Antipodeans Abroad: Trends and Issues in the Writing of New Zealand Mission History

Abstract

There has been a paucity of reflective and contextual analysis of New Zealand's historical involvement in the international missionary movement. This article suggests that existing literature falls into four categories: denominational/organizational histories; biographies and personal narratives; unpublished university theses; and a small body of more reflective and contextual works. Historical analysis since 1990 reflects wider historical discourses, rather than being the specific product of mission history. Valuable analysis has focused on women's involvement, culture contact, and the relationship between New Zealand missions, European colonialism and indigenous nationalist movements. Yet the theological nature of missionary involvement has been less extensively understood, obscuring the nuanced nature of things like missionary motivation and the relationship with colonialism. A lacuna still exists with respect to: a comprehensive and comparative analysis of post-1945 missionary involvement; micro and macro-historical analysis of missionary support; the gendered nature of missionary support; and the role of children and young people in missionary structures and discourse.In 1909 the Rev. Harry Driver was commissioned to write a silver jubilee history of the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society (NZBMS).