The Achilles Heel of Anglican Mission: The Selwyn Legacy in New Zealand

Abstract

Historical case studies can be painful. The editorial question must be: does the pain bring forth usable insights? In this analysis, historian Pinnington looks beyond overt, oft-cited problems like “the land issue” and focuses on the unresolved root problems of isolation, individualism — and even rivalry — which wracked the missionary force, depriving them of desperately-needed mutual support, and blunting the cutting edge of their mission. “They were not enough a community in love … The Maoris had already too great a sense of their own community to be built into the Body of Christ by mere missionary committees.” For Western missions in the late 20th Century, relevant insights indeed!