ABSTRACT
Secker’s reflections on more than half a century of missionary efforts, mostly failures, in the British Empire shed much light on the distinctive characteristics of the British missionary enterprise. He fully accepted the Church of England’s obligation, both religious and imperial, to make the Christian religion available to the two great non-white populations within the British Empire. Secker wastes no time addressing the arguments of those who dismissed nonwhite people on the basis of essentialist racial theory. There is no hint here of Enlightenment scientific racism, or the Hamitic theory of racial origins, or the argument that Negroes have no souls, or the theory that Native Americans are under a different covenant or dispensation from white people, or that Native Americans are depraved savages incapable of Christian faith. His response is in the form of a lament over the church’s failure. Yes, we have failed, he responded, but it is unfair to accuse us of not trying, and there are some good reasons for our failure.
