Abstract
In January and February 1888, the head of the NMS, Secretary Ole Gjerløw, visited the mission field of Natal and Zululand.1 This was the first inspection of any mission field by the mission management, and it was necessitated by a long-term conflict between the missionary community and the Home Board. The conflict had escalated after a certain resolution was passed during the 1887 extraordinary missionary conference at Eshowe mission station.2 When Gjerløw arrived, he immediately convened another extraordinary meeting, during which he severely reprimanded the missionaries. They collectively accepted his accusations, repented and promised subordination to the Home Board.3 Gjerløw also replaced the superintendent — Ommund Oftebro since 1877 — with Ole Stavem, known to be loyal to the leaders in Stavanger.4 Finally, at the meeting Gjerløw officially announced the Home Board’s decision to dismiss the medical missionary Christian Oftebro, Ommund Oftebro’s nephew and son-in-law, from service in the NMS. This had tragic consequences for the individuals involved. Christian Oftebro became seriously ill soon after the Secretary’s return to Norway. He never recovered, dying from rheumatic fever at 48 years of age. As well as his humiliating dismissal, Ommund Oftebro suffered a personal loss in the death of his close relative.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Ole Gjerløw, Beretning vedkommende Sekretærens Reise til Missionsmarken i Zululand og Natal 1887–88 (Stavanger: Det Norske Missionsselskab, 1888).
Erik Sidenvall, The Making of Manhood among Swedish Missionaries in China and Mongolia, c. 1890–c. 1914 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009), 13.
Yvonne Maria Werner, ‘Religious Feminisation, Confessionalism and Re-masculinisation in Western European Society 1800–1960’, in Pieties and Gender, ed. Lene Sjørup and Hilda Rømer Christensen (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
The following biography on Christian Oftebro is based on Markus Dahle, ‘Christian Oftebro,’ in Hjem fra Kamppladsen: Livsbilleder af norske missionærer, ed. Anders Olsen (Kristiania: Steen’ske Bogtrykkeri og Forlag, 1906)
Christian Oftebro was a student of the so-called ‘third class’ of 1868/69, which is renowned as a class of missionary pioneers. There were two admissions; nine out of 23 applicants were accepted in 1868, and in the following year eight out of 22 applicants were accepted. See Emil Birkeli and C. Tidemann Strand, Kallet og veien: Det Norske Misjonsselskaps misjonsskole 1850–1959 (Stavanger: Misjonsselskapets Forlag, 1959), 40–6
Minutes from the NMS’s Home Board meeting of 27.6.1873, Journal of Negotiations 1862–1875, MA-MHS, HA/G.sekr.10. According to the school principal, the decision was made in accordance with Christian Oftebro’s own wish. Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society (EMMS) was founded in 1841 by a group of doctors. In 1852 EMMS started a scheme to train students to become medical missionaries. In 1853 a medical mission dispensary and clinic was opened. This acted as a practical training ground for student doctors, but also benefited the residents in the area. See David Hardiman, ‘Introduction’, in Healing Bodies, Saving Souls: Medical Missions in Asia and Africa, ed. David Hardiman (Amsterdam/New York: Editions Rodopi B.V., 2006),12.
Ole Stavem, The Norwegian Missionary Society: A Short Review of Its Work among the Zulus (Stavanger: The Norwegian Missionary Society, 1918), 14.
Jeff Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom: The Civil War in Zululand, 1879–1884 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1994), 29.
Christian Oftebro in NMT 36, no. 12 (1880): 236.
Lars Dahle and Simon Emanuel Jørgensen, Festskrift til Det Norske Missionsselskabs Jubilæum i 1892 (Stavanger: Det Norske Missionsselskabs Forlag, 1892), 137.
Ole Stavem, Et bantufolk og kristendommen: Det norske missionsselskaps syttiaarige zulumission (Stavanger: Det norske missionsselskaps forlag, 1915), 282.
John Nome, ‘Det Norske Misjonsselskaps historie i norsk kirkeliv: Fra syttiårene til nåtiden’, in Det Norske Misjonsselskap 1842–1942, ed. John Nome (Stavanger: Dreyer, 1943).
Olav Guttorm Myklebust, ‘Sør-Afrika’, in Det Norske Misjonsselskap 1842–1942, ed. John Nome (Stavanger: Dreyer, 1949), 101–5.
Andrew Porter, Religion versus empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 91–115.
Jarle Simensen, Thomas Børhaug, Per Hernas and Endre Sønstabø, ‘Christian Missions and Socio-Cultural Change in Zululand 1850–1906: Norwegian Strategy and African Response’, in Norwegian Missions in African History, Vol 1: South Africa 1845–1906, ed. Jarle Simensen (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986), 230.
John McCracken, Politics and Christianity in Malawi 1875–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 17–33.
In 1869 the NMS sent Christian D. Borchgrevink, who was both a theologian and a physician, to Madagascar. The first NMS hospital was established in Antananarivo in 1879. See Ludvig Munthe, Venstrehandsmisjon? Misjonslegar på Madagaskar frå 1860-åra og ut hundreåret (Oslo: Luther, 1985).
Esme Cleall, Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 85–8.
Michael Gelfand, Christian Doctor and Nurse: The History of Medical Missions in South Africa from 1799–1976 (Sandton: Mariannhill Mission Press, 1984), 18.
Norman Etherington, ‘Education and Medicine’, in Missions and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 278.
See Lars Martin Titlestad’s article ‘The Missionary as a Doctor’ in NMT 72, no. 4 (1916): 73–6.
Norman Vance, The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, ed., Manliness and Morality: Middle-class Masculinity in Britain and American 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987)
Donald E. Hall, ed., Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age (Cambridge/New York/Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
The British Christian Socialist Movement was established in 1848 and the American Social Gospel Movement in the mid-1860s; see Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism 1865–1915 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1940).
Instruks for det Norske Missionsselskabs Udsendinger, § 13. See a copy of the 1858 revision in Halfdan E. Sommerfelt, Den Norske Zulumission: Et Tilbageblik paa de første 20 Aar af det Norske Missionsselskabs Virksomhed (Christiania: Wm. Gram, 1865), 349–52.
Per Hernas, ‘The Zulu Kingdom, Norwegian Missionaries, and British Imperialism, 1845–1879’, in Norwegian Missions in African History, Vol 1: South Africa 1845–1906, ed. Jarle Simensen (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986).
Jarle Simensen and Vidar Gynnild, ‘Norwegian Missionaries in the Nineteenth Century: Organizational Background, Social Profile and World View’, in Norwegian Missions in African History, Vol 1: South Africa 1845–1906, ed. Jarle Simensen (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986), 35.
Line Nyhagen Predelli, ‘Marriage in Norwegian Missionary Practice and Discourse in Norway and Madagascar, 1880–1910’, Journal of Religion in Africa 31, no. 1 (2001): 4–48.
Anna Prestjan, Präst och karl, karl och präst: Prästmanlighet i tidigt 1900-tal (Lund: Sekel Bokförlag, 2009), 102.
Anna Prestjan, Präst och karl, karl och präst, 29–32. See also Anna Prestjan, ‘The Man in the Clergyman: Swedish Priest Obituaries, 1905–1937’, in Christian Masculinity: Men and Religion in Northern Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Yvonne Maria Werner (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2011).
David Tjeder, ‘Borgerlighetens sköra manlighet’, in Män i Norden: Manlighet och modernitet 1840–1940, ed. Claes Ekenstam and Jørgen Lorentzen (Hedemora: Gidlund, 2006), 56–60.
John Tosh, ‘Manliness, Masculinities and the New Imperialism, 1880–1900’, in Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire, ed. John Tosh (Harlow: Longman, 2005), 193.
Munthe, Venstrehandsmisjon? Misjonslegar på Madagaskar frå 1860-åra og ut hundreåret; Thor Strandenaes, ‘Misjonsdiakonien som kulturuttrykk i Kina: En tekst-og billeddokumentasjon fra Hunanprovinsen’, in Misjon og kultur. Festskrift til Jan-Martin Berentsen, ed. Thor Strandenæs (Stavanger: Misjonshøgskolens forlag, 2006).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Kristin Fjelde Tjelle
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tjelle, K.F. (2013). Proper Missionary Masculinity. In: Missionary Masculinity, 1870–1930. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336361_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336361_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46346-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33636-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)