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Vol. 17, No.3 July 1993

Doctoral Dissertations on Mission: Ten-Year Update, 1982-1991 William A. Smalley

Ten years ago the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH published a directory of 934 doctoral dissertations on mission-related subjects at theological schools anduniversities in the United States and Canada. Almost four decades of research were covered, from 1945 through 1982. In this issue we are pleased to present another directory of 512 North American dissertations for thedecade 1982-1991.

The compiler of thedirectory andauthor of thearticle below is William A. Smalley, afriend andcolleague ofmanyyears' standing. Now retired in Hamden, Connecticut, he is a near neighbor of the Overseas Ministries Study Center. For twenty-three years Dr. Smalley wasa translation consultant with theUnited Bible Societies, serving primarily in Southeast Asia.Duringpartof thatperiod he also edited Practical Anthropology, and for a time he was principal of the Toronto Institute of Linguistics, which prepares missionary candidates for language and culture learning. Earlier Smalley wasa missionary linguistwith theChristian andMissionaryAlliance in Laos andVietnam. Hismostrecent book isTranslation as Mission: Bible Translation in the Modern Missionary Movement (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1991).

The Editors

I n July 1983 the INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH published a bibliography of North American dissertations on mission that had appeared since the end of World War 11.1 E.Theodore Bachmann began his introduction to :hework by noting the radical way in which the Christian church waschanging as it spread throughout the world in this era. He cited Kenneth Scott Latourette's emphasis' on rising "global outreach, the imminent rise of indigenous churches, and the mobilization of persons in many lands who were volunteering forthe missionary task." Bachmann mentioned how his bibliography of dissertations reflected those changes.

As Bachmann also pointed out, research on mission is far ]eommoribund. Ten years later, dissertations on mission prolif

erate ever more rapidly, again reflecting change in the church and in mission. Most of the topics indexed in the earlier bibliography are to be found again in the pages that follow, but this decade also shows a distinct increase, especially in dissertations dealing with theological issues in the younger churches, most notably with non-traditional theologies. Liberation theology predominates among these non-traditional theologies, butAsian, African, black, and feminist theologies recur as well, as the following summary indicates:"

On Page 97 Doctoral Dissertations on Mission: Ten-Year

Update, 1982-1991 William A. Smalley

100 Degree-Granting Institutions Here Represented, with Abbreviations and Number of Doctoral Dissertations from Each

104 Dissertations Listed Alphabetically by Author

118 Index of Subjects

126 The Legacy of Lewis Bevan Jones Clinton Bennett

130 Mission and Democracy in Africa: The Problem of Ethnocentrism Robert K. Aboagye-Mensah

134 Book Reviews

144 Book Notes

of issionary Research

1945-1981 (37 years)15 (0.4/year)3 (0.08/year)o4 (O.l/year)2 (0.05/year)o

1982-1991 (10 years)89 (8.9/year)32 (3.2/year)17 (1.7/year)11 (l.1/year)11 (l.1/year)3 (0.3/year)

163 (16.3/year)

Liberation theologyAfrican theologyAsian theologyBlack theologyPolitical theologyFeminist theology

All non-traditional 24 (0.65/year)

Judging again by the respective indexes, some other topicshave correspondingly decreased in the past ten years. Missionsending agencies, for example, received less attention in the1980s. Treatment of most major countries went up or downslightly, but Japan dropped sharply from 1.1 dissertations peryear to 0.3, perhaps because the American post-war interest inoccupied Japan has lessened. In contrast, the treatment of Korearose even more sharply from 0.8 dissertations per year to 3.2,perhaps due in part to the large number of Korean doctoralcandidates in the United States. Increased interest in issues ofcultural sensitivity and appropriateness is clearly reflected in thenumber of dissertations dealing with indigenization andcontextualization. The 0.1 per year entries under "context-ualization" in 1983 became 1.6 per year ten years later. "Indig-enous," which registered 0.6 entries per year in 1983, shows athree-fold gain in the present bibliography, to 1.8 per year.

Topics as broad as non-traditional theologies illustrate aproblem for the bibliographer of mission, however. Liberationtheology has been examined by anthropologists, sociologists,political scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and theologians,as well as by missiologists. Presumably there is little if anymissiological content in some of their dissertations. Liberationtheology began in mission and continues in mission, but becauseof its many ramifications it has also taken on a life .outside ofmission. I have therefore included some titles and omitted oth-ers, depending on my subjective impression of likely missiologicalrelevance as judged from the title or the abstract of the disserta-tion.

The process of selecting dissertations to be included be-comes subjective for other reasons as well. Sometimes titles donot reveal actual mission content. Although "Presbyterian Mis-sions to Indians in Western Canada" (3.33) is self-evident as acandidate for inclusion in this bibliography, a title such as "AnEthnohistory of the Indian People of the San Francisco Bay Areafrom 1770 to 1810" (13.27) could easily be overlooked; yet itdiscusses the effects of mission work among those Native Ameri-can peoples. Nor does "Confronting the Quintessential: Singing,Dancing, and Everyday Life among Biaka Pygmies" (11.23)reveal that the dissertation deals with the effects of evangelismon Biaka cultural activities.

After titles are subjectively selected, compiling an indexcompounds the subjectivity. The full range of major topics cov-ered in a dissertation is not always explicit, even in the publishedabstract. Terminologies and perspectives of disciplines and ofindividuals also differ, lending uncertainties. The bibliographeroverlooks possibilities. Dissertations that actually have topics incommon may get separated, and more diverse ones may getunited under the same index entry.

In addition to changes over time in subjects studied, com-parison of the two bibliographies also shows some shift inrelative ranking of institutions in respect to the number ofdissertations written under their auspices. While the universitiesand seminaries that led in the earlier period tended to accept

about the same number of dissertations per year in the 1980s, thenew leaders dramatically increased the numbers of dissertationsaccepted annually.

IJoj

1945-1981 (37 years) 1982-1991 (10 years)Total dissertations 934 (25/year) 512 (51.2/year)listed

Institutions granting 145 (O.2/year avg.) 114 (O.4/year avg.)'degrees

Leaders in 1982-1991Fuller Theol. Sem.DrewUniv.Princeton Theol.

Sem.Leaders in 1945-1981

Boston Univ.Univ. of ChicagoColumbia Univ.

Est~Rei19E

Pul

10 (O.3/year)11 (O.3/year)32 (0.9/year)

61 (6.1/year)25 (2.5/year)22 (2.2/year)

Ov49(TelFaJ

EdGe

54 (1.5/year)49 (1.3/year)44 (1.2/year)

14 (1.4/year)13 (1.3/year)7 (0.7/year)

Many dissertations in the bibliography were apparentlywritten by Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans, that is, bypeople from the traditional "mission fields." Dissertations byKoreans seem particularly numerous. I was not able to quantifythis observation, however, because I could not always determinean author's nationality. Whereas Samuel Adu-Andoh, writingon Ghana (1.2), is probably Ghanaian, is Yoshito Anno, writingon a Matthew passage (1.10), a Japanese person or an Americanof Japanese ancestry? I was frequently not able to judge the sexof an author, either, and so did not attempt to tabulate figures onthe gender of dissertation authors.

The present bibliography was commissioned by Gerald H.Anderson, editor of INTERNATIONALBULLETINOF MISSIONARYRESEARCH,with explicit guidelines. Only dissertations for thePh.D., Th.D., S.T.D., and Ed.D. degrees are included, and onlythose presented at North American institutions. I have followedthe format of the earlier bibliography as closely as possible, usingmy best judgment about what is relevant to mission, interpretingthe topic broadly. 5 Studies of present-day churches in traditionalmission areas, which are the direct or indirect "fruit" of mission,constitute an important element in the biography.

In his preface to Bachmann's 1983 work, Anderson elabo-rated on the problem of defining relevance in a bibliography ofthis kind:

CaDaSaJBaN Retrieval of Contextual Models of the Church in an African Setting. Th.D. 1987 LSTC.

Mandai,Asish Kumar. 13.33 The Christian Minority in India, 1947-1980. Th.D. 1984 GTU.

Moore,Moses Nathaniel,Jr. 13.34 Orishatukeh Faduma: An Intellectual Biography of a Liberal Evangelical Pan-Africanist, 18S7-1946. Ph.D. 1987 UTS/NY.

Mora,Abdias. 13.35 Praxis and Church in the Theology of Liberation. Ph.D. 1986 BayU.

Morgan,ThomasD. 13.36 TheHidden Imperative for Christian Education: Values-clarification Strategies for Intercultural Relations Between Native Americans and Whites. S.T.D.1982 SFTS.

Morris, NanCJI Jane. Hawaiian MIssionaries Abroad. Ph.D. 1987 UHi.

13.37

Mosoma,David Luka. 13.38 Political Struggle and Cooperative Visions for Change: An Analysis of the Political and Theological Thought of Major Black Leaders in South Africa. Ph.D. 1991 PTS.

Moss, Mary Lynn. 13.39 A Comparison of Missionary Kids, International Students, and American Students on Measures of Lo