Misje medyczne w protestantyzmie a problem ochrony zdrowia misjonarzy: Na przykładzie misji anglikańskich i prezbiteriańskich w I połowie XX wieku

Marcin Rzepka

doi:10.36124/rt.2025.06

Published: 2025-12-281

Vol. 67 No. 1 (2025)

Medical missions in Protestantism and the issue of missionaries’ health care

Marcin Rzepka

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2020-6594

https://doi.org/10.36124/rt.2025.06

The example of Anglican and Presbyterian mission of the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

The article discusses the development of medical missions in Protestantism and the arrangements for monitoring and protecting the health of missionaries. Focusing on two missionary organizations, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the Church Missionary Society respectively, the article analyses normative and ideological materials that constitute missionary health policy, concentrating mainly on the interwar period, when, after a phase of dynamic development, medical missions had to face new challenges, such as nationalism and the increasing role of nation-states in promoting health care. The assumption was made that medical missions led to the development of two trends in missionary Protestantism. The first led to a kind of emancipation of medicine within the mission, and consequently to forming independent missions, understood more as a manifestation of social activities and humanitarian action. The second led to the internalization of medicine by extending the competencies of medical missions managed by particular departments to monitor the health of missionaries.

Keywords:

Protestantism, Presbyterianism, Anglicanism, missions, missionaries, medicine, health

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Rzepka, M. (2025). Medical missions in Protestantism and the issue of missionaries’ health care: The example of Anglican and Presbyterian mission of the first half of the 20th century. Theological Yearbook, 67(1), 97–128. https://doi.org/10.36124/rt.2025.06

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