Missionary responses to tribal religions at Edinburgh, 1910

Missionaries of the imperialist era (1880-1920) have not been adequately heard or represented with respect to their understandings and evaluations of religion in tribal societies, in the post colonial era. This dissertation is a study of missionaries who contributed to the report on "Animistic Religions" for Commission IV of the World Missionary Conference held at Edinburgh in 1910.; The project utilizes the published works of these missionaries and the unpublished responses to the Questionnaire circulated by Commission IV in preparation for the conference.; The findings of this study indicate that the paternalistic mood, structure and design of the conference did not encourage dialogue with the younger churches of Asia and Africa. However, missionaries with anthropological interests, such as Henry Callaway and Henri Junod contributed significant initiatives to the study of African religions. They conceived of the relationship of Christianity to African religions in complementary ways using the concepts of fulfillment and transformation.; The study develops five models of how missionaries conceptualized from their theological and ethical positions, the relationship of Christianity to tribal religions: (1) the radical displacement model of W. D. Armstrong of the interdenominational Regions Beyond Missionary Union, (2) the two level displacement model of Johannes Warneck and German Lutheran pietists, which held in tension the corporate ideals of religions in tribal societies with their own personal and individual understanding of Christianity, (3) the moral reconstruction model of Donald Fraser and others from British and American protestantism, (4) Robert Nassau's continuity/rejection model from American protestantism and (5) the fulfillment/affirmation model of Godfrey Callaway and the Anglican high church tradition.; These models except that of W. D. Armstrong, have the capacity to discriminate between elements of tribal religion that can be accepted, incorporated, transformed, or fulfilled and those incompatible with the Christian faith. The broad judgment that missionaries at Edinburgh regarded African religions as demonic and to be uprooted is not supported by this study.