American Women in Mission: The Modern Mission Era 1792-1992

by Dana L. Robert

The stereotype of the woman missionary has ranged from that of the longsuffering wife, characterized by the epitaph Died, given over to hospitality, to that of the spinster in her unstylish dress and wire-rimmed glasses, alone somewhere for thirty years teaching heathen children. Like all caricatures, those of the exhausted wife and frustrated old maid carry some the underlying message of the sterotypes is that missionary women were perceived as marginal to the central tasks of mission. Rather than being remembered for preaching the gospel, the quintessential male task, missionary women were noted for meeting human needs and helping others, sacrificing themselves without plan or reason, all for the sake of bringing the world to Jesus Christ.Historical evidence, however, gives lie to the truism that women missionaries were and are doers but not thinkers, reactive secondary figures rather than proactive primary ones. The first American women to serve as foreign missionaries in 1812 were among the best-educated women of their time. Although barred from obtaining the college education or ministerial credentials of their husbands, the early missionary wives had read their Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins. Not only did they go abroad with particular theologies to share, but their identities as women caused them to develop gender-based mission theories. Early nineteenth-century women seldom wrote theologies of mission, but they wrote letters and kept journals that reveal a thought world and set of assumptions about women's roles in the missionary task. The activities of missionary wives were not they were part of a mission strategy that gave women a particular role inthe advancement of the reign of God.By moving from mission field to mission field in chronological order of missionary presence, Robert charts missiological developments as they took place in dialogue with the urgent context of the day. Each case study marks the beginning of the mission theory. Baptist women in Burma, for example, are only considered in their first decades there and are not traced into the present. Robert believes that at this early stage of research into women's mission theory, integrity and analysis lies more in a succession of contextualized case studies than in gross generalizations.

482 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

About the author

Mission history, the history of world Christianity, and mission theology intersect in the research and teaching interests of Dana L. Robert. She is the Truman Collins Professor of World Christianity and History of Mission. At Boston University she has directed over sixty doctoral dissertations, and former students hold teaching and ministry positions around the world. In 2011 she delivered a keynote address at the Global Christian Forum in Manado, Indonesia. In 2010 she delivered the Alexander Duff and the Henry Drummond Lectures in Scotland, the opening keynote lecture at the historic Edinburgh 2010 conference, and the Henry Martyn Lectures at Cambridge University. Her most recent books are Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), now in its sixth printing; and Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History, 1706-1914 (editor, Eerdmans 2008). She wrote the study Joy to the World!: Mission in the Age of Global Christianity for the 2010-2011 summer schools of mission for The United Methodist Church. With M.L. Daneel, she edits the book series “African Initiatives in Christian Mission” (University of South Africa Press). Robert received her BA from Louisiana State University and her PhD from Yale University.

http://www.bu.edu/cgcm/about-us/dana-...

Reviews

[Richard Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Women in Mission traces the missionary history of women for 200 years. It is not exhaustive and focuses on the most active or influential groups in different times. It also gives an account of Catholic women’s mission work. The book is illuminating about the unique gifts and trials of women in mission. The hardest obstacle to overcome was (and probably still is) the patriarchal structures and mindsets of male leaders in the church. That in itself is a powerful but disappointing commentary on the church. This is not always fun reading but it is important stuff.