımsız bir Arap krallığı hayaline kapılan Arap milliyetçileri Osmanlı Devleti’ne isyan etmiş ve Birinci Dünya Savaşı sonunda İngiliz ve Fransız sömürgecilik yönetimleri altında kalarak büyük bir pişmanlık içerisine düşmüşlerdir. İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrasında Batılı sömürgeci güçlerin maliyetli Arap topraklarından tedrici çekilmeleri sonucunda bir dizi bağımsız Arap devleti ortaya çıkmıştır. Dönem itibariyle derin anlaşmazlıklara sahip olan bu Arap devletleri tek bir devlet kurmak yerine uluslararası bir örgüt çatısı altında bütünleşme yanlısı olmuşlardır. Bu makalede Arap Birliği’nin kuruluşu 19. yüzyılda gelişen Arap milliyetçiliğine dayandığı ön kabulü üzerinden tarihsel veriler ışığında incelenecektir.
  • The One Balm for All Earth’s Wounds: The Priority of Gospel Proclamation in Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s Missiology

    Sypert, John (Scholars Crossing, 2014-09-01)
    This dissertation explores the relationship between gospel proclamation and mercy ministry in Charles Spurgeon’s ministry. The dissertation argues that Spurgeon’s Pastors College, Stockwell Orphanage, and his multitude of other ministries had one clear goal: the spreading of the gospel and the conversion of the lost. This dissertation uses Spurgeon’s approach to missions as an apologetic for a more biblically precise missiology, namely, one that prioritizes gospel proclamation without neglecting the physical needs of those who suffer. This approach could be called “benevolent prioritism” because it prioritizes the proclamation of the gospel while not neglecting works of love for those suffering.
  • An Archaeology of Early Christianity in Vanuatu (Terra Australis 44)

    L. Flexner, James (ANU Press, 2017-02-17)
    Religious change is at its core a material as much as a spiritual process. Beliefs related to intangible spirits, ghosts, or gods were enacted through material relationships between people, places, and objects. The archaeology of mission sites from Tanna and Erromango islands, southern Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides), offer an informative case study for understanding the material dimensions of religious change. One of the primary ways that cultural difference was thrown into relief in the Presbyterian New Hebrides missions was in the realm of objects. Christian Protestant missionaries believed that religious conversion had to be accompanied by changes in the material conditions of everyday life. Results of field archaeology and museum research on Tanna and Erromango, southern Vanuatu, show that the process of material transformation was not unidirectional. Just as Melanesian people changed religious beliefs and integrated some imported objects into everyday life, missionaries integrated local elements into their daily lives. Attempts to produce ‘civilised Christian natives’, or to change some elements of native life relating purely to ‘religion’ but not others, resulted instead in a proliferation of ‘hybrid’ forms. This is visible in the continuity of a variety of traditional practices subsumed under the umbrella term ‘kastom’ through to the present alongside Christianity. Melanesians didn’t become Christian, Christianity became Melanesian. The material basis of religious change was integral to this process.
  • The Attitude of Christian Churches in the Kingdom of Poland toward Jews in 1855–1915

    Lewalski, Krzysztof (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2024-03-13)
    The book is the first attempt in historiography to present the attitude of Christian Churches (Catholic, Evangelical, and Orthodox) in the Kingdom of Poland towards Jews at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The work is based on a rich and varied source base, it presents many new facts and introduces unknown or unused sources. The monograph deals with the issues of extremely important historical significance, often remaining at the center of the updated historical and political disputes. Despite the difficulty and complexity of the topic, the analysis of the source material, the narrative, and the conclusions contained therein were not involved in these disputes. The work is an important step towards understanding Christian-Jewish relations and Polish-Jewish relations.
  • Story of Ida Kahn and Mary Stone

    Columbia University Libraries (Boston : Publication Office, Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church, 1912-01-01)
    3 unnumbered pages : 18 cm
  • Zwischen Welten und Worten: Transkulturelle Übersetzungsprozesse in der Jesuitenmission des 18. Jahrhunderts bei Florian Paucke

    Stober, Ulrich Samuel (Büchner-VerlagDEUMarburg, 2024-03-13)
    Wie fand Kommunikation in der Mission zwischen Menschen unterschiedlicher kultureller Prägung statt? Welche Interessen verfolgten Jesuiten, Indigene und Spanier_innen im Grenzgebiet Gran Chaco in der Jesuitenprovinz Paraguay? Welche Abhängigkeiten entstanden dabei? Antworten auf diese Fragen lieferte der Jesuit Florian Paucke (1719-1780) in seiner Abhandlung "Hin und Her", in der er seine Erfahrungen in der Paraguay-Mission verarbeitete. Der Autor erschließt erstmals grundlegend das Manuskript sowie die über 200 Aquarellzeichnungen des Missionars. Auf dieser Basis werden unter Heranziehung von zahlreichem Archivmaterial sprachliche und kulturelle Übersetzungsprozesse betrachtet. Im Zentrum steht dabei die Auseinandersetzung der Missionare mit der indigenen Sprache, Ernährung und Bekleidung sowie unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen von Geschlechterrollen. Auch wenn Paucke diesbezüglich eine genuin europäische Perspektive einnahm, ist zentral, dass indigene Lebenswelten die Fragen der europäischen Akteure rahmten und formten.
  • Shaping Cantonese Grammar – Early Western Contribution

    Paternicò, Luisa M. (2019)
    Les premiers Occidentaux à apprendre et à décrire le cantonais étaient les missionnaires protestants arrivés en Chine au xixe siècle. Devant l’absence presque totale d’outils linguistiques locaux, ils ont commencé à présenter le cantonais en grammaires, dictionnaires et manuels de conversation, en concevant des systèmes de romanisation pour transcrire ses sons. La première tentative de description de la grammaire cantonaise a été faite par Robert Morrison dans une section de sa Grammaire de la langue chinoise (1815). Beaucoup d’autres travaux ont suivi, compilés aussi par des missionnaires catholiques ou des savants laïcs, et consacrés à l’analyse et à la pédagogie du cantonais. Cet article offrira d’abord un aperçu des premières impressions sur le langage effectuées par les Occidentaux ; il montrera ensuite comment ces analyses ont évolué, devenant plus raffinées et détaillées, et finalement − grâce au travail de T. O’Melia − sont devenu plus conscientes et indépendantes des analyses du Mandarin, contribuant ante litteram à démystifier le mythe d’une « grammaire chinoise universelle ».
  • "Greater Love...": European Missionaries, Self-Sacrifice and Christian Partibility in the Western Solomon Islands

    Rüpke, J; Dureau, Christine (2018-10-10)
    Extended Abstract: “GREATER LOVE…” European Missionaries, Self-Sacrifice and Christian Partibility in the Western Solomon Islands Christine Dureau The University of Auckland To get the best from these people, we must teach them to be industrious, honest, clean, and self-reliant and, if need be, self-sacrificing (Goldie 1916:4) Despite growing interest in the articulation of global and local understandings in Christian conversion, anthropologists still pay limited attention to the worldviews and cultural imperatives driving missionaries who were key agents of conversion, disciplinary concerns with discourse, power and agency tending to marginalize questions about missionaries’ cultural-theological imperatives. In Melanesian missions a key question concerns the relationship between missionary and indigenous understandings of the properly moral person. This is particularly the case for non-Conformist Protestants, long associated with individualist modes of personhood, working in a region where the person was conceived as ideally dividual, defined as a person according to the totality of their relational enmeshments. I consider one such mission—the Edwardian Australasian Methodist Mission to the Western Solomon Islands—during approximately its first two decades (1902 – 1922), paying particular attention to Rev. John Francis Goldie, its founding chair. In keeping with Protestant industrial missions of the time, Goldie and others typically dismissed Islander values and practices as forms of primitive communism, commensurate with their putatively low social evolutionary position (Stanley 2009; e.g. Goldie 1909) and sought to inculcate more Western forms of character marked, for example, by personal responsibility, orientation to nuclear family over extended kin commitments, the courage to stand alone against others. Yet, there are points at which missionaries’ moral personhood echoes indigenous models of the dividual. Mark Mosko has recently argued that, in fact, Christianity has been essentially dividualist since Antiquity, stressing Godly gift—of grace, forgiveness, etc.—and the reciprocities—“confessions…, prayer, songs of praise, tithes, … good works”, etc.—to which Christians are, in turn, morally obliged (2015: 370). Mosko’s broad inclusiveness threatens conceptual weakness and reductionism to the point at which all religious exchanges are forms of dividualist partibility, as his commentators have observed (e.g., Errington & Gewertz 2010; Barker 2010). Still, I want to engage the idea that at least some aspects of Christian personhood can be analyzed as forms of dividualism Late Victorian and Edwardian missionaries and missionary literature elevated self-sacrifice as Christian essence: Calvary as the model of selfless giving on behalf of all humankind; missionary lives as self-surrender in order to bring heathens into Christian relationship; and the aspirational surrender of self-interest and self-indulgence as the mark of true conversion from heathenism. These understandings of Christianity in terms of community, kinship and transcendence of the self often eclipsed concerns with individual souls, and I ask how they might be understood in terms of dividuality. For Edwardian Methodist missionaries, the Christian person was not solely self-authored. Although they must permanently strive for self-improvement, their Christian being was authored by God, who had offered them an adult conversion or deepening faith, rather than by their own efforts (O’Brien 2015). Nor could one be Christian solely in oneself: owing a personal debt of acceptance and acknowledgment to Christ, they felt compelled to share the Word, bringing others into the Christian ecumene. Frequently beset by ill health, permanently exhausted, often separated from kin and friends for years or decades, endlessly dealing with frustrations and occasionally dying or left with broken health—and extolled accordingly in religious literature—they understood their lives as simultaneously reciprocity to God and gift to heathens. These ideals of surrendering the self on behalf of others imply a Christian personhood as morally embedded in networks of relationships limited only by the boundaries of Christianity. But beyond relationality, the dividual further implies a partible person, one materially embedded in the lives of others through relations of substance detached from the self and gifted to others, who reciprocate in turn. I suggest that missionary ideals of self-sacrifice can be partially understood in such terms. Certainly, the sacrifice of the incarnate Christ on Calvary suggests that the triune God, in which each was both individual and dissolved in the One, could be interpreted as partible. And missionary self-sacrifices of time, effort, energy or health on behalf of mission can be also interpreted in terms of detached corporeal substance, transacted as gifts to other members and potential members of their religion. Finally, seeing their own lives as models for converts, they sought something similar is seeking to teach self-sacrifice to Solomon Islanders, often judging their success by how much they materialized their faith by surrendering their wealth for mission support. In making such judgements, missionaries did not recognize the extent to which such giving reflected the congruence between their own understandings of salvation as gift and indigenous models of moral sociality—a point long made by some Pacific theologians who see the two as inherently compatible with Christian ideals.   References Australian Broadcasting Commission, John Cleary, Benjamin Myers, Chris Fleming & Michael Jenson. 29/3/2013. The Cross and the Atonement. http://www.abc.net.au/sundaynights/stories/s3727892.htm http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/local/sundaynights/201304/r1095168_13154458.mp3 Downloaded 29/1/2017. Centuries of disputation about the meaning of the Crucifixion, meanings have shifted in changing historical-cultural and theological contexts, and ongoing changes in its interpretation in different denominations and evangelical manifestations (Australian Broadcasting Commission et al, 29/3/13. Listen again. Barker, John, 2010. The Varieties of Melanesian Christian Experience: A Comment on Mosko’s “Partible penitents.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 16: 247–49. Errington, Frederick, & Deborah Gewertz, 2010. Expanding Definitions, Contracting Contexts: A Comment on Mosko’s “Partible Penitents.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 16: 250–52. Goldie, Rev. J., 1909. The People of New Georgia: Their Manners and Customs, and Religious Beliefs. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland XXII (1): 23 – 30. Goldie, Rev. John F., 1916. Industrial Training in Our Pacific Missions. Australasian Methodist Missionary Review (4/6/06) XXVI(3): 2 – 5 Mosko, Mark S. 2015. Unbecoming Individuals: The Partible Character of the Christian Person. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(1): 361 – 93. O’Brien, Glen, 2015. Australian Methodist Religious experience. In Glen O’Brien & Hilary M. Carey, eds, Methodism in Australia: A History. Farnham: Ashgate, pp, 167 – 66. Stanley, Brian. 2009. The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. Studies in the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.
  • Arte y Vocabulario de la lengua Lule y Tonocoté

    Badini, Riccardo; Tiziana, Deonette; Stefania, Pineider; BADINI, RICCARDO; Tiziana Deonette; Stefania Pineider (CUEC Editriceplace:CAGLIARI, 2008)
    Edizione e Traduzione con apparato di note di una grammatica con vocabolario e catechismo abbreviato Spagnolo-Lule, redatta dal Padre missionario Antonio Mcaccioni nel 1732. L'opera rappresenta la maggiore e la più completa testimonianza di una lingua indigena della zona del Gran Chaco, oggi scomparsa.
  • L'architettura dei Carmelitani Scalzi in età barocca. Principii, norme e tipologie in Europa e nel Nuovo Mondo

    Sturm, Saverio; Sturm, Saverio (Gangemiplace:ROMA, 2006)
    The middle age Carmelite Order, reformed by the mystical nun Teresa d’Avila in Spain at half sixtheenth century, matured original and autonomous bulding rules and figurative politics in the crucial passage bettween ‘500 and ‘600, and between european urban convents and missionary foundations in the colonial countries of America. Large number of churches and convents in Spain, Italy and other european and american countries are connected to general typologies and principles as poverty, sobriety, humilty, expression of the spiritual aims of the Order, also explainable as the actual translation of the traditional Vitruvian categories of firmitas, venustas and utilitas. The result is a functional, humble, simplified, proto-razionalist architecture, often carried out by internal tecnicians, nevertheless not destitute of symbolical intentions and spectacular outcomes as Cornaro Chapel in S. Maria della Vittoria mission’s seminary in Rome.
 The volume examines the Order throughout Italy, but also takes a wider look at Carmelites in Europe and the New World, surveing a large number of churches and convents, and fleshing out the more general principles and typologies of their architecture.
  • Traduire les noms de Dieu. Les missionnaires d'Afrique face à la religion haya (Tanzanie)

    Mattalucci, C; MATTALUCCI, CLAUDIA (Éditions de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Socialescountry:FR, 2009)
    This paper discusses the issues faced when translating the idea of God into indigenous languages. A dual strategy emerges from the ethnography of religion conducted by Missionaries of Africa in Buhaya (Northwest Tanzania). On the one hand, several authors were able to locate the attributes of the Christian God within the names of local deities. These were considered alleged traces of a primitive monotheism, something which was later overlaid by false beliefs. On the other hand, and in order to mark the difference of the true God from the ancestors and from the spirits of the kubandawa religion, some of the missionary ethnographers underlined the former’s extraneity to both rituals of possession and forms of exchange with other spiritual entities. These strategies, however, failed to make African deities and the Christian Divinity commensurable, and to legitimate any translation of the name of God into an indigenous one.
  • El aptaycachana de Juan de Castromonte - un manual sacramental quechua para la sierra central del Perú (ca. 1650)

    Alan Durston (Institut Français d'Études Andines, 2002-07-01)
    This article presents a critical edition of Juan de Castromonte’s Aptaycachana, a Quechua sacramental manual written in the mid 17th century to be used in the Indian parishes of the central Peruvian highlands (present-day departments of Junín, Pasco, Huánuco, Ancash and Lima). Even though the Peruvian Church had imposed a pastoral lingua franca based on Cuzco Quechua since the Third Lima Council of 1583, there are abundant Central Quechua lexical, morphological and phonological elements in the Aptaycachana - more so than in any other colonial text. Castromonte’s manual is thus an important source for Quechua historical linguistics and for the study of the translation practices of the Church in the colonial Andes. This edition, which consists of an annotated paleographic transcription and Spanish translation, is preceeded by a preliminary study which explains the immediate historical contexts of the Aptaycachana and discusses some of its main features.
  • Las primeras historias naturales de las Filipinas (1583-1604)

    José Pardo-Tomás (Centre de Recherches sur les Mondes Américains, 2019-10-01)
    The paper is based on the hypothesis that the Philippines was a territory colonized from New Spain and served as experience, accumulation, memory and practice for other spaces colonized from New Spain, mainly the North of Mexico and California. Although the Jesuits hegemonized the missionary-colonizing voice in those territories (the Philippines first, then the North), there were precedent ways of writing the natural history that the Jesuits knew, learned and, finally, appropriated and adapted. The paper presents one of the first attempts of writing the natural history of the Philippines, Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas – published in Mexico, in 1609, but written between 1595 and 1603 – to compare it with the first natural history of the Philippines produced by a Jesuit, Pedro Chirino, published in Rome, in 1604.
  • Mapoon Mission Station and the Privatization of Public Violence:

    Jasper Ludewig
    This paper considers the role of missionary architecture as an instrument of colonial governance. It focuses on the case of Mapoon, a German Moravian mission station established on the remote Cape York Peninsula in the colony of Queensland at the turn of the twentieth century. In its conception, the Mapoon mission would serve as a mechanism in the wider regulation of Queensland’s late-nineteenth-century colonial frontier, working to segregate the colony’s Aboriginal population from settler-colonial expansion. The architecture of the mission station formed the material basis of this project, redeploying aspects of a unique settlement model developed by Moravian Pietists since the eighteenth century. The paper argues that the history of Mapoon is one of transnational connection in which individual actors, organizational structures, and spheres of activity crossed porous imperial, colonial, and national borders. It examines this mobility—of ideas, expertise, and institutional projects—in order to rethink the conditions for telling a history of Australian architecture. It seeks to question the notional limits of these categories—of what can meaningfully be called “Australian” in this historical moment, and of what is deemed permissible as an example of historical “architecture”—in order to reveal that, even at its founding moment, Australia was already a global enterprise.

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