Author Description
How Are Religious Educational Institutions Built? In Histories Of Evangelical Institution-building In The Victorian Indian Colonial Period (1858-1901), This Question Has Mostly Been Addressed From The Perspective Of The Religious Ends That Christian Missionaries Sought To Achieve And The Ideological Obstacles They Encountered. This May Be Called The 'values' Approach. Missionary Calculus Sets This Aside And Examines, Instead, The Most Routine Transactions Of Missionaries In Building An Evangelical Institution, The Sunday School. Missionaries Daily Struggled With And Acted Upon Certain Questions: How Shall We Acquire Land And Money To Set Up Such Schools? What Methods Shall We Employ To Attract Students? What Curriculum, Books, And Classroom Materials Shall We Use? How Shall We Tune Our Hymns? Shall We Employ Non-christians To Teach In Christian Sunday Schools? The Makers Of Colonial Sunday Schools Focused Obsessively On The Means, The Material And Symbolic Resources, With Which They Felt They Could Achieve Certain Immediate Objectives. Such A Transactional Or 'instrumental' Approach Resulted In Stated Religious 'values' Being Insidiously Compromised. Using Insights From Classical Weberian Sociology, And Through A Close Scrutiny Of Missionary Means, This Book Shows How The Success Or Failure Of Meeting Evangelical Ends May Be Assessed. With Extensive Archival Research, Chiefly On American Missionaries In Colonial India, This Work Examines The Formation Of Sunday Schools At The Point Of Transnational, Intercultural Contact. Readers Interested In Religion, Education, And Colonial History Should Find The Matter, Method, Outcomes, And Narration Of Missionary Calculus New And Thought-provoking.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This book investigates how the routine, transactional methods employed by Christian missionaries in Victorian India fundamentally shaped the development and outcomes of evangelical educational institutions. Anilkumar Belvadi, utilizing a Weberian sociological framework, shifts the focus from the ideological goals of missionaries to the practical, material, and symbolic resources they managed. By analyzing the daily operations of Sunday schools, the author argues that an instrumental focus on means often compromised the very religious values these institutions were intended to promote.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of institutional formation during the Victorian Indian colonial period (1858-1901).
- Examination of logistical challenges including land acquisition, funding, curriculum development, and staffing.
- Application of classical Weberian sociology to missionary administrative practices.
Scope Limits
- The study focuses primarily on American missionaries in India rather than a global survey of all evangelical efforts.
- The analysis is restricted to the specific institutional context of Sunday schools rather than broader missionary social work.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars in colonial history and the sociology of religion note that this work provides a rigorous, archival-based alternative to traditional value-centered historical narratives. Experts highlight the text as a significant contribution to understanding the intersection of transnational contact and institutional pragmatism in colonial settings.
Page Count:
304
Publication Date:
2019-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190052430
ISBN-13:
9780190052430
History
Education
Sociology of Religion
Colonial History
India