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There is currently a great deal o controversy about missions. Some o

this reaction is related to recent trends, like the sometimes violent

response to missions in the Middle East, India, and elsewhere. Much

o the controversy, however, is simply a resurgence o a popular perception aboutmissionsnamely, that historically the missions movement was the handmaiden

o colonialism and an existential enemy o indigenous cultures. The problem with

these imperial connotations o missions, however, is that they are usually based on

novels, movies, anecdotes and subjective impressions. Whats missing is a compre-

hensive and balanced examination o the actual historical and statistical evidence.

As part o the Project on Religion and Economic Change unded by the

Templeton Foundation and Metanexus Institute, I have compiled data on vir-

tually all Protestant and Catholic missionary activity rom the early-19th cen-

tury though the mid-20th

century and conducted a careul review o historicalresearch on missions.1 By looking at patterns within the historical record

and comparing places where missionaries were present with places they were

not, I am able to systematically measure the social eects that missions have

actually had. In this article I ocus primarily on historical evidence rather

than statistics, but in both cases the data point to the same conclusion: When

missionaries were independent rom direct state control (e.g., they chose their

own leaders and raised their own unds), they moderated, not exacerbated,

the negative eects o colonialism.

The story o missions is o course also closely intertwined with the story oreligious reedom. In this article I argue that religious reedom and missionary

activity are usually synergistic; historically, places where they have advanced

in tandem have seen a reduction in abuses o power and a expansion o civil

society. Although missionaries and other religious radicals have been widely

resented in their day, they have also been central to the abolition o slavery, the

development o mass education, and the ourishing o organizations outside

state control. Indeed, the eects o 19th and early 20th century missionaries are

by Robert D. Woodberry

Reclaiming the M-Word: The Legacy of Missionsin Non-Western Societies

International Journal of Frontier Missiology

How Do We Deal with the Baggage of the Past?

Editors note:This slightly revised

article is reprinted with permissionfrom The Review of Faith and

International Affairs. It originally

appeared in the Spring 2006 issue:

4(1): 3-12. Readers are encouraged to

consult the website (www.ca.org) for

full subscription information. All online

subscriptions come with instant access

to the entire archives of The Review.

Robert D. Woodberry is director o

the Project on Religion and EconomicChange and an assistant proessor osociology at the University o Texasat Austin. His research analyzes thelong-term impact o missions andcolonialism on education, economicdevelopment, and democracy. Otherinterests include religious infuences onpolitical institutions and the economy,and the spread o religious liberty.


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Reclaiming the M-Word: The Legacy of Missions in Non-Western Societies18

still measurable in the educationalenrollments, inant mortalities, andlevels o political democracy in societ-ies around the world.

Why Does Missions Matter?Since the early 19th century, missionar-ies have been one o the largest groups

o Westerners in the non-westernworld. North American missionar-ies, in particular, have also tended tobe disproportionately well educated.In the 19th and early 20th centuries

when university education was scarce,most North American missionarieshad college degrees, and most malemissionaries had at least some graduateeducation.

Missionary organizations were alsoamong the wealthiest organizations

o any kind. In 1900 the AmericanFederation o Labor (AFL) had anannual budget o $71,000; in the same

year the missions board o the NorthernMethodists (a single U.S. denomina-tion) had an annual budget o over onemillion dollarsover 14 times larger.In act, in the 19th century the largestmissions and evangelical reorm agen-cies outstripped all but a ew commer-cial banks as the largest and wealthiestcorporations in the United States. The

number o missionaries continued togrow through the 20th century, althoughtheir size relative to business and gov-ernment declined.

I the historical scale and level oorganization o the missionary enter-prise is requently underestimated,the degree o cultural damage it hascaused is requently overestimated. Tobe sure, there were many problem-atic missionary methodologies in the

colonial era, and there continue to besome ailures today. But, we shouldnot lose sight o the positive legacy omissions in the areas o racial attitudes,education, civil society, and colonialreorm. I the primary eect o mis-sions was negative, we would expectconditions to be worse where they werethan where they were not, and worse

where they had more reedom to doexactly what they wanted than where

they were restricted, but both historicaland statistical evidence suggest exactlythe opposite. The consequences ocolonialism would have been ar worse

without the presence o missionaries.

Missionary Resistance toEnlightenment Racial Attitudes

One o the most consistent critiquesagainst missionaries is their ethno-centrism. Missionaries are, and were,people o their era. In the 19th andearly 20th century, most missionariesassumed the superiority o WesternChristian civilization. In their

undraising literature, missionariesoten emphasized the problems with

other religions, descriptions manymodern readers fnd o-putting. Withrising dominance o scientifc racism inEuropean thought, many even assumedthe racial superiority o whitessomething even the Gospel could notovercome. Yet the dominant mission-ary critique o others was cultural, notracial. For instance, missionaries like

William Carey argued that Britonshad been barbarians beore the comingo Christianity, and the Gospel could

transorm others in the same way.Interestingly, during the 19th and early20th centuries missionaries were moreoten critiqued or thinking too highlyo indigenous peoples, rather than

visa versa. For example, James Hunt,who coined the word anthropol-ogy, ounded the frst anthropologicalsociety, and edited the frst two anthro-pological journals, argued that darkskinned people were dierent species,

mentally inerior to whites, and couldnot be civilized through education.Hunt claimed that missionaries resistedthese truths o anthropology becauseo their outmoded religious belie in thecommonality o all humanity. Thus,he argued that anthropologists hadto fght missionaries to establish their

discipline. In the 1866 volume o theAnthropological Review he wrote:

In this endeavor to commend

Anthropology to more general

acceptance, we must not hide from

ourselves that two great schools are,

on principle, decidedly opposed to

our pretensions. These two inuential

parties . . . cordially agree in discard-

ing and even denouncing the truths

of Anthropology. They do so because

these truths are directly opposed to

their cardinal principle of absoluteand original equality among man-

kind. The parties to which we refer

are the orthodox, and more espe-

cially the evangelical body, in religion,

and the ultra-liberal and democratic

party in politics. The former proceed

on the traditions of Eden and the

Flood . . . the latter . . . [on] ideas of

political rights and social justice, as

innocent of scientic data, that is, of

the fact as it is in nature, as the wild-

est of the theological gments which

set Exeter Hall in periodic commotion,at the never failing anniversaries of

missionary enterprise.2

Missionaries varied widely in their sen-sitivity to other cultures and religions.Still, as the Harvard historian WilliamHutchinson writes, I defcient rom amodern point o view in sensitivity tooreign cultures, they were measurablysuperior in that regard to most con-temporaries at home or abroad. 3

Missionary Promotion ofMass Education and PrintingProtestant missionaries wanted peopleto be able to read the Bible in their ownlanguages. In most religious tradi-tions, lay people can participate ullyin religious lie without vernacularliteracy. This is not true or Protestants.

Thus, wherever Protestant missionarieswent, they quickly developed writtenorms o oral languages, created onts,

cThe degree o

cultural damageit has causedis requently

overestimated.


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Robert D. Woodberry

imported printing technology, andprinted Bibles, tracts, and textbooks.In the process they created the writtenorm o most languages, generallyintroduced the frst printing, andoten printed the frst newspapers andtextbooks. Throughout the non-western

world early journalists learned their

skills working in missionary presses.To oster Bible reading, Protestant mis-sionaries also sponsored mass literacy.

This spurred other religious groupsto invest in mass education to preventtheir children rom being exposed toProtestant proselytism. To minimizeexposure to proselytism, members oother religions also pressured govern-ments to expand ormal educationand to restrict religious content inmissionary schools. When competing

with Protestants, Catholic missionar-ies also invested in mass education andoten had the best schools. However,prior to Vatican II, when isolated romProtestant competition, they tendedto invest in schools or priests and theelite, not mass education. Missionaries

were especially important in educatingwomen, non-elites, and slaves.

Colonial governments, settlers, andbusiness people were generally leery o

mass education. They preerred dealingwith a small educated elite that theycould control, and advocated educat-ing others only in practical skills likemasonry and carpentry. For example,in South East Asia the French shutdown indigenous schools, barredProtestant education, blocked SoutheastAsians rom getting education in othercountries, and as an explicit policyonly educated as many people beyondelementary school as they could hire

into the colonial government.The British unded education througha grant-in-aid system, but this system

was initially created through mission-ary lobbying and it allowed the gov-ernment to channel education towardtheir interests. Prior to missionaryagitation, the British did not invest inmass education. Moreover, in areas

where the British successully kept outmissionariese.g., interior Nigeria,

tal organizations (NGOs) in India.Protestant missionaries tried to convertHindus and to reorm social customsthey considered immoral, such asburning widows on the uneral pyreso their husbands and consummat-ing marriage beore age 12. Both theconversionary and social reorm eortso missionaries spurred powerul reac-tions among Hindus. Some createdgroups like Bramo Samaj to reormHinduism. Others ormed groups likeDharma Sabah to fght reorm. Butboth wings hoped to prevent conversionto Christianity. Both wings also copied

the organizational orms and tactics thatmissionaries had introducedpetitions,newsletters, traveling evangelists,boards o directors, and so on.

Moreover, because evangelicals orcedthe British to allow religious liberty,the British allowed these religious/anti-missionary groups to ourish. Over timethese groups gained identifable leaders,newspapers, extensive memberships,and cross-regional networks. Eventually,

these groups helped birth Indiannationalism and provided leaders or theIndian National Congress Party andthe BJP. Because they were so large andcould get their message out through theirnewsletters, speakers, etc., when thesegroups became anti-colonial, the Britishcould not easily crush them and hadto compromise. Thus, they orced theBritish to leave earlier and divest powermore gradually than they wanted to. As aresult India had political parties, experi-

ence managing government agencies,and a thriving civil society at indepen-dence. This may have helped stabilize itsdemocracy. However, civil society wasorganized along religious lines; over timethis may have ostered Hindu national-ism and inter-religious violence.

A similar pattern o Protestant mission-ary activism ollowed by local imitationo missionary tactics and organiza-tional orms is clear in China, Egypt,

British Somaliland, the Gul States,Nepal, and the Maldivesthe Britishdid not invest in mass education. Atmost they educated a ew children othe existing elite.

In multivariate cross-national statisti-cal analysis, the historic prevalence oProtestant missionaries and mission-ary education is a robust predictor ohigher educational enrollments in acountry. By contrast, being a Britishcolony is not statistically associated

with higher enrollments when all ac-tors are taken into account. This is true

even when we look at regions o theworld that had similar pre-colonial lit-eracy ratesor example West Arica,Oceania, and the Middle East.

Moreover, we fnd the same patternwhen we look at regional educationaldierences within individual colonies.In Nigeria and Ghana, missionaries

were kept out o the north, and currenteducational rates are lower there. InKenya, missionaries had less inuenceon the coast, and education rates are

lower there as well. In India, literacyrates are unusually high in Kerala,Goa, Nagaland and Mizoramareas

with large Christian populations anddisproportionate missionary inuence.

Thus there appears to have been amultiplier eect. Early missionaryeducation demonstrated the economicreturns o education and spurreddemand. Missionaries also wroteand translated books, built buildings,and trained teachers, which madeuture educational expansions easier.

These early investments have hadlong-term consequences.

Missions and the Rise of Civil SocietyMissionaries also had an importantimpact on the growth and diversif-cation o organizations outside statecontrol. For example, there is a clearlink between Protestant missions andthe rise o indigenous nongovernmen-

Colonial governments, settlers, and business peoplewere generally leery o mass education. They

preerred dealing with a small educated elite.


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and became a crucial actor in the rise oIndian nationalism).

Missions and the Riseof Immediate AbolitionismMission lobbying also challengedBritish colonial policy. One clearexample is the rise o abolitionism. In

the West Indies Anglican clergy workedprimarily with whites and generallydeended slavery. But nonconormistmissionaries worked with slaves. Theyinitially tried to stay apolitical becausethey needed slave owners permission tomeet with slaves. However, missionar-ies gathered slaves or weekly services,trained church leaders, and taught con-gregants how to read and write. Amongother things, literate slaves began tointerpret the Bible or themselves andread newspaper accounts o debates overpolitical rights in Europe.

In 1823 thousands o slaves rebelled inDemerara (now Guyana). The plant-ers brutally crushed the rebellion andblamed John Smith, an LMS mission-ary, or inciting the uprising, sentenc-ing him to death. In reaction, slaveowners in other British slave coloniesburned churches, harassed missionar-ies, and restricted missionary access toslaves. This inuriated evangelicals and

stoked their support or abolitionism.Under evangelical pressure, the colonialofce recalled the governor o Demeraraand parliament passed a slave coderestricting punishments o slaves andmandating provision or slaves religiousinstruction. This gave missionaries legalgrounds or meeting with slaves andurther angered slave owners. Parliamentimposed this law on crown coloniesand required colonies with legislaturesto pass similar codes. However, over

the next decade the British governmentrepeatedly overruled the codes passedby the Jamaican legislature becausethey restricted religious liberty. Finally,in 1828 the British crown temporarilydisbanded the legislature and imposed aslave code.

However, because o their close rela-tions with planters, Jamaican magis-trates and ofcials did not enorce the

Japan, Korea, Palestine, Sri Lanka, andelsewhere. Where we have quantita-tive data (such as Sri Lanka and Japan),the evidence shows that the currentprevalence o NGOs is still associated

with the historic prevalence o mission-aries. The frst wave o nationalists inArica, the Middle East, India, China,

and Korea were also closely tied to mis-sion education. Although later waves onationalism were oten anti-missionary(particularly in their Marxist orms),these may ironically owe some o theirexistence to missionary-planted ideolo-gies and organizations.

Missionary Mobilization ofColonial Reform and AbolitionismPerhaps the most proound inuence omissions has been on colonial reorm.

Although some missionaries werestrongly anti-colonial, most were not.They were primarily concerned withconversion, not politics. In areas wheremissionaries thought colonialism wasinevitable or where missionary work

was prohibited, missionaries generallypreerred colonizers that suited theirinterests. For example, Protestantsusually preerred British colonization,because the British allowed religiousliberty, while most historically-Cath-

olic colonizers restricted Protestants.However, when missionaries did notthink colonization was inevitable andhad reedom to proselytize, they otenhelped indigenous rulers resist colo-nizationas in Thailand, Ethiopia,Madagascar, and post-Opium WarsChina. Elsewhere they helped localrules negotiate protectorates in anattempt to block white settlers romtaking over indigenous landorexample, Botswana and Malawi.

Regardless, most missionaries wanted amoderate orm o colonialism. Colonialabuses angered local people against the

Westwhich many associated withChristianityand thus made conver-sions more difcult. Missionary writingsare ull o complaints about how colonialabuses undermined their best eorts to

win converts. Thus, missionaries had(1) incentives to fght colonial abusesthat hampered missionary work, (2)

personnel throughout the world directlyexposed to them, (3) a base o support-ers in many colonizing countries, and(4) a massive network o religious mediato mobilize the aithul against policiesthat hampered mission interests.

Missionaries were best able to reormcolonial policy in colonies where they

were independent rom direct statecontrolthat is, the British, U.S.,Australian, and New Zealand colo-niesand in areas where they were notfnancially dependent on local whitesettlers. In French, Spanish, Portuguese,and Italian colonization, the state made

agreements with the Catholic Churchunder which the state paid missionaries

salaries, chose/approved colonial bishops,and severely restricted Protestants. Thisusually silenced overt criticism o colonialpolicy, although there are exceptions.

The British originally banned missionar-ies in India and elsewhere, but evan-gelicals orced them to allow religiousliberty in 1813 by blocking passage othe British East India Company (BEIC)charter. Spurred by this success, themissionary lobby initiated a series oreorms in British colonialism. Some o

these reorms challenged local customs.For example, in India missionariesmobilized pressure to: ban sati(burn-ing widows in the uneral pyres o theirhusbands); outlaw emale inanticide;allow untouchables to use public roads,

wells, and wear clothing above the waist;and orbid consummation o marriagesbeore age 12 (although this fnal lawraised such ire that it was never enorced

cSpurred by

this success, themissionary lobbyinitiated a series oreorms in British

colonialism.


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code either or maltreating slaves oror persecuting nonconormists. Toreestablish their authority, the colonialofce began systematically investi-gating complaints, but this requiredpeople in Jamaica to gather inorma-tion and fle them despite harassmentby planters. The governor and local

magistrates repeatedly delayed andignored complaints fled at the locallevel. Thus missionaries, tentatively atfrst, but later more confdently, gath-ered evidence and complained directlyto the colonial ofce.

Two incidents were crucial to thistransormation. First, in June 1829 anAnglican priest named George Bridgesand magistrate named James Bettyattempted to shut down Methodistchurches in St. Anns district. Whenthe Methodist slave lay leader Henry

Williams passively resisted, he was sentto the most severe workhouse on theisland and beaten almost to death. Hissister was also publicly stripped andogged. To save Williams lie the mis-sionary Isaac Whitehouse intervened

with a letter to the press and a com-plaint to the colonial ofce. Williams

was released, but the governor reusedto investigate. Whitehouse collectedhis own evidence and presented itto court, but his case was dismissedand he was repeatedly threatened.However, when the colonial ofcesaw the evidence, they sent orders toremove Betty rom his position andseverely reprimanded the governor.

Although this had little immediateimpact on slave conditions, it embold-ened missionaries. In 1830, whenSam Swiney, a Baptist lay leader, wasogged and imprisoned or leading an

extemporaneous prayer meeting onEaster Sunday without a missionarypresent, Baptist missionary WilliamKnibb did not hesitate to act. Whenthe governor and the courts tried todismiss the case, the colonial ofcedismissed two magistrates and thegovernor. This urther emboldenedboth missionaries and slaves. Thus,conicts over religious liberty engen-dered legal protections or slaves, reed

missionaries rom the requirement ogetting slave owner permission to meet

with slaves, emboldened missionariesto critique abuses, provided slaves withthe ability to be religious leaders andhave semi-autonomous organizations,and let slaves know that they had rights

which would occasionally be deended.

In 1831 nonconormist slave churchleaders organized an uprising in Jamaica.

When planters discovered who the lead-ers were, they burned down noncon-ormist churches, attacked missionariesand put many in prison, and barred

slaves rom learning to read or meetingor worship. For nonconormist mission-aries this was the fnal straw. Not only

was slavery abusive, it threatened theeternal destiny o Arican souls.

Missionaries who had been attacked,imprisoned, and/or kicked out o Britishslave colonies toured Great Britainmaking fery speeches and distributingpetitions against slavery.4 Through theirmissionary work they had direct experi-ence with the brutality o slavery and

could describe it vividly. Their evangeli-cal supporters mobilized a massive pres-sure campaign or immediate abolition.In act, the parliament was so amazedby the nonconormist dominance inthe anti-slavery campaign that theyrecorded petitioners religious tradi-tions. The historian Seymour Dreschercalculates that in Great Britain over59 percent o adult nonconormists,and over 95 percent o adult WesleyanMethodists, signed petitions demanding

immediate abolition.5Allied with a small group o intellec-tual, ree-market economists, evangeli-cals orced the government to both banslavery in 1834 and to pressure othergovernments to ban slavery. This wasdone against direct opposition o plant-ers and traders at a time when slavery

was highly proftable.

Missionary Monitoring of Colonial Abuses

Spurred by this success, missionary sup-porters established The ParliamentarySelect Committee on Aboriginal

Tribes in 1835 under the leadership oThomas Fowell Buxton, vice presidento the Church Missionary Society.6

This group commissioned a worldwideinvestigation o

what measures ought to be adopted

with respect to the Native Inhabitants

of Countries where British Settlements

are made, and to the Neighbouring

(sic.) Tribes, in order to secure them

the due observation of justice and the

protection of their rights, to promote

the spread of Civilization amongthem, and to lead them to the peace-

ful and voluntary reception of the

Christian Religion.7

The commission collected over athousand printed pages o testimonyabout the consequences o coloniza-tion, most o it rom missionaries,and used the inormation to initiatea series o colonial reorms.8 In 1837the Select Committee reorganized asthe Aborigines Protection Society and

commissioned a series o ethnogra-phies it hoped would alter public opin-ion and pressure colonists to changetheir exploitative behavior.

Over time missionary inuence oncolonial policy waned as business-people and settlers created lobbyingorganizations and journals to countermissionary inuence and the rise oscientifc racism hardened Britishattitudes about the racial ineriority o

subject peoples. Still, the missionarylobby continued to inuence policy.

For example, in 1865 EdwardUnderhill, the Secretary o the BaptistMissionary Society, wrote the colonialsecretary outlining the deterioratingeconomic situation o ormer slavesin Jamaica and enumerating abuses.He asked the colonial ofce to initi-ate economic and political reormsincluding expanding the surage.

Missionaries who had been attacked, imprisoned,and/or kicked out o British slave coloniestoured Great Britain making fery speeches . . .


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The colonial ofce orwarded theletter to Governor Eyre o Jamaica

who responded angrily and attackednonconormist missionaries.

In this period o high tension, acourtroom squabble in Morant Bayescalated into a riot and several whites

were killed. In retaliation GovernorEyres soldiers killed hundreds o blacks,ogged hundreds more, and burnt black

villages almost randomly. GovernorEyre shipped George Gordon, a promi-nent mulatto activist, rom Kingston toMorant Bay, court marshaled him, andhung him although he had no link toanyone in the uprising.

The Colonial Ofce initially com-mended Eyre, but missionaries sentdamning reports and mobilized their

supporters. Governor Eyre was recalledand put on trial in England or murder.Missionaries and their allies wanted toset a precedent that English law appliedequally to whites and non-whites.

Missionaries were also a dominant orcein ending the opium trade, fghting ornative land rights, mitigating orcedlabor programs in Kenya and Melanesia,changing land-tenure rules in northernIndia, and fghting or the rule o law. Itis hard to imagine many o these abuses

being restricted without active mission-ary involvement. Oten these strugglesmade missionaries unpopular with bothsettlers and government ofcials whothen hampered mission work. Thus,missionaries had to balance betweenplacating those in power, doing religious

work, and reorming abuses. To pursuewhat they viewed as a higher calling, theysometimes did not fght abuses or did notfght them as vigorously as later national-ists would have liked. But this does not

negate the crucial role they played.

Missionaries are oten blamed orcoming to China on opium ships and ortheir supposed collusion with Europeancolonial policy, but this hard to reconcile

with the historical record. Missionarieswere in act the most virulent critics othe opium trade and many other abuses.Consider the ollowing statements romThe Committee on The Relations o

Commerce and Diplomacy to Missionsat the 1888 Centenary Conerence onthe Protestant Missions o the World,held in London.

[Colonial policies such as the opium trade]

are a very great evil standing in the way

of all Mission work. They are a stand-

ing reproach to Christianity and tend to

associate in the natives mind immoralityand Christianity . . . The outlook in regard

to the opium and drink trafc of a so-

called Christian country is such as to lead

one to question whether on the whole

Britain is not a greater curse than a bless-

ing to the world . . . In [Great Britain] we

can say to the Government that when

the Treaty [of Nanjing] expires, the

Chinese Government shall be left with

as much liberty to make a Treaty as

the Government of France is. We must

give the Government of China perfect

liberty to say what terms it will insert

in any renewal of that Treaty . . . . [F]

or generations to come China will be

the worse for what we have done. It is

impossible to consider the condition of

China, through our action in this matter,

without feeling that one has not words

to express our sorrow that the land we

love should have any connection with a

business so fearful . . . . We have to reckon

with . . . Divine Judgment if we neglect

this matter . . . We have wronged China

as I believe no nation ever wronged

another. 9

These are hardly words o uncriticalallegiance.

The Enlightenment VeneerO course, missionaries and theirsupporters did not act alone. Theyoten cooperated with a small group

o anti-religious political liberals,such as John Stuart Mill. Althoughmodern academics usually ocus onthis enlightenment elite, they were notthe crucial actor in the real politics ocolonial reorm. Missionaries and theirevangelical supporters were.

This becomes clear when we com-pare British colonialism with otherEuropean orms o colonialism. France,Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, andthe Netherlands all had egalitarianradicals who criticized colonial policy.In act in all these countries, secularEnlightenment elites controlled thegovernment during signifcant por-tions o the 19th and early 20th centuries.None had a mass abolitionist move-ment, none had programs to amelioratethe conditions o slaves ater emancipa-tion, and most used orced labor untilater World War II. 10 The British

were the only European colonizer thatdid not have a secular enlightenmentgovernment during this period, yet theyreormed earlier and more completely.

These other colonizers all had mis-sionaries, but the state exercised muchtighter control over them, e.g., choos-ing their leaders, paying their salaries,and restricting entry. This usually had

the eect o muzzling missionary cri-tiques. Moreover, none o these otherEuropean colonizers had non-statemissionaries rom the colonizing coun-try working directly with slaves. Thus,continental abolitionists relied almostentirely on translations o accounts oEnglish and American slavery.

Enlightenment intellectuals lacked thefrst-hand inormation, the built-in selinterest o feld missionaries, and thebroad power base o the non-state mis-

sionary movement. Thus, although theycritiqued abuses, they did not mobilizebroad social pressure or change. Non-state missionaries also helped the Britishcolonial ofce monitor the complianceo local ofcials. As a result o mission-ary intervention, the British recalled sev-eral governors and magistrates or abuseso slaves and blacks. I am not aware oany other colonizer doing this duringthe 19th or early 20th century. This

cThese are hardly wordso uncritical allegiance.


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greater rule o law in British coloniesseems to have had long term eects.

ConclusionPrior empirical studies, including thoseemploying a rigorous array o statisti-cal controls, have consistently suggestedthat ormer British colonies are today

more democratic and have lower levels ocorruption than ormer colonies o othernations. But my own statistical researchdemonstrates that this British colonial-ism eect disappears ater we control orthe prevalence o Protestant missionaries.In act, statistically speaking, the historicprevalence o Protestant missionariesseems to explain about 50 percent othe variation in non-western democ-racy, and removes the impact o other

variables social scientists traditionally

associate with democracy, such as thenationality o those who colonized thecountry, the countrys Gross DomesticProduct, the percentage o its populationthat is European, and the percentage oits population that is Muslim.

Thus perhaps it is time or a reevalu-ation o the glib assertions popular inintellectual circles today about the closeconnection between missionaries andcolonialism, and the overwhelminglydeleterious impact o missions on non-

western societies. Both historical and sta-tistical evidence suggests that colonialism

would have been ar worse i non-statemissionaries had not been present andengaged. Furthermore, it is worth notingthat Christianity spread ar more rapidlyin areas and periods when Europeancolonialism was not a major threat. 11

These fndings should also give peopleconfdenceregardless o their religiousbeliesthat protecting religious liberty

is not a ools errand. The organizationaldiversity and competition that otenourish under conditions o religiousreedom can be crucial to other posi-tive developments in society and law.Ater all, the Methodists, Baptists, andQuakers who dominated the cam-paign or immediate abolition were thereligious anatics o the 19th century.

The dominant academic ideologies othe day were anatical in a ar dierent

way: They viewed blacks as biologicallyinerior and held that educating thembeyond manual skills was pointless.12But in retrospect most o us think thereligious anatics were right. IJFM

Recommended Followdevelopingresearchon

the social impact o missions anddownload digital maps and data onhistoric missionary activity at theProject on Religion and EconomicChange website: www.prec.com.

Readrecenthistoricalresearchonthe impact o missions on or-eign and colonial policy such as:Norman Etherington,Missionsand Empire(New York: OxordUniversity Press, 2005); Mary

Turner, Slaves and Missionaries:The Disintegration o Jamaican SlaveSociety, 17871834 (Kingston,

Jamaica: The University Presso the West Indies, 1998); andRobert D. Kaplan, The Arabists(New York: The Free Press, 1995).

Watchthenews,readmissionaryprayer letters, and talk to returningmissionaries about how U.S. or-eign policy eects people in otherscountries and prayerully considercontacting government representa-tives i reorms seem necessary.

Endnotes1

This work has been made pos-sible through unding by the SpiritualCapital Research Program, sponsored bythe Metanexus Institute on Religion andScience, with the generous support o the

John Templeton Foundation. For detailedcitations o evidence presented in this papersee: Robert D. Woodberry, The Shadow o

Empire: Christian Missions, Colonial Policy,and Democracy in Postcolonial Societies (Ph.D.dissertation, University o North Carolina,Chapel Hill, 2004) [Editors note: This dis-sertation is available or download romijm.org/archives]; Mary Turner, Slaves and

Missionaries (Kingston, Jamaica: The Uni-versity Press o the West Indies, 1998); andthe Project on Religion and Economic Change

website: www.prec-online.com.2 Exeter Hall was the headquarters o

various nonconormist missionary organiza-tions and social reorm movements.

3 See William R. Hutchinson,Errandto the World: American Protestant Thoughtand Foreign Missions (Chicago: University oChicago Press, 1987), p. 1.

4 For example, The Baptist Magazine

(1832) reports on a speech by the missionaryWilliam Knibb: [T]he Societys mission-ary stations could no longer exist in Jamaica

without the entire and immediate abolitiono slavery. He had been requested to bemoderate but he could not restrain himselrom speaking the truth. He could assure themeeting that slaves would never be allowed to

worship God till slavery had been abolished.

Even i it were at the risk o his connexion[sic.] with the Society, he would avow this:and i the riends o missions would not hearthis, he would turn and tell it to his God nor

would he ever desist till this greatest o curseswere removed (p. 325).

5 See Seymour Drescher, From Slaveryto Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Riseand Fall o Atlantic Slavery (New York: New

York University Press, 1999).6 Buxton led the campaign to abolish

slavery. Several o his major abolitionistallies were Joseph Butterworth, treasurer othe Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society

(WMMS), Jabez Bunting, ounder o theWMMS, and Richard Watson, secretary othe WMMS.

7 Cited in George W. Stocking, Jr.,Victorian Anthropology (New York: FreePress, 1987), p. 241.

8 For example, in conjunction withpressure rom British missionaries, JamesStephen, an evangelical undersecretary at thecolonial ofce, banned all legal distinctionsbased on race in the Cape Colony. These lawsremained in eect until Boer settlers tookover the South Arican government in the

20

th

century and instituted apartheid.9 James Johnston, ed., Report o the Cen-tenary Conerence on the Protestant Missions othe World Held in Exeter Hall(June 9th19th),London. (Vol. II) (New York: Fleming H.Revell, 1888), pp. 536, 546, 548, 550.

10 Long ater the French and Belgiannations were democracies they continued touse orced labor in their colonies. In act inFrench and Belgian Congo these campaigns

were so brutal that during the early 20 thcentury scholars estimate that about 50% othe population died in the rubber grow-ing regions. These abuses were primarily

exposed by American and Swedish Protes-tant missionaries.11 For example, compare the spread

o Christianity in Korea where Japan wasthe major colonial threat, with Japan where

Western powers were. Also compare thespread o Christianity in China during thecolonial period with the post-1970s, and thespread o Christianity in Arica beore andater independence.

12 Kidd, Colen. 2006. The Forging oRaces: Race and Scripture in the Protestant

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