Heavenly fatherland : german missionary culture and globalization in the age of empire / Jeremy Best.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Best, Jeremy, 1979- author.

Series:

German and European Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Missionaries.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (344 p.)

Place of Publication:

Toronto, Ontario : University of Toronto Press, [2021]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

"Motivated by a theology that declared missionary work was independent of secular colonial pursuits, Protestant missionaries from Germany operated in ways that contradict current and prevailing interpretations of nineteenth-century missionary work. As a result of their travels, these missionaries contributed to Germany's colonial culture. Because of their theology of Christian universalism, they worked against the bigoted racialism and ultra-nationalism of secular German empire-building. Heavenly Fatherland provides a detailed political and cultural analysis of missionaries, mission societies, mission intellectuals, and missionary supporters. Combining cases studies from East Africa with studies of the metropole, this book demonstrates that missionaries' ideas about race and colonialism influenced ordinary Germans' experience of globalization and colonialism at the same time that the missionaries shaped colonial governance. By bringing together religious and colonial history, the book opens new avenues of inquiry into Christian participation in colonialism. During the Age of Empire, German missionaries promoted an internationalist vision of the modern world that aimed to create a multinational, multiracial "heavenly Fatherland" spread across the globe."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Preach the Gospel to all creation : Missionswissenschaft and a German Protestant mission movement

Speaking in tongues : language, education, and Volkskirchen

Give ... to God the things that are God's : labour and capital in the mission field

Go in and take possession of the lLand : anti-Catholicism and the limits of Protestant missionary internationalism

Tending the flock : bringing mission to the Heimat

Iron sharpens iron : international missionary conferences and their German roots.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4875-3245-8

1-4875-3244-X

OCLC:

1202419645