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The Social Origins and Recruitment of English Protestant Missionaries in the Nineteenth Century

出版	University of London., 1974
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=-iUBHAAACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Christian missions attempt to transcend the boundaries of social space and time by reproducing the religion of one society in another; nevertheless the sociological insight that religions are shaped by social influences bears on missionary work in that missionaries and their converts are members of societies wider than the church. The missionary message is socially conditioned. The following is concerned with English Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth century, and their connections with the society of their origin, with respect both to "structure" and "culture". Part I considers the place of missionary thinking among the social ideas of the period, and the place in the social structure of those evangelical denominations which were the chief contributors to missions. A number of writers have considered that evangelical religion, especially in the early nineteenth century, itself shaped society rather than being shaped by it, but here the opposite view is taken. Part II examines the social origins and recruitment of the missionaries of the four main missionary societies, the Baptist, Church, London, and Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Societies. Missionary support, missionary ideas many of the missionaries themselves seem to have bad their location in the "industrious" and liberal part of the nineteenth century society; among the artisans, merchants and manufacturers, who were Free Traders, radicals, and believers in social progress. Part III considers the forces which served to weaken this section of society and its ideas later in the nineteenth century. Occupational and demographic changes, and Britain's diminishing economic and political strength made liberal policies at home and in missions more difficult of fulfillment. A study of the women missionaries sent out in the latter part of the century is also included in Part III, since in social background and function they were characteristic of society and religion in this period.