This volume presents a range of up-to-date studies on nineteenth-century Christian missions in the Middle East. Important themes are the history of Christian geopiety and the tensions between nationalist and internationalist interests, rival missionary organisations and conversionalist and civilizational aims.

The growth of Christianity in Africa during the twentieth century is one of the most fascinating shifts in the history of religions. This book presents a history of the Tanzanian Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is representative of this shift in many respects: slow beginnings, struggles over cultural issues, the emergence of a unique church life combining denominational heritage and African elements, frictions with governments, and the development of popular theology. Yet Tanzanian Adventism also exemplifies an important phenomenon which has been given little attention so far - the...

Indonesia is the home of the largest single Muslim community of the world. Its Christian community, about 10 per cent of the population, has until now received no overall description in English. Through cooperation of 26 Indonesian and European scholars, Protestants and Catholics, a broad and balanced picture is given of its 24 million Christians. This book sketches the growth of Christianity during the Portuguese period (1511-1605), it presents a fair account of developments under the Dutch colonial administration (1605-1942) and is more elaborate for the period of the Indonesian Republic...

This book, connecting the fields of social anthropology and missiology, presents a body of colonial ethnographic writing applied to highland societies in the southern portion of the Mainland Southeast Asian massif. The writers under scrutiny are Catholic priests from the Societe des Missions Etrangeres de Paris. Their texts from the Upper-Tonkin vicariate, in today's northern Vietnam, are paid special attention, notably through its major contributor, F.M. Savina. The author locates this ethnographic heritage against its historical, political and intellectual background. A comparison is...

This book offers a pioneering account of the relationship between missionary work and masculinity. By examining four individual men this study explores how self-making occurred within foreign missions, but also how conceptions of male gender informed missionary work.

This book is a nuanced critique of German Moravian missionariesa (TM) work amongst indigenous Australians within British colonial Australia. It examines tensions between religion and politics and the strained positions in which the missionaries found themselves working within a settler society.

In the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) the Catholic Church for the first time recognized non-Christian religions as entities which the Church should respect and with which Christians should enter into dialogue. There are, however, conflicting views in Catholic interpretations of Conciliar theology: to what extent did the Council see other religions as means to salvation? The author offers The Catholic Doctrine of non-Christian Religions according to the Second Vatican Council as the first comprehensive and analytic piece of research on Conciliar teaching concerning the nature of other...

This book makes visible an important but largely neglected aspect of Christian missions: its transnational character. An interdisciplinary group of scholars present case-studies on missions and individual missionaries, unified by a common vision of expanding a Christian Empire "to the ends of the world." Examples range from Madagascar, South-Africa, Palestine, Turkey, Tibet, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada and Britain. Engaging in activities from education, health care and development aid to religion, ethnography and collection of material culture, Christian missionaries considered...

In The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602-1747), John M. Flannery describes the establishment and activities of the Portuguese Augustinian mission in Persia. Hopes of converting the Safavid ruler of the Shi'a Muslim state would come to naught, as would the attempts of Shah 'Abbas I to use the services of the missionaries, as representatives of the Spanish Habsburgs, to forge an anti-Ottoman alliance with the papacy and the Christian rulers of Europe. Prevented from converting Muslims, the Augustinians turned their attention to Armenian and Syriac Christians in...

Building God's Kingdom studies how the encounter with nineteenth century Madagascar influenced the Norwegian Protestant mission. Drawing upon rich Norwegian and Malagasy sources, entangled and multivocal stories are allowed to unfold, revealing the complex dynamics of mission encounters. Tracing Malagasy agency and pursuit of churchly independence in pre-colonial and colonial Madagascar, this study explores the power-struggles between the Malagasy, the missionaries and between the mission in Norway and Madagascar. Through careful attention to context and agency, Karina Hestad Skeie provides...