The Norwegian American Lutheran Experience In 1950s Japan

Stepping Up to the Cold War Challenge: The Norwegian-American Lutheran Experience in 1950s Japan describes the events that led to the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC), an American Christian denomination, to respond to General MacArthur’s call for missionaries. This Church did not initially respond, but did so in 1949 only after their missionaries had been expelled from China due to the victory of communist forces on the mainland. Because they feared Japan would also succumb to communism in less than ten years, the missionaries evaded ecumenical cooperation and social welfare projects to focus on evangelism and establishing congregations. Many of the ELC missionaries were children and grandchildren of Norwegian immigrants who had settled as farmers on the North American Great Plains. Based on interview transcripts and other primary sources, this book intimately describes the personal struggles of individuals responding to the call to be a missionary, adjusting to life in Japan, learning Japanese, raising a family, and engaging in mission work. As the Cold War threat diminished and independence movements elsewhere were ending colonialism, missionaries were compelled to change methods and attitudes. The 1950s was a time when missionaries went out much in the same manner that they did in the nineteenth century. Through the voices of the missionaries and their Japanese coworkers, the book documents how many of the traditional missionary assumptions begin to be questioned.

A NEW TESTAMENT offers a recast economic, legal, and social history of the strangely neglected, enduring and power-laden relationship between a Scandinavian Transatlantic mission and the Santals, Boro and Bengalis of East India, Northern Bangladesh, and Eastern Nepal. Bleie's kaleidoscopic portraits transport readers back to the medieval period and Danish and British Company Rule. The British Raj and the early post-Independence period remain her principal framing, however. This customized text enables readers to navigate and selectively immerse themselves in theoretical and descriptive chapters brimming with immersive storytelling. The volume is relevant for university curricula in international history, Scandinavian and Norwegian transnational history, Santal ethnohistory, the history of religion, the sociology of religion, mission history, intercultural history of Christianity, museum studies, subaltern and postcolonial studies, comparative international law, peace and development studies, social anthropology, history of aid, tribal studies, women's studies, and the study of indigenous oral and textual history.

Now revised and updated to incorporate numerous new materials, this is the major source for researching American Christian activity in China, especially that of missions and missionaries. It provides a thorough introduction and guide to primary and secondary sources on Christian enterprises and individuals in China that are preserved in hundreds of libraries, archives, historical societies, headquarters of religious orders, and other repositories in the United States. It includes data from the beginnings of Christianity in China in the early eighth century through 1952, when American missionary activity in China virtually ceased. For this new edition, the institutional base has shifted from the Princeton Theological Seminary (Protestant) to the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural Relations at the University of San Francisco (Jesuit), reflecting the ecumenical nature of this monumental undertaking.

A bibliographical guide to the works in American libraries concerning the Christian missionary experience in China.

A bibliographical guide to the works in American libraries concerning the Christian missionary experience in China.