Missionary Strategies in the New World, 1610-1690

An Intellectual History
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-367-87607-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales)

Buch, Englisch, 242 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 331 g

Reihe: Religious Cultures in the Early Modern World

The study is an intellectual and comparative history of French, Spanish, and English missions to the native peoples of America in the seventeenth century, c. 1610–1690. It shows that missions are ideal case studies to properly understand the relationship between religion and politics in early modern Catholic and Calvinist thought.

The book aims to analyse the intellectual roots of fundamental ideas in Catholic and Calvinist missionary writings—among others idolatry, conversion, civility, and police—by examining the classical, Augustinian, neo-thomist, reformed Protestant, and contemporary European influences on their writings. Missionaries’ insistence on the necessity of reform, emphasising an experiential, practical vision of Christianity, led them to elaborate conversion strategies that encompassed not only religious, but also political and social changes. It was at the margins of empire that the essentials of Calvinist and Catholic soteriologies and political thought could be enacted and crystallised. By a careful analysis of these missiologies, the study thus argues that missionaries’ common strategies—habituation, segregation, social and political regulations—stem from a shared intellectual heritage, classical, humanist, and above all concerned with the Erasmian ideal of a reformation of manners.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ballériaux, Catherine

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Missionierung und Konvertierung
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein Missionswissenschaft, Missionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: 1. Custom as Ethos and Habituation: Native Paganism and Idolatry 2. Conversion: Will, Grace and Good Works 3. Nomadic Lifestyles: Civility, Law, and Godly Government 4. Assimilation versus Segregation: Two Competing Missiologies 5. Community Building: Commonwealth and Christian Missions 6. Conflict: Rejection of European Political and Religious Authority. Conclusion. Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Catherine Ballériaux has studied philosophy, American studies, and history at the Universities of Liège and Antwerp, Belgium, and Pittsburgh, USA She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is currently a Researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.