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Introduction: “Christianity, Gender, and the Language of the World”

Introduction: “Christianity, Gender, and the Language of the World” Critics of cultural imperialism at home and abroad have prompted historians to pay good attention to the role of nation in framing Christian overseas missions. Yet women volunteering for missionary activity in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries rarely would have phrased their commitments as service to nation. In the rapidly secularizing United States, missionary volunteers came from church-going families and referred to a spiritual calling. Indeed, in 2014 when I first talked with a North American missionary daughter who had converted to communism and still lives in China, she expressed curiosity about what had become of the distant world of her childhood. “Do they still talk about the call, whether you have a call?” she asked about missionaries today.1The call came from God, and helped to demonstrate that your motives were pure—that you had spiritual motives for the abandonment of home ties for service on the other side of the world. Those assessing questions of missionary motive and identity must respect those spiritual motivations within the mix of identities carried to the field.Recent historians of women and the empire in both Britain and the United States have made that point. Elizabeth Prevost’s assessment of the state of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of American-East Asian Relations Brill

Introduction: “Christianity, Gender, and the Language of the World”

Hunter, Jane
Journal of American-East Asian Relations , Volume 24 (4): 16 – Oct 31, 2017
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References (21)

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1058-3947
eISSN
1876-5610
DOI
10.1163/18765610-02404001
Publisher site
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Abstract

Critics of cultural imperialism at home and abroad have prompted historians to pay good attention to the role of nation in framing Christian overseas missions. Yet women volunteering for missionary activity in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries rarely would have phrased their commitments as service to nation. In the rapidly secularizing United States, missionary volunteers came from church-going families and referred to a spiritual calling. Indeed, in 2014 when I first talked with a North American missionary daughter who had converted to communism and still lives in China, she expressed curiosity about what had become of the distant world of her childhood. “Do they still talk about the call, whether you have a call?” she asked about missionaries today.1The call came from God, and helped to demonstrate that your motives were pure—that you had spiritual motives for the abandonment of home ties for service on the other side of the world. Those assessing questions of missionary motive and identity must respect those spiritual motivations within the mix of identities carried to the field.Recent historians of women and the empire in both Britain and the United States have made that point. Elizabeth Prevost’s assessment of the state of

Journal

Journal of American-East Asian Relations – Brill

Published: Oct 31, 2017

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