The "History of the Southern States Mission, 1831-1861," traces the development of a system of proselyting in the southeastern United States, and its effect on the lives of both missionaries and converts who embraced the principles of the restored gospel taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.This study includes an examination of twenty-eight personal missionary journals, and consequently gives a valid picture of Latter-day Saint objectives and the sacrifices necessary to achieve them. Their objectives were to carry the message to the world and build up the Kingdom of God.To reach their goal, the Mormons developed an enthusiastic and extensive proselyting system. As members joined the movement and caught the spirit of the Kingdom, they were zealous to carry the message to their friends and relatives. The free-lance method developed into a system wherein definite calls were made to a particular field of labor.One of the earliest and most fruitful fields of Mormon proselyting activity became known as the Southern States Mission – an area of thirteen southeastern states.The South was first contacted by two Mormon missionaries in June, 1831. Each succeeding year, the number of laborers increased. By 1861, at least 230 missionaries had served in the South. Some of them returned again and again, as many as five times, to spread the gospel. Even the threats of mobs did not stop their work. They not only preached the gospel, but also collected money to finance the temples and help the poor, sold subscriptions to L.D.S. newspapers, campaigned for Joseph Smith as a presidential candidate and organized Saints for emigration.The mission was a field of training for leadership. Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, Jedediah M. Grant, George A. Smith and others received valuable training for Church responsibilities.The hospitable and religious nature of the Southerners made success possible. Approximately 2000 Southern converts joined the Church during the thirty year period. They came from the various strata of society--from Negro slaves to the wealthy plantation owners. They responded to their profession of faith by contributing their time, talents and money to the Church.As soon as the number of converts in a locality justified an organization, they sustained a local member as president of their "branch." The first branch was established in Cabell County, Virginia, in 1832. A larger ecclesiastical unit composed of branches, was developed into a "conference" in 1836.When Joseph Smith designated ‘gathering places’ for his followers, approximately fifty per cent of the Southern Saints joined the emigration movement to Missouri, Illinois and Utah.Proselyting activities focused on Texas after the body of the Church moved to Utah in 1847, and hundreds of Texans were affected by the "spirit of gathering." They had a long distance to travel, and experienced much hardship and discouragement.The "History of the Southern States Mission, 1830-1860," shows the effect of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the lives of men. It reflects the successes, joys, sorrows and satisfactions that came to those who embraced the Latter-day Church. For thirty years, before the outbreak of the Civil War, the South was a fruitful missionfield. However, in 1861, the war brought a cessation of missionary work and ended the first era of the Mission's history.

During most of the 1830's, the Church was headquartered at Kirtland, Ohio. The thrust of her missionary effort toward the populous east came from that center. The impact of that proselyting work on Ohio's neighboring state, Pennsylvania, is the subject of this thesis. This study is concerned with the background and history of the missionary work in Pennsylvania as a part of the greater history of the Church in the 1830's. This thesis is also concerned with the results of that missionary work. Pennsylvania provided missionaries to teach in New York, New England, Canada and elsewhere and laid the foundation in Philadelphia for the missionary work along the east coast. Some of her native sons were the converts who settled in Missouri and joined in the march of Zion's Camp. The impact of the Church in an area so close to Kirtland is interesting to observe. Over fifty missionaries taught thousands and recorded the baptisms of over eight hundred souls during the decade. Converts from the state include Edward Hunter and Jedediah M. Grant. Pennsylvania missionaries counted Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball among their baptisms.

The number of senior missionaries serving missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has increased in recent years. Many of these volunteers travel overseas and are therefore immersed in a different culture. Some of them adjust successfully and others do not. The purpose of this research was to assess senior missionaries' perceptions of the type of preparation they made and training they received before departure, the expectations they had of their assignment, the people and way of life in the islands, and the accuracy of those expectations, the challenges they faced, the factors that they felt helped them adjust to these challenges, the advice they would give to future senior missionaries, and the recommendations if any they would give to improve their training. Participants consisted of 37 senior missionaries currently serving on the islands of Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, and Kiribati. The instrument used in this study was a questionnaire containing both quantitative and qualitative questions. Analysis of the quantitative data showed that subjects identified their previous experience living in the country and conversations with other Americans who had been to the country as the most helpful way to prepare for their assignment. The subjects felt that the most helpful aspect of the formal training was training that focused on their specific area of responsibility. The subjects reported having some challenges with the climate, the people, and the language barriers they encountered. Factors that were identified as being very helpful to participants in adjusting to the challenges included spiritual factors (such as prayer and scripture study), building good relationships with the local people and other missionary couples, maintaining contact with home, maintaining a positive attitude, striving to be tolerant, support from non-native supervisors, and staying active/busy. Analysis of the qualitative data showed that the participants felt that learning some of the host language, and learning more about the host culture prior to departure would be particularly beneficial. They also indicated that although training was provided prior to departure, the training needed to be more specific to their individual assignments, and it needed to involve some language and cultural training. In addition, it was also apparent that regardless of whether or not the missionaries had had previous experience living overseas, most of the subjects had a good idea what they where undertaking before they left home.

The purpose of this work is to summarize the history of the Netherlands Mission from its beginning in 1861 to 1966 and to give an account of the proselyting activities of the Mormon missionaries and the effects of their message on the growth and development of the mission and the Church in Holland.

A study of migrant workers in Indiana and their relationship with various Christian churches and programs throughout the state.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / George Müller of Bristol (1805-1898) was widely celebrated in the nineteenth century as the founder of the Ashley Down Orphan Homes in Bristol, England. He was a German immigrant to Great Britain who was at the vanguard of evangelical philanthropic care of children. The object of his charitable work, orphans, influenced the establishment of Christian orphanages in Great Britain, North America, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. However, what brought Müller widespread public acclaim was his assertion that he supported his orphan homes solely by relying on faith and prayer. According to Müller, he prayed to God for the material needs of the orphans and he believed, in faith, that those needs were supplied by God, without resort to direct solicitation, through donations given to him. He employed his method as a means to strengthen the faith of his fellow Christians and published an ongoing chronicle of his answered prayers that served as evidence. Müller’s method of financial support brought him to the forefront of public debate in the nineteenth century about the efficacy of prayer and the supernatural claims of Christianity. His use of prayer to provide for the orphans made his name a “household word the world round.” This dissertation is a study of Müller’s influence on evangelicals that analyzes Müller’s enduring legacy as a hero of the faith among evangelicals around the world. For evangelicals Müller was an exemplary Christian—a Protestant saint—who embodied a simple but pure form of biblical piety. To explore his influence from the nineteenth century through the twentieth century, this study, as a social biography, investigates how evangelicals remember individuals and how that memory, in this case Müller, influenced the practice of prayer in evangelical piety. The dissertation affirms a link between evangelicals and eighteenth-century German Pietism, while also showing that evangelicals used publications to celebrate and to informally canonize individuals esteemed for their piety. The dissertation, ultimately, is concerned with how evangelicals identified heroes of the faith and why these heroes were and are widely used as models for edification and for emulation in everyday life.

The embeddedness of Pentecostal/Charismatic tenets within contemporary global frameworks of transnational power reveals the ability of religion to shape the sociocultural and spiritual experiences of people on the move from one place to another. For this reason, sociologists of religion and scholars of World Christianity have noted the rapid missionary expansion of African Pentecostal/Charismatic movements to the northern hemisphere. Some have even referred to the missionary work of non-western forms of Christianity in the western world as the ‘Southernisation of European Christianity’. But if the aggressive strategies adopted by African Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in the western diaspora are intended to reawaken Christianity in Europe, what then is the motivation for intra-African Pentecostal/Charismatic movements in traversing national boundaries, with their distinctive version of the Christian faith, making Africa a theatre in which Christian missionaries are both sent and received? This thesis examines the intra-African missionary praxis of a highly influential Nigerian Pentecostal/Charismatic church, the Winners’ Chapel, and its accompanying power dynamics in Cameroon from 1996 to 2016. Using a qualitative research approach, the study examines the character of transnational Pentecostal/Charismatic movements in Africa, using Winners’ Chapel in Cameroon as a case study. After an investigation of the emergence of the church, the study examines the various strategies used to achieve and maintain control of the mother church in Nigeria over its daughter church in Cameroon, such as the deployment of Nigerian missionaries, the use of Nigerian-defined Winners’ Chapel tenets in Cameroon, the place of sermons and testimonies, and the role of the media. The thesis studies the conflicts of loyalty and contestations that emerge between Nigerian Winners’ Chapel missionaries to Cameroon and their Cameroonian colleagues in Cameroon. It concludes with an assessment of how far Winners’ Chapel can be said to contribute to the provision of social capital and empowerment in Cameroon. The findings in this study provide a significant and original contribution to the understanding of how power dynamics can operate within complex relationships between transnational Pentecostal/Charismatic actors (missionaries), and their receiving countries colleagues in the continent of Africa. It also contributes to the literature on African Pentecostalism but offers fresh insights into the encounters, contestations, and resistance that emerge between ‘founder-owners’ and recruited workers of intra-African Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements. By appropriating international relations concepts such as Joseph Nye’s ideas of ‘soft power’ and concepts in the sociology of religion such as Peggy Levitt’s ‘remittances’, popularised by Afe Adogame, the study potentially unveils the nexus between international relations, the sociology of religion and development within Pentecostalist transnational discourses in Africa.

This dissertation analyzes Mennonite missionary engagement with African Independent Churches in West Africa. The engagement between missionaries and indigenous churches gave rise to a novel mission interaction with a non-western form of Christianity. It led to the early development of mission strategy and theory from an intentionally Anabaptist perspective. Based upon close analysis of archival material, the dissertation examines the extended encounter between missionaries and Independents in southeastern Nigeria between 1958 and 1967. It places the encounter within the context of the religious history of both groups and outlines the influence of the experience on subsequent mission work. This case study sheds new light on the emergence of African indigenous Christian movements and western Christians’ interaction with those movements during the period of decolonization and African nationalism. The history that this study constructs shows that the religious and missiological assumptions that each party brought to the encounter complicated their relationship. The Independents’ religious history led them to expect missionaries to establish traditional mission educational and healthcare institutions that would reinforce their well-being. Missionaries Edwin and Irene Weaver and their colleagues were hesitant to do so, since their experience in India had convinced them that such institutions caused dependency on foreign funds and impeded indigenization. They focused, rather, on encouraging better relationships between estranged Independents and mission churches, capacitating Independent churches through biblical training, and reinforcing Independents’ indigenous identity. Yet some Nigerian Independents insisted on a traditional mission relationship and its accompanying Mennonite identity. Missionaries borrowed mission theory about indigenization from the wider missionary movement, but applied and modified it over time, finally incorporating it into an Anabaptist missionary approach for work in Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and the Republic of Benin. This study suggests that while relationships between streams of the Christian movement are conditioned by their different religious histories and cultures, they nevertheless generate missiological insights. Through this engagement missionaries articulated an Anabaptist missiology that became influential throughout Africa. In turn, the Mennonite missionary presence enabled some Nigerian Independents to network successfully with the world Christian movement via their Mennonite affiliation.

Although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent numerous missionaries to labor in the South prior to the Civil War, a formal mission organization did not exist until the etsablishment of the Southern States Mission of the Church in 1875 at Shady Grove, Tennessee. This thesis details the significant events in the mission during the eventful years of the Ben E. Rich administration, 1898 to 1908. Following his courageous example, hundreds of missionaries taught the message of the Restored Gospel to the people of the South during a renewed period of persecution and hatred as the acceptance of Utah on a par with her sister states was tested by the Roberts Trial and the Smoot Hearings. In addition to his role as mission president, Ben E. Rich played a significant part in winning the friendship and support of Theodore Roosevelt during the Smoot Hearings.This study also outlines the history of the mission and the growth of the the Southern Church membership following the Rich administration until 1970.

The purpose of this study is to present the origin and development of the San Juan Mission in southeastern Utah in its work with Indian people, principally since 1940. One of the responsibilities of the San Juan Mission was to teach the Indian people the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It is also the purpose of this study to show what has been accomplished in regard to the original call and also determine what remains to be completed. The history of the San Juan Mission has been indexed under the following chapter headings: Introduction to San Juan and the Call of the Mormons to Colonize, Establishing Communities and Relationships among the Indians, San Juan Stake Mission, Albert R. Lyman's School, San Juan Stake Indian Branches, San Juan Area Indian Seminaries.It was found that an enormous amount of time, money and effort was contributed to teaching and assisting the Indian people. It was also discovered that much more needs to be done before the San Juan Mission call fills the demands of the original injunction by Apostle Erastus Snow.