Creating Pure Spaces: Edifices, Domesticity and the Temperance Movement

Abstract This chapter argues that the religious ideal of purity could only be maintained in the long run if there were spaces where it held true in an exemplary fashion. Therefore, the Basel missionaries aspired to create pure spaces in the form of Christian villages, domestic safe havens and sobriety societies. A central policy of the Basel Mission consisted of establishing separate Christian settlements for their parishioners within rural contexts, referred to as “salems” in West Africa. The Pietist family model formed the core of the civilising project, in which women and domesticity ultimately guaranteed the perpetuation of cleanliness and purity. The struggle for what missionaries perceived as the reinvigoration of the Christian family among the poor at home and the heathens abroad was a transregional expression of Pietist purity efforts. The temperance movement offers another example of how born-again Christians in both Europe and West Africa aspired to create pure spaces, where the people they sought to protect would find shelter from the seemingly harmful consequences of modern life.