‘The great demands of Eternity on your hearts must not be forgotten in favour of the many demands that education of life in the world puts into force, the purpose of being a heavenly citizen not being set back by the call of the world citizen’, is the message in
For Ungdommen.
1 ‘Det store krav, som Evigheden gjør paa eders Hjerte, maa ikke forglemmes over de mange Fordringer, som Dannelsen for Livet I Verden gjør gjældende, Bestemmelsen til Himmelborger ikke sættes tilbage for Verdensborgerens Kald’ (For Ungdommen, July 1846, p. 8). The passage casts the child as both world and heavenly citizen, with a light warning against letting the first take precedence over the latter. Rather, world citizenship seems to mainly serve the function of preparing the child – as a Christian citizen in training – for his or her heavenly citizenship. An important part of this world citizenship, it seems, is the role of the child in missionary work, and we find in these magazines the staging of the child as a future missionary, or at least that of an active participant in religious life.
Missionsblad for Børn is quite explicit in this regard, such as in the self-reproachful text entitled ‘Hjælp dog de arme Hedninger!’ (Help the Poor Heathens!): ‘Every day fifty to sixty thousand unconverted heathens die. And it is our fault! Had we brought them the Gospel, they there would have found light and support, and could have wandered on the road of salvation.’
2 ‘Enhver Dag dør femti til sextitusinde uomvendte Hedninger. Og det er vor Skyld! Havde vi bragt dem Evangelium, saa haavde de deri fundet Lys og Støtte, og havde kunnet vandre paa Salighedens Vei’ (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1848, p. 14). The text goes on to present various ways in which the child reader may support the missionary cause, ranging from prayer – ‘If it be so, that they could not do anything but pray for the missionaries and their work, this is still indeed the most important one can do for them’
3 ‘Sæt endog, at de ikke kunne andet end bede for Missionærerne og deres Arbeide, saa er dog dette netop det Vigtigste, som man kan gjøre for dem’ (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1848, pp. 15–16). – to donations: ‘But children could also do more, if they wanted to, you have perhaps a money box from where you could take a small trifle for the missionary cause and place it in the missionary box.’
4 ‘Men Børn kunne ogsaa gjøre noget Mere, hvis de ville, De have maaske en Sparebøsse, hvoraf de kunne tage en liden Skjærv for Missionssagen og lægge den i Missionskassen’ (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1848, p. 16). In this way, the text encourages the child to be an active participant in missionary work in various ways, to be like the boy who prays to God to make him a missionary or, at the very least, to ask: ‘What can I do for the poor Heathens?’
5 ‘Hva kan da jeg gjøre for de arme Hedninger?’: (Missionsblad for Børn, February 1848, p. 17). The child saviour motif, which we usually think of in terms of Romantic symbolism,
6 A. Byrnes, ‘The Child Saviour: A Literary Motif’, in The Child: An Archetypal Symbol in Literature for Children and Adults (New York, 1995), pp. 7–32. See also R. C. Kuhn, Corruption in Paradise: The Child in Western Literature (London, 1982). here takes on a much more pragmatic role as future helpers in the lands of the heathens. In all of these examples the child’s agency, which also involves responsibility and blame, is tightly connected to the missionary cause and seems to answer to the words from the Acts of the Apostles that reverberate throughout these magazines, calling for the child reader to come over and help.
The idea of children as future citizens and as active participants in society is certainly in tune with Lutheran notions of the child. In the missionary magazines I have studied in this chapter this citizenship and participation relates first and foremost to religious life and missionary work but also makes itself manifest in the children’s ascribed roles as (letter) readers and writers. As such, the notion of the child as a Christian citizen in training seems to be intertwined with another training, namely that of a literary citizen in training, preparing the child to become a participant in print culture, which through the import of foreign materials and the international geography of the missionary work is also fundamentally transnational. Literary citizenship in these first missionary magazines, then, although concentrating on the missionary cause, encompasses at least the possibility of a range of different citizenships and roles for the child: as world citizen, heavenly citizen, and literary citizen.