Origins of Missionary Periodicals: Form and Function of Three Moravian Publications

The nineteenth century was a boom time for the genre of missionary periodicals. Missionary periodicals were established by religious organizations, societies, and churches for their members, for the general public, for theologians, for women, for children, and for converted non‐Europeans, and their growth reflected the expansion of missionary societies into the non‐European colonial world. Despite the abundance and wide range of these publications, research on the origins, form, and function of missionary periodicals remains limited. This article examines the rationale behind the establishment of three Moravian Church missionary periodicals: the British Periodical Accounts (1790–1970); the German Missions‐Blatt (1837–1941); and the North American The Little Missionary (1870–1920). The article elucidates both broader similarities and differences in missionary periodicals, as well as distinguishing how intentions behind the establishment of missionary periodicals differed from the practice of how religious organizations, societies, and churches utilized these periodicals in presenting themselves to the outside world.