“I Must Change My Life”

Abstract

The chapter recounts the intimate and public missionary life of May in Greece from 1930 to 1933. He finds the experience daunting, thrust from small town American life both to the scenes of classical antiquity and contemporary conflict between Greece and Turkey. He teaches refugee kids and realizes they have seen more and experienced worse moments than he ever has. All of this leads to a religious crisis in which May commits to a personalist vision of Christianity in opposition to a typical missionary attitude of simply counting saved souls without guiding their individual growth in grace. His crisis is also an exercise in rebellion against what he sees as his father’s superficial Christianity. In all, early 1932 is a turning point in his sense of self and his vision of the future borne of both the challenge and discomfort of Europe and Salonika in particular