God's Interpreters: The Making of an American Mission and an African Church

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-54101-6
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 59, 254 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 577 g

Reihe: Studies in Christian Mission

This study of the pioneer mission to the Zulu people differs from others in South African mission studies by offering a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between mission and church during the formatives stages in the making of an African Christian community, both in America and in British Natal. Critical scholars continue to view the Western mission enterprise as an adjunct if not a tool of colonialism or at best a clash of cultures between white mission powerbrokers and powerless black Christian acolytes. The author argues that they were partners from the beginning, and in this endeavor the Christian identities of the missionaries as well as the Zulu were changed forever.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Switzer, Les

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christentum/Christliche Theologie Allgemein Missionswissenschaft, Missionsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Note on Sources

Maps

Introduction: The Contexts of Study

1 An Alternative to Missionaries as Part of the Colonial Project

1 Christian Narratives in Pre- and Post-Revolution America

1 The Puritan Legacy of Colonial New England

1.1 A Special People

2 The First Great Awakening and Its Impact before and after the War of Independence

2.1 Religious Rhetoric during and after the Revolution

2.2 Religious Toleration Free from Government Interference

3 The Second Great Awakening and Its Impact on Post-Colonial America

3.1 An All American Awakening

3.2 A Religion for the Masses

3.3 The American Bible Society

4 The Impact of the Second Awakening on Calvinist New England

5 The Impact of the Revivals on Social and Religious Practices in the Nineteenth Century

5.1 A New Patriarchal Marriage and Family Model

5.2 Benevolent Societies and Moral Crusades

5.3 The American Board and the Anti-slavery Movement

2 The American Board and the Evangelization of the World

1 A Postmillennial View of Religion and Culture

1.1 Being in and Not of the World

2 The Beginnings of a Foreign Mission Enterprise

2.1 Young Turks

2.2 Formation of the American Board

2.3 Overseers of the Foreign Mission Program

3 A Golden Age: The Era of Rufus Anderson

3.1 The Senior Secretary

4 Between Mission Theory and Practice

5 Foreign Missions Started before the Civil War

5.1 Proponents of the Three Self Program

5.2 Ramifications of the Three Self Program

6 Board Missions to “Primitive Cultures”

3 Laying the Foundations of an American Missionary Culture

1 Colleges of Choice for Men of the Zulu Mission

1.1 Yale College

1.2 Amherst College

2 Seminaries of Choice for Men of the Zulu Mission

2.1 East Windsor Seminary in Connecticut

2.2 Union Seminary in New York

3 Missionary Women in a Patriarchal World

3.1 Mount Holyoke and Mary Lyon

3.2 Mary Lyon’s Legacy

4 The Peoples of Pre-Colonial Natal and the First American Missions in South Africa

1 Conflicting Pre-colonial Paradigms

2 The American Mission to Mzilikazi and His People

3 The American Mission to Dingane and His People

5 The American Zulu Mission Enterprise under British Colonial Rule

1 Prospects for a Zulu Ministry in the 1840s and 1850s

1.1 American Missionary Views in Early Debates over Land and Labor

2 Segregating Africans in Government-Controlled Reservations

2.1 Mission Glebes and Reserves

2.2 American Administration of Its Mission Reserves

3 The Mission Reserves and the Shepstone System

6 Daily Life on American Mission Stations and Outstations

1 The Christian Home inside Mission Stations

2 The Christian Home outside the Mission Stations

3 American Mission Attitudes towards White Settlers

4 Missionary Relationships with Zulu Congregants in Colonial Natal before the 1880s

4.1 Negative Missionary Images: Race-based Linguistics

4.2 Negative Missionary Images: More Failed Ministries

4.3 Positive Missionary Images

7 Charting a Ministry for Mission and Church

1 African Commercial Farming in the Glebes and Mission Reserves

1.1 Mission-Sponsored Cash Crops

1.2 African Sugar Cultivators

2 Changing Circumstances and Altered Mission Policies

2.1 Protecting Missionary Women outside the Christian Home

3 An Independent Women’s Ministry among the Amabhinca

3.1 Teachers and Evangelizers

4 An Independent Women’s Ministry among Amabhinca Girls in Boarding Schools

4.1 Umzumbe Home for “Kraal” Girls

4.2 Ireland Home for “Kraal” Girls

5 Men and Ministry inside and outside the Mission Stations

6 The Campaign against Traditional African Cultural Practices

6.1 Gender Relations in Patriarchal Zulu Society

6.2 Polygamy and Lobola

6.3 Temperance

7 The First Ordinations of Zulu Pastors

7.1 Reaction and Resistance

Epilogue

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Les Switzer, Ph.D., M.Div, has had careers as a print journalist, a university academic, a hospice chaplain and a part-time minister mainly in South Africa and the U.S. He retired as executive director of the Foundation for Contemporary Theology—a venue for discussion and debate on contemporary issues and concerns in theology and religious studies in general—in Houston, Texas. He has published eight books and thirty-one book chapters, articles and essays in journalism and media studies, development studies, cultural studies, southern African studies and religious studies.