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CHAPTER ONE Beginnings of the British Missionary Movement in Japan and Taiwan The British missionaries who went out to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were members of an overseas movement that had a relatively short tradition . The reasons why it developed and how it was organized at home are important in helping to explain the reaction of missionaries to Japan. Perhaps because they were the furthest away from Britain, the three mission fields which came to make up the Japanese Empire were among the last in which the British missionary movement began work. Thus the missionaries in the Japanese Empire were the beneficiaries of the accumulated knowledge that their predecessors had painstakingly acquired in other lands. Significantly, the growing respectability of the Protestant missionary movement from the mid-1850s onwards meant that those missionaries who came to Japan were generally better educated than many of those who had been overseas missionaries at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The origins of the British missionary movement also coincided with the growing political and economic strength of Britain overseas. THE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH MISSIONARY MOVEMENT The mIssIonary movement in Britain consisted of two major parts, home and foreign missions, although the latter was of less importance in the life of the home church. The foreign missionary movement itself can be divided into two distinct parts, work among British nationals and work among non-European peoples; the latter generally became more important in the late nineteenth century. Foremost among those societies which attempted to cater to both British nationals abroad and non-Europeans was the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (sPG). Non-Conformist societies tended to concentrate their attention upon the native population in colonies where there was no large population of British stock. The SPG, founded in 1701, and the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1699, were the two outstanding examples of missionary societies begun before the Evangelical Revival. The SPG alone had missionaries, as the work of the SPCK was Notes for Chapter 1 are on pp. 268-71. 8 BEGINNINGS OF THE BRITISH MISSIONARY MOVEMENT 9 mainly in translating and publishing Christian literature. Initially the SPG largely catered to the needs of the white Anglican population of North America and the West Indies.! Later, it extended its activity by undertaking some work among the aboriginal peoples and blacks in North America and the West Indies. However, missions to non-Europeans were only undertaken after a fundamental change in attitude had taken place in Britain. Widespread support in the home churches for these missions occurred only after the vocation of a foreign missionary had gained respectability and after the general rise of respectability of the non-Conformist ministry.2 Canon Max Warren has argued that the British missionary movement was in part an expression of a far wider development-the social emancipation of underprivileged classes in Britain. This development owed its inspiration to influences as diverse as the Evangelical Revival, the Industrial Revolution, and the social upheaval of the French Revolution .3 By the last decade of the eighteenth century, there was a proliferation of new British missionary societies directed toward the conversion of the non-European. The most important were the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), the London Missionary Society (LMS, increasingly Congregationalist, 1795), the Church Missionary Society (C~IS, Low Church Anglican, 1799), and the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804). As an organized Trinitarian Church, the Presbyterian Church in England did not come into existence until 1844.4 Prior to this, orthodox Presbyterian congregations in England (most of them Scottish in origin and inspiration and connected with the various branches of Scottish Presbyterianism) supported the Church of Scotland 's missionary work that had begun in India in 1829. Professor Cyril Powles has pointed out that "British missionary societies reflected the tendency of Englishmen to form voluntary associations for specific purposes. Neither the SPG nor the eMS enjoyed official sponsorship of the Church of England. They were only two among hundreds of semi-private societies founded after the late seventeenth century for the improvement of manners and conditions of life."5 The missionary movement from Britain followed the established routes of British commerce and colonial development throughout the world. At times, missionaries even spearheaded British penetration into new areas, especially Africa. The pattern of expansion, however, often had the unfortunate result of identifying British missionaries with British colonialism. Yet despite the growth of missionary societies, the missionary movement abroad did...

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