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Reimagining the Protestant Missionary Family: The Malcolms of the China Inland Mission
Author(s) -
Morrison Hugh
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of religious history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1467-9809
pISSN - 0022-4227
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9809.12757
Subject(s) - liminality , protestantism , china , sociology , identity (music) , status quo , narrative , gender studies , normative , family life , history , environmental ethics , aesthetics , political science , law , anthropology , philosophy , linguistics
This article considers how to meaningfully discuss or understand the missionary family, focusing on the longer life and potential adjustments of family members beyond the mission‐field experience. It argues that the post‐missionary years were an important transitional space, that were just as formative as the original mission spaces occupied elsewhere. In that new liminality of place and time, there was the potential for other things to occur: re‐orientations of life direction, reconfigurations of modes of thought or belief, and reconstructions of identity and of purpose. It does so through a case study of the Malcolm family (Anna, William, and son Ronald) from Australia/New Zealand, who worked with the China Inland Mission between the 1890s and 1920s but then returned to New Zealand and eventually to a different set of outcomes for each family member. Their story moves from traditional, normative colonial evangelical Protestantism to a more complicated and differentiated story of juxtaposed divergent narratives either maintaining or discarding the religious status quo. As such, this article draws attention to the dynamic nature of the missionary family as a crucible for change and its essentially emotional role as a place of safety and security in the midst of profound intra‐ and extra‐familial disruptions.