About the project

The Norwegian Missionary Society took up mission work in the Hunan province in central China in 1902. My dissertation is about the Lutheran church that eventually developed at the NMS mission field.

The principal intention is to study the specific character of the church, and to explore how it developed and changed in the interaction between the Norwegian missionaries and the Hunanese Christians. The analysis begins with the establishment of the first Lutheran congregations shortly after the arrival of the pioneer missionaries in 1902, and ends with the termination of the church in 1951. The method chosen is to read and to interpret the archival sources in the China Collection of the Mission- and Diaconia Archives in Stavanger.