Introduction

Header image: Ida Pruitt, Sweet Lotus Seeds recipe, undated, part of the Ida Pruitt Papers at Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute.

What do women missionaries tell us about World Christianity?

In her 2006 article "World Christianity as a Women's Movement," Dana Robert asked "What would the study of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America look like if scholars put women into the center of their research?" Robert posed this question in the context of the growing field of World Christianity, which recognizes that Christianity has grown much faster in regions outside Europe and North America--namely Africa, Asia, and Latin America--in the last thirty years. But Christianity as a global phenomenon is not new. Historians of the nineth and twentieth centuries point to international Christian missions as an organized effort and expression of historical Christian globalism. And women are at the center of that story, too. Women missionaries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries claimed an agency and independence unavailable to many of their peers by embarking on transoceanic voyages.

And yet, many women missionaries replicated patriarchal ideas about gender among the women and men they evangelized to. Women missionaries were often wives or daughters of ministers or missionaries and experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and raised their children in unfamiliar lands. Some women missionaries were unmarried, challenging evangelical ideas about true Christian womanhood.

Many women missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were white and were inspired to evangelize, at least in part, because of white supremacist ideas about African or Asian inferiority. In this way, women missionaries acted as Christian agents in creating a racist American empire. Black women were also missionaries, however, and challenged ideas about the inherent links between race, empire, and evangelism. Finally, women missionaries were prolific historians of their own craft, leaving behind detailed diaries, memoirs, and eulogies of their fallen friends. In recognizing their importance, they made it so. The archive of women missionaries is rich and overflowing.

What can we learn about World Christianity from women missionaries? From their writings and teachings, we learn about Christian--especially evangelical Protestant--theology; from funding sources and women's auxiliary groups, we learn about denominational structures and priorities; from photographs, recipes, diaries, and memoirs (both books and films), we learn about the culture and daily life of Christianity abroad. All of these things--and more. We learn about Christianity and feminism, race, and memory from the sources women missionaries left behind, too.

Today, nearly two-thirds of Christians live outside Europe and North America. "World Christianity," the term for this global south Christian growth, is the story of twenty-first-century Christianity. It is impossible to say whether that would be the story had international missions not been a significant story of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christianity.

Historical Overviews

These books are secondary sources that provide introductions and background knowledge on the topic of women missionaries. Each of the books focuses on a particular Christian denomination or a particular missional region and examines the change in women's missions over time, as well as other related themes.

Click the images and links below to read the books online or find physical copies in Harvard Libraries (if online access is not provided). Throughout the guide, many links will require a HarvardKey to access.

Barbara Mann Wall, Into Africa: A Transnational History of Catholic Medical Missions and Social Change (2015).

Kwok Pui-lan, Judith Berling, and Jenny Plane Te Paa (ed.), Anglican Women on Church and Mission (2012).

Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Connie A. Shemo (ed.), Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812-1960 (2010).

T. Laine Scales, All That Fits a Woman: Training Southern Baptist Women for Charity and Mission, 1907-1926 (2000).

Marilyn Fardig Whiteley, Canadian Methodist Women and Missions: The Transformation of 'Pious, Plodding' Females (1996).

Juanita Evans Leonard (ed.), Called to Minister, Empowered to Serve: Women in Ministry and Missions in the Church of God Reformation Movement (1989).

Nadine Pence Frantz and Lauree Hersch Meyer, Women in Ministry and Mission, (1985).

Audrie E. Reber, Women United for Mission: A History of the Women's Society of World Service of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, 1946-1968 (1969).

Reference Works

Reference works are put together by experts in the field using mostly secondary sources. They're great places to start your research or to consult later to fill in any gaps after you've read primary and secondary sources.