Bethel Mission
The Bethel Mission (also Bielefelder Mission ) was a German evangelical mission society with the focus of its work in East Africa .
founding
At the instigation of the German colonialist Carl Peters , the " German-East African Mission Society " was founded in Berlin in 1886 in order to consolidate the colonial acquisitions through missionary work. With Peters' significant participation, the colony of German East Africa was founded in East Africa in 1890 .
After conflicts and Peters' departure, the society was reorganized and renamed " Evangelical Mission Society for German East Africa " (EMDOA) in 1887 . She started her work with a mission station in Dar es Salaam and a hospital in Zanzibar . Since there was a lack of missionaries , the EMDOA turned in 1890 to Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh of the Von Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel , who was successful in the Inner Mission and whose childhood dream was to convert the pagans in India as a missionary of the then leading Basel mission . With his help and organization, the missionary work was continued, which according to his understanding could not be realized without the diakonia , even if the hospital, which was moved from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam after the transfer from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam, had been taken over by the colonial administration. Another station was set up around 1890 in the coastal town of Tanga . In addition to having studied theologians prepared for missionary work in a candidate convict, Bethel deacons and deaconesses were also sent to serve in the health service.
The theological school emerged from the Konvikt in 1905 , to which Johannes Warneck , who had previously worked in the service of the Rhenish Mission Society in Sumatra , was appointed as the first lecturer in missiology . At the same time, a missionary college was affiliated, in which secondary school students and vocational training were also trained as missionaries. Its director, Gottfried Simon, who also taught the New Testament at the Theological School , also came from the Rhenish Mission. The mission school lasted until the First World War . The theological school became the forerunner of the Bethel Church University , the first Protestant church university in Germany.
Move to Bethel
When the company moved to Bethel in 1906 and Bodelschwingh took over the management and, after his death in 1910, his son Friedrich became the name of Bethel Mission , until it became the official name in 1920.
Mission areas
In 1891 missionaries - without military escorts, "without bayonets " - established stations with schools in Tanga in the Usambara Mountains , to a modest extent also for girls, including the Hohenfriedeberg mission station . On the eve of the World War, around 2,000 parishioners had been won and 3,600 African school children were admitted, who were taught in their mother tongues. Since 1902, African teachers have been trained at a middle school, and since 1909 there has been a German school. After the World War, the work continued, the German School was founded in 1931 as Friedrich v. Bodelschwingh School in Luandai rebuilt. A mission hospital was finally founded in Bumbuli in 1927/28, which improved the mission medical service.
Since 1906, missionary work in the Kingdom of Rwanda began with modest success. One was more successful with the less respected Hutus and the poorer relatives among the Tutsis and thus inadvertently intensified the ethnic conflict. ( See also : Genocide in Rwanda .) Other areas of operation were in the Buhaya Empire in Bukoba on Lake Victoria .
The world war interrupted the mission work, the stations were occupied by Belgians, British and South Africans in the course of 1916, most of the missionaries and mission workers were expelled with their families. Before that, the ordination of seven African parish helpers as pastors laid the seeds of church independence.
The mission society was meanwhile working on the island of Jawa . She returned in the mid-1920s. but soon came into conflict with the ideology and restrictions of the Nazi era and soon afterwards with the Second World War .
Bible translation
Ernst Johannsen and Karl Roehl were early Bible translators for the Mission Society.
post war period
Thanks to ecumenical relations, the missionaries interned in Africa continued to work under the umbrella of non-German societies after 1945. From 1950 missionaries could again be sent from Germany, but under American or Scandinavian societies. Since the beginning of the activity there were contacts to the Rheinische Missionsgesellschaft and considerations to join forces. This was achieved, not least due to the changing character of the emerging churches in the Third World , in 1970/71 with the merger to form the United Evangelical Mission (UEM) based in Wuppertal, the core of the later, more comprehensive merger of German mission societies.
Todays situation
Today the bears Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania , the pastoral care in the former mission territories. The German mission societies joined forces with the mission churches in 1996 to form the United Evangelical Mission for cooperation in partnership. The Von Bodelschwingh Foundation Bethel is a constituent member. The archive and museum holdings were transferred to the new headquarters in Bielefeld-Bethel .
literature
- Gustav Menzel: The Bethel Mission: From 100 Years of Mission History , Verlag Vereinte Ev. Mission, 1986, ISBN 978-3-921900093 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bethel historical , bethel-historisch.de, accessed on May 24, 2015.
- ↑ Early Mission Bibles: Important Institutions - Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart (accessed on June 23, 2017)
- ↑ Bethel Mission in Tanzania: Schools for the Outcasts , wdr.de, article from November 27, 2014.
Coordinates: 52 ° 0 ′ 44.9 " N , 8 ° 31 ′ 23.4" E