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Christian Missions and the Enlightenment. Edited By Brian Stanley. Studies in the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2001. xii + 246 pp. $45.00 cloth.
The collected essays in this volume address several fundamental issues in global history through an exploration of the relationship between Christian missionaries and the globalization of the West. The critical role that missionaries played during the early modern period in laying the groundwork for western imperial expansion during the centuries that followed has been a topic of considerable recent attention. This book contributes important insights to the existing literature in this field by providing a series of case studies treating mainly evangelical Protestant missionaries-especially English and Scottish-during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It also seeks to make a contribution to the contemporary debate within the Christian community concerning the ongoing role of missionary Christianity in a postmodern world.
The book takes this issue very seriously, even including as its final chapter an essay by theologian Daniel W. Hardy, "Upholding Orthodoxy in Missionary Encounters." While the inclusion of such an essay in a volume of historical essays may strike some readers in the historical profession as odd, the inclusion of this essay provides insight into the degree to which the volume is intended as a contribution to the ongoing...