Church Missionary Society Periodicals

Church Missionary Society Periodicals provides digital access to two hundred years of serial publications from the British-based Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the South American Missionary Society. The collection consists of two modules.

Module 1: Global Missions and Contemporary Encounters was released in April 2015 and features a wide range of titles from the collection at the Crowther Mission Studies Library in Oxford. It includes the Church Missionary Gleaner, CMS Outlook, CMS Intelligencer, Ruanda Notes (MAM News) and the South Missionary Magazine, encompassing issues from 1804-2009. 

Module 2: Medical Journals, Asian Missions and the Historical Record, 1816-1986 is expected to be released in Spring 2016 and will supplement the documents in Module 1 with holdings from the Cadbury Research Library at Birmingham University.  It will include titles such as India's Women and China's Daughters, The Medical Mission Quarterly, Fukien News, Japan Quarterly, Chengtu Newsletter and the CMS Annual Reports, as well as some periodicals for children.

For a full list of titles and holdings planned for the collections, see the CMS Periodicals Titles List in the Appendix.

This material should be of interest specifically for researching the history of modern evangelical mission work, although its scope is limited to the group of evangelical societies united under an Anglican-affiliated administrative body. A significant component of the documentation is focused on internal operations, including a full register of missionaries from 1804-1928, and other notes on mission appointments. But there are also reports and notes on work in the field, as well as records of indigenous religious appointments, providing a broader record of cultural interactions. For the primary publications covered in Module 1 this yields a wide range of geographic coverage. For instance, in just one issue of the CMS Gleaner from October 1883, there are reports of mission activities, tribal migration, and illness outbreaks in areas ranging from Ceylon, India, Egypt, New Zealand, and western Canada. An article on "The Gospel and the Red Indians" notes that "the unmistakeable leadings of God's Providence led a Society 'for Africa and the East" into the Furthest West."

The digital collections are enhanced by extra features including a biographical index (pointing to biographical essays in the publications) and contextual essays.