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Page 1: Introduction: Christian Missions in Southern Africa

This article was downloaded by: [University of Bath]On: 05 November 2014, At: 07:21Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

South African Historical JournalPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rshj20

Introduction: Christian Missions in SouthernAfricaCaroline Jeannerat a , Alan Kirkaldy b & Robert Ross ca University of the Witwatersrandb Rhodes Universityc Leiden UniversityPublished online: 08 May 2009.

To cite this article: Caroline Jeannerat , Alan Kirkaldy & Robert Ross (2009) Introduction: Christian Missionsin Southern Africa, South African Historical Journal, 61:2, 213-215, DOI: 10.1080/02582470902857694

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02582470902857694

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Page 2: Introduction: Christian Missions in Southern Africa

Introduction: Christian Missions in Southern Africa

CAROLINE JEANNERAT, ALAN KIRKALDY and ROBERT ROSS*

South African Historical Journal 61 (1) 2009ISSN: Print 0258-2473/Online 1726-1686DOI: 10.1080/02582470902857694 © Unisa Press pp. 213–215

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*Corresponding author: [email protected]

The articles in this issue were developed from papers presented at (or, in the case of Jared McDonald, arising from) the international conference entitled ‘Christian Missions in 19th and 20th Southern Africa and in Comparative Perspective: Passing Review and Breaking New Ground’. This was jointly organised by the Berlin Society for Mission History and Department of History at Rhodes University, and was held at the latter institution from 8 to 11 July 2007.

Twenty-nine papers were presented by delegates from 23 institutions spread across three continents. The conference opened with a session entitled ‘Setting the Scene – Case Studies’, and then included sessions entitled ‘Missions and Visual Representation’, ‘Missionary Science and Medical Missionaries’, ‘Biography’, ‘African Christianity, Faith and Conversion’, ‘Identities and Textual Interpretation’, ‘Archives, Libraries and Museums’, ‘Gender and Missions’ and ‘Teaching and Research’. It may be argued that the number of institutions represented and the broad range of session topics demonstrate that there has been both a revival of interest in, and a distinct change in the focus of, mission studies in recent years.

At the end of the conference, Caroline Jeannerat (University of the Witwatersrand), Alan Kirkaldy (Rhodes University) and Robert Ross (Leiden University and University of South Africa) formed an editorial panel to select papers for submission to the South African Historical Journal. We sought to solicit papers which reflected on, and pushed forward, cutting-edge issues in the field of Christian missions, whether through theoretical interventions or through more detailed, specific studies.

Over the last two decades, the study of Christian missions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern Africa has become a central theme through which to study issues of power and ideology. Work by researchers on southern Africa has come to be regarded as seminal and frequently cited far beyond the confines of the region or the specific disciplines of engagement of their authors. This work has begun to challenge a series of boundaries.

1. Disciplinary boundaries. The first challenge was the critical and conscious rupturing of the boundary between history and anthropology, an engagement that is of particular importance both to accommodate the time depth of Christian missions in southern Africa as well as to approach the ideological and cultural aspects of what happened on the ground. A second disciplinary boundary being breached is that between studies located in the social sciences and those performed by researchers in missiology and departments of religion. More recently, a number of scholars have also begun to work in the field of missionary contributions to the history of science, especially the history of the natural sciences and medicine.

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Page 3: Introduction: Christian Missions in Southern Africa

214 CAROLINE JEANNERAT, ALAN KIRKALDY and ROBERT ROSS*

2. Gender studies. A second challenge is located in gender studies. This has drawn extraordinarily on the approaches developed in gender studies all over the world and in particular in colonial spheres, and has led to women and gender relations being seen as critical for the understanding of mission and religion. This line of analysis still needs to be related to a study of masculinities within the mission sphere, one which has only recently been opened up in southern African anthropology and history.

3. Nation and colonial power. A third boundary, dealing with issues surrounding the relationship between nation and colonial power, has characterised the study of missions in southern Africa. The need to determine the nation of origin, of individuals as well as of organisations, has been a critical theme in southern African politics from at least 1850 onwards. Yet, too often, research on mission in southern Africa has assumed far too rigid and stereotypical a view of what influence the politics of nation had on mission work. Within this fall the rarely investigated relationships between mission societies of different national origins and the joint mission organisations they formed in an attempt to form a unified position.

4. Interpretation of written texts. A further boundary that is currently being breached, investigates the manner in which Africans who came into contact with missionaries and itinerant pastors understood the Christian message. Critical to this investigation is the question of how we can read mission documents, which are often the only written sources available for studying nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mission societies, for African agency. These studies, taking the cue from work on colonial history and frontier studies, push the boundaries of interpretation of written texts beyond the obvious constriction of the intentions and cultural assumptions of the authors. They identify signs of debate, challenge, and dispute between the various parties that were engaged in mission, from the missionaries and converted Christians to the first evangelists and itinerant preachers, to political and traditional religious leaders, to people rejecting the Christian message. This investigation leads into the interest in communities of readers, pursued in particular in literary studies and the history of books. This focus opens up new possibilities for the study of missionary literature such as periodicals, school books and hymnals.

5. Changing identities. A fifth challenge in the study of mission has been posed by the study of changing identities, both of the missionaries as well as of the people they won over. Both sides experienced quite profound changes in their sense of selves and ways of relating to their ‘home’ societies. This challenge attempts to present in much more complexity and contrast both the changes undergone by the missionaries, in contrast to their often stereotypical presentation in popular (and also, frequently, in academic) literature; as well as the agency involved in the changes undergone by those who joined the mission.

6. Faith and Conversion. A last topic that has, in contrast, hardly been dealt with directly in southern African mission studies is that of faith and conversion. This has been debated far more strongly around Christian missions in the South-East Asian region.

As is to be expected, in actual practice, many of the contributors straddled these broad fields of enquiry. The most frequently recurring themes in the papers are those of gender, changing identities and issues of faith and conversion. Contributors falling within this grouping also rely strongly on a close reading of missionary texts, and frequently place themselves at the borderline between history and anthropology.

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Page 4: Introduction: Christian Missions in Southern Africa

INTRODUCTION: CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA 215

Within the first broad clustering, Birgit Brammer explores issues of missionary domesticity and changing female identity on a Berlin Mission Station in the Orange Free State, during the period 1885 to 1889. Also focusing on gender and identity, Esme Cleall explores the negotiation of masculine identities among London Missionary Society missionaries and the representation of masculinities in the Society’s publications between from about 1860 to the end of the nineteenth century. In offering a preliminary assessment of the Society of Women Missionaries, Deborah Gaitskell sheds light on the under-researched area of single women missionaries in South Africa.

Dealing more particularly with issues of faith and conversion, Natasha Erlank discusses the growth of local ecumenism and the impact of both local and transnational ecumenism on black South Africans during the 1920s and 1930s. Covering a similar period, Caroline Jeannerat uses a careful reading of Berlin Mission Society sources to explore indications of how first-generation and later generations of Christian women in the Soutpansberg experienced their faith. Also utilising a close reading of Berlin Mission Society texts for the far-northern parts of South Africa, Alan Kirkaldy and Lize Kriel argue that, contrary to many other societies in the early stages of the missionary encounter, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Bahananwa and Vhavenda women were not more eager to convert to Christianity than men. They were also certainly not representative of the ‘early significant baptisms’ in their communities.

Specifically in the field of crossing disciplinary boundaries and missionary medicine, Martin J. Lunde explores the reactions to African concepts of ill-health causality and healing by the medical missionary Dr Neil Macivar, and his efforts to enact sweeping changes. Lunde grounds this study in Macivar’s scientific background and the role that this played in shaping his own Christianity.

Michael Godby uses the photograph album of an unknown missionary working in Natal in the 1930s to explore the ‘typical missionary narrative of bringing the light of Christianity into heathen darkness‘, and its adaptation/subversion through the socio-economic realities of the time.

The feature ends with three case studies. Jared McDonald explores some of the ways in which the San at Bushman Station of the Transgariep frontier area responded to pressures arising from the northward expansion of the colonial frontier between 1828 and 1833. Robert Ross and Russel Viljoen discuss the census made of Cape Mission stations in 1849. In doing so, they provide breakdowns of the number of residents on the mission stations by sex and, to a degree, by age. They also offer some discussion of the ways in which the inhabitants of the stations were integrated into the Cape’s labour process. Lastly, Fiona Vernal explores attempts at creating a more ‘vital, mature African engagement with Christianity’ at Farmersfield Mission in the Eastern Cape between 1838 and 1883.

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