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Women have been central to the work of Christian ministry from the time of Jesus to the twenty-first century. Yet the story of Christianity is too often told as a story of men. This accessibly written book tells the story of women throughout church history, demonstrating their integral participation in the church's mission. It highlights the legacies of a wide variety of women, showing how they have overcome obstacles to their ministries and have transformed cultural constraints to spread the gospel and build the church.
At the turn of the century, women represented over half of the American foreign mission force and had settled in "heathen" China to preach the lessons of Christian domesticity. In this engrossing narrative, Jane Hunter uses diaries, reminiscences, and letters to recreate the backgrounds of the missionaries and the problems and satisfactions they found in China. Her book offers insights not only into the experiences of these women but also into the ways they mirrored the female culture of Victorian America. "A subtle and finely written book... [on] an aspect of the mission world in China that has never before received such probing, affectionate, detailed treatment."--Jonathan Spence, New York Review of Books "An important and often entertaining work....New angles on imperialism and gentility alike."--Martin E. Marty, Reviews in American History "A triumph of sophisticated subtle intelligence. Though quite cognizant of the dark side of the confluence of American nationalism and the missionary enterprise, Hunter's interest is in moving beyond that understanding to explore how the meeting of two cultures affected, and was shaped by, a female angle of vision."--Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Signs "Jane Hunter writes better than most novelists, and she has a topic more demanding and rewarding than the subjects many novelists deal with. Her story of the valiant and ofttimes guilt-ridden women who ventured to China, singly or with spouses, to win the country for Christ creates a world and beckons readers into it."--Christian Century
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 truth: 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 random: 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.
‘British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793-1861’ looks at the arrival of the early British women missionaries in Bengal, especially when travelling to India or working in missions was neither a spontaneous nor an acceptable career decision for white women. The book aims to throw light on a key moment in colonial contact, a new interface between two races, religions and ways of life. From a hesitant beginning as ‘helpmeets’ to a more confident phase of mission activities in the form of setting up formal educational institutions, writing books and so on comprise a long legacy of white women’s participation in overseas colonial encounters. Historicizing imperial feminism will enable those who choose to use the past to locate and interrogate its ramifications on more ‘modern’ notions of feminism. The advent of the Baptist missionary William Carey in Bengal in 1793, followed by others, significantly altered how mission activity was perceived in India. From Hannah Marshman, who helped her more famous missionary husband Joshua Marshman to open schools for girls, to Mary Ann Cooke, the first single British woman missionary to come and work in India, to Hannah Mullens’s contributions to zenana education, were all part of a long journey which helped professionalize women’s missionary work in the colonies. With the death of Hannah Mullens in 1861, the ‘early’ phase of missionary work came to an end and then began a more proactive phase of evangelization and missionary activity in India.
Women have advanced God's mission throughout history, but often face particular obstacles in ministry. Mission researcher Mary Lederleitner interviewed respected women in mission leadership from across the globe to gather their insights, expertise, and best practices. These real-life stories will shed light on dynamics that inhibit women, giving both women and men resources for partnering together in effective ministry and mission.