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1 – 10 of over 2000Subhash Abel Kalarikkal, G. Thamilvanan and Bincy Baburaj Kaluvilla
The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital libraries and online repositories enhance access to missionary archives. It investigates how the digitalization of missionary…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital libraries and online repositories enhance access to missionary archives. It investigates how the digitalization of missionary archives fosters the access, searchability, interactivity, dissemination and preservation of the historical and cultural knowledge of missionary documents and legacies. The selected topic stems from a genuine and deeply ingrained desire and interest to explore the digital archiving landscape, majorly in the context of missionary archives.
Design/methodology/approach
The study relied heavily on the literature review of the most current scholarly articles. Additionally, the study relied on case studies on missionary institutions and churches that rely on technology to digitize missionary archives and online repositories to make them accessible. Generally, reliance on scholarly articles relevant to the topic was an avenue for examining the existing studies and projects affiliated with digitizing and using missionary archives.
Findings
Missionary archives and records provide a distinct perspective regarding the realities faced by missionaries and indigenous populations. Digital libraries and online repositories are invaluable and instrumental in improving access to missionary archives. They help users overcome physical barriers while supporting the preservation of fragile materials. Additionally, the digitization efforts of various institutions foster the broader dissemination of missionary records. Digital platforms and online repositories foster collaborative research globally in remote settings. Online repositories are instrumental in enhancing access to missionary archives. They achieve this by providing centralized access points to digitalized collections of historical documents, photographs, manuscripts and artifact. Major challenges include substantial costs affiliated with digitization, environmental factors heightening degradation of the original materials and intellectual property dictations and copyright.
Originality/value
By using scholarly and authoritative sources of information and evidence, the study contributes to the existing literature by providing insights into the instrumentalism of digital libraries and online repositories to enhance access to missionary archives. There should be comprehensive digitization, adherence to preservation standards, commitment to stakeholder engagement and collaborative decision-making.
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Nicholas Larsen and Barry R. Chiswick
The purpose of this paper is to explore how potential exposure to missionary activity impacts both English language proficiency and labor market earnings of male and female…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how potential exposure to missionary activity impacts both English language proficiency and labor market earnings of male and female immigrants to the USA.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the pooled files of the American Community Survey (2005–2009). To estimate the relationship between the missionary activity of both Protestants and Catholics on an immigrant’s English language proficiency using a linear probability model and their labor market earnings using the human capital earnings function that is estimated with an ordinary least squares model. Among other relevant variables, the analysis controls for the colonial heritage of the immigrant’s country of origin.
Findings
Overall, and within colonial heritages, the results indicate that male and female immigrants from countries with a higher concentration of Protestant missionaries tend to exhibit higher levels of English language proficiency and earnings, and those from countries with a greater concentration of Catholic missionaries exhibit lower levels of both, compared to countries with lower concentrations of missionaries. Furthermore, a greater proficiency in English enhances earnings. One of the important implications of the findings in this paper is that a “missionary variable” often used in other studies is too aggregate and may mask important findings because of strikingly different effects of Protestant and Catholic activities and characteristics of the missionaries.
Originality/value
This study explores for the first time how, through a missionary concentration variable, potential exposure to missionary activity impacts the English language proficiency and earnings of immigrants.
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The purpose of this paper is to identify unique Victorian-Era collections of British and American missionary activity, which provide an introduction to the breadth and depth of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify unique Victorian-Era collections of British and American missionary activity, which provide an introduction to the breadth and depth of primary sources in the field of missiology.
Design/methodology/approach
This article provides a list of physical archives, digital repositories, microfilm collections and subscription databases with relevance to missionary activity in the Victorian Era. Collections were purposefully selected based on denominational importance or historical relevance. The bibliography consists of collections from both the USA and Great Britain.
Findings
Through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the digital availability of Victorian Era missionary materials has increased significantly over the past decade.
Originality/value
This bibliography includes archival collections housed or hosted in the USA and Great Britain. The annotations describe the scope and uniqueness of each archive, and will be of interest to scholars interested in the field of missiology.
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Michał Wilczewski, Zbigniew Wróblewski, Mariusz Wołońciej, Arkadiusz Gut and Ewelina Wilczewska
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the role of spirituality, understood as a personal relationship with God, in missionary intercultural experience.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the role of spirituality, understood as a personal relationship with God, in missionary intercultural experience.
Design/methodology/approach
We conducted narrative interviews with eight Polish consecrated missionaries in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Paraguay. We used thematic analysis to establish spirituality in missionary experience and narrative analysis to examine sensemaking processes.
Findings
Missionary spirituality was defined by a personal relationship with God as a source of consolation, psychological comfort, strength to cope with distressing experiences, and Grace promoting self-improvement. It compensated for the lack of family and psychological support and enhanced psychological adjustment to the environment perceived as dangerous. Spirituality helped missionaries deal with cultural challenges, traumatic and life-threatening events. Traumatic experiences furthered their understanding of the mission and triggered a spiritual transition that entailed a change in their life, attitudes and behavior.
Research limitations/implications
Comparative research into religious vs nonreligious individual spirituality in the experience across various types of expats in various locations could capture the professional and cultural specificity of individual spirituality. Research is also needed to link spirituality with expat failure.
Practical implications
Catholic agencies and institutions that dispatch missionaries to dangerous locations should consider providing professional psychological assistance. Narrative interviewing could be used to enhance missionaries' cultural and professional self-awareness, to better serve the local community. Their stories of intercultural encounters could be incorporated into cross-cultural training and the ethical and spiritual formation of students and future expats.
Originality/value
This study captures a spiritual aspect of intercultural experience of under-researched expats. It offers a model of the involvement of individual spirituality in coping in mission.
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Education was an enduring feature of the modern Protestant missionary movement. Historiographically, however, scholarship on the subject is often fragmented geographically and…
Abstract
Purpose
Education was an enduring feature of the modern Protestant missionary movement. Historiographically, however, scholarship on the subject is often fragmented geographically and focused on the micro contexts in which missionary education occurred. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nuances of the missions‐education relationship, using a particular case study, in order to indicate alternative ways of conceptualising that relationship. It focuses on a small New Zealand evangelical mission working in Bolivia from 1908 and utilises the concept of “sites” to indicate the complexities that need to be considered in any particular study of missions and education.
Design/methodology/approach
Educational activities and explanatory factors pertaining to the Bolivian site of missionary education are re‐constructed from missionary archives. Different voices, agendas and readings are acknowledged in this re‐construction. In this way the article moves from a plain narrative about the mission and its educational activities to a more conceptual attempt to explain the application of education in the Bolivian context. The archives are read in the light of both historiography and theory.
Findings
The article indicates that a simple or monochrome reading of the missions‐education relationship is deficient. It grapples with the reasons why an explicitly evangelistic mission invested considerable energy and resources in education. Using the concept of “sites” it argues that this emphasis on education can be explained by a set of complex and overlapping factors reflecting historical timing, evangelical culture or mentalité, missionary geographical origins and local socio‐political context. While this will not explain all “sites” of missionary education, the approach is a model of how to construct a complex reading that enables us to discern multiple voices and motivations.
Originality/value
This article addresses a lacuna of conceptual scholarship on missionary education. Furthermore it attempts to shift the focus onto four relatively neglected aspects in missions‐education scholarship: missionary projects from colonial contexts, the South American context, the early twentieth century, and conservative evangelicalism.
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Hannah King occupies a unique place in missionary and colonial history, the history of education, cross‐cultural relations and material culture in New Zealand. She was the only…
Abstract
Hannah King occupies a unique place in missionary and colonial history, the history of education, cross‐cultural relations and material culture in New Zealand. She was the only woman from the first 1814 Missionary settlement of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in New Zealand to remain in New Zealand for the rest of her life, yet she does not have an entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, and is rarely indexed in either New Zealand’s general historical works or even works more specifically related to the Missionary era. John and Hannah King were one of three artisan missionary couples who sailed with the Revd Samuel Marsden on his ship, the missionary brig ‘Active’, from Port Jackson, Australia to Rangihoua, in the Bay of Islands, in late 1814. Marsden’s 1814 Christmas Day service on the beach at Rangihoua is recognised as the beginning of missionary activity and planned European settlement on New Zealand soil.
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– The purpose of this case study is to discuss and analyze the process of developing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital humanities projects across several institutions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this case study is to discuss and analyze the process of developing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital humanities projects across several institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
This case study will provide an overview of a multi-institutional digital humanities project from the planning phase to implementation. In particular, this case study will discuss identifying institutional partners, collaborating with a design, designing for curricular integration and best practices for sustaining a project of this size and scope.
Findings
Sustainable collaboration develops slowly over time. Communication and consensus-building are key components to completing and sustaining a multi-institutional digital project. Scalable design is a crucial step in planning for project expansion.
Originality/value
Though many journal articles articulate “best practices” for collaboration among geographically dispersed institutions, very few case studies discuss “best practices” within the context of project development, from initial idea to completion.
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Missionaries, monetary funds, and marketers make strange bedfellows. The paradisal visions that they promote appear quite distinct. It seems to slander some more than others to…
Abstract
Missionaries, monetary funds, and marketers make strange bedfellows. The paradisal visions that they promote appear quite distinct. It seems to slander some more than others to label all three as pimps. And despite the phenomenon of serial addictions, the religious zealots, impoverished wretches, and compulsive consumers of the world seem to form mutually exclusive, if not mutually hostile, groups. Nevertheless, missionaries, international monetary funds, and other marketers all strive to incite passionate longing toward something far better, for which those seduced must pay a price. All three seek to fan the fires of fanaticism with promises of a future paradise, immediate or distant. And all three threaten hellish punishments for those who reject these promises. There are, I contend, more similarities than differences among the conversion tactics and promises of these three panderers to human fears and longings. By examining the overlapping manner in which each purveys promises of paradise, we may better understand the tap roots of human emotion that each seeks to incite.
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