The Music of the Mennonite Brethren of Saskatchewan to 1923

1986 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 457
Author(s):  
Wesley Berg
Keyword(s):  
Mennonite Brethren

Sacred children and colonial subsidies: The missionary performance of racial separation in Belgian Congo, 1946–1959

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anicka Fast
Keyword(s):  
White Identity ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Mennonite Brethren ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
African Context ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Separate Identity ◽  
Belgian Congo

While most Protestant missions in Belgian Congo gladly accepted the colonial state’s offer of educational subsidies in 1946, a strong emphasis on church–state separation led the American Mennonite Brethren Mission (AMBM) to initially reject these funds. In a surprising twist, however, the AMBM reversed its position in 1952. Through archival research, I demonstrate that a major factor that led the AMBM to accept subsidies was the creation and institutionalization of a racially separate ecclesial identity from that of Congolese Christians. Moreover, the development of this separate identity was closely intertwined with missionaries’ vision for a “white children’s school,” geographically separated from their work with Congolese. The enactment of white identity helped pave the way for the acceptance of subsidies, both by bringing the missionaries more strongly into the orbit of the colonial logic of domination, and by clarifying the heavy cost of failing to comply with the state’s expectations. Through this case study, I engage with the complexity of missionaries’ political role in a colonial African context by focusing on the everyday political choices by which missionaries set aside their children as sacred, by exploring how ideas about separateness were embedded into institutions, and by demonstrating how attention to the subtleties of identity performance can shed new light on major missionary decisions.

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