Walter and Ingrid Trobisch and the Globalization of Modern, Christian Sexual Ethics

by Anneke H. Stasson

Publisher:

Pickwick Publications

, 2021

Overview

Walter and Ingrid Trobisch played a major role in shaping a transcultural conversation about love, sex, gender identity, and marriage during the mid-twentieth century. The Trobisches are most well known for Walter’s book I Loved a Girl (1962), which he wrote while teaching at Cameroon Christian College. Within a decade, one million copies of the book were in circulation, it was translated into seventy languages, and Trobisch had received ten thousand letters from African and American readers of the book asking for relational advice. The Trobisches founded an international marriage-counseling ministry to answer these letters. While the Trobisches held paternalistic attitudes common among western missionaries of their generation, their vision of sexuality helped Christians in Africa and the United States to navigate changing sexual norms of the mid-twentieth century.

Praise for Walter and Ingrid Trobisch and the Globalization of Modern, Christian Sexual Ethics

“During the mid-twentieth century, a period of intense social change, millions of young people turned to Walter and Ingrid Trobisch for guidance on modern gender relations. Anneke Stasson traces how the Trobisches spread ideals of marital partnership through their writings and counseling ministry. This fascinating book fills a huge gap in the cultural and gender history of Christianity as a global religion. I recommend it very highly.”

—Dana L. Robert, director, Center for Global Christianity and Mission, Boston University School of Theology



“Good biography does more than introduce a person, it makes larger and more complicated stories accessible. Stasson has written a great biography. She uses one family to rethink twentieth-century missions. This is not the stale tale of cultural domination, but an example of missionaries as global mediators. Through them, questions about sexuality in Africa in the 1950s provided answers for Americans navigating the sexual revolution of the 1960s. This book is missions reimagined!”

—Daryl R. Ireland, author of John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man



“Working amid changing attitudes about love, sex, and marriage, as well as decolonization movements in Africa, Christian missionaries Walter and Ingrid Trobisch influenced Christian sexual ethics in the twentieth century. Stasson deftly captures how the Trobisches, through books and correspondence with young adults in Africa and the United States, became multidirectional conduits of a global ‘conversation’ about sex and marriage.”

—Douglas D. Tzan, professor and assistant dean, Wesley Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Walter and Ingrid Trobisch and the Globalization of Modern, Christian Sexual Ethics
• Author: Anneke H. Stasson
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Print Publication Date: 2021
• Logos Release Date: 2021
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781725253995, 9781725253971, 9781725253988, 1725253992, 1725253976, 1725253984
• Resource ID: LLS:9781725253995
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T20:18:25Z

About Anneke H. Stasson

Anneke H. Stasson (PhD, Boston University) is associate professor of humanities and history at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana.