Thesis (B.A. Hons.)--University of Adelaide. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-161).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, Deerfield, Ill., 1997. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-173).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 380-406).

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 671-673).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1944. / Reproduced from type-written copy. Bibliography: p. [269]-290.

Abstract My study is focused on the Finnish missionary workamong Bushmen in eastern Ovambo and Kavango in Namibia and on the image of Bushmen conveyed by it. The encounter of the cultures gave rise to new elements of the Bushman way of life that are partly based on the tradition of the encounter of cultures in the area and on the requirements of the local natural conditions. This helped to give the Bushmen the strength to resist acculturation, and the meeting of cultures brought regular elements, which I have called the borderline culture, to the outskirts of the missionary stations. Increased information reduces uncertainty. This fact began to come to surface in the 1950s in the descriptions of Bushmen by Finnish nurses in Kavango in which the emotions of fear, sympathy and care were present. The pressures for missionary work among the Bushmen towards the end of the 1950s broke the old image of Bushmen. In eastern Ovambo and Kavango, the missionary work among Bushmen which was expanding in the 1960s made the image of Bushmen a more everyday matter in the emerging borderline culture, in which it was typical to associate the image of the Bushman to work and success at work. The missionaries did not yet quite understand the life of the Bushmen, although they were clearly interested in it. They tried to dictate the conditions for the encounter in the 1960s in accordance with the old ideology of missionary work. Thus the 1960s was the era of a Bushman image that was controlled by the preachers who tried to defend the justification and methods of missionary work. The breaking of the language barrier was an important factor on the way to the next change in the image of Bushmen which was seen clearly in the borderline culture which was established in the 1970s. Language meant improved and more profound information and therefore confidential relationships between the missionaries and the Bushmen. The understanding of ethnic cultures improved in general. The new ideals were partly due to the strivings for independence in the area and to more general international pressures in which mission and colonialism were subjected to criticism. The borderline culture had been established, and the life of Bushmen was felt to be part of everyday life. The interest of the missionaries in the Bushmen"s way of life was increased. In the early 80s, the image of the Bushman had become much more diversified and uniform. The Bushman way of life was known quite well, although based on the description of a few missionaries only. As a consequence of the Namibian Civil War, the work of the Finnish missionaries ended in the stations in Ovambo, but the work continued in the form of developmental aid in Kavango. The last image of the Bushmen there was given by the quiet missionaries, the nurses, just like in the early stages in the early 1950s. The concerns over care and everyday nursing were common in their descriptions, but the Bushmen were not any longer strange wanderers in the forest but familiar people in a borderline culture.

The Mfengu, or Fingos, of the Transkei were a mixed group of refugees. Originally driven from Natal during the Mfecane, they moved into the Transkei and then the Ciskei. In the 1860's some were allowed by the Cape government to settle in an area in the Western Transkei which it had recently seized. The majority of those who moved were opposed to mission work and education. When therefore the government agent for Fingoland, Captain Blyth, and a Free Church of Scotland missionary, Richard Ross, gained the support of a few headmen for an educational Institution in the Transkei, and approached Dr James Stewart of Lovedale to found such an Institution on the lines of Lovedale, they had very slender support. Mfengu subscribe £10.00 towards the cost. Stewart agreed on condition the support for this somewhat startling and, to some, unpalatable request was gained mainly because it was known that the government intended introducing a hut tax which would be far more onerous than the levy which, it was estimated, would be required to find the sum Stewart was asking. Blyth was able to use the agreement to a voluntary levy for an institution to persuade the government to postpone the tax. The Institution was built on a larger scale than had been planned, for the Mfengu made two subscriptions, each larger than the total requested, and Stewart raised money in Scotland.

Using previously undocumented archival material, this dissertation examines missionaries from the Brethren agency Echoes of Service. A consideration of missionary primitivism provides a more complex picture of the mission engagement with China. The Brethren are a radical evangelical group that originated in Britain in the nineteenth century. They looked backwards to an original ideal of Christian faith and church organisation, which they sought to revive in the modern world. This was a reaction against modernity, but it should also be seen as part of modernity. The Brethren attempt to take missionary primitivism to China demonstrates how Christianity in the West and in China during this period were mutually constitutive, with influences circulating freely and unpredictably between the two. The thesis is organised into five chapters which develop these themes. Chapter one focuses on changes taking place in Britain at the start of the twentieth century, and shows how the promotion of missionary primitivism abroad was seen as essential for the health of the Brethren movement at home. In particular, missionary supporters elevated the individual missionary who operated according to simple, scriptural principles. Accordingly, the remainder of the thesis focuses on a number of individuals who sought to enact this model in different ways and in a variety of settings. Chapter two examines Watchman Nee, the founder of the Little Flock movement. Nee appropriated missionary primitivism as a means of establishing a truly independent Chinese Christianity, and his success provoked extreme and contrasting responses from Christians in the West. In addition, although Nee emphasised the primitive character of his movement, its immediate context was the cosmopolitan, bourgeois world of China’s treaty-ports. Chapters three and four examine the work of Brethren missionaries on China’s margins, specifically on the Sino-Mongolian and Sino-Tibetan borders. Missionary primitivism lauded its pioneers in these ‘regions beyond’, which were seen as arenas where a Brethren missionary could truly fulfil their calling. The remoteness of these places also meant that the modernity of a missionary became more pronounced. Through administering modern medicine or as a result of business or political contacts, missionaries would often become important figures in the mediation of modernity in these regions. Finally, chapter five examines missionary primitivism in the context of decolonisation. Two points of continuity are particularly noted: first, the survival and growth of the Little Flock in communist China has led to it becoming a significant feature of the landscape of popular religion in contemporary China. The memorialisation of Watchman Nee has also left an enduring legacy among Christians in the West. Second, the Echoes missionary George Patterson, after being involved in the mission to Tibet, began reporting about and campaigning for the Tibetan cause. Though he saw this as a continuation of his missionary calling, it has led to him promoting causes at tension with his earlier convictions. These regional stories of missionary primitivism serve to challenge existing paradigms of modern Chinese history. They demonstrate that, rather than seeing the modern as superseding the primitive, the relationship between the two should be seen as a coterminous and symbiotic one. In addition, the emergence of modern and primitive forms should be seen as a product of the free movement of influences between China and the West, and of their mixing in a variety of contexts.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-294).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Columbia International University, 2002. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 190-202).