Abstract   This thesis examines the role of women who went as missionaries to China between the 1890’s and the 1930’s, with a special regard to the Swedish missionary Sally Nordling. I think it is interesting to find out more about their motives. What made these women choose to go far away from their homes in Europe to live and work for God?   I have noted that there is not much written about these women and I hope that this thesis will shed light on this part of history, and that I will be able to give my own personal reflections. Through analysing different biographies written about female missionaries that lived in China I hope to be able to answer my hypothesis that women through their religious conviction were able to escape their restricted lives. The main research question for this thesis is whether female missionaries were allowed to do similar work as men when going to China.

This missiological project seeks to study the role of the Guinnesses and Kumms in reaching the Sudan Belt, particularly through the Sudan-Pionier-Mission (SPM) founded in 1900. The term Sudan Belt referred to Africa between Senegal and Ethiopia, at that period one of the largest areas unreached by Christian missionaries. Grattan Guinness (1835-1910) at that time was the most influential promoter of faith missions for the Sudan. The only initiative based in Germany was the SPM, founded by Guinness, his daughter Lucy (1865-1906), and her German husband Karl Kumm (1874-1930). Kumm has undeservedly been forgotten, and his early biography as a missionary and explorer in the deserts of Egypt is here brought to light again. The early SPM had to struggle against opposition in Germany. Faith missions were considered unnecessary, and missions to Muslims untimely by influential representatives of classical missions. The SPM was seeking to reach the Sudan Belt via the Nile from Aswan. The most promising figure for this venture was the Nubian Samuel Ali Hiseen (1863-1927), who accomplished a scripture colportage tour through Nubia. Unfortunately, he was disregarded by the first German missionary, Johannes Kupfemagel (1866-1937). When the SPM failed to reach the Sudan Belt due to political restrictions, Kumm and the SPM board were divided in their strategies. Kumm planned to pursue a new route via the Niger River, seeking support in Great Britain rather independently. The SPM, holding on to Aswan, dismissed Kumm, and began to decline until it made a new start in 1905, but for a long time remained a local mission work in Upper Egypt. The Sudan United Mission however, founded by the Kumms in 1904, did indeed reach the Sudan Belt. An analysis of the SPM reveals its strengths and weaknesses. The SPM grew out of the Holiness movement and shared the urgency, which made faith missions successful, but also was the SPM's weakness, as it suffered from ill-preparedness. The SPM innovatively gathered together single women from the nobility in a community of service for missions under its chairman, Pastor Theodor Ziemendorff (1837-:1912). / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Missiology)

This missiological project seeks to study the role of the Guinnesses and Kumms in reaching the Sudan Belt, particularly through the Sudan-Pionier-Mission (SPM) founded in 1900. The term Sudan Belt referred to Africa between Senegal and Ethiopia, at that period one of the largest areas unreached by Christian missionaries. Grattan Guinness (1835-1910) at that time was the most influential promoter of faith missions for the Sudan. The only initiative based in Germany was the SPM, founded by Guinness, his daughter Lucy (1865-1906), and her German husband Karl Kumm (1874-1930). Kumm has undeservedly been forgotten, and his early biography as a missionary and explorer in the deserts of Egypt is here brought to light again. The early SPM had to struggle against opposition in Germany. Faith missions were considered unnecessary, and missions to Muslims untimely by influential representatives of classical missions. The SPM was seeking to reach the Sudan Belt via the Nile from Aswan. The most promising figure for this venture was the Nubian Samuel Ali Hiseen (1863-1927), who accomplished a scripture colportage tour through Nubia. Unfortunately, he was disregarded by the first German missionary, Johannes Kupfemagel (1866-1937). When the SPM failed to reach the Sudan Belt due to political restrictions, Kumm and the SPM board were divided in their strategies. Kumm planned to pursue a new route via the Niger River, seeking support in Great Britain rather independently. The SPM, holding on to Aswan, dismissed Kumm, and began to decline until it made a new start in 1905, but for a long time remained a local mission work in Upper Egypt. The Sudan United Mission however, founded by the Kumms in 1904, did indeed reach the Sudan Belt. An analysis of the SPM reveals its strengths and weaknesses. The SPM grew out of the Holiness movement and shared the urgency, which made faith missions successful, but also was the SPM's weakness, as it suffered from ill-preparedness. The SPM innovatively gathered together single women from the nobility in a community of service for missions under its chairman, Pastor Theodor Ziemendorff (1837-:1912). / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Missiology)

The thesis uses the case study of the experience of middle-class northern white women in America during the period 1800-1860 to explore several issues of wider significance. Firstly, the research focuses upon the dynamic relationships between the culturally-constructed categories of public/formal and private/informal power and participation at both the practical and symbolic levels, suggesting ways in which they intersected on the lives of women. Secondly, consideration is given to the validity of the stereotyped view that 'domestic' women were necessarily disadvantaged and dominated relative to those who aspired to public political and economic roles. Thirdly, the relationship of religious belief to these two areas is discussed, in order to discover its relevance to the way in which women both perceived themselves and were perceived by others. In seeking to explore these issues, the research has analysed the patterns of social and cultural change in the era under question, indicating how those changes influenced the perceptions and experiences of both women and men. Their reactions in terms of discourse and activity are located as strategies of negotiation in redefining both social role and participation for the sexes. The rhetoric of 'separate spheres', which was used by men and women to order their mental and physical surroundings, is reduced to its symbolic constituents in order to illustrate that the distinction between male and female arenas was more perceptual than actual. The motivating forces behind the activities and ideas of women themselves are investigated to determine the role of religion in the construction of both female self-images and wider negotiational strategies. The context of nineteenth-century social dynamics has been revealed by detailed analysis of extensive primary sources originated by both women and men for private as well as public consumption. Feminist tools of analysis which enable the conceptualisation of 'meaningful discourse' as including female contributions have further enhanced the specific focus on how women constructed their own world-views and approaches to reality. 'Traditional' approaches and tools are shown to have seriously skewed and misrepresented the reality and variety of both discourse and female experience in the era. Great efforts have been made to allow women to speak in their own words. This has produced an insight into a richness of female social participation and discourse which would otherwise be obscured. The research indicates that women were indeed actors and negotiators during the period. Those women who advocated as primary the duties of women in the domestic and social arenas were by no means setting narrow limitations on female participation in both society and discourse. The religious impulses and eschatological frameworks derived by women (varied as they were) served to order and renegotiate reality and meaning, whilst they produced female roles and influence of great significance. Women were not passive victims of male oppression. Religion can thus be perceived as a positive force which women were able to approach both for its own sake, and for their own particular ends.