CAUSAS DEL MALTRATO INFANTIL

experience all that is permanently valuable, and then go ahead.28

Missionary thinking in the 1 920s was a curious blend of business as usual and of reflective concern for the global progress of Christianity. In the New Zealand context the convocation of denominational and non-denominational missionary organisations at the Dunedin Missionary Conference, in April 1 926, was the first time that such a wide range of practitioners and thinkers had met to consider the way forward. Yet if it was a period in which critical and strategic reflection took place, agreement on the outcomes was by no means unanimous. Whilst some were considering future changes in the light of both the past and the post-war present, others were seeking to steer foreign missions along a path considered to be more theologically orthodox and congruent with the past. Changing global and theological contexts, as with any change, evoked differing responses from New Zealand missionary observers and participants.

By the 1 920s there were a wide range of enduring theological images and concepts with respect to mission (Table 5.6). The most consistent of these still revolved around notions of conversion and enlightenment, the action of going with the Christian gospel to meet a range of perceived international needs, the actions of preaching and teaching, and the missionary obligation resting upon the Church. Other categories, such as the sense of mission as a divine command from God, the extension of God's kingdom, and mission as service and sacrifice waxed and waned at various stages?9 Mission as 'warfare', 'representing Christ' and 'establishing an indigenous Church' were concepts that emerged in the early twentieth century or by the early 1 920s. More generally non­ denominational missions tended to place a higher emphasis on mission as 'representing Christ' and as 'service or sacrifice'. This latter category was also more prominent for Presbyterians. The 'Christian leavening' aspect of mission now seemed to be emphasised just as much by groups like the NZSCM, with its growing concern for the social and ethical dimensions of Christianity, and missions like the Sudan United Mission, which played an increasingly important role in education and industrial

28

'Report of the Commission Appointed to Consider the Missionary Policy of the NZSCM', c. 1 925- 1 926, Miscellaneous Publications, MS-Papers-1 6 1 7-503, NZSCM Collection, WTU.

29

This may have been a function of either time or context, or of the range of documents examined. The selection, reading, and analysis of representative textual material were as systematic as possible.

Chapter Five - Post-War Growth and Diversity, 1 9 1 9- 1 926

training ill Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Women tended to place a greater emphasis on

mission as 'service or sacrifice' and 'preaching or teaching' . Conversely men tended to emphasise mission as a set of actions, and the notions of 'warfare or conquest'. A wide range of dichotomous imagery was still employed. Finally the synoptic gospels, and the New Testament more generally, still provided the main biblical basis for missionary thinking, with most emphasis on the 'Great Commission' of Matthew 28: 1 9-20 and Mark 1 6: 1 5. By the 1 920s, however, both sets of verses were commonly conflated, especially by missionary applicants, into one generally perceived command by God to go and preach the gospel worldwide.

Table 5.6 -Ranked Descriptions of Mission by New Zealanders, 1 856-1 93fPl!

Mission as

1 856- 1 889 1 890- 1 899 1 900- 1 9 1 8 1919-1930

Salvation/Conversion

1 2 1 1

Response to Great Need

7

4 2 2

Service/Sacrifice

9= 1 1 3

Going/Taking the Gospel

2 1 8= 4

Response to a Command

9 5 1 0 5

Warfare

1 2 9= 6 6

Duty/Obligation

8 6 3= 7

Preaching/Teaching

5 3 8= 8

Enlightenment

3

₇

=

7

9

Extending God's Kingdom

4 1 1 3= 10=

Representing Christ

1 2 1 0=

Christian Leavening

6

₇₌

5 12

Reaping a Harvest

1 0 1 2 1 3 13

Liberation

1 1 1 4= 1 5 14

Establishing Indigenous Church -

15

Prernillennial Urgency

1 3 1 4 16

Biblical Fulfilment

1 3 1 4= 1 6 17

At the same time there were a number of differences in the theological construction of mission in the 1 920s that belied either its apparent homogeneity or its continuity with

the past. One of these was an emerging cluster of categories that emphasised the obligatory and sacrificial nature of the missionary task, as perceived by the wider church-going pUblic. On the surface it appeared as if an explicit appeal to duty was diminishing in importance. It is more likely, however, that the sense of duty was just as strong or even stronger in this period. Constant references to notions of self-sacrifice

30

For the period 1 9 1 9- 1 930 there were 367 phrases, collected from 244 different documents and grouped according to the dominant image or sentiment. Anglican -54 phrases from 33 documents; Baptist -99

phrases from 44 documents; Presbyterian - 1 29 phrases from 97 documents; Other -85 phrases from 70

documents (seventeen from BIM, thirty-seven from elM, thirty-one from a range of others).

Chapter Five - Post-War Growth and Diversity, 1 9 1 9- 1 926

and service, mixed in with the invocation of Christ' s command and appeals to sympathy for a world in need, were essentially a call to duty. Archbishop Julius forcefully stated, in 1 922, that 'the duty of preaching the Gospel to the heathen is laid upon the whole Church and not upon a section of it' , qualifying this statement with the old adjectival phrase ' bounden (or obligatory) duty' .31 The scriptural reference point for this notion of

'being under obligation' was the Pauline text - 'I am obligated both to Greeks and non­ Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish' (Romans 1 : 1 4, NIV). Marion Neale (BIM), on hearing a sermon on this text, said that ' it had not been brought home to me before that I was actually a debtor to the heathen . . . . [because of] the appalling state and dire need of the Bolivian Indians, spiritually, morally, mentally and physically, .32

The combination of scriptural command, personal gratitude for the gift of divine love, and pulpit pressure must have been a heady and persuasive spiritual and psychological mix. It is also likely that this sense of duty and sacrificial service was heightened by proximity to the experiences of World War One. The Timaru Baptist Church anticipated in 1 9 1 9 that, alongside its newly installed Roll of Honour for its war dead, there would be ' a new Roll of Honour . . . for the names of those who go to fight the powers of darkness in the high places of the field, .33 The impact of World War One on New Zealand society was unprecedented. Of 1 00,000 men sent to fight, around 58,000 died or were wounded - some twenty-five per cent of military aged males. Whilst the years quickly passed, the traumatic memories did not. During the 1 920s the erection of public memorials and the annual ritual of Anzac Day reflected how close to the collective surface the trauma of war remained, and gave New Zealand the closest thing there was to civil religious observance. James Belich muses that a 'cult of 1 8,000 Kiwi Christs emerged, whose sacrifice simply had to have been for a noble cause' .34 It was not surprising, then, that the potent language of warfare, sacrificial service and duty was co­ opted for the missionary cause. We have already noted the ambiguity of warfare imagery in earlier missionary discourse. It was certainly linked with the notion of ' spiritual warfare' , whereby missionaries saw themselves contending with the so-called 'spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms' . 35 Whilst this remained true in the post-

3 1 Quoted in the Annual Report of the New Zealand Anglican Board of Missions, 1 924- 1 925, p. 5. 32 'Testimony', in Bolivian Indian, September 1 926, pp. 65-66.

33 NZB, May 1 9 1 9, p. 80.

34 James Belich, Paradise Reforged, pp. 95-96, I 1 6- 1 1 7.

Chapter Five - Post-War Growth and Diversity, 1 9 1 9- 1 926

war period, it was equally true that the New Zealand experience of war, especially the Gallipoli campaign, provided many of the anecdotes and much of the imagery used to stir people on in the missionary cause. An article in the NZBTI Reaper exemplified this in its depiction of 'Christian villages' on the island of Malaita in the Solomon Islands. Such villages were part of the ' fighting line' that had been 'steadily pushed further and further [inland] ' . The writer went on to use such words and phrases as ' conquest' , 'lonely outpost', ' gained a footing and dug in', 'further advance', 'the thinness of our line' , 'our attacking forces', 'poorly equipped', and 'carry on this fight'. 36

Missionary publicists and speakers exhorted young people to emulate the spirit of sacrifice shown by soldiers and other wartime volunteers. They had a keen sense that whilst wartime service had been of great importance, so also was the cause of world evangelisation and humanitarian aid. This was promoted as a high and worthy cause, and the language of patriotic service heard so often between 1 9 1 4 and 1 9 1 8 fitted easily into the missionary rhetoric of the post-war years. The Rev. William Hinton, newly installed as Baptist Union President in 1 92 1 , captured the spirit of this when he reminded young people that 'the call is to sacrifice . . . . the Master and His service are abundantly worthy of it. No greater honour to a home or a church can be conceived than that they should have a representative on the Mission Field' .37 Indeed it may have been the case that the subtext of this message was that the missionary cause was ultimately more important than the cause that had so recently scarred the national psyche.

There was also a second dimension to this particular theological cluster. It seems that individuals, more than corporate entities, tended to think of mission in terms of responsibility and sacrificial service. For example, between fifty and eighty-six per cent of Anglican and Presbyterian statements describing mission in this way came from individual missionary applicants. Furthermore these statements were often couched in almost exclusively personal terms. Dorothy Mathew's comment to the Presbyterian FMC, that ' God commanded "Go". I heard and, in consequence am offering my services ', was a common refrain in applicant records.38 In light of the above discussion,

36 'Life for God on a Pacific Island', [NZBTI] Reaper, March 1 929, p. 22.

3 7 William and Lilian Hinton had been PIYM missionaries in India between 1 897 and 1 906. He was

invalided home and went on to a range of Baptist pastorates, and retained a keen interest in foreign missions. Quote is taken from NZB, January 1 922, p. 3.

3 8 'Dorothy Mathew', 6. 1 7, Folder 1, Punjab Mission (GAOl 49), Series 6, Staff Files, PCANZ Archive.

Chapter Five - Post-War Growth and Diversity, 1 9 1 9- 1 926

this suggests that the post-war rhetoric was finding its mark. It further indicates that many people applied a highly individualised biblical hermeneutic, by which the biblical texts were often interpreted as being personally addressed to them. The oft-cited notion of mission as a response to God's command, as embodied in the Matthean and Markan texts, was an example of this. The original Greek rendering of both texts conveys the notion that, with the use of second person plural verbs and the third person plural pronoun a1Ytot<; (to them), the missionary task was originally entrusted to a community of people rather than to any one individual. Yet a generation or more of evangelical theology and spirituality, with its increasing emphasis on individualised conversion and devotional practices, and on personal accountability before God, meant that by the 1 920s a general commandment to the whole Church had been internalised as a personally addressed imperative. Missionary publicists, then, wielded a very potent tool in their repertoire of pUblicity and recruitment methods.

A second cluster of categories - responding to needs, Christian leavening and the establishment of indigenous churches - reflected the changing post-war socio-political contexts amongst which New Zealand missionaries worked, and again illustrated the various ways in which World War One continued to have an impact on the movement. On the one hand nationalist movements and sentiments, particularly in India and China, were having a ripple effect amongst indigenous Christian communities. It became increasingly obvious to missionary societies that a key task in this period would be the establishment of independent churches and structures. Dr. J. J. Kitchen, addressing the AGM of the Australasian CIM in 1 922, declared that 'the most important feature of missionary work in China to-day is the preparation of the Chinese Church to undertake its responsibilities . . . . a self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing [Church] should surely be the ultimate aim of all Foreign Missionary effort, .39 There was a noticeable maturing of attitudes. Some had the hindsight to realise that European domination was a 'historic accident' .40 They at least acknowledged the inevitable democratisation of colonial societies, even if they were unsure about it, and they affirmed the principle of equality between European and non-European Christians. The Rev. H . H. Barton argued, after visiting Presbyterian missionaries in 1 92 1 , that:

39

China 's Millions, June 1 922, p. 63 .

40

Rev. A. W. Stuart, 'The Christ of the World's Highways', Annual Missionary Sermon at the New Zealand Baptist Union Conference, 1 927, recorded in the NZB, November 1 927, pp. 34 1 -342.

Chapter Five - Post-War Growth and Diversity, 1 9 1 9- 1 926

most of all, perhaps, are we called upon to take our place alongside the Chinese and of the

In document Efectos del maltrato físico y psicológico ejercido por los padres de los niños y niñas de la institución educativa "san francisco de asis" de la región ica en el año 2014 (página 46-50)