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Below you will find a selection of papers delivered at conferences and seminars between 2002 and 2013, in the context of the Project co-ordinated by Professor Andrew Walls, which resulted in the publication of Methodists and their Missionary Societies by Revd John Pritchard (two volumes, 1760-1900 and 1900-1996, Ashgate 2013 and 2014).

Some have been revised subsequently. You can search for papers either by the author's name or via the list of conferences and seminars.

The copyright in each paper is held by the author. They are not to be modified, reproduced, transmitted, published or otherwise made available in whole or in part without the author's prior written consent. By opening any of these papers you agree to these terms and conditions.

The Project came to a semi-colon (rather than a full stop) with the Bicentenary of the Leeds District Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in October 2013. It continues under the auspices of the Andrew F Walls Centre for the Study of Asian and African Christianity at Liverpool Hope University.

Annual conferences on kindred themes are organised by the Yale Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity.

2002 : Launch of the Project

New College, Edinburgh

Speakers included Reg Ward, Brian Stanley, Lamin Sanneh, Dan O'Connor and Andrew Walls. Papers from the initial conference are not available.

2003 : World Parish to World Church

Sarum College, Salisbury

Keynote addresses :

Short papers

2004 : Finance Symposium

Liverpool Hope University

  • WMMS Finance 1813-1932
    John Lenton
  • Note on Circuit Accounts and Currencies used in the Leeward Islands District(s) of the Caribbean and the Americas Up to 1806
    John Neal
  • Primitive Methodist financing of World Mission
    John Young
2004 : 'Great was the Company of the Preachers'

2004 : 'Great was the Company of the Preachers'; The Recruitment, Selection and Formation of Methodist Missionaries and of the Ministry in Methodist Missions

United College of the Ascension, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

Short papers

2005 : Methodist Missions and the Organisation of Society

United College of the Ascension, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

Short papers

2006 : Methodist Mission and the Printed Word

Sarum College, Salisbury

Keynote addresses

Short papers

  • Methodist Missionary Magazines
    Terry Barringer
  • 'Another agency in this great work': the beginnings of missionary printing in Tonga
    Martin Daly
  • Missions, politics and the printed word: Richard Watson's political writing, 1813-1833
    Michael Gladwin
  • John Wesley's Use of the Printed Word on the Simmonds - subsumed in John Wesley in America
    Geordan Hammond
  • Grumbles, Gripes and the Gospel: The British & Foreign Bible Society, Wesleyan missionaries and political wrangling in late colonial Burma
    Mike Leigh
  • The Genesis of Methodist Missions: The Interplay of Printed Word and Oral Tradition in the West Indies
    John Neal
  • Atlantis and Cargate
    John Pritchard
  • The place and 'problem' of conversion in 20th century Methodist missionary literature
    Norman Taggart
  • John Innocent, Pioneer MNC Missionary : A Grinder to China Stuart Walters
  • Edwin Smith and the Printed Word
    John Young
2007 : Methodist Mission and Development

Selly Oak Centre for Mission Studies, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

2007 : 'All our Pomp of Yesterday'

2007 : 'All our Pomp of Yesterday': Methodist Missions and the Rising and Setting of Empire

Woodbrooke, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

  • Empire and Christian Missions: opposition, opportunities, obstacles - published in Christianity and History Bulletin (Summer 2010), pp. 31-43
    David Killingray
  • Rhodesia Becomes Zimbabwe and the Programme to Combat Racism
    Albert Mosley
  • Autonomy, Independence and Interdependence - substantially incorporated in Methodists and their Missionary Societies 1900-1996 (Ashgate 2014) chapter 14
    John Pritchard
  • British missionaries and the end of empire in Africa - subsumed in British Missionaries and the End of Empire (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2011)
    John Stuart

Short papers

2008 : Did they Believe and Preach Our Doctrines?

Woodbrooke, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

  • British Evangelical Theology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
    David Bebbington
  • Theology in action and reaction: the Methodist-Buddhist Encounter in 19th century Sri Lanka - subsumed in "Memory, Experience and the Clash of Cosmologies; The Encounter between British Protestant Missionaries and Buddhism in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka" in Social Sciences and Mission (Brill) vol 25/3 (2012)
    Elizabeth Harris
  • Mission House Theology: lines of development in Methodist official thinking on missions
    Andrew Walls

Short Papers

  • Believing Preaching and Teaching in Methodist Missions in the Caribbean and Americas
    John Neal
  • John Wesley's Inter-faith Understanding
    Stephen Skuce
  • Mind the gap! - Theory and Practice on the Mission Field with reference to 19th and early 20th century Southern Africa
    Jennifer Potter
  • 1913 and all that - an expanded version of this paper appeared in Methodism and History (Oxford: Applied Theology Press, 2010)
    John Pritchard
  • Primitive Methodist Missiology - comprising two papers
    John Young
2009 : Methodist Missions and Indigenous Religious Movements

Woodbrooke, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

  • Conversion, Movements in India
    Sebastian Kim
  • Indigenous Religious Movements in Central and Southern Africa
    David Maxwell
  • Methodist Missions and Indigenous Religious Movements
    Andrew Walls

Short Papers

  • Methodism and indigenous religions
    Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu
  • Medical work in South-East Nigeria
    John Bramley
  • Prayer Women and Biblewomen: A Comparison of Two Indigenous Ventures among South African Methodists
    Deborah Gaitskell
  • Personal Reflections of a Wesley Deaconess in Sierra Leone 1909-1913
    Dorothy Graham
  • The Alleluia Church and other indigenous religions in South America
    John Neal
  • Spiritual Healing Church of Prophet Mokaleng
    Jennifer Potter
  • Harris Discovered
    John Pritchard
  • An Irish perspective on a major controversy
    Norman Taggart
  • Edwin Smith and the African Independent Churches: 1905 and 1950
    John Young
2010 : War and Peace and Methodist Missions

Woodbrooke, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

  • Strange Warmth: Methodism, the Wars and the Changing Face of Christianity in Ghana
    Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu
  • Opportunity and Danger: British Methodism and the Wider World in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
    Michael Hughes
  • The 1857 Indian Rebellion and its Impact on the Wesleyan Mission - published in Protestant Nonconformity and Christian Missions (Milton Keynes, Paternoster, 2014)
    John Pritchard
  • Methodist Missions and the Little Wars of Empire
    Andrew Walls

Short papers

  • A Methodist Doctor's experience of working in a Leprosy Mission Hospital in the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan 1990-1992
    John Bramley
  • The Bible and the Sword: John Thomas and the Tongan Civil War of 1837
    Martin Daly
  • John Fletcher and the American Revolution
    Peter Forsaith
  • A Tale of Two Chaplains: H D Hlabangane and Stanley Pitts of South Africa in the Two World Wars
    Deborah Gaitskell
  • Isabel Adam, Wesley Deaconess and Experience of Life in South America and Spain 1913-1953
    Dorothy Graham
  • The Eye of the Storm: Methodist missionaries and an episode from the evacuation of Upper Burma in 1942
    Mike Leigh
  • War and Peace and Methodist Missions in the 20 th Century: An Irish perspective
    Norman Taggart
  • Wole Soyinka and the Nigerian Civil War
    Abraham Waigi
  • Sampson Oppong: the prophet who reversed the effects of war
    James Walton
  • The Battlefield: a Mission field. Edwin W. Smith on the Western Front, 1915
    John Young
  • Hannah Kilham and vernacular education in Africa
    Victor Zizer
2011 : Gender and Ethnicity in Methodist Mission History

Woodbrooke, Birmingham

Keynote addresses

Short papers

2012 : Methodist Missions, Other Faiths and Other Churches

Luther King House, Manchester

Keynote addresses

Short papers

2013 : Two Hundred Years of Mission

Hinsley Hall, Leeds

Keynote addresses

Short papers