Missions, Social Change, and Resistance to Authority: Notes toward an Understanding of the Relative Autonomy of Religion

In sociology, studies of social change in the non-Western world have not assigned a prominent role to missionary organizations. This relative neglect is the product of two assumptions: first, that missions abroad were ineffective as agents of fundamental social change; and, second, that their activities were shaped more by powerful secular agendas over which they had little control than by autonomous rehgious interests. Contrary to the first assumption, there is ample evidence that some missions were impressive agents of social transformation; contrary to the second, some of them took a stand in direct opposition to the secular political and economic interests to which they are often considered subordinate. Together the8e observations reinforce the concept of the relative autonomy of religion. I argue here that one key to understanding mission resistance to powerful nonreligious forces can be found in religious conceptions of the proper relationships among land, labor, and community stabilitv. When these are threatened, the symbiosis between rehgious and secular intests can give way to open and effective defiance.