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Full Members of the TEAM? Evangelical Women in the European Mission, 1945–1980

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2017

HANS KRABBENDAM*
Affiliation:
Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, the Netherlands. Email: jl.krabbendam@zeeland.nl.

Abstract

After World War II, American evangelicals realized that the European religious landscape had been seriously damaged, causing them to begin to include Europe in their mission programs. Their initiatives reversed the established direction of things, changing the pattern of who sent and who received missionary support. The religious aid flowing from the US fell almost entirely within the masculine framing of the American state, which had so recently exerted its influence in Europe in the military, economic, and cultural spheres. This essay explains how, as a result of practical experience and general social change, gender relations in American missions came to embrace greater inclusivity. European evangelicals, in turn, were both empowered by working with the American missionaries and impacted by the American debate over the separation of male and female roles in the mission field.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017 

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References

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21 Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, IL, archives (hereafter MBI), Report of the Educational Branch for the Year Closed at 31 Dec. 1952, Annual Reports Educational Department 1948 and 1953, 2–4, 9.

22 MBI Archives, Foreign Missionary Report, 1953. Annual Report Educational Department 1953, 7. Between 1948 and 1990 women had a 53% majority.

23 “What Is the Missionary Union?” MBI Archives, Departmental Missions, Box 1, Missionary Union [1952] history file.

24 Ibid., June 1952 Program.

25 Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton, Illinois USA (hereafter BGCA), Collection 171, Oral History Bobby, Mary Lee (1928–) and Albert Edward (1925–1998) Papers; 1953–1978. The interviews with them were conducted by Galen Wilson in their private home in Bowie, Maryland, on 21 May 1982.

26 Mary Lee Bobby Oral History, BGCA.

27 By August 1940, 53 out of 1,597 active missionaries trained at Moody worked in Europe (mostly in Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, and Poland). MBI Foreign Mission Reports, 1939 and 1940. Forty of them stayed there till the end of the war. In 1951 ten new missionaries left Moody for a European country. MBI Archives, Foreign Missionary Report 1979.

28 Jon P. DePriest, “Send the Light: TEAM and the Evangelical Mission, 1890–1975,” PhD dissertation, Claremont Graduate University, 2001, 18–45, 110, 214. Albert Bobby Oral History, BGCA.

29 Al Bobby to Augie, 3 Oct. 1960, BGCA, Collection 171, File 6, Bobby correspondence 1953–1961.

30 In 1921 French evangelicals Ruben and Jeanne Saillens had established the Institut biblique de Nogent-Sur-Marne. Portugal Team field committee minutes 1, 2, 3 Oct. 1951, TEAM archives, Carol Stream, IL. The team voted for supporting the Leiria Bible School and accepted the Conservative Baptist doctrinal statement in April 1952. Berry, Mary Anne, Unless the Lord Builds the House: A Brief History of the Faculté Libre de Théologie Évangélique Vaux-sur-Seine, France (Vaux-sur-Seine: FLTE, 2011), 6 Google Scholar.

31 DePriest, 81–111.

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34 Newsletter, 13 Nov. 1953, BGCA, Collection 171, File 6, Bobby correspondence 1953–1961.

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38 After their return Albert joined the staff of Voice of America, Mary Lee went into education and assisted Portuguese-speaking congregations in the Washington, DC area. The transnational contacts continued in a different form.

39 Mary Lee Bobby interview, BGCA.

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46 Page. Interviews with Sarah Page by the author, 30 March and 2 April 2013. Simultaneously women in the Division for World Mission and Ecumenism of the Lutheran Church in America discussed the neglect of women in mission in their conferences. See Bowers, Joyce M., “Roles of Married Women Missionaries: A Case Study,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 8 (Jan. 1984), 46 Google Scholar. A survey among 53 couples was held and a heated debate followed between proponents of quick and radical change and those who were satisfied with the situation. The majority of women complained about the lack of job descriptions. Also in this mainline organization (female) staff hesitated about claiming their rights. The result was the appointment of advisers for couples and opportunity for dual pay, but not (yet) opening leadership positions.

47 Page, 32. Interview by the author with Sarah Page, 25 Feb. and 2 April 2013.

48 Page, 36.

49 Email, Sarah Page to author, 20 June 2015.

50 Finzel, Hans, ed., Partners Together: 50 Years of Global Impact – The CBFMS Story (Wheaton, IL: Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1993)Google Scholar.

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52 Email, Sarah Page to author, 30 March 2013.

53 Ibid.

54 Greater Europe Report, March–April 1974, 5.

55 Interview with Sarah Page, 2 April 2013. Retreats were also an American innovation. Williams, “Sex and the Evangelicals,” 108–9.

56 The speaker was the female Lutheran evangelist from India Subbamma, B. V., “Evangelization among Women,” in Douglas, J. D., ed., Let the Earth Hear His Voice (Minneapolis: World Wide Publications, 1975), 765–73Google Scholar; and Gien Karssen, “Evangelism among Women Report,” in ibid., 774–75.

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