This thesis analyses missionary reactions to the sleeping sickness epidemic that haunted East and Central Africa in the early 20th century. Sleeping sickness was an inevitably fatal disease endemic...Show moreThis thesis analyses missionary reactions to the sleeping sickness epidemic that haunted East and Central Africa in the early 20th century. Sleeping sickness was an inevitably fatal disease endemic to Sub-Saharan Africa. In focusing on the German protestant Bethel Mission and the French catholic White Fathers mission, this thesis argues that missionaries had distinct approaches towards sleeping sickness and that the disease was less prevalent in the African Great Lakes Region than previously assumed. Past scholarship on sleeping sickness has relied almost exclusively on the Belgian, German, and British colonial states’ archives. Sleeping sickness threatened these states’ claim to power and consequently induced profound colonial anxieties. Missionaries, instead, were less anxious in light of sleeping sickness. Missionary medicine and missionary mobility regimes aided the Bethel Mission and the White Fathers to cope better with the epidemic. Their archives offer an alternative to colonial archives that does not conflate the disease, and also acknowledges that vast areas in the African Great Lakes Region were free of sleeping sickness. The disease was one among many diseases the missionaries and their communities faced. The missionary sources this thesis relies on suggest that scholarship on sleeping sickness reflects a colonial imaginary rather than the lived reality of non-colonial individuals in the African Great Lakes Region.Show less
This study answers the question to what extent the writings of the Dutch reformed and evangelical authors Cornelis Brem (1721-1803) and Hermanus Johannes Krom (1738-1804) were featured by an...Show moreThis study answers the question to what extent the writings of the Dutch reformed and evangelical authors Cornelis Brem (1721-1803) and Hermanus Johannes Krom (1738-1804) were featured by an innovative pneumatological scope. It is argued that Brem and Krom were inspired by John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and Moravian spirituality. As result, their pneumatology involved the theme’s creation, mission and outreach, the outpouring of the Spirit, progress in history, eschatology and ecumenism. Also, it was featured by the key concepts of love, experience and sanctification. Brem and Krom’s pneumatology was innovative in the Dutch reformed context. As such, it explains the character and origin of Dutch evangelicalism between 1770 and 1804.Show less
In this thesis the changing landscape of mission in global christianity is analyzed with a focus on reverse mission: missonaries from East Asia and the Global South coming to (Western) Europe...Show moreIn this thesis the changing landscape of mission in global christianity is analyzed with a focus on reverse mission: missonaries from East Asia and the Global South coming to (Western) Europe aiming to rechristianize the secularized West. This thesis combines a literature study looking at the causes for this changing missionary landscape with two case studies of the Roman Catholic Church in the netherlands and a local congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Wales.Show less
