A History of Christian Missions: Book Review (II)
Major Themes
Briefly, these are: The fundamental missionary nature of Christianity, that impelled believers to take the good news of Jesus Christ to those who had not heard; the hard work and suffering that were necessary for the gospel to be effectively communicated, and the heroism of many missionaries; the institutionalization of Christianity and its organization into larger or smaller national bodies with a hierarchical structure; the role of monasteries, monks, and special missionaries; the alliance of church and state throughout Christian history; the baneful effects of this unholy union; the roles of migration, invasion, and conquest; repeated attempts to “convert” nations from the top down, almost always resulting in resistance, persecution, and shallow Christianity when eventual “success” was secured.
Finally, we note the pattern of progression, “conquest,” and then retrogression, as formerly “Christian” nations and peoples were conquered from without or fatally compromised from within.
Part I, continued
Chapter 5: The Age of Discovery, 1500-1600
At the start of the “Age of Discovery,” two aims motivated the early explorers: “to bring the light of the true Gospel to hitherto unknown nations who had lived in darkness; secondly. . . to enter into contact with the Christian churches which were believed to be in existence in those lands,” and thus to establish alliances that could finally break the power over trade routes held by Muslims (120).
At first, Portugal and then Spain were the only two European nations engaged in the great voyages of exploration. To prevent rivalry between these two Roman Catholic countries, the Pope assigned to Portugal the territories east of a line drawn on the map from north to south west of the Azores. Later, the line was moved eastward to recognize the discovery of Brazil by a Portuguese. The lands west of that land would belong to Spain.
Rome bestowed both ecclesiastical and political authority on Spain and Portugal, with the clear understanding that godly messengers of Christ would accompany the ships and soldiers who set out to conquer the newly discovered territories.
Neill first tells the story of Portuguese advances into Asia, and especially of the Jesuits, a missionary order that was confirmed by the Pope in 1540. The author calls this “the most important event in the missionary history of the Roman Catholic church” (126).
He then traces the exploits of the Jesuits in India, where they encountered the ancient “Christians of St. Thomas,” a group that claimed ecclesiastical descent from the apostle Thomas and was affiliated with the Syrian church of the East. The Jesuits persuaded them to break with their patriarch in Mesopotamia and align themselves with the Pope, a move that worked for only a while. As in Europe, the Jesuits sought to convert whole peoples through their leaders. This policy, as we shall see, had mixed results and was sometimes disastrous.
Francis Xavier, one of the greatest missionaries of all time in Neill’s view, went from India through Malacca to Japan. There, he succeeded in planting the seeds of a church that eventually grew to number 300,000 converts. Persecution broke out in 1614 and was so fierce that by 1630 Roman Catholic Christianity had ceased to exist in Japan.
Turning to China, Neill relates the main facts of the remarkable career of Matteo Ricci, who arrived in China in 1583 after some time in the Portuguese colony of Macao. A great man by any standard of measurement, Ricci eventually established a Jesuit mission in Beijing, where they had access to the imperial court and high officials. Ricci’s reputation as a missionary rests partly on his policy of adapting the Christian message to Confucianism, an approach that was controversial in its day and has remained so since. (For more on Ricci, go to Ricci, Matteo | BDCC (bdcconline.net).)
Neill’s history then explores the progress of Roman Catholic missions in the Philippines and Central and South America. After a region had been conquered by Spanish or Portuguese soldiers, the missionaries were to gather the native people in villages, teach them the rudiments of the Roman Catholic faith, and establish schools and churches. This strategy eventually resulted in the “conversion” of the people and the “Christianization” of the land. Sadly, true religion was rare and the impact of Roman Catholicism, though wide, was not deep. Meanwhile, as usual, the church was closely aligned with the political rulers.
“The principal obstacle to the evangelization of the western peoples was the cruelty with which they were treated by the Spanish colonists,” who were subject to the cupidity and harshness of the men into whose hands the helpless Indians had been given over. . . [In time], whole populations began to die out; it may well be that their principal sickness was despair” (145). Missionary protests produced some changes, but no real reform.
Chapter 6: The Roman Catholic Missions, 1600-1787
Roman Catholic missions in sixteenth century were dominated by the two sponsoring nations, Spain and Portugal, and led by the religious orders, primarily the Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans. Missionaries were often too entangled in the affairs of the world; rivalry was intense.
“In 1622 Pope Gregory XV took action and brought into being the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, often conveniently known for short as the Propaganda” (154). From now on, missionary work was to be under the authority and direction of Rome. The first secretary of the Propaganda enunciated basic principles that still command attention, such as allowing people to retain their customs, etc., as long as they did not conflict with the Christian faith.
“The second great triumph of the movement . . . was the inauguration in 1663 of the seminary of the Société des Missions Étrangeres at Paris” (153), a reflection of the rise of France “as the great Roman Catholic missionary nation” (153). One of its main goals was to raise up an indigenous clergy.
Neill tracks the progress of this new missionary movement in India, where controversial experiments in indigenizing the faith were undertaken, and then China, where the labors of the Jesuits led to the appointment of a Chinese bishop, Lo Wen-Tsao, and where rivalry between the religious orders led to the (in)famous Rites controversy. Our evaluation of this long-drawn-out controversy will depend in large part upon our theology. The Franciscans and Dominicans “were horrified to find among the converts of the Jesuits what they regarded as a semi-pagan Christianity; they felt that the Jesuits, out of a base desire to stand well with the nobility and to avoid persecution, had sold out on essentials of the Christian faith. The Jesuits looked with great disfavor on those newcomers, who would not take the trouble to understand the Chinese mind” (163).
The missionaries disagreed on “the customs to be observed at funerals, the reverence to be paid to ancestors – was this civil deference, or did it involve an element of religious worship? – and the terms to be used in translating the name of God” (163). When the matter was referred to Rome for judgment, the Pope pronounced against the accommodationist approach of the Jesuits. When the Chinese emperor heard of this, he considered it an improper interference in the affairs of his realm, and in 1704 ordered all missionaries who did not follow the rules laid down by the Jesuits to be expelled.
It seems to me that the Franciscans and Dominicans were right to see ancestral rites as acts of worship, at least as far as the mass of common folk were concerned, even though the emperor’s judgment that they were only civil ceremonies reflected the attitude of the literati, with whom the Jesuits mostly interacted.
For the next two hundred years, “Roman practice, nearly as it was at Rome, was to be in every detail the law for missions” (165). That included using Latin in the liturgy. At the same time, the missiological experiments in India came to an abrupt end.
The story in Vietnam is quite different. There, the Jesuit Alexander de Rhodes, with a remarkable linguistic ability, learned Vietnamese, a notoriously difficult tonal language and reduced it to writing. He also invented an extremely effective instrument for spreading the gospel and planting indigenous churches: the “company of catechists,” lay brothers living in community and under rule, who were trained in the faith and in the rudiments of medical care.
In West Africa, Capuchins recorded large numbers of converts, but extremely low levels of instruction and over-reliance on the favor of local rulers led to shallow churches. In Africa generally, Roman Catholic missions made little lasting imprint because they did not make a “serious attempt . . . to face all that is involved in a mission to quite primitive peoples – the need for a deep and accurate knowledge of the language, understanding of their customs and mentality, the long and patient instruction that must precede baptism, the endlessly patient pastoral care that must follow it” (169-170).
In North America, Roman Catholic missionaries faced enormous difficulties, compounded by “inhuman cynicism with which the white man engaged the Indian in his own quarrels,” and the introduction of alcohol and its devastating effects, leading to “the tragedy of the red man” (171). South America, despite early successes by the Jesuits in Paraguay, yielded little lasting fruit.
“The second half of the eighteenth century was a period of tragic collapse for the Roman Catholic missions,” as Spain, Portugal and France were driven out of their conquered territories by England and Holland as the new Protestant missionary movement got underway (173).
In China, Roman Catholics endured fierce persecution, and foreign missionaries survived only by going into hiding in the homes of the faithful. “In the nineteenth century almost everything had to be done afresh” (174). Something similar happened in Siam and North Vietnam; only in South Vietnam did Roman Catholicism maintain itself and even grow a little.
In 1773, Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Jesuits. For too long, there had been complaints of “their arrogance, their improper missionary methods, their interference in political affairs, and the vast wealth accumulated through their commercial speculations” (173).
In his summary evaluation of two centuries of Roman Catholic missions and the relative lack of fruit they had borne, Neill points to several factors: The churches at home were in a state of “lassitude and retreat” in the seventeenth century; the numbers of those engaged in missions was small, and many died of disease and persecution; the various religious orders engaged in constant competition and rivalry; they failed to develop in indigenous priesthood; they made local rules that retarded growth, such as the use of Latin and the requirement that clergy be celibate; and they did not translate the Scriptures.
In spite of all this, Roman Catholics had created a “bridgehead” in a number of lands that would help them when they resumed active missionary work in the nineteenth century.
Chapter 7: New Beginnings in East and West, 1600-1800
This chapter begins with a good survey of Russian Orthodox church in the early 1700s. Moscow now considered itself the “third Rome,” since the first Rome (the Roman Catholics) had fallen into heresy and the second, Constantinople, had fallen to the Turks. Russian missionary activity was always so closely connected with the state that missionaries became as it were, agents of the expansionist Russian empire. Still, Russian Orthodox missionaries have been notable for their zeal, industry, and sufferings.
Protestant missions got off to a slow start, as most Reformation churches were also connected to the state and saw no need to move beyond national borders.
Credit for lighting the fire of Protestant missions goes to the Pietists, a movement within churches for renewal and witness. About the same time, King Frederick IV of Denmark became burdened for the “well-being of his Indian subjects in the tiny Danish settlement of Tranquebar” on the southeast coast of India. He dispatched two Pietist missionaries, whose principles of operation were similar to all pioneer missionaries:
“1. Church and school are to go together. Christians must be able to read the Word of God, and therefore all Christian children must be educated . . . 2. If Christians are to read the Word of God, that word must be available to them in their own language. . . 3. The preaching of the gospel must be based on an accurate knowledge of the mind of the people,” acquired through careful study of the actual religious beliefs of the people . . . 4. The aim must be definite and personal conversion. . . 5. At as early a date as possible, an [indigenous] church, with its own . . . ministry, must come into being” (195-196).
These principles became a template for most Protestant mission work until the end of the nineteenth century and, for evangelicals, into the twenty-first century.
Likewise, Neill’s description of “the most famous of all the missionaries who have worked in South India . . . Christian Friedrich Schwartz (1726-98)” could serve as a (very high) standard for all who would gain lasting success as ambassadors of Christ. Schwartz was a man marked by long (48 years) service in India; “uprightness and probity” of character; a profound “knowledge of the Indian character”; wide knowledge of several languages, including Tamil and Persian; a “charm that enabled him to move easily in all classes of society”; “the extreme simplicity of his life”; “utter self-forgetfulness and integrity. But central to everything was a simple and stalwart faith, and a total dependence on the merits of the Redeemer. Men who met Schwartz knew that they had seen a man of God” (199).
From India, Neill turns his eyes to Greenland, the West Indies, Africa, and North America. In all these places, it was a time of small beginnings.
Part Two: From 1800 to the Present
Chapter 8: Introduction
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, missionary activity outside of Europe had almost come to a standstill, and the results of previous efforts were small, fragile, or even buried in oblivion. Why? Because Europe was still weak, and unable to support sustained and vigorous missionary efforts.
Several changes transformed Europe, much of the rest of the world, and cross-cultural missions:
A long period of peace in Europe after centuries of devastating wars
A new sense of confidence in European civilization and its relatively greater strength compared to other cultures and nations
“Scientific and economic” discoveries that achieved the “mastery of speed and the mastery of power. . . The rapidity of communication which set in with the invention of the steam-engine and the steamship did more than anything else to make possible the first of the new world in which we live” (209)
The Industrial Revolution “sent Europe out conquering with a new self-confidence, and increasingly, as the century advanced, with a new sense of mission to the world” (210). Along with this came a “passion for exploration,” which “was followed, or accompanied by, exploitation” (210). In short, this was colonialism, the evils of which Neill succinctly describes, though without mentioning some of the benefits that this movement brought to conquered peoples.
At the same time, there was “an unforeseen religious awakening which affected almost every Christian denomination in every country of the West” and led to the great burst of missionary zeal and outreach. By 1920, missionaries had planted churches, translated the Scriptures, and established schools and hospitals in almost every country of the world. Almost always, the poor and the oppressed responded most warmly to the gospel. Missionary societies were formed in most Protestant nations and Roman Catholics expanded their work under a stronger papacy for the first time in missions history, women joined in the work and soon outnumbered men.
Alas, Western missionaries “in the nineteenth century had to some extent yielded to the colonial complex” (220). For too long, they did not raise up native clergy or, when they did, power was still retained by the Westerner.
Chapter 9: New Forces in Europe and America, 1792-1858
This chapter begins the thrilling story of what K.S. Latourette famously called “The Great Century” of Christian missions. During this remarkable period, Western missions, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, exploded onto the global scene with revolutionary force, forever changing much of the world forever.
Neill opens with the well-known story of William Carey, often (though not quite accurately, since others had gone before him) called “the father of modern missions.” He and his companions Joshua Marshman and William Ward – “the Serampore Trio” – established a foothold for Protestant missionary work in India.
Like almost all pioneer Protestant missionaries who followed him, Carey set out first to learn the language, in this case Bengali, of which he acquired “incomparable knowledge” (223), and then to translate the Bible. He and his team faced terrific obstacles, but they persevered, eventually producing more than a dozen translations of all or part of the Bible. Some were of dubious value, but a start had been made.
Carey embarked on a “five-pronged advance”: “(1) the widespread preaching of the Gospel by every possible method; (2) the support of preaching by the distribution of the Bible in the languages of the country; (3) the establishment at the earliest possible moment of a Church; (4) a profound study of the background and thought of the non-Christian people; (5) the training at the earliest possible moment of an indigenous ministry” (224).
Neill comments: “In each of these five directions notable success was achieved” (224). Aside from the Bible translations, “Carey’s Sanskrit grammar, a. . . work of 1,000 pages, was a memorable contribution. . . Carey is held by the experts to have been the founder of prose literature in Bengali” (225).
Neill, an Anglican, then traces the history of Anglican missions in India. We read, for example, of Henry Martyn, who “in seven brief years . . .completed the New Testament in Urdu, a version which is still the basis of that which is in use today, . . . completed a thorough revision of the Persian, and was deeply launched on the revision of the Arabic” (227). In the south of India the Church Missionary Society began work among the Church of the Thomas Christians in 1816.
“A new period in the history of Indian missions begins with the arrival in 1830 of Alexander Duff (1806-78),” who came “to present the Gospel to the cultured sections of the community through higher education in English” (233). His method was controversial, but produced lasting fruit. Others followed in his steps, laying the foundation for India’s modern educational system.
We do not have space to follow Neill’s lively narrative of the efforts of other missionary societies, which planted the seeds for a church that today ranks only second in the number of professing Christians.
That brings us to China. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to that great and ancient land, arrived in 1807. We know his story: He had to learn Chinese in secrecy, because Chinese were forbidden to teach that language to foreigners. Nor could he reside in China without some legitimate employment. He felt “compelled” therefore to work as a translator for the East India company, which imported opium to China to pay for the tea it raised in India. Morrison’s connection with the EIC, and the Opium War of 182, have forever etched in the minds of the Chinese a connection between the gospel of Christ, the missionary movement, and Western imperialism.
Could Morrison have chosen a different path? Yes. He knew that many Chinese were living outside China. That is why he decided to found an Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, where he set his colleague Milne to work. I think Morrison should have lived there also, an arrangement that would have allowed him a “normal” family life.
Nevertheless, he is rightly remembered and praised as the man who, with the help of Milne and courageous Chinese assistants, translated the entire Bible into Chinese. “His whole life was devoted to the extension of his knowledge of Chinese, that shoreless sea, and to use it for Christian purposes. . . His great dictionary of Chinese went far to establish the knowledge of that language on a scientific footing” (238). His indefatigable labors laid the foundation of the entire Protestant missionary enterprise in China.
After the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which granted to foreigners the right to live in China and to be tried by their own courts (“extra-territoriality”), “while deploring the [Opium] war and doubting the wisdom of the treaty, missionaries took the view that what was deplorable in itself had been overruled by divine providence with a view to the opening up of China to the gospel” (240). Neill comments that the resentment among Chinese over this and other “unequal treaties,” and the stigma thereby attached to foreign missions, “have never quite died away. That Christian work seemed so plainly to enter in the wake of gunboats and artillery was to be a permanent handicap to it in China” (240).
China having been “opened,” however, many missionary societies hastened to send workers there. Most of them were content to work in the five “treaty ports” allowed to foreigners, but a few were not. Neill briefly describes the pioneering work of William Burns, a Presbyterian, and the flamboyant and controversial Karl F. A. Gutzlaff (1803-51). Despite his failure to see that he was being deceived by his Chinese helpers, his vision of using Chinese to evangelize their own people, his mastery of the language and customs, his dressing like a Chinese, and his itinerant ministry all made a huge impact on J. Hudson Taylor.
The author concisely describes the rise and fall of the Taiping Rebellion, then concludes this section with the “determination of all the Protestant missions in China . . . to have from the earliest possible date a fully ordained and responsible Chinese ministry,” by which he means ministers of the gospel. After giving us the name of the first Chinese ordained by the Anglicans, he says, “This concentration on the indigenous ministry was of vital importance, and proved its worth a century later in the general collapse of missions in China” (245).
Neill then follows the course of pioneer missionaries in Thailand, Malaya, Borneo, Indonesia, and Burma. The remarkable labors and sufferings of Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) receive ample space. Like Morrison and so many other Protestant missionaries, Judson mastered the Burmese language, translated the Bible, and left behind “an immense collection of materials for a dictionary; the English-Burmese section was ready for the press” (249).
The limits of this review do not permit even the barest summary of the rest of the chapter, which narrates the work of European missionary progress among native peoples in Ceylon, the South Pacific, Hawaii; the ancient civilizations in the Middle East; and the vast reaches of sub-Saharan Africa. With a rare combination of succinctness and detail, Neill highlights the main achievements and introduces us to the major actors, including Robert Moffatt (1795-1883), “one of those in whom the vocation of a missionary has in outstanding degree manifested its power to produce great men and splendid characters” (264, quoting J. Richer).
Just a few notes about Moffatt: he lived and worked among the Bechuana for forty-eight years; became a “master of the Tswana language, the difficulties of which were formidable”; and by 1857 had produced a translation of the whole Bible, which he published himself. Always seeking balance and candor, Neill does not pass over the very real flaws of this great man, especially his patriarchal attitude towards the Africans.
Remarking that “the fame of Moffat has been a little overshadowed by the superlative greatness of his friend and son-in-law David Livingstone (1813-73),” the author takes pains to record Livingstone’s life-long passion: the suppression of the slave trade. Since Africans were enslaved by other Africans, especially Muslims, Livingstone believed that “Africans should be persuaded to engage in legitimate commerce, exchanging the products of their own fields and forests for those desirable things which the white man could supply.” Only then “would the evil and destructive commerce [of slavery] be brought to an end” (267).
The chapter concludes with brief but powerful sections on missionary work in Madagascar and the southern tip of South America.
In summary: “In sixty years, Protestant missions had entered a large number of countries, and most of the Churches of the Protestant world had become engaged in the enterprise. But we are still in the day of small things . . . But the missionary force was there. Back-breaking work had given it its tools in language and Scripture” and the way was prepared for the next massive surge of Western missionary activity (272).
To be continued.