Christian Missions and the Enlightenment

Christian Missions and the Englightenment concentrates on British Protestant missions and the formative role of the Scottish Enlightenment on such topics as education and the relationship between "conversion" and "civilization." After discussing the problematic nature of all attempts to define the Enlightenment, the book breaks new ground by setting the British missionary awakening in the context of its continental European predecessor. It includes regional studies of missions in India, the Cape Colony, and the South Pacific, as well as analyses of debates in Scotland and England over whether missionaries should first seek to "civilize" or whether conversion to Christianity offered the only sure route to "civilization." The volume concludes with a theological perspective on what it may mean to uphold Christian orthodoxy in mission encounters in an age no longer bounded by the horizons of modernity.