Missionaries and Economics

2018

One of the most powerful cultural transformations in modern history has been the dramatic expansion of Christianity outside Europe. Recent, yet extensive, literature uses Christian missions established during colonial times as a source of exogenous variation to study the long-term effects of religion, human capital and culture in Africa, the Americas and Asia. We argue that the endogeneity of missionary expansion may be underestimated, thus questioning the link between missions and economic development. Using annual panel data on missions from 1751 to 1932 in Ghana as well as cross-sectional data on missions for 43 sub-Saharan African countries in 1900 and 1924, we show that: (i) locational decisions were driven by economic factors, as missionaries went to healthier, safer, and more accessible and developed areas, privileging the best locations first; (ii) these factors may spuriously explain why locations with past missions are more developed today, especially as most studies rely ...

What impact (consequence?) has Christian missionary activity had on certain Asian emerging economies from 1945 to 2010? Recent research by Dr. Robert Woodberry has proven that non-state funded Christian missionaries greatly influenced the development of democracy in nations around the world. In contrast to being lumped into the politics of colonialism, it seems that many Christian missionaries were activists against the economically important issues of slave trading and colonial land ownership. (Woodberry) My research expands on this idea to include an apparent absence of religious history in the study of international business. Outside of being a student, my professional work focuses around increasing the economic dignity of people in developing nations. The research to be presented builds on my work and is inspired by Meredith’s International Business and World Religion courses to include Christian missionary influence in the economic development of a nation. I will give a snapshot of the faith pathways of several countries in Asia to focus on the only nation to survive colonialism’s Asian exploration as “Christian.” What part, if any, did Christian missionaries play in the economic development of the Philippines, America’s only colony?

International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 2007

W hat are Western missionaries to do with the highly pliable, contextually framed, but still deadly sin of greed-the insistence on personal entitlement to more than enough, in contexts where neighbors have less than enough-when by most prevailing standards of adequacy they bear conspicuous personal witness to the Good News of plenty? In this issue of the IBMR we explore this question and others, all arising from the complex interstices of mission and mammon. Can the good intentions of an end user sanctify or at least mitigate the moral taint of a benefactor's ill-gotten gains? Can one generation be held accountable for the sins of its ancestors, from whose evils it is a direct beneficiary? And what is the relationship between material possessions and one's personal, ecclesiastical, or cultural identity? There are no easy answers to such questions. The relational, communicatory, and ethical dynamics of gross material inequity among persons in close social proximity have challenged and bedeviled Western missionaries from the beginning. According to estimates appearing in the January 2007 IBMR, since 1900 the income of foreign missions globally has grown from an estimated US$200 million to $22 billion, today financing the work of some 453,000 missionaries. This figure does not include the cost of sending the tens of thousands of North Americans who each year venture forth on short-term (two weeks or less) mission trips. When a North American missionary family relocates to another country, it can seem as though they had suddenly inherited a peerage. The missionary vocation-being paid to be religious in someone else's culture-can appear by local standards to be an extraordinarily lucrative way to make a secure and comfortable living. In 2005, for example, a typical support package for an American evangelical missionary couple serving in southern Africa was approximately $60,000 per year, exclusive of funds for travel and special projects. However reasonable $5,000 per month might be for sustaining minimal levels of American social and material entitlement for a family living abroad, it guarantees them a place among the privileged in their host country. While per capita expenditures vary widely, data provided by North American Protestant agencies draw attention to the impressive economic power undergirding North American missionaries. The accompanying table, based on figures appearing on pages 22-23 of the

Imperialists used some tools to maintain empire and to prolong rule of over subjected people. One of them is missionaries' enterprise. They played vital and ground breaking role to maintain empire in the name of preach and service of native people.

Journal of African Economies, 2010

Using regional data for about 180 African provinces, we find that measures of Protestant missionary activity in the past are more correlated with schooling variables today than similar measures of Catholic missionary activity, as previous papers have suggested. However, we find that this effect is mainly driven by differences in Catholic areas (i.e., areas in which Catholic missionaries were protected from competition from Protestant missionaries in the past). This is not surprising because most former Catholic colonies had a number of restrictions to the operation of Protestant missionaries that benefited Catholic missionaries. Therefore, our results are consistent with an economic rationale in which different rules created differences in competitive pressures faced by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

2010

Using regional data for about 180 African provinces, we find that measures of Protestant missionary activity in the past are more correlated with schooling variables today than similar measures of Catholic missionary activity, as previous papers have suggested. However, we find that this effect is mainly driven by differences in Catholic areas (i.e., areas in which Catholic missionaries were protected from competition from Protestant missionaries in the past). This is not surprising because most former Catholic colonies had a number of restrictions to the operation of Protestant missionaries that benefited Catholic missionaries. Therefore, our results are consistent with an economic rationale in which different rules created differences in competitive pressures faced by Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

Journal of Development Economics, 2017

This paper examines the long-run eects of dierent Catholic missionary orders in colonial Mexico on educational outcomes and Catholicism. The main missionary orders in colonial Mexico were all Catholic, but they belonged to dierent monastic traditions and adhered to dierent values. Mendicant orders were committed to poverty and sought to reduce social inequality in colonial Mexico by educating the native population. The Jesuit order, by contrast, focused educational eorts on the colony's elite in the city centers, rather than on the native population in rural mission areas. Using a newly constructed data set of the locations of 1,145 missions in colonial Mexico, I test whether long-run development outcomes dier among areas that had Mendicant missions, Jesuit missions, or no missions. Results indicate that areas with historical Mendicant missions have higher present-day literacy rates, and higher rates of educational attainment at primary, secondary and postsecondary levels than regions without a mission. Results show that the share of Catholics is higher in regions where Catholic missions of any kind were a historical present. Additional results suggest that missionaries may have aected long-term development by impacting people's access to and valuation of education.

Methodist Review, 2012

In 1910, 1200 representatives of Protestant missionary societies met in Edinburgh, Scotland, to consider the meaning of Christian mission for their generation. In 2010, we gather as part of a worldwide network of meetings asking the same question. What has been the shape of Christian mission over the past century, and what is its future? Because human beings are God's hands and feet at work in the world, we must also ask the related question: What has it meant to be a missionary over the course of the last century? And most relevant to our gathering today, what does it mean to be United Methodist missionaries today? To "rethink mission" requires that we also "rethink missionaries," both for our own generation, and for those who will follow. Although apostolic vocation is a timeless calling, the work of mission takes its cue from its contemporary sociocultural context. Nobody expressed this as well as the great 20 th century Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones, who wrote in The Christ of the India Road, "Evangelize the inevitable." In other words, the missionary must bring the Gospel into contact with whatever is going on in the world. To "evangelize the inevitable" requires crossing boundaries to witness to Jesus Christ. But the nature of those boundaries changes according to the circumstances of each age. In this address, I will reflect on a few of the changing definitions of " missionary" from 1910 to today. "Rethinking missionaries" means asking what it means for us to "evangelize the inevitable." Except for the proverbial death and taxes, what seemed inevitable a century ago does not seem inevitable a hundred years later. And yet, the accumulated decisions of past generations continue to shape our understanding of the missionary vocation today. I. The missionary under colonialism. A. Missionary as Professional A century ago, the 1200 delegates who gathered at the World Missionary Conference knew exactly how to define a missionary, and there was no doubt in their minds about their importance. Study Commission Five on the Preparation of Missionaries stated as follows: "the word 'missionary' must be taken in its widest signification to include all those European and American agents whom the Missionary Societies directly appoint and use on the mission field in any capacity connected with the work of a station. Hence we must think of ordained missionaries, medical missionaries, educationists, nurses, industrial teachers, Bible readers, zenana visitors, secretaries or business agents, etc." 1 The report described the core functions of the "missionary force": 1. Presentation of the Christian message, i.e. direct evangelization and the making of converts. 2. Manifestation of the Christian life, e.g. "medical, educational, and industrial work." While such work was seen as acts of Christian love, the report noted that in some countries promoting Christian life would require introducing "elements of civilization." 3. Organization of a Christian church and nation. "A living and effective Church in a Christian nation is the end of missionary work." 2