The foreign missionary enterprise at home : explorations in North American cultural history /

This anthology makes a significant contribution to a growing number of ethnohistorical and anthropological texts that examine the cultural and historical impact of missionary activity. Recognizing that missionaries historically act as cultural brokers by representing the cultural groups with whom they have contact to congregations back home, these 15 articles describe the influence of Protestant missionaries and mission organizations (mainline and evangelical/free church) not on cultural "others," but primarily on US culture itself. Balanced and striving for scholarly neutrality, the articles demonstrate the effects of overseas missions (primarily in Asia and Africa) on US missionary culture as well as US history, diplomacy, foreign policy, and culture in general. The editors skillfully weave the articles together with short introductions that give historical context to Protestant mission history from the beginning of the 19th century to the end of the 20th. Most important, the work deals deftly with the internal and external critiques generated by missionaries themselves. Eschewing a simplistic model of missionaries as patriarchal white male imperialists, they stress instead diachronic changes in missionary ethos, self-consciousness, and self-critique. This work is valuable for students of history, culture, theology, and mission studies. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All levels. R. A. Bucko Creighton University

Though its high price may keep it out of the reach of individual scholars, this collection of academic essays about the missionary movement should be on the shelves of every college and university library. High-profile scholars such as Grant Wacker, Edith Blumhofer and Laurie Maffly-Kipp investigate how the foreign missionary enterprise changed people on the home front, arguing that "the standard textbooks on U.S. history have virtually ignored the missionary's domestic significance." How did missionaries who served abroad change the course of American social and cultural history in the 19th and 20th centuries? Memorable essays explore the evolution of race consciousness, drawing from the experiences of black missionaries to Liberia and Haiti; Protestant missionary efforts to Roman Catholics, African-Americans, and Mormons within the boundaries of the United States; and the waning of the missionary impulse after WWII, using missionary-author Pearl S. Buck's gradual liberalization as a barometer for the evolution of the entire Protestant missionary movement. This is a weighty and worthy anthology. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved