The Dutch Reformed Women's Missionary Movement from the Cape and the Mt Holyoke Connection

Book excerpt: This book reinterprets the history of South African Dutch Reformed missions as a women's movement. It traces American women missionaries from Mt. Holyoke College who went to southern Africa in the late 1800s to teach Dutch Reformed girls. Dutch Reformed women then formed a missionary network to send the educated women throughout southern Africa, and into Malawi and Zimbabwe. Missionary women modeled a combination of education and piety that inspired African church women's leadership and enabled Reformed churches to spread throughout the region. Not only does the book show how American women introduced a distinctive missionary piety into Reformed missions, but it also places women at the center of southern African mission history.