The Missionaries' Servant: Babel, Funding and the Bible Society in Australia

Abstract

This chapter examines the visual strategies used in the slides shown in the last fundraising tours in Victoria, Australia, in 1948 and 1949 by the British and Foreign Bible Society to raise money for the printing and distribution of Bibles in local Aboriginal and Papuan languages. Although there is no text of the lecture that accompanied the slides, the lecturer did publish a book, Living Languages, that closely parallels the content of the slides, giving a clear idea of the likely content of the lecture and contrast made in it between the representation of the work in Australia with that in Papua.