Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Rufus Anderson's indigenous church principles constituted a major shift in missiology in the mid-nineteenth century and continue to influence missionary methods. 1 Anderson served as the general secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), a Protestant missionary society in the United States.During the course of his duties as leader of the ABCFM, he began to recognize that American missionary activity often proceeded by means of cultivating Western civilization among native populations in ways that left local churches dependent on outside resources 1 Anderson's principles of self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation have becomeknown almost ubiquitously as "indigenous" church principles, though Anderson primarily employed the term "native" to describe components of his ecclesiology (e.g., native pastorate, native ministry, etc.).Considering the pervasive use of the moniker indigenous within missiological discussions of Anderson's argument, however, this essay will continue to use that term to describe Anderson's principles, even though the term did not feature prominently in his writing.4 See, for example, J.
DOI: 10.31046/4xaxtj70
Author: C. S. Barefoot
Language: English
Subfield: Religious studies
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409518719