Called to mission : Mennonite women missionaries in Central Africa in the second half of the twentieth century

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-198).This thesis is an investigation of the "sense of call" as a potential support factor for Mennonite women missionaries from North America based in Central Africa during the latter half of the twentieth century. The investigation is conducted in two main parts. In the first we investigate the theological-historical distinctives of the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition; in the second part, through a case study, we examine how a select number of women missionaries interpreted their call in relation to their heritage, how their sense of call functioned as a support factor or otherwise, and whether this was determined in any significant way by the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. Central to the study is a pastoral concern for women missionaries as women whose missionary role has placed special burdens on them in situations of cultural dislocation

Progressivism and the Mission Field: Church of the Brethren Women Missionaries in Shanxi, China, 1908-1951

This thesis examines the attitudes and activities of Church of the Brethren women missionaries in Shanxi, China, between 1908 and 1951, focusing on evangelism, \u27woman\u27s work\u27 programs, education, and relief work. This thesis presents the mission field as an expression of changing gender roles in the Church of the Brethren. In sum, Brethren women missionaries in Shanxi embodied both conservative and progressive ideologies and ultimately moved in a progressive direction, seeking growth, flexibility, and accommodation in their mission endeavor. The expansion of the Church of the Brethren mission field and the denomination\u27s geographic and cultural boundaries has implications for the evolution and continued existence of distinctive faith communities in the United States

Australian and New Zealand single women missionaries in Asia, 1874-1900.

Lists ANZ single women who served as Protestant Missionaries in Asia from 1874 to 1900. The working paper seeks to stimulate further interest in researching the lives and work of each individual listed

Meeting at Middle Ground: American Quaker Women’s Two Palestinian Encounters

In the late nineteenth century the Palestinian town of Ramallah began receiving American missionary women who embodied their middle-class ideology of womanhood and ventured to discourse on Arab women and culture. Their conviction of the American woman as the model for other “unfortunate” women prevented these missionaries from integrating in the Palestinian cultural context. Consequently, this americentric belief led them to construct overwhelmingly negative views of Palestinian women as oppressed, living in ignorance and degraded conditions, and of Arab culture as backward and inept. However, American women missionaries after World War I grew in their cultural and linguistic understanding of Arab culture. this change in perspective came as a result of numerous social and cultural developments in Palestine and the United States that prepared these women to establish an accommodative middle ground between them and the Palestinians, thus modifying their previous perceptions.1 among these developments were the increased secularization of the Quakers’ curriculum, more cultural and linguistic training of American teachers, the significance of Palestine as the “Holy land” in missionary imagination, and most importantly the emergence of the strategy of cooperation and devolution among the different Protestant missions in Syria and Palestine after World War I

Slovene Women Missionaries in India: Contexts, Methods and Considerations

UvodnikIntr

Lydia Mary Fay and the Episcopal Church Mission in China

Mary Fay was among the earliest single women missionaries in China. She worked as a teacher for 28 years. She achieved high distinction as a scholar of Chinese language. Her work laid the foundation for St. John's Episcopal University in Shanghai. The item includes consideration of her personal life, her unsuccessful romance with an Episcopal clergyman in Alexandria Va. The enduring theme of her life was loneliness, compounded by ill-health in later life

Source criticism and cultural models: constructing life histories of women missionaries

Research work is an interpretive enterprise. The variety of sources poses some central methodological questions for constructing religious life histories. There is an apparent discrepancy between the source categories concerning the content of the information. Private diaries and letters provide information on women's work and life which is not available in official reports and letters. They reveal dates, events and individuals which are not mentioned elsewhere. In histography the question of discrepancy is normally solved by comparing the sources with an aim to arrive at the "true picture" of how things have been. Such a picture is believed to portray not only the true life situation of the individual or group in question but, depending on the nature of the data, also the epoch and time situation itself. From the viewpoint of social sciences and comparative religion one will ask: could the variety of sources be approached and utilized in some other way? The second question posed by the data concerns the content of each source category. The information can be located on the continuum "highly subjective — stereotyped". Subjective information, including reflections on personal experiences may not be the best source e.g. for constructing the flow of historical events, but it is of uttermost importance if we want to show how individuals respond to social constraints and actively assemble social worlds

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 7th ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON ETHNIC AND MINORITY STUDIES

This paper reviews some of the most salient aspects of E. M. Rogg\u27s (1974) seminal work, The Assimilation of Cuban Exiles; The Role of Community and Class--a sociological study of the Cuban community in the town of West New York in northeastern New Jersey. Although taking issue with some of the author\u27s theses, this paper elaborates on other findings of the book in question by means of more recent participant-observation field research in the same neighborhood. For example, the new data confirms Rogg\u27s proposition that the organized ethnic minority helps to direct the process of acculturation, though slowly

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 7th ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON ETHNIC AND MINORITY STUDIES

This paper reviews some of the most salient aspects of E. M. Rogg\u27s (1974) seminal work, The Assimilation of Cuban Exiles; The Role of Community and Class--a sociological study of the Cuban community in the town of West New York in northeastern New Jersey. Although taking issue with some of the author\u27s theses, this paper elaborates on other findings of the book in question by means of more recent participant-observation field research in the same neighborhood. For example, the new data confirms Rogg\u27s proposition that the organized ethnic minority helps to direct the process of acculturation, though slowly