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The Social Control of Religious Zeal: A Study of Organizational Contradictions. By JON MILLER. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. xvi + 240 pp. $48.00.
In some measure, the massive Christian missionary movement that gathered strength in Europe and North America at the end of the eighteenth century affected virtually all regions of the world. While scholars have explored the role played by missionaries in proselytizing, institutionbuilding, and wider economic, political, and social patterns, they have given less attention to internal properties of missionary organizations. This sociological case study explores one such body, the Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, Switzerland.
The Basel Mission, as it is more commonly known, grew out of the religious movement called Pietism. Starting in 1815, the Basel Mission...