Mission to the World: An Examination of the Link between Motivations and Attitudes in Protestant Missionaries Assigned to Senegal, West Africa
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Authors
McSwegin, Melissa Ann
Issue Date
1998
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
My research questions were originally based on determining the effect of living
and working in a predominantly Muslim country on the religious beliefs of American
Protestant missionaries. However, as I conducted the interviews, I discovered that most
of the missionaries reported similar positive changes in their beliefs. Furthermore, they
indicated in many cases that these changes could have occurred in any international
setting, not specifically in a Muslim environment as I had originally proposed. Outside
the realm of this paper, I suggest that this phenomenon is due to the close integration of
the missionary community, which provides each individual with a readily accessible
support network of people with similar belief structures. Regardless, it was not until after
having completed the interviews that I remarked two different trends in responses
regarding the rewards and difficulties of the job, as well as the use of specific language
regarding Muslims. Based on these trends, I reconfigured my research question into a
search for connections between the motivations of missionaries and how these
motivations affected the reactions that the individuals have to their jobs as well as to the
host nationals surrounding them. Since I determined these questions after having
finished the interviews as well as after having returned to the United States, I was unable
to draft another series of questions that examined specifically the question of attitudes as
they pertain to motivations. Thus, although I feel that my interviews provide adequate
data as they stand, I may have received different data had I begun my project with this
new question in mind. Nonetheless, the interviews speak for themselves.
Description
v, 65 p.
Citation
Publisher
Kalamazoo, Mich. : Kalamazoo College.
License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.