Marketing Missions: Material Culture, Theological Convictions, and Empire in 18th-Century Christian Philanthropy
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 7
Abstract
In the 18th century, Halle Pietists were part of a global missionary network that reached into North America and that anticipated later developments in worldwide evangelical missions; Pietists made critical alliances with other Protestants, they were savvy in their use of media, and they worked alongside different empires in their efforts to reach and convert the world. Recent scholarship on religion and humanitarianism in the United States has focused predominantly on the Anglo-American story and the Post-Revolutionary period. This article argues that the Pietists highlight an earlier—and crucial—colonial era of global missionary connections, philanthropy, media, and empire. Attending to their writings and the images they used reveals important and continuing themes in the study of Christian philanthropy in America, including the significance of theological convictions, financial necessities, political allegiances, and racialized imaginings of potential, “uncivilized” converts. This article looks at the image of ascending eagles from the orphan house in Halle, which the Francke Foundations (earlier the Glauchasche Anstalten) used for their seal on books and medicines, and also considers an engraving of Tomochichi, a leader of Yamasee and Lower Creek descent, who appeared in the first report from the Pietist mission in colonial Georgia. The article argues, finally, that images were used to sell a particular vision of missionary work, albeit one that was not always true to experience on the ground and that appealed to colonialist objectives.
Authors and Affiliations
Philippa Koch
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26068
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9070207
- Views 387
- Downloads 14
The Apparatus of Belief: Prayer, Technology, and Ritual Gesture
Through a focus on the early history of a mass mediated ritual practice, this essay describes the “apparatus of belief,” or the specific ways in which individual religious belief has become intimately related to tele-t...
Inscribing Authority: Female Title Bearers in Jewish Inscriptions
This paper investigates representations of gender in the material culture of the ancient synagogue. The pertinent data are numerous dedicatory and funerary inscriptions linking individual Jews, men and women, with titl...
Lamòling Bèaka: Immanence, Rituals, and Sacred Objects in an Unwritten Legend in Alor
This paper recounts a parallel story of the Lamòling myth. The original analysis of the legend addressed the relationship between two gods, Lamòling and Lahatàla, from the Abui traditional religion. The myth evolved fr...
Typology and the Holocaust: Erich Auerbach and Judeo-Christian Europe
In response to Nazi exclusion of the Jews from German society on racial grounds, Erich Auerbach (1892–1957), a secular Jewish intellectual inspired by cultural Protestantism and Catholicism, formed a vision of a cosmop...
Globalization and Religion in Historical Perspective: A Paradoxical Relationship
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. This idea is not controversial or novel thinking, nor is it meant to be. However, the dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expresse...