Missions and Missionaries

Christianity is a very successful missionary religion: no other religion has ever spread to so many parts of the globe, or won converts among so many different peoples. This book looks at the men and women who dedicated their lives to spreading their faith, the key figures in the process, and organisations which planned it. It begins in the sixth and seventh centuries when England and the Netherlands were the mission fields, taking up the story again in the seventeenth century, but the main focus is on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when missions flourished. Some chapters look at strategists in Europe and North America, others at missionaries in Hong Kong, Kenya, Madagascar, Indonesia and the Middle East. Topics of particular interest include the relationship between missionaries and colonial governments and between missionaries and indigenous Christians, the impact of new theologies, and the growing importance of women in modern missions. As a whole, the book illuminates the day to day experiences of individual missionaries, while placing them within a wider framework of political, social, and intellectual change. Professor PIETER N. HOLTROP teaches at the Theologische Universiteit, Kampen; Professor HUGH McLEOD teaches in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Birmingham.Contributors: ANNA MARIA LUISELLI FADDA, EUGENE HONEE, HENDRIK E. NIEMEIJER, KATE LOWE, JORIS VAN EIJNATTEN, ANDREW PORTER, H.L. MURRE-VAN DEN BERG, GUUS BOONE, BRIAN STANLEY, PIETER N. HOLTROP, RACHEL A. RAKOTONIRINA, MYRTLE HILL, LIESBETH LABBEKE, JOHN CASSON