Dr. Art. Inger Marie Okkenhaug

An alternative to focusing on conflicts and divisions when analyzing interaction between people with different ethnic and religious backgrounds is to focus on religious institutions in a wider, social context. Studies have for example shown that Anglican and Catholic missionaries functioned as necessary safety nets in the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th century (Thompson 2003, Okkenhaug 2002). This was also the case with Scandinavian women missionaries, who, for example, contributed greatly to work among Armenian refugees in French controlled Syria and Lebanon. When the French colonial power did not manage to deliver sufficient aid to the numerous refugees and orphaned children in Beirut and Aleppo, these Danish and Norwegian women established orphanages, health stations and organized “help to self-help” programs (Okkenhaug 2005a, b).  However, the safety-net role was also found in the mission home countries and work among their fellow countrymen (Jansson 2004, Werner 2002, Malchau 2000,) In Norway Norsk misjon blandt hjemløse worked among gipsies, a group that the Norwegian state (including the state church) wanted to locate in permanent homes. Women were central actors within these organizations, and thus played a role as welfare agents in civil society. This project wants to focus on three individual actors, educated women from the political, financial and religious elite in Norway (Bodil Biørn, Kvinnelige misjonsarbeideres forening (KMA); ongoing project, Thora Wedel Jarlsberg, KMA and Ebba Astrup, Norsk misjon blandt hjemløse), and analyse female missionaries’s role in welfare practices in various geographical areas; Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria, India and Norway in the period from around 1900 till 1940. These three actors came from a high state church background; how did they understand their mission in their various practices? What was the relationship between evangelization and social work, in meeting with gipsies within Norwegian society, Kurdish Muslims and Armenian Christians? Thus a central question will be how were missionaries changed in their meeting with the mission field?
          The social status is also important in relation to influence on local authorities and power-relations within the mission organization. Ebba Astrup became the first director of an orphanage, which was formally owned by the Norwegian Mission for the Homeless. However, Ebba Astrup’s financial and social standing made her a powerful leader who was able to influence the mission’s policy. In this manner she could affect conditions for Norwegian policy on the “homeless”. In a similar manner missionaries in the Middle East played a central role within the development of a colonial welfare-system. Were these mission-based activities in cooperation or competition with the local state authorities? Did these practices challenge the various existing gender-orders?