Aotearoa New Zealand Association for Mission Studies

‘It is My Bounden Duty’ Theological Contours of New Zealand’s Missionary Movement, 1890-1930

 Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Missions Studies Conference, Auckland, 25-26 June 2003

Hugh Morrison

 Abstract:

From 1890 onwards New Zealanders participated in the modern foreign missionary movement in increasing numbers, as missionaries and supporters. By the 1920s missions occupied a central position in the priorities, rhetoric and self-identity of many New Zealand churches and denominations. The wide range of written sources that resulted provide clues as to how foreign missions were theologically constructed and perceived by the New Zealand participants in this period.

 This paper argues that missionary theology was fluid and variegated in how it was defined and conceived. Until the 1920s this fluidity existed within the boundaries of a broadly evangelical conception of both task and context. The paper will attempt to outline this with reference to the language, imagery and biblical texts employed by a wide range of men and women from both denominational and nondenominational backgrounds. It will focus on clusters of images that emerged over the period, the nuances within them and how they changed over time. The wider international missionary movement, and contemporary theological and contextual factors, will form the background for this discussion. To conclude attention will be given to how these patterns began to change in the 1920s, as a result of World War One and the conservative evangelical reaction to theological modernism.

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