Professor Christopher Duncan “Moving Beyond Missionaries”
Professor Duncan was a 2011 A.T. Steele Faculty Grant awardee for his work “Moving beyond Missionaries.” This project documents the indigenous proselytization efforts of the Forest Tobelo of Eastern Indonesia. Originally the target of missionary efforts the American-based New Tribes Mission in the 1980s and 1990s, the Forest Tobelo began sending out their own missionaries to non-Christian Forest Tobelo groups in the late 1990s and continue to expand these efforts in the present. This project will explore the rationales behind this proselytization, how it compares to the evangelism of the New Tribes Mission, as well as the reasons behind its failures and successes through interviews with both Forest Tobelo missionaries and their target population.