Explores the roles and expectations of women and men in Christian missionary experience

This study examines one aspect of American women's professionalization and the implications of the cross-cultural dialogue between American woman missionaries and Japanese students and supporters at Kobe College between 1873 and 1909.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- A note on orthography and semantics -- A note on primary sources -- Introduction -- PART I Imperial awakenings -- 1 Women, the Church Missionary Society and imperialism -- 2 'In journeyings oft': missionary journeys to and around Uganda at the end of the nineteenth century -- PART II Arrivals -- 3 'Welcome' encounters: early relations with Ugandans -- 4 Female missionaries and moral authority: a case study from Toro -- PART III Mission and Church -- 5 Ugandan women and the Church: generational change -- 6 The experience of women in mission and Church organisations -- 7 Training for motherhood: the Mothers' Union -- PART IV Tensions within -- 8 A Christian women's protest in Buganda in 1931 -- 9 Tensions within the Uganda Mission: gender and patriarchy -- Conclusion: links - 1895-1960s -- Index

“Pathbreaking. Approaches the transcultural and religious encounters of Korean and American women with a remarkable degree of sensitivity and nuance, as well as with judicious use of feminist and postcolonial theory. Its rich and diverse historical examples and illustrations are both engaging to read and meticulously documented.”—Namhee Lee, UCLA

The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies represents more than a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the engagement of Christians with cultures, religions, and societies worldwide. It contains more than 40 articles by experts from different disciplinary and ecclesial perspectives, who are from all continents. It not only offers a broad overview of key approaches and issues in mission studies but it also highlights current trends and suggests future developments. The Handbook builds on renewed interest in mission studies this century generated by recent key statements on mission from ecumenical, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox sources, and by a spate of academic works on the topic. Western church leaders now apply insights from foreign missions (such as, inculturation, liberation, interfaith work, and power encounter) to today's multicultural societies. Meanwhile, there are new initiatives in mission from the Majority World, where most Christians live, so that sending is not only 'from the west to the rest' but 'from everywhere to everywhere'. Therefore, this volume aims to reflect the voices of the receivers of mission as well as its protagonists and to raise awareness of new movements. In a time of growing recognition of 'religions' more generally, this work examines and theorizes the missional dimensions of the world's largest religion: its agendas, growth, outreach, role in public life, effect on cultures, relevance for development, and its approaches to other communities.

Over the last thirty years, issues of gender have been creatively explored within the field of mission studies. Whereas the life and work of female missionaries have been fruitfully reflected upon, male gender identity has often been understood as an unchanging category. This book offers a pioneering account of the relationship between missionary work and masculinity. By examining four individual men this study explores how self-making occurred within foreign missions, but also how conceptions of male gender informed missionary work. Changes that occurred in the lives of these men are placed within the broader context of how issues of gender were renegotiated within the contemporary missionary movement.

Inspired by the searing story of Margaret Garner, the escaped slave who in 1856 slit her daughter's throat rather than have her forced back into slavery, the essays in this collection focus on historical and contemporary examples of slavery and women's resistance to oppression from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Each chapter uses Garner's example--the real-life narrative behind Toni Morrison's Beloved andthe opera Margaret Garner--as a thematic foundation for an interdisciplinary conversation about gendered resistance in locations including Brazil, Yemen, India, and the United States. Contributors are Nailah Randall Bellinger, Olivia Cousins, Mary E. Frederickson, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Carolyn Mazloomi, Cathy McDaniels-Wilson, Catherine Roma, Huda Seif, S. Pearl Sharp, Raquel Luciana de Souza, Jolene Smith, Veta Tucker, Delores M. Walters, Diana Williams, and Kristine Yohe.

Feminism and Migration: Cross-Cultural Engagements is a rich, original, and diverse collection on the intersections of feminism and migration in western and non-western contexts. This book explores the question: does migration empower women? Through wide-ranging topics on theorizing feminism in migration, contesting identities and agency, resistance and social justice, and religion for change, well-known and emerging scholars provide in-depth analysis of how social, cultural, political, and economic forces shape new modalities and perspectives among women upon migration. It highlights the centrality of the various meanings and interpretations of feminism(s) in the lives of immigrant and migrant women in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Eastern Europe, France, Greece, Japan, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Papua New Guinea, Spain, and the United States. The well-researched chapters explore the ways in which feminism and migration across cultures relate to women’s experiences in host societies --- as women, wives, mothers, exiles, nuns, and workers---and the avenues of interactions for change. Cross-cultural engagements point to the convergence and even disjunctures between (im)migrant and non-immigrant women that remain unrecognized in contemporary mainstream discourses on migration and feminism.

This book makes visible an important but neglected aspect of Christian missions: its transnational character. Missionaries considered themselves global actors, yet they operated within a variety of nation-states. The volume demonstrates how processes on a national level are closely linked to larger transnational processes.

A New Gospel for Women tells the story of Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946), author of God's Word to Women, one of the most innovative and comprehensive feminist theologies ever written. An internationally-known social reformer and women's rights activist, Bushnell rose to prominence through her highly publicized campaigns against prostitution and the trafficking of women in America, in colonial India, and throughout East Asia. In each of these cases, the intrepid reformer struggled to come to terms with the fact that it was Christian men who were guilty of committing acts of appalling cruelty against women. Ultimately, Bushnell concluded that Christianity itself - or rather, the patriarchal distortion of true Christianity - must be to blame. A work of history, biography, and historical theology, Kristin Kobes DuMez's book provides a vivid account of Bushnell's life. It maps a concise introduction to her fascinating theology, revealing, for example, Bushnell's belief that gender bias tainted both the King James and the Revised Versions of the English Bible. As Du Mez demonstrates, Bushnell insisted that God created women to be strong and independent, that Adam, not Eve, bore responsibility for the Fall, and that it was through Christ, "the great emancipator of women," that women would achieve spiritual and social redemption. A New Gospel for Women restores Bushnell to her rightful place in history. It illuminates the dynamic and often thorny relationship between faith and feminism in modern America by mapping Bushnell's story and her subsequent disappearance from the historical record. Most pointedly, the book reveals the challenges confronting Christian feminists today who wish to construct a sexual ethic that is both Christian and feminist, one rooted not in the Victorian era, but rather one suited to the modern world.