Gender Divide

It seems like the gender divide in missions is something that’s come up rather often in class.  Why are women so much more interested in missions than men?  We’ve tried to come up with some answers to this million dollar question.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised by what I found in this issue- especially considered it was published in 1937, but the clues about the gendered perspectives on mission work were really too hard to ignore in this issue.

So, to start I’ve got a nice little blurb under the title “WANTED – PRAYER” which goes on to describe how we don’t need more men in the mission field or more money in the mission field,  we need more prayer in the mission field.  Sure, that’s fine.  But the thing that struck me was the very decisively gendered use of “men.”  While it may have just suited the author’s purpose (the blurb paralleled a help wanted ad), it seemed pretty obvious to me that while women in the mission field are fine, they really only see men as valid mission field workers.

This stands in very sharp contrast to the fact that there is a whole entire page (of this short publication- it is proportionally significant) dedicated to the Young Women’s Foreign Missionary Society, and five pages are given to the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society.  This, really, is a disproportionately large section of the publication, especially when you consider the fact that a large majority of it are short reports from missionaries on the field.  The members of W.F.M.S. did a huge amount of fundraising for missions and were very involved and interested in mission work. 

This was published still before the influx of unmarried female missionaries began in SIM.  I would be interested to see some kind of chart that had numbers of each gender going into the mission field for each year.  It would be a rather interesting case study of comparison between the Nazarene missionaries and SIM missionaries.

Finally, without any transition whatsoever, I present a missionary poem.  We all love missionary poems, right?

Called
Miss Rhoda V. Schurman

He called to her, "Come follow me."
She answered, "Yes, Lord, only Thee."

To China, then, He bade her look;
And every step in faith she took.

She loved and served unselfishly--
Was graced with deep humility.

No sacrifice too great to make,
In doing all for Jesus' sake.

The troubled ones, who sought her side,
Were led in Jesus to confide.

She taught them all so patiently,
That many His dear face will see.

He called to her, "It is enough,
Come where the way is no more rough.

"In heaven I have prepared for thee
A home for all eternity."

She slipped away.  God knoweth best.
 Many will rise to call her "blest."