Pitfalls of Trained Incapacity

The Unintended Effects of Integral Missionary Training in the Basel Mission on Its Early Work in Ghana (1828–1840)

Herppich

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498229531
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

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 behavior to the vastly different circumstances in Africa, impeded the realization of mission objectives, and hindered the emergence of an African appropriation of Christianity. By exploring educational and sociological perspectives in a precolonial 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.

Part I

The Community of Practice of the Basel Mission Training Institute

1

A Learning Community Shaped by German Pietism

This chapter provides a historical background detailing the vision, movements, and influences that led to the establishment of the Basel Mission as a German initiative to engage in Protestant missions. It investigates the characteristics of German Pietism as significant inspiration towards Protestant mission and outlines the cultural, socio-economic, and religious factors that influenced the community learning approach that the BMTI adopted. I argue that the approach of the BMTI was shaped by the values and emphases of German Pietism and essentially constituted the kind of learning community that the construct of communities of practice describes.

From its inception in 1815 the Evangelical Missionary Society at Basel, commonly referred to as the Basel Mission, focused on training German and Swiss missionaries to bring the Christian message to regions outside Western Europe. Even after 1822, when they had started their own work, the BMTI continued to prepare considerable numbers of candidates for other societies. The motivations, emphases, and practices of the Basel Mission, both in its approaches to training missionaries and the subsequent cross-cultural engagement in Africa cannot be understood without the social, political, and religious developments that produced and molded this organization and its support networks. Specifically, since it had its roots in the European and global networks of German Pietism, the emphases and impulses of this movement are foundational. Not only did its missionary impulse birth the first Protestant missions in the Danish-Halle mission in India and the Moravian missions in the West-Indies and Greenland, its educational emphasis also shaped approaches to training that essentially constituted communities of practice; groups of people “who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor.”86

The definition “allows for, but does not assume, intentionality“ but the Basel Mission leaders purposely designed the BMTI as a learning community which was focused on formation of shared ideas of character and specific practices as well as intellectual learning. This educational design built on previous approaches to missionary training at Halle University, in the Moravian community, and by “one-man-academies” like David Bogue’s in Britain and Johannes Jänicke’s in Berlin who trained many of the first missionaries for the newly established Protestant missionary societies.

The Missionary Impulse of German Pietism

German Pietism began as a reform movement that called for personal and societal transformation in response to the utter devastation and demoralization of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648). Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) earned the designation “father of Pietism” with his Pia Desideria (published 1675) which offered candid critique of prevailing conditions and suggestions for reform addressed to civil authorities, clergy, and common people.87 His core concern was the “inner religion” of individual believers who needed New Birth and a faith “whose expressions are the fruits of life.” The proposal for realization of the priesthood of all believers was collegia pietatis, meetings in which believers read and discussed the Bible together “in order to discover its simple meaning and whatever might be useful for the edification of all” to teach, warn, convert, and edify each other. These conventicles and the “religion of the inner man” which finds expression in moral life became trademarks of Pietism across its different expressions. In Germany, with the exception of what has been termed “Radical Pietism,” this movement was “a response from within the church to a felt spiritual need” which for the most part remained in state churches.88

Protestant missionary engagement began with Spener’s protégé and successor August Herrmann Francke (1663–1727), who implemented his ideas at the new university in Halle, and his godson Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) and the Moravian community in Herrnhut. In 1706 the first Halle trained missionaries arrived in the Danish colony Tranquebar in South India and their reports—published from 1710—raised missionary passion and support throughout Pietist circles.89 From 1727 Moravian evangelistic bands and travelling evangelists started new groups wherever they went; and in 1732 the first Moravian missionaries went to the West-Indies and Greenland.90

These first Protestant missions were the result of the fact that Pietism promoted a personal, moral, and active understanding of Christianity that is inherently missionary and inspired local and foreign missions. This is typically lost in research on the disagreements within, varying religious expressions, and theological motifs of the movement. An exception is Vogt who suggested four tendencies in Pietism which facilitated its missionary impulse: the view of the Bible as instruction for present action, the ideal of the apostolic age that judged the established church as “fallen,” Pietist eschatology that expected the conversion of Jews and “heathen” as condition for Christ’s return, and the emphasis on personal faith experience which carried with it the responsibility of the “revived” to work towards the renewal of those who are not.91 Vogt’s analysis shows that it is more helpful for an understanding of Pietism’s missional impulse to focus on common marks of this diverse movement as they have been articulated for example by Wall...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Integral Missionary Training and the Basel Mission
• Part One: The Community of Practice of the Basel Mission Training Institute
• Part Two: Indications for Trained Incapacity in the Beginnings of the Basel Mission in Ghana
• Conclusion
• Bibliography