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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2013
Despite extensive engagement, children were invisible in the programs of the nineteenth-century Protestant missionary conferences. By the early 1900s this had noticeably changed as denominations and missionary organizations sought to maximize and enhance juvenile missionary interest. Childhood was the key stage in which to establish habits; the future depended upon “the education of the childhood of the race, in missionary matters as in all others.” Literature was pivotal and periodicals were deemed to be the most effective literary form. They provided the young with “impressions which will never be lost . . . nothing will appeal to the young more strongly than stories from beyond the seas, of strange people who know not of Christ, but who need His gospel.” Juvenile missionary periodicals were ubiquitous in Britain, Europe, and America, but they are still only partially understood. Adult and juvenile literature was qualitatively different so that “any adequate analysis . . . requires to be grounded in an understanding of the construction of childhood in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.” This task remains very much a work in progress. Most recent scholarship tends to discursively situate children's periodicals with respect to religion, culture, and politics. All agree on at least a broad two-fold function: the spiritual and the philanthropic. Periodicals per se were an integral part of a large and pervasive Victorian corpus of juvenile religious and moral literature. At the same time missionary periodicals were different. They emphasized child agency by encouraging a “participatory relationship” between readers and their subject. Children became active agents “in a diaologic relationship with [their] world.”
77 “Children” or “juvenile” in this article refers collectively to children and young people.
78 Various Speakers, “The Missionary Idea,” in Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York 1900, ed. Editorial Committee (New York: American and Religious Tract Societies, 1900), 117–122, 134–141; and Commission VI, “The Missionary Awakening of Work Among Children,” in Report of Commission VI: The Home Base of Missions, ed. Editorial Committee (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1910), 20.
79 Commission VI, “The Missionary Awakening of Work Among Children,” 33.
80 Rev. E. E. Strong (ABCFM), “Missionary Periodicals,” in Ecumenical Missionary Conference, 167.
81 Breitenbach, Esther, Empire and Scottish Society: The Impact of Foreign Missions at Home, c.1790 to c.1914 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
82 Representative examples include: Harrison, Henrietta, “‘A Penny for the Little Chinese’: The French Holy Childhood Association in China, 1843–1951,” American Historical Review (February 2008): 72–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prochaska, Francis, “Little Vessels: Children in the Nineteenth-Century English Missionary Movement,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 6, no. 2 (1978): 103–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stanley, Brian, “‘Missionary Regiments for Immanuel's Service’: Juvenile Missionary Organizations in English Sunday Schools, 1841–1865,” in The Church and Childhood, ed. Wood, Diana, Studies in Church History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 391–403Google Scholar.
83 For example: Elleray, Michelle, “Little Builders: Coral Insects, Missionary Culture, and the Victorian Child,” Victorian Literature & Culture 39, no. 1 (2011): 223–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jensz, Felicity, “Origins of Missionary Periodicals: Form and Function of Three Moravian Publications,” Journal of Religious History 36, no. 2 (2012): 234–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schoepflin, Rennie, “Making Doctors and Nurses for Jesus: Medical Missionary Stories and American Children,” Church History 74, no. 3 (2005): 557–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
84 Elleray, “Little Builders,” 232.
85 “List of Magazines, Books, etc., on Missions and Missionaries,” c.1897, Ephemera (4), ANG143/5.3, Box 22, New Zealand Church Missionary Society Archives, Kinder Memorial Library, Auckland, New Zealand.
86 “The Missionary Box,” The Evangelist (December 1870), 370–71; New Zealand Baptist (April 1885), 60.
87 “The Young People's Work,” The Message (August 1903), 12–14; “The Children's Page,” Monthly Leaflet (January 1908), 9–10.
88 The Canadian Church Juvenile (January 1895), 1–4; New Zealand Missionary Record (November 1882), 1–10.
89 Troughton, Geoffrey, “Religion, Churches and Childhood in New Zealand,” New Zealand Journal of History 40, no. 1 (2006): 40Google Scholar; Grant, John Webster, The Church in the Canadian Era, revised ed. (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1988), 59Google Scholar.
90 “The Children's Page,” Monthly Leaflet (January 1908), 9–10.
91 “Introduction,” New Zealand Missionary Record (November 1882), 3.
92 Rev. John McKenzie, “Open Letter,” The Break of Day (February 1909), 3.
93 See further, Robert, Dana, Christian Missions: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Chicester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 56–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
94 Richards, Jeffrey, “Introduction,” in Imperialism and Juvenile Literature, ed. Richards, Jeffrey (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 1–2Google Scholar.
95 “Introduction,” New Zealand Missionary Record (November 1882), 4.
96 “Letter from Mrs Wheeler,” Monthly Leaflet (April 1908), 11.
97 Airhart, Phyllis D., “Ordering a New Nation and Reordering Protestantism, 1867–1914,” in The Canadian Protestant Experience, 1760–1990, ed. Rawlyk, George A. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990), 128–129Google Scholar.
98 “Suggestions for Blackboard Review,” The Message (August 1915), 12; Margaret Jamieson, “Incoming Strangers,” The Message (October 1914), 15.
99 Prochaska, “Little Vessels,” 113–114.
100 “Burma,” The Canadian Church Juvenile (January 1895), 3; New Zealand Missionary Record 1882–1885; The Break of Day 1909–1914.
101 “ABC of Missions,” The Message (September 1916), 14; The Break of Day (September 1909), 10.