Hosaflook, David (2018) Protestant Missions in the Balkans: Purposes, Policies, and Perceptions. In: Conference Proceedings from the Balkan Conference on the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Institute for Albanian and Protestant Studies, Tirana, pp. 23-41. ISBN 978-9928-104-85-4
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
The influx of Protestant Christian missionaries into the Balkans in the nineteenth century is a phenomenon that has not been widely studied or properly understood. It is essential to understand clearly the foundational motivations and framework of Protestant activism. Otherwise, researchers are prone to false assumptions, onedimensional analysis, and even faulty conclusions. This presentation first seeks to answer the question why numerous highly educated men and women left their home countries and what kept them at their stations for decades, despite illnesses and peril. Next, this paper probes source documents describing the policies and guidelines governing missionary conduct and activities, essentially answering the questions “What were they to do?” and “How were they to do it?”. Understanding the Protestants’ missionary purposes and policies is essential to understand the sending component of the cultural exchange, but of course we must also probe the attitudes of the receiving component. The missionaries’ arrival in the Balkans was met by various perceptions of their identity and purposes. Sometimes the local perceptions were accurate and positive, sometimes accurate and negative, sometimes inaccurate and positive, and sometimes inaccurate and negative. Being able to identify clearly the purposes, policies and perceptions of Protestant missions in the Balkans is an essential first step to the historical interpretation of the countless projects, publications, institutions, persons, movements, and submovements within the greater Protestant movement, all of which must be researched with greater detail in the future.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Protestant missions, missionary motivation, politics, missionarypolicies, cultural exchange, local perception of missionaries |
| Subjects: | A Church/mission history G Christian traditions/Denominations > Reformed, Presbyterian |
| Divisions: | Balkan countries |
| Depositing User: | Users 1 not found. |
| Date Deposited: | 21 Nov 2019 15:20 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Nov 2019 21:17 |
| URI: | https://ceeamsprints.osims.org/id/eprint/1703 |
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