The Overseas Missionary Fellowship, Africa Inland Mission and Decolonization in Malaya and Kenya, 1940-1966

Abstract

This thesis connects and compares the evolving activities of the China Inland Mission Overseas Missionary Fellowship (CIMOMF) and the Africa Inland Mission (AIM) in China, Malaya and Kenya from 1940-1966. These two so-called ‘faith missions’ saw significant shifts in their missiological policies during these decades as they navigated the nationalist and developmentalist movements which were both reshaping the nature of the globe and local decolonization processes. From the 1940s onwards CIMOMF and AIM stances began to exhibit corresponding transitions away from a previously single-issue mentality of evangelism-only in favour of more socially conscious and institutionally minded approach. In the 1950s, despite clear parallels between the Malayan and Kenyan Emergencies, these missions exhibited different courses of action in the two locales, as their direct circumstances and experiences prompted context-specific missiological programmes. By the 1960s CIMOMF and AIM policies once again converged, as conservative evangelical missions came together to combat the new threats of the cold-war era. These three decades saw the emergence of conservative evangelical missions as a coherent and unified ‘third force’ aiming to play a role in shaping the global governance of the post-war world. It will be seen that these two missionary bodies, operating in disparate contexts, were part of the same ‘fundamentalist network’. Through this system of transnational connections information and attitudes were transmitted, and cohesive responses were coordinated. As such the policies of the CIMOMF and AIM are analysed here through a framework of ‘comparative connections’. In doing so it shall make clear overarching priorities for global evangelicalism during the shifting of the world order through decolonization, whilst providing answers to what contextual circumstances and indigenous influences impacted AIM and OMF policy, as these missionaries attempted to reconcile both transnational and contextually contingent influences.