How American Protestant missionaries helped usher in post-Protestant America
David Hollinger shows how the social gospel principles that drove mission abroad boomeranged back home.
missionaries
In 1961, Margaret Flory started a new kind of mission program.
An American childhood in Haiti
Apricot Irving writes with love—and hurt—about her father's misplaced desire to be a savior to others.
In many instances, Jesuit influence is essential to understanding the history of Asian societies.
A do-gooder’s tale
D. L. Mayfield wanted to help Somali refugees. She ended up mostly baking them cupcakes.
Missionaries among Muslims
To lionize the missionary’s courage, Muslims were cast as implacable adversaries and served as the quintessential foil.
The subject of immigration engenders contentious debate, complex discussion, and conniving diatribe among Americans. Four years ago, the mother of a recently elected Republican senator implored her son to be compassionate in his legislative work on the issue. She reminded him of their own family’s journey from central Cuba to south Florida and noted that undocumented immigrants—she called them los pobrecitos, “poor things”—are human beings seeking dignity, work, and a better future just like they were. One wonders if Marco Rubio remembers his mother’s message.
Sustainability is certainly a goal for most church plants. But have denominations set up a model that is sustainable for pastors?
Like it or not, the world’s religious landscape owes much to the long history of European imperialism. But the story of empire and missions is more complex than we might assume.
Way Below the Angels, by Craig Harline
One cold afternoon in 1975 in a small rented bedroom in Antwerp, the young Mormon missionary Craig Harline (Elder Harline in Mormon parlance) had a faith crisis—though it is not quite right to call it that.