Politics within Nineteenth Century Missionary Periodicals

Workshop held by the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”

Numerous evangelical Protestant missionary societies were established throughout the nineteenth century to ‘civilise and Christianise’ the non-European Other, who came to the attention of Europeans through colonial expansion. Protestant missionary societies were also established with the aim of converting Catholics, Muslims and Jews to Christianity. The rise of these missionary organisations resulted in a burgeoning of missionary periodicals that were used as tools for propaganda and fund-raising.

The audiences of missionary periodicals were wide, and varied from children, youth, families, women, church members, and indigenous converts, to potential sponsors of missions. Replete within such periodicals were normative European notions of ‘civilisation’, as well as political discourses, albeit often implicit, pertaining to the colonial or nation state. Missionary periodicals clearly elucidate the entangled nature of the missionary endeavour within colonial politics, and provide insight into how religious media shaped domestic and international political discourse.

This workshop brings together international scholars working on the relationships between religion and politics within both Protestant and Catholic missionary periodicals. It provides a forum for scholars to exchange ideas on the methodological, theoretical, empirical and conceptual approaches to the study of nineteenth century missionary periodicals. (Felicity Jensz, Hanna Acke)

Venue:

Main Building of the Cluster of Excellence
Room J119
Johannisstraße 1-4
48143 Münster

Program

Thursday, 2. Dezember
9:30–10:00	Welcome and Introduction
	Fashioning the Other
10:00-10:30	Dolls as Transmitters of Western Culture and Modernity: Methodist Episcopal Missionary Magazines for Women and Children, 1869-1895	Janet Rice McCoy and Lisa Shemwell, Morehead State University
10:30-11:00	Body politics: Swedish missionary discourses on hygiene	Hanna Acke, University of Münster
	Missionary Nationalism
11:30-12:00	Confessing to an Imperial Mission: Religious Youth Periodicals and the Battle for the Future in Turn-of-the-Century Germany	Jeff Bowersox, University of Mississippi
12:00-12:30	Reading boer sub-imperialism of the 1890s in the Wesleyan Missionary Notices and the Berliner Missionsberichte	Lize Kriel, University of Pretoria
14:00-14:30	Science for Mission and Empire: The Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift and Missionary Nationalism	Jeremy Best, University of Maryland
14:30-15:00	Diverging reports of European politics and colonial aspirations in the Periodical Accounts and Missionsblatt	Felicity Jensz, University of Münster
15:00-15:30	Nation, Nationalism and Europe in early 19th century missionary periodicals: A comparison of German and English Argumentations	Judith Becker, Institute of European History, Mainz
16:00-16:30	Group Discussion
Friday, 3. Dezember
	Creating the Nation
9:30-10:00	Asserting the Mission, Defending the Nation: The transformation of the Lutheran mission Journal Freimund in April 1933	Christine Winter, University of Queensland
10:00–10:30	An “Indigenous” Lutheran Mission Periodical in German and Australian Ruled “New Guinea” in the Pacific and Its Entangled Nature	Gabriele Richter, University of Rostock
	Constructing Missionary Politics
11:00-11:30	Narrating Redemption: Autobiographies and Biographies of Converts in Late Nineteenth Century German Missionary Periodicals	Albert Wu, University of California
11:30-12:00	The Lettres édifiantes et curieuses and the Politics of History in different 19th Century editions	Helge Wendt, University of Mannheim
	Missionary Discourses
14:00-14:30	The “Indian Coolie Mission” in Fiji: Discourses of Labour, Religion and Race in the Australasian Methodist Missionary Review	Amelia Bonea, Heidelberg University
14:30-15:00	Martyrdom, Solidarity, and Justification: Debating the Boxer War, 1900-1901	Thoralf Klein, Loughborough University
	Politics and World Religions
15:30-16:00	The Gospel and Politics: The London Society and its missions to the Polish Jews, 1848-1855	Agnieszka Jagodzinska, University of Wroclaw
16:00-16:30	The Image of Islam in Missionary Periodicals (1870-1930)	Armin Owzar, University of San Diego/University of Münster
16:30-17:00	Group Discussion
Saturday, 4. Dezember
10:00-12:00	Group Discussion
12:00-12:30	Concluding Remarks