During the nineteenth century, over 300 missionary periodicals were established in Britain,Footnote 18 along with hundreds in North America, Europe, and the colonial world, yet little has been written about the rationale behind their establishment.Footnote 19 From their beginnings as sources of intelligence, periodicals developed into vehicles of influence by the first decades of the nineteenth century, with missionary organizations also using this reduplicated commodity to deliberately persuade and mold public attitudes.Footnote 20 This article examines some thirty inaugural editorials and first volume prefaces to Protestant missionary periodicals, including those from “new series,” to uncover how editors justified their establishment to their potential readership.
The growth in nineteenth-century evangelical Protestant missionary endeavors was reflected in increased numbers of missionary specific periodicals.Footnote 21 Given the frequent presence of an “Editorial Notice,” “Prospectus,” “Introductory Remarks,” “Unser Programm (our program)” or a more personable notice, such as “To our readers,” in the inaugural issues it can be assumed that the establishment of a missionary periodical was not self evident, but required justification.Footnote 22 These texts ranged from a short paragraph to ten pages long. Their positioning at the beginning of the periodical, or, very rarely, as an epilogue or “Salutatory,”Footnote 23 was a didactical tool that encouraged the reading of the periodical in the way that the editor(s) intended.
The predominantly male editors of these publications sought to create distinct audiences. Society periodicals justified their establishment by acknowledging their need to communicate with their disparate members, supporters, and patrons as well as with young missionary societies such as the Presbyterian Church's Western Foreign Missionary Society, hoping that their periodical would help them become known.Footnote 24 Denominational periodicals, such as the General Baptist Magazine, Repository, and Missionary Observer (London, 1854), noted in their preface the “bond of union, and as such a source of strength” provided by their publication.Footnote 25 In contrast, intra-denominational, non-denominational and supra-societal publications reached beyond any defined, single audiences. These latter periodicals can be divided between a national model and a digest model. The American Missionary Register (New York, 1820), as a national supra-societal publication, explicitly stated the seven societies in the United States that they would report upon, and thus positioned itself as the national authority.Footnote 26 An early periodical, the New York Missionary Magazine (New York, 1800) justified its establishment in fulfilling a national need so that the American readership could obtain intelligence about the “heathen” mission work in “our own land” from a local, not foreign, periodical.Footnote 27 Such periodicals intentionally and actively created national church identities separate to international churches.Footnote 28 Digest publications, such as Evangelisches Missions-Magazin (Basel, 1857), aimed to synthesize material from multiple languages, providing the lay audience with missionary news, reports, and book reviews that spanned denominational, linguistic, and geographical boundaries.Footnote 29 Subsequent periodicals, such as the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift (Gütersloh, 1874), followed this model,Footnote 30 with digests advertising themselves as saving both time and money.Footnote 31 The increase in cheap secular as well as religious periodicals from the 1820s, due to affordable access to technology,Footnote 32 ensured that the affordability of publication was stressed within inaugural addresses of missionary periodicals, so that all could be privy to “the progress of truth and righteousness in heathen lands.”Footnote 33
I. Respectability Through Didactic and Edifying Material
Nineteenth-century missionary periodicals aimed at respectability, by providing content that was informative, authoritative, edifying, and occasionally entertaining.Footnote 34 Missionaries in the field provided much material for periodicals, and it was the duty of the editor to provide a respectful tone to ensure their reputation. This was often achieved by placing missionary work in a historical continuum that demonstrated its religious legacy, or through providing a historical overview of the mission work already undertaken.Footnote 35 Although success was noted, inaugural editorials frequently referenced the work that still needed to be undertaken among the “heathen” of the world, thus justifying the establishment of a periodical as a missionary tool.Footnote 36
Respectability also was connected with reliability of factual information, with editors explicitly noting their desire to provide a “correct and impartial record of Missionary exertion,” which was free of religious polemic and scientifically grounded.Footnote 37 Missionary periodicals were didactical, exemplified by the rhetorical questioning in the inaugural Calwer Missionsblatt (Calw, 1828) as to what the “Missionssache” (missionary cause) entailed. The definite answer was: “we want to tell you.” This indicated a desire to impart factual, authoritative information, as well as to persuade and mold public attitudes through emotive and edifying material.Footnote 38 The didactic content was even greater in children's missionary periodicals, which clearly stated how such periodicals should be read, and why they should be purchased.Footnote 39 Within inaugural editorials, editors informed the readership of the content of subsequent issues, with the caveat that the structure could change.Footnote 40 The content generally depended upon submissions, with inaugural editorials canvassing for unique materials, particularly for and from missionaries, which further demonstrates the multifunctional role of periodicals as media for information exchange.Footnote 41
II. Justification for Establishment
Editors explicitly stated that missionary periodicals had been established to “excit[e] a more ardent and systematic zeal in the missionary cause,” to solicit prayer, or to ensure a mouthpiece for the particular missionary organization.Footnote 42 Periodicals implicitly functioned as propaganda and fundraising tools. Nineteenth-century religious sensibilities discouraged immodesty, and editors often indicated that they had been encouraged by external observers to establish the periodical, underscoring a selfless regard for the wishes of others.Footnote 43 The anonymous editor of The Missionary Recorder (Foochow, 1867) expressed modesty in their function as the successor of the Chinese Repository (Canton, 1832). Yet by placing his new publication in a broader secular publishing context about China, he demonstrated his desire to see his publication as an authority beyond just spiritual matters.Footnote 44 Other periodicals explicitly detailed the model upon which the editor drew, as in the American Missionary Register (New York, 1821) being modeled on the Church Missionary Register (London, 1813).Footnote 45 In doing so the editor, Z. Lewis, drew upon the esteemed reputation of the old world publication, which itself acknowledged the debt that the Church Missionary Society [CMS] owed to its precursors.Footnote 46 Such thick cross-referencing placed editors and their readership in the midst of a solemn tradition of Christian duty towards the “heathen” world.
Missionary specific periodicals often filled a gap found in other forms of religious communication. The Church Missionary Record (London, 1830), for example, was an enlargement of the Monthly Paper. Its introductory remarks were succinct, referring to other CMS publications for the reasons why the “distinct and separate” publication was established.Footnote 47 However, this periodical itself was deemed as not “fully accomplishing the purposes for which [it and others] were intended” and thus the Church Missionary Intelligencer (London, 1849) was established. The anonymous editorial piece noted the deficiencies of the Record, due mostly to the inability of the format to keep up with the increase in the CMS's work, and pledged a publication with more missionary detail catering specifically to an audience with an “intelligent and thinking mind.”Footnote 48
Editors were well aware of the need to speak to their readership in terms that would engage them and build an ongoing relationship. This was often achieved through rhetorical questions with personal pronouns both to raise interest as well as to speak to the moral responsibility that the readership had to support the missionary work.Footnote 49 A further tactic was to explicitly state that the periodical's profits would go toward foreign and home missions, with the purchasing of the periodical having both an edifying effect on the reader as well as further charitable and moral effects beyond the act of reading.Footnote 50 Editors also indicated a personal involvement by signing their name or that of the missionary committee to their prefaces, a practice that contrasted with the pervasively anonymous character of much of the Victorian press.Footnote 51 Compared to newspapers, missionary periodicals were based upon emotive connections and were used as vessels for creating and maintaining proud denominational identities, as in the inaugural editorial of the New Series of the General Baptist Magazine (London, 1854)Footnote 52 as well as the Home and Foreign Record of the Free Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1856), which positioned itself as a “testimony of the goodness of God towards the Free Church of Scotland.”Footnote 53 Editors also hoped that their periodicals would integrate people over broad geographical spaces. This was particularly important in North America where auxiliary societies and local chapters were dispersed over the country.Footnote 54
III. Realignment and New Series
Although the establishment of a new series indicated a break with the previous form, and sometimes the function, of a periodical, it was important for the editors also to indicate continuity, in order to maintain a sense of familiarity and connection. Editors were able to achieve this by gratuitously congratulating “the friends and patrons of this periodical work,” and expressing their hope for continuing support.Footnote 55 Other editorials saw in a new series a chance to reach a broader readership, or to inform the audience how changes in form were shaped by external forces beyond their control, such as a decrease in page numbers due to stamp taxes.Footnote 56 Changes in series also provided editors with opportunities to change titles to more geographically inclusive ones, such as from the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine (Boston, 1803) to The American Baptist Magazine (Boston, 1817), which subsequently became the more content specific The Baptist Missionary Magazine (Boston, 1835). The addition of subtitles, such as Missionary Chronicle to the Evangelical Magazine in 1823, also indicated the new editorial slant of the publication. Whether new or old series, the editors were responsible for providing their audiences with carefully selected intelligence that would further the missionary cause.Footnote 57
IV. Conclusion
Missionary periodicals functioned as “independent mode[s] of communication”Footnote 58 beyond newspapers and other publications, with inaugural editorials instructing audiences on how to read these periodicals. In a market where editors were wary of the call of “yet another missionary periodical,”Footnote 59 editors used first issues to carve unique spaces for their periodicals that drew upon the broader success of the Protestant missionary enterprise, yet provided enough specificity for the maintenance of group identities and loyal readerships. In the ever-tightening market of missionary periodicals, editors needed to provide affordable, unique products directed at their specific readerships. The tone that was set in the inaugural issue was vitally important for the future success of missionary periodicals.
