"The real need of ... overseas communities cannot be met by tourists...": British Protestant Missions and the Challenge of Voluntary Service Overseas, 1957–67

For British Protestant missionary societies committed to the provision of health and educational facilities in late colonial Africa, close links with government were a sometimes regretted but unavoidable necessity: missions lacked the resources necessary to undertake medical and educational work on their own terms. From the mid-1940s onwards missions worked ever more closely with British imperial and colonial authorities to recruit Christian personnel in the United Kingdom. All the while missionaries were increasingly aware that international non-governmental agencies (INGOs, some of which operated under the aegis of the UN) were similarly keen to recruit suitably qualified Western workers, for service in Africa and other parts of the ‘developing’ world. The formation in the late 1950s and early 1960s of new agencies such as VSO (in the UK) and the Peace Corps (in the US) was, from the missionary viewpoint, a further complication. So too was the devolving of political authority from British colonial to independent African governments.  Utilising contemporary archival, published and other sources, this paper focuses on British Protestant missionary responses to the changing nature of personal service by western men and women in the non-western world during the period 1957-67. Some such people chose to work with religious organisations either mission- or indigenous church-based; others chose instead to avail of the opportunities provided by INGOs and voluntary organisations. Their terms (typically of short duration) and conditions of service may have seemed more attuned than those of missions to the changing expectations of volunteers. Arguably, such organisations fulfilled a contemporary need as, in an earlier time, had the missionary societies. Missionaries debated whether and how to adapt aspects of their terms and conditions in response to changing circumstances, with some uncertainty as to the implications for such change on the idea and practice of overseas mission as religious vocation.