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Women
in Mission: A Shirt-tail Experience? This paper tries to refocus the lens of the camera to allow new understandings and interpretations to emerge, not only by revisiting old sources but also by uncovering new sources and bringing these into focus. It will look at the lives of four Church Missionary Society wives to Aotearoa/NZ in the 19th century and consider their vocations, roles and significance. From the beginning the CMS encouraged its men to go as married men with families in order to be able to model pious domesticity and the ideal Christian family. It was this Victorian ideology which worked for and against the wives – giving them a morally superior status to men but limiting their role to within the home, thus making it a shirt-tail experience. The paper will then consider the current situation of women in mission in the 21st century to try to determine if it is still a shirt-tail experience for women.
[1] Elaine
Bolitho, “Women in New Zealand Churches Part 1 1814-1939” Stimulus
[2]
Fiona Bowie, “Introduction:Reclaiming Women’s Presence” in Women and
Missions: Past and PresentAnthropological and Historical Perspectives,
ed Fiona Bowie, Deborah |
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