SOURCE: Christophers, Brett. “Redemption.” In Positioning the Missionary: John Booth Good and the Confluence of Cultures in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia, pp. 19-40. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Christophers argues that the work of missionaries often came into conflict with the work of secular imperialism. Tracing the scriptural origins of evangelism, Christophers distinguishes the universalist rhetoric of Christianity from the nationalist tendencies of a specifically national religion such as Anglicanism.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

—Romans 3:23

Most discussion of nineteenth-century colonial discourse has focused on its ‘codification of difference.’¹ Scholars have charted the manifold ways in which Europeans distinguished themselves from non-Europeans, showing that such distinctions often buttressed and coloured colonial practice. Homi Bhabha offers a useful synopsis of these findings. ‘The objective of colonial discourse,’ he claims, ‘is to construe the colonized as a population of...