Messengers Of Grace - Evangelical Missionaries In The South Seas 1797-1860
Published by Oxford University Press: Melbourne 1978 1st Edition
"Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797-1860 is Niel Gunson's substantial study of the first three generations of Protestant missionaries active throughout the Pacific Islands. Beginning with the commencement of organised missionary activity in 1797, Gunson examines the missionaries' social backgrounds, religious convictions, education and practical training, placing their work within the wider Evangelical Revival and the social changes produced by the Industrial Revolution.
The book then follows the missionaries into the field, describing their encounters with unfamiliar cultures and the formidable practical and spiritual difficulties of island life. Far from restricting themselves to preaching, they built and chartered vessels, established schools and printing presses, translated scripture, provided medical treatment, recorded languages and customs, and frequently became advisers in political affairs. Gunson also considers the tensions within the missions and the complex responses of Pacific Island communities as Christianity was adopted and adapted to existing beliefs and social structures.
Based upon extensive original sources, including missionary diaries and correspondence, this is an analytical history rather than a simple celebration of missionary achievement. Illustrated and accompanied by maps, a glossary, detailed appendices, notes, manuscript sources, bibliography and index, it remains an important scholarly account of the religious and social transformation of the nineteenth-century South Pacific. This is the 1978 first edition, published in Melbourne by Oxford University Press and presented in its original unclipped dustjacket."
