A History of Christian Missions traces the expansion of Christianity from its origins in the Middle East to Rome, the rest of Europe and the colonial world, and assesses its position as a major religious force worldwide. Many of the world’s religions have not actively sought converts, largely because they have been too regional in character. Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, however, are the three chief exceptions to this, and Christianity in particular has found a home in almost every country in the world. Professor Stephen Neill’s comprehensive and authoritative survey examines centuries of missionary activity, beginning with Christ and working through the Crusades and the colonization of Asia and Africa up to the present day, concluding with a shrewd look ahead to what the future may hold for the Christian Church.

This revised edition of Missions and Money offers new reflections in the light of a changed situation in Christian missionary circles. Bonk offers new reflections in the lights of a changed situation, now marked by increases in the number of short-term missioners and increases in the numbers of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans leaving their homelands to serves as missionaries to other people. The conversation on the ambiguity of wealth and Christian missionary outreach is deepened with essays by Christopher J.H. Wright on the righteous rich in the Hebrew Bible and by Justo Gonzalez on faith and wealth in the Christian Bible and the early church. Book jacket.

Missionary Imperialists? examines the frontiers of empire in tropical Africa and the south-west Pacific in the Mid-Victorian era. Its central theme is the role played by British Protestant missionaries in imperial development and a continuous thread is the interaction between the missions and those in government, both London and in the colonies. An introductory chapter examines the main missionary societies involved in this study. This is followed by six detailed case studies, three from the south-west Pacific (the Pacific labor trade, Fiji, and New Guinea) and three from tropical Africa (the Gambia, Lagos and Yorubaland, and East Africa). The crucial importance of influential missionary supporters in Britain is noted as its missionary involvement in wider campaigning networks with other humanitarian groups. The book argues that where missionaries did aid imperial development it was largely incidental, an imperialism of result rather than an imperialism of intent to use the categories of Cain and Hopkins. It will be seen that although there were a few dedicated imperialists in the missionary ranks, and others gradually became convinced that the future of their particular mission and its people would be most secure under British jurisdiction, the majority had no such enthusiasm. Yet this did not mean that they had no effect on imperial development. Campaigns against both slavery and indentured labor inevitably raised the profile and influence of Europeans on the imperial frontier thus shifting a fragile balance in their direction. Most importantly, by their very presence on the frontiers of empire and as providers of education and European moral and spiritual values, missionaries became incidental and sometimes unintentional but nevertheless effective agents of imperialism.