Missionary Families Find a Sense of Place and Identity: Two Generations on Two Continents

(Hardback)

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Missionary Families Find a Sense of Place and Identity is a community history of members of nineteen Lutheran missionary families who served in Tanzania. Based on over ninety interviews and John Bensons extensive knowledge of cultural geography, he compares the lives of the missionary generation who grew up in the United States and went to Tanzania as missionaries to those of their children who grew up in Africa but settled in the United States as adults. Benson blends his personal experiences as a child of missionaries in Tanzania to tell the story of both generations. Missionary Families is centered on the themes of connection to place and religious development and will appeal to scholars of geography, cultural studies and religion.

Reviews

Its interviews and reflections, reminiscent of Clifford Geertzs thick description, truly take the reader into the lives of a missionary generation and its progeny, into the details that mattered for them in formulating their worlds, and into the multiple ways in which responsiveness to a sense of calling for one affected entire life stories for another. It is a kind of social autobiography, that I commend not only to church people and students of the missionary movement. [but] to sociologists, psychologists, and educators as well. * Lutheran Quarterly *
As a geographer, Benson offers a perspective seldom seen in missiology.... Missionary Families is informed by and contributes to the genre of missiology focused on the psychology and spirituality of missionary families.... While the book focuses on American missionary families serving in Africa, missionaries and missionary trainers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America may find this volume helpful in considering issues impacting missionaries and their children. Finally, this book is important as a general contribution to missiology. Geography as a discipline seems to be overlooked in our missiological discussions. Bensons emphasis on place is a helpful step toward correcting that oversight. * Mission Studies *
Missionary Families Find a Sense of Place and Identity is a careful memoir of growing up cross-culturally and cross-nationally. The single theme is that of place and identity, reflecting Bensons training as a geographer. This book is broader than any single discipline and will be of interest in religious studies, east African history, intercultural psychology, missiology, and perhaps most importantly, for social scientists interested in how identity plays a role in human interaction. -- Tony Waters, California State University, Chico, and Payap University
In this simultaneously intimate and sweeping narrative, John Benson provides a unique window into the lives of a particular band of missionary kids who grew up in East Africa. For those of us who shared some of his experiences as missionary kids, Bensons account is a mirror, stirring reflection on how our roots have shaped who are and who we have become. For others, his account is a window into the complex processes of forming a sense of identity and place across two cultures on two continents. -- Eugene Roehlkepartain, Research and Development Search Institute

Author Bio

John Benson is professor in the School of Teaching and Learning, Minnesota State University Moorhead.