Missionary Backstories The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
Missionary Backstories: The Civil Rights Movement in the United StatesLecture by Professor Owen MillerThursday, March 2nd at 12:00 pm William Goodell (the abolitionist) was a distant relative of William Goodell (the missionary to the Ottoman Empire) and Lucy Goodale. Like his relatives, William Goodell (the abolitionist) was deeply involved with the Congregational Church, which played a central role in the abolition of slavery in the United States. In 1833 Goodell founded the New York Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Over the next three decades, he devoted his life to the cause of destroying the sin of slavery (and incidentally, the sin of racism). His descendants continued this trend. Grandson, William Goodell Frost was the third president of the remarkable Berea College (motto: God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth). It was the first school in the south to be coeducational and racially integrated. Frost was at the forefront of struggles against the Jim Crow system in the South. It was Frost who confronted the Kentucky state legislature when it passed a bill in 1904 to segregate Berea College. Frost and the Berea College administration fought this bill all the way to the Supreme Court. Over the past decade, the study of missionaries from the United States has grown in leaps and bounds. Much of this work presumes that missionaries were always outsiders to the societies they evangelized however their children often grew up speaking local languages without a trace of an accent, and seeing the world through local lenses. This process of acculturation signals that the work of conversion was often a two-way street, and that the experience of living abroad for several generations profoundly shaped communities of missionaries. In the Middle East, the American missionaries become involved in activities later associated with the Peace Corps, from building schools to carrying out famine relief. In Hawai'i, the American missionaries were involved in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the annexation of the islands to the United States. Finally, in the south of the United States, in the aftermath of the Civil War, missionaries built most of the historically black colleges and struggled against the racism of Jim Crow. |
| Missionary Backstories: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States
Thursday, March 2nd at 12:00 pm |
History of Christianity in East Asia at the University of Oxford
Call for Applications for an International Workshop
on the History of Christianity in East Asia at the University of Oxford
The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco in collaboration with the China Centre at the University of Oxford will hold a four-day international workshop at Oxford from September 20 through September 23, 2017.
We are inviting post-doctoral level scholars and junior faculty members with their research focus on Christianity in East Asia who are currently preparing a book manuscript for publication to apply. This workshop is part of a four-year project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation in New York City. The project is entitled, “Historical Legacies of Christianity in East Asia: Bridging a New Generation of Scholars and Scholarship” and is administered by the Ricci Institute.
National U.S. Catholic China Bureau National Conference
Experience of the China Church in the 21st Century — The 27th National U.S. Catholic China Bureau National Conference
St. John’s University, Jamaica, Queens, New York City. August 11-13, 2017,
Scheduled Keynote Speakers: Father Joseph Jiang, S.J., Boston College
Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti Archbishop Eugene Nugent: From 2001 until 2010 he directed the Holy See Study Mission in Hong Kong.
Saturday August 12 sessions: Father Zhang, Biblical Studies Professor, China;
Father Tommy Murphy, S.S.C., Former Columbans Superior General; Sister Rita Hongyan Ge., Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Hope, MA Candidate in Spirituality, Loyola University of Chicago; Joann Pittman, China Source; Father Michael Li, China; Dr. Joseph Lee, Professor of History and Executive Director, Confucius Institute, Pace University, NYC; various representatives and laity from U.S. Chinese Catholic communities and associations.
Saturday afternoon Chinese Catholic liturgy, Chinese banquet, and cultural evening presentation
Sunday morning August 13 Plenary Session: Interdisciplinary Scholarly Exchange on Christianity in China and modern topics of Catholic religion. Scholars, graduate students and others may submit proposals and will remain open until all panels are filled.
General public, students and scholars are welcome to attend. Register now at www.uscatholichina.org.
Early bird housing and registration till July 21, 2017
Questions: Contact Executive Director Father Rob Carbonneau, C.P., Ph.D.
Contemporary Mission Theology
David B. Barrett and the Quantification of World Christianity
Join Ph.D. candidate Gina Zurlo in a lunch forum discussing Barrett's achievement and her process of researching and writing a dissertation. Lunch Provided.
Goals of Frontier Church Planters and Other Missionaries According to the Serampore Form of Agreement
In 1805 the famed missionary trio of William Carey, William Ward, and Joshua Marshman, along with six other men of the British Baptist Missionary Society who were stationed at Serampore, India, set forth for themselves, and a stream of new missionaries arriving from England, eleven “great principles” (as they called them) to explain their commitments and aims. The Serampore Form of Agreement (SFA) articulates a more robust and biblical understanding of the church planter’s life and ministry than typically does the popular contemporary literature on missions that is consumed by US American evangelicals.
Travis Myers, STH alumnus, recently published an article titled "The 'Peculiar Qualifications' and Goals of Frontier Church Planters and Other Missionaries According to the Serampore Form of Agreement (1805)" in Journal of Global Christianity. His article demonstrates Serampore Form of Agreement's early-nineteenth-century signers’ attention to culture learning and avoiding offense, to building rapport and diligent evangelism, to proper doctrine and patient disciple-making, as well as to indigenous churches and missionary oversight. Throughout the article, he suggests several points of application to certain contemporary issues in missions, especially those related to best practices in the field and missionary qualifications.
Books on Korean Protestantism
Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak, STH alumnus, published two books on the history of early Korean Protestantism for the Korean audience. A New History of Early Korean Protestantism is a critical study of many accepted, yet distorted narratives of early Korean churches up to 1910. It demythologizes historical heroes and criticize renowned historians’ interpretations. Recently Christianity Today Korea chose this book as the best book of the year in history and nominated it for the book of the year.
The First Forty-five Events of Early Korean Protestantism presents 45 first figures and events in the early history of Korean Christianity such as the first visiting missionary, the first vernacular Korean Christian tract, the first baptism in Pyongyang, and so on. Oak’s three sourcebooks also come out this January. Sources of Samuel Austin Moffett, vol. 1 (1854-93) and vol. 2 (1894-1900). This ten-volume series compiles all English materials of the first American missionary couple to Pyongyang and translate them into Korean with annotations and photos. Sources of Modern Nursing in Korea, vol. 2 (1910-19) transcribes, translates, and annotates the primary (English, Japanese, and Korean) sources of the nursing work in Korea.
“Spatial Spirituality and Latino Ethnic Identity: How Religious Affiliation Facilitates Diverging Forms of Local Ethnic Belonging”
"Spatial Spirituality and Latino Ethnic Identity: How Religious Affiliation Facilitates Diverging Forms of Local Ethnic Belonging"The Missiology of Pearl Sydenstricker Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s fame as a novelist (best known for her beloved book The Good Earth) often overshadowed her original vocation as a Presbyterian missionary and her later role as a social activist. Her Christian values, however, provided an important foundation for humanitarian works. Soojin Chung recently published an article titled "The Missiology of Pearl Sydenstricker Buck" in International Bulletin of Mission Research Vol. 41 No.2. The article underscores Buck's identity as a missionary and a humanitarian who formed a bridge between the East and the West. The first half of the article delineates her life, and the second half expounds on her missiology in close conjunction with her peer William E. Hocking.
Research Fellowship
The David M. Stowe Fund for Mission Research is intended to support visiting researchers who come to the Yale Divinity Library to use its missions and world Christianity-related collections. This year we are happy to announce that $5,000 is available to subsidize the travel and accommodation expenses of individuals whose research would benefit from using the resources available at the Yale Divinity Library. It is our preference that the researchers visit the Yale Divinity Library in connection with the Yale-Edinburgh Group meeting of June 29 – July 1, 2017 and spend at least one week in residence in New Haven to use the collections. We will give preference to younger scholars who may lack institutional funding for research travel. Because of financial regulations here, we can only use the funds to book travel for researchers and cover accommodations costs at OMSC or YDS; we cannot provide reimbursements or stipends. The number of fellowships distributed will depend on the travel/accommodation costs of the successful candidates. Individuals who have been awarded Stowe funding in the past will not be eligible for another award.
If you would like to be considered for an award from the Stowe Fund, please send a statement to me indicating your area of research and the specific holdings of the Divinity Library that are of interest to you. The library's catalog is available at http://orbis.library.yale.
Information about the June meeting of the Yale-Edinburgh Group is available at: http://divinity-adhoc.