Pushing Boundaries: New Zealand Protestants & Overseas Missions 18271939

We know a lot about the early missionaries who came to New Zealand from 1814 and how Christianity developed through their complex interactions with Maori. Less well known are the ways in which settler churches of Aotearoa New Zealand reached out to engage in missionary activity in other parts of the world. This is the first book-length attempt to tell the story of the evolution of overseas missionary activity by New Zealand’s Protestant churches from the early nineteenth century up to World War II. In this thought-provoking book, Hugh Morrison outlines how and why missions became important to colonial churches – the theological and social reasons churches supported missions, how their ideas were shaped, and what motivated individual New Zealanders to leave these shores to devote their lives elsewhere. Secondly, he connects this local story to some larger historical themes – of gender, culture, empire, childhood and education. This book argues that understanding the overseas missionary activity of Protestant churches and groups can contribute to a more general understanding of how New Zealand has developed as a society and nation.