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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Pitfalls of Trained Incapacity: The Unintended Effects of Integral Missionary Training in the Basel Mission on Its Early Work in Ghana (1828-1840)

Pitfalls of Trained Incapacity: The Unintended Effects of Integral Missionary Training in the Basel Mission on Its Early Work in Ghana (1828-1840)

Herppich, Birgit

Paperback

General Christianity

ISBN10: 0227176219
ISBN13: 9780227176214
Publisher: James Clarke Company
Published: Dec 29 2016
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.79 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A historical case-study of the pioneering German missionary group the Basel Mission, and how its training methods affected early missionary work in Africa.

The need to train Christian missionaries was an afterthought of the Protestant missionary movement in the early nineteenth century. The Basel Missionary Training Institute (BMTI) was the first school designed solely for the purpose of preparing European missionaries for ministry in non-European lands. Pitfalls of Trained Incapacity explores the various sociological and historical factors that influenced the BMTI 'community of practice' and how the outcomes affected the work of the Basel Mission in Ghana in its initial phase. It shows that the integral training of the BMTI resulted in missionary practices that lacked flexibility to adjust attitudes and behaviour to the vastly different circumstances in Africa, impeded the realisation of mission objectives, and hindered the emergence of an African appropriation of Christianity. By exploring educational and sociological perspectives in a pre-colonial context, this study reaches beyond its historical significance to raise questions of unintended effects of integral ministry training in other times and places. The natural cultural bias of groups with shared theological assumptions and social ideals - like the Basel Mission - suggests a strong propensity for trained incapacity, that is, for training processes that establish inflexible mental frameworks that are potentially detrimental to intercultural engagement.

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