| Using the case study method, this dissertation examines the encounter between China and the West between 1884 and 1951 through the missionary career of one woman---Elizabeth Fisher Brewster. Using selected missionary periodicals and other promotional materials as the primary data set, this study identifies the interconnections among media, religion, and culture used to promote the missionary enterprise with church members and potential sponsors back home.; The ground work for this study is laid by examining Elizabeth's early life, particularly her spiritual development through the Christian epiphany moments of grace, conversion, sanctification, holy death, and "the call" to missionary service.; Next, Elizabeth's rhetorical strategies to recruit personnel and raise money for missions are analyzed in light of the political, intellectual, and religious transformations occurring on both sides of the Pacific. Particular attention is paid to Elizabeth's rhetorical status that was both enduring and evolving during a six-decade career that included the life stages of single woman, wife, and widow. This study analyzes how Elizabeth's marital status and institutional status impacted her strategies of solicitation.; This study also examines Elizabeth's roles as a cultural anthropologist and a cultural rhetorician who described the Chinese people and their culture to readers back home. Elizabeth used the foundational binary of "Christian/Heathen" as the primary lens of interpretation. Six additional key binaries defined the civilizing roles the missionary enterprise played within foreign culture including evangelism, education, humanitarian services, and social reform. These binaries include: (1) Worship of True God/Idol Worship; (2) Light/Dark; (3) Clean/Dirty; (4) Health/Illness; (5) Saved/Sinner; and (6) Salvation/Sin.; In essence, this case study provides a window into the life of a woman who would deny being a feminist but who served as an agent of modernization to transform and expand the acceptable parameters of female behavior on both sides of the Pacific. Furthermore, this study is grounded in an examination of the secular and religious roots of the concept of manifest destiny that even today drives American foreign policy to save the world through the processes of civilization, modernization, and democratization. |
