In the late 20th century about one-third of the world's people claimed the
Christian faith. Christians thus constituted the world's largest religious
community and embraced remarkable diversity, with churches in every nation.
Christianity's demographic and dynamic centre had shifted from its Western base
to Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific region, where more than half the
world's Christians lived. This trend steadily accelerated as the church declined
in Europe. The tangibly real universal church represented a new phenomenon in
the history of religions. This was the fruit of mission.
The word mission (Latin: missio), as a translation of the Greek apostole,
"a sending," appears only once in the English New Testament
(Galatians 2:8). An apostle (apostolos) is one commissioned and sent to
fulfill a special purpose. The roots of mission, Christians have believed, lie
in God's active outreach to humanity in history--as a call to those able to
fulfill the divine purpose, among them Abraham, Moses, Jonah, and Paul. The New
Testament designated Jesus as God's apostle (Hebrews 3:1). Jesus' prayer in the
Gospel According to John includes the words "As thou didst send me into the
world, so I have sent them into the world. . . . [I pray also] for those who
believe in me through their word, that they may all be one . . . so that the
world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:18, 20-21). (see also Index:
Bible)
The ground for mission appeared early in the Old Testament in God's concern
for all nations (Genesis, chapters 10 [the "Table of Nations"] and 11)
and the calling of Abraham--implicitly of Israel (Genesis 12:1-3). The Jews
acknowledged God's sovereignty over all the world's peoples but believed God had
chosen Israel to be the sign to all nations of the divine will and purpose
(compare the "Covenant on Sinai," Exodus 19:5-6). Echoing throughout
the Old Testament, this theme found its clearest voice in Isaiah: "I have
given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations" (42:6); and
in God's universal task for Israel as servant to the nations: "I will give
you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the
earth" (49:6). (see also Index: Judaism)
The Maccabean wars filled the Jews with fervent hope for a powerful messiah
to bring political triumph to a suffering Israel. Jesus Christ, professed by his
followers as Messiah in the role of suffering servant presented in Isaiah
(52:13-53:12), found widespread rejection among his people. Yet those from
Israel who confessed faith in him as Messiah and Lord saw in Christ's
Incarnation, death, and Resurrection God's decisive entry into history--an act
in continuity with God's incursions in Israel's past. In that reality they and
their successors viewed the Old and New Testaments (or "Covenants") as
inseparably united and mutually interdependent. The church was born and grew as
the covenanted instrument of and witness to God's mission (missio
Dei), the human agency of God's outreach to all the peoples of the world.
The "Great Commission" of Jesus declares: "Go therefore and
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age"
(Matthew 28:19-20; compare Mark 16:15, Luke 24:47, John 20:21-22, and Acts 1:8).
Not an isolated command, it re-expressed, in Christian perspective, the
obedience of a servant in universal witness to the mission of God as declared in
the Old and New Covenants.
The Christian mission, the church, and Christianity--each distinguishable,
but inseparably related--have experienced across 20 centuries of world history
four major transitions.
Born on Jewish soil but quickly emerging from Palestine to cover the rim of
the Mediterranean world, the new missionary faith made its first major
transition. The Apostle Paul became the missionary to the Gentile world. With
help from Barnabas and a local network of coworkers, many of them women, he
evangelized Asia Minor and southern Greece and eventually reached Rome. When
Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70, Antioch became Christianity's centre in the
Eastern Empire, and mission became one of Gentiles to Gentiles. Thus began the
transition.
Dominated politically by the Roman Empire, the new religion benefited from
one unifying factor in the Greco-Roman world: common, or koine, Greek provided
its lingua franca. Alexandrian Jews had already translated (250 BCE) the Hebrew
Bible into koine Greek for dispersed Greek-speaking Jews. The New Testament
writers also wrote in koine Greek. In that largely literate empire early
Christians used and widely distributed the Hebrew Scriptures. (see also Index:
Roman Republic and Empire, Greek religion, Roman religion, biblical translation,
early church)
Several factors brought growth to the faith. From the beginning
laypeople--women and men--conducted the largest part of mission. Congregations
grew in homes used as churches. Although it was owned by the husband, inside the
house the wife was its mistress, and thousands of women opened their homes to
newly forming churches. Most evangelization occurred in the daily routine as men
and women shared their faith with others. Christianity's monotheism, morality,
assurance of eternal life with God, and ancient Scriptures attracted many to the
faith.
From the empire-wide occasions of emperor worship, Rome had exempted only the
Jews. Christians also refused to engage in emperor worship. Rome declared their
faith an illegal religion, and persecutions ensued. In the persecutions so many
Christians had borne powerful witness (Greek: martyria) that the word
martyr quickly evolved into its current meaning. Christian faith--not least that
of young women such as Blandina, Perpetua, and Felicity--had made an impact, and
many who beheld that witness became Christian. In 313 when the new emperor,
Constantine, declared the persecutions ended, Christians probably constituted 10
percent of the empire's population.
Christians daily encountered members of other religions--the mysteries,
Gnosticism, and philosophical cults. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries external and
internal pressures drove the young church to strengthen itself through creating
a structured ministry, formulating beliefs in creeds, and producing a canon of
Scripture. That process transformed a movement into a young religious
institution. The major thrust of the pre-Constantinian church-mission sprang
from the conviction that Christians and congregations were fulfilling a mission
and ministry begun in Jesus Christ. Baptism provided induction into the vibrant
company of "God's own people" (1 Peter 2:9-10).
By 315 many who saw advantage in belonging to Constantine's new imperial
faith poured into the churches. The result was striking: small congregations of
convinced Christians serving God's outreach in the world became large churches
with many nominal members whose instruction and needs had to be met within the
new churches. As multitudes entered the churches, the need for outreach to
others was much reduced, and most churches shifted from an outward thrust to an
inward focus upon themselves. Mission and service became the province of
priests, deacons, and, increasingly, monks. This Constantinian inversion helped
shape the churches of Christendom.
At the same time, mission beyond the frontiers of the empire continued.
Ulfilas (c. 311-c.
382), Arian apostle to the Goths, translated the Bible into their tongue.
Martin of Tours (c. 316-397) served in Gaul, and Patrick (c.
389-c. 461) laboured in Ireland. In Malabar, South India, a church of
ancient tradition, demonstrably present since the 3rd century, held the Apostle
Thomas to be its founder. Frumentius (d. c. 380) from Tyre evangelized
in Ethiopia and became the first patriarch of its church. In the 5th century
Nestorians pushed into Central Asia and began a mission that eventually reached
the capital of China. (see also Index: Christians of Saint Thomas)
In 410 Rome fell to the barbarians, and by 476 the entire Western Roman
Empire had collapsed. In the eyes of many members of the still-pagan Roman
nobility, the rise of the Christian faith in the Mediterranean world had caused
the empire's downfall. Yet where Constantine had built his capital,
Constantinople--the "second Rome"--the Eastern Empire continued.
In its first 500 years Christianity achieved remarkable missionary and
theological acculturation. Through the first four ecumenical councils (325-451),
and in the Nicene Creed (on the Trinity) and Definition of Chalcedon (on
Christology), the church had stated its faith with meaning for the Greek and
Latin worlds.
By the close of the period Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, the
Vulgate, had appeared. Church and state already were locked in uneasy embrace.
The first great transition of the Christian mission--from Judaic Palestine to
the Mediterranean world--had ended.
Rome's urban and literate world quickly disappeared under the barbarians'
westward onslaught. These rough conquerors filled Europe's rural lands; however,
they recognized in missionary monks the bearers of a new faith and preservers of
a higher civilization. The monks instructed them in the faith and in statecraft.
The mission thrust of these monks contrasted sharply with that of the tiny
persecuted church in the first three centuries. Then, except for the conversions
of the city-state of Edessa, in AD 200, and Armenia, declared a Christian nation
in AD 300, people joined the new faith individually. In this second transition
whole peoples followed their sovereigns into the new faith.
Christianity expanded in the Byzantine Empire, most notably in Russia, but it
experienced a widening breach, and a split of the Eastern and Western churches
occurred in 1054. Yet the major result of this 1,000-year mission was the
creation of European civilization. Its emergence marked the second great
transition of the faith.
The medieval mission began in 496 with the baptism of Clovis, king of the
Franks, and his soldiers. Baptized by a Catholic bishop rather than an Arian one
(through the influence of Clovis' Catholic wife), they helped to turn the tide
against the Arians.
Irish Celtic Christianity differed from that on the Continent. It was
organized into communalized groups under an abbot and nurtured intense
missionary conviction and outreach. It did not recognize Rome's authority. The
abbot Columba (c. 521-597) built a monastery on Iona, off Scotland's
western coast, as a base for mission to Scotland and northern England. From it
Aidan (d. 651) traveled to Lindisfarne, off England's northern coast, where he
and a successor, Cuthbert (634/635-687), led in evangelizing in Northumbria.
Moving southward, the Celtic monks might have evangelized all of Britain, but
midway they met Roman missionaries. Other Celtic peregrini,
or "wanderers," evangelized on the Continent. (see also Index:
Ireland, Celtic Church)
Pope Gregory I the Great (reigned 590-604), who possessed the mind of both a
statesman and a theologian, operated as a Roman emperor and greatly magnified
papal power and temporal involvement. In 596 he launched, through Augustine of
Canterbury, a mission to England based on gradualism and accommodation--the
first papally sponsored mission. For the next 1,000 years Roman missions
operated with the pope's direction, the king's support, and the monks' services.
(see also Index: papacy)
Augustine's missionaries reached England's southern coast in 597. King
Aethelberht of Kent and his wife, Bertha, a Christian, enabled them to make
their base at Canterbury. Within the year the King and 10,000 subjects had
received baptism. Roman missionaries moving northward met the Celts, and at the
Synod of Whitby in 664 the Celts accepted Roman jurisdiction and patterns.
Inspired by Irish missionary enthusiasm, the English Christians began a
500-year mission across northern Europe and finally into Scandinavia.
Outstanding in this effort were Willibrord (658?-739), "Apostle to the
Frisians" (Friesland, Holland, and Belgium), and Wynfrid, renamed Boniface
(c.
675-754), one of the greatest of all Roman missionaries. In central and
southern Germany Boniface established Benedictine monasteries for
evangelization. With full papal trust and Carolingian support he strengthened
and reformed the Frankish church.
Boniface also saw the need for women in mission. From England he recruited
Lioba (d. 782) and entrusted her with developing Benedictine monasteries for
women. Despite her outstanding and unique achievements, with her death that
movement ended, and Roman Catholic women reentered mission service only in the
19th century. But the Christian wives of pagan kings, who led their husbands
into the faith and through them hastened the Christianizing of whole peoples,
also contributed to its spread.
In Rome on Christmas Day, AD 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne (d. 814)
Holy Roman emperor. Leo thus demonstrated the primacy of papal power over
temporal rulers and symbolized the growing gulf between the Eastern and Western
churches. Charlemagne's missionary zeal and political goals fused. Saxons in his
territories faced a choice: become Christian or die.
From the Holy Roman Empire, Catholic outreach into Bohemia took root under
King Wenceslas I (c. 907-929), with evangelization complete by about AD
1000. In Poland, Mieszko I, under the influence of his wife, accepted baptism in
966 or 967. His reign saw the beginning of the evangelization of the country,
which continued under his able son, Boleslav. In 955 the Holy Roman emperor Otto
I defeated the Magyars and brought them to Christian faith. Later, the country's
first king, Stephen (reigned 1000-38), made Hungary a Christian land. (see also Index:
Boleslaw I)
Early attempts at evangelization in Denmark and Sweden were made by a German
monk, Ansgar (801-865). Canute (d. 1035), Danish king of England, of Denmark,
and of Norway, was probably raised as a Christian and determined that Denmark
should become a Christian country. The archbishop of Canterbury consecrated
bishops for him, and he saw his goal realized before he died. Olaf I Tryggvason
(reigned 995-c.
1000) was baptized by a Christian hermit, returned to Norway and was accepted
as king, and sought to make his realm Christian--a task completed by King Olaf
II Haraldsson (reigned 1016-30), later St. Olaf. Olaf I also presented
Christianity to a receptive Iceland. Leif Eriksson took the faith to Greenland's
Viking settlers, who quickly accepted it. After several efforts Sweden became
Christian during the reign of Sverker (c. 1130-56). Sweden's Eric IX
controlled Finland and in 1155 required the Finns to be baptized, but only in
1291, with the appointment of Magnus, the first Finnish bishop, was
evangelization completed.
Removal of the empire's capital from Rome to Constantinople, the "second
Rome," in 330 greatly strengthened the temporal power of the bishop of
Rome. In the Byzantine Empire the patriarch of Constantinople remained under the
political control of the Christian emperor. Cultural, political, philosophical,
and theological differences strained relations between the two cities. Rome
demanded Latin as the one ecclesiastical language, but Constantinople encouraged
national languages for the liturgy and emphasized translation of the Scriptures.
In 1054 leaders of the two bodies excommunicated each other. (see also Index:
Eastern Orthodoxy)
One reflection of growing difficulties lay in counterclaims to pursue mission
in and hold the allegiance of border areas between the two jurisdictions.
Rostislav of Great Moravia sought help from the Emperor, who (presumably through
the Patriarch) in about 862 sent two brothers, Constantine (later called Cyril;
c. 827-869) and Methodius (c. 825-884), from Constantinople to
Moravia. They provided Scriptures and liturgy in the mother tongue of each
people evangelized. They also trained others in their methods--a major factor in
winning Bulgaria.
Constantinople's greatest mission outreach was to areas that later became
Russia. In the 10th century the Scandinavian Rus controlled the areas around
Kiev. Undoubtedly influenced by his Christian grandmother Olga and by a proposed
marriage alliance with the Byzantine imperial family, Vladimir I (c.
956-1015) of Kiev, from among several options, chose the Byzantine rite.
Baptized in 988, he led the Kievans to Christianity. His son Yaroslav encouraged
translations and built monasteries.
From 1240, and continuing for 200 years, the Mongol Golden Horde was suzerain
over Russia but generally allowed freedom to the church. For Russians the church
proved to be the one means through which they could express national unity. They
moved the metropolitanate from Kiev to Moscow, and their church became and
remained the largest of the Orthodox bodies, protector and leader for the
others. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. Moscow became
"the third Rome" and accepted for itself the mystique, dynamism, and
messianic destiny of the first Rome--a reality essential to understanding
Russian Orthodoxy and nationalism.
East of the Euphrates River, Nestorians and Jacobites maintained headquarters
in Persia for eastern outreach. The more numerous Nestorians developed a
far-flung mission network throughout Central Asia. The Persian bishop A-lo-pen
reached China's capital, Ch'ang-an (modern Sian), in 635 and founded monasteries
to spread the Christian faith. By the end of the T'ang dynasty (618-907),
however, the Nestorian community had disappeared. (see also Index: Syrian
Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch)
In 1289 the Pope--responding to a request made 20 years earlier by Kublai
Khan for 100 Christian scholars to be brought by the Polo brothers--sent one
Franciscan, Giovanni da Montecorvino (1247-1328). He reached Khanbaliq (Peking)
in 1294 and launched a small but successful mission. In 1342 Giovanni dei
Marignolli arrived with 32 other missionaries, but their work flourished for
less than 25 years. The succeeding Ming dynasty excluded foreigners. Twice
Christianity had entered and disappeared from China.
Between Muhammad's death in 632 and the defeat of Muslim forces at
Poitiers by Charles Martel's Franks in 732, Arab Muslims had taken the Middle
East and Egypt, then swept across North Africa, turned northward through Spain,
and ventured briefly into southwestern France. Within a century Islam had
eliminated more than half of Christendom.
Encouraged by the papacy, the Iberian reconquest (742-1492) became a crusade
against Islam and fused an Iberian Catholicism that Spain and Portugal
later transplanted around the globe. In the late 20th century its members
represented more than half the world's Roman Catholics. The Crusades (1095-1396)
produced among many Christians an adversarial approach to those of other faiths.
Ramon Llull (c.
1235-1316) pursued a different way. He studied Arabic and sought through
dialogue and reason the conversion of Muslims and Jews. (see also Index:
Iberian Peninsula)
As a result of the second great transition the faith of the Mediterranean
world had become that of all Europe and had largely created its civilization.
Christendom had lost half its members to Islam, but Europe had become the
new centre of the Christian faith.
By 1500 Europe was bursting with new energy and achievement, and from it
Christianity spread worldwide. Iberian monks in the 16th century spanned the
globe, and 300 years later Protestant missionaries did the same.
With Europe cut off from Asia by the Muslims, Portugal's Prince Henry the
Navigator (1394-1460) launched exploratory voyages along the western coast of
Africa. In 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India; others pushed to Asia's eastern
limits. Papal grants in 1454 and 1456 gave Henry all lands, power over the
missionary bishops therein, and trading rights south of the Tropic of Cancer. An
early Portuguese mission to the Congo produced an African bishop, but the church
quickly disappeared. Other efforts on both African coasts also were
unsuccessful.
Spain sought a route to India through Columbus' westward voyages. In 1494 a
papal grant gave Spain everything west of 47° W longitude (eastern Brazil).
Under royal patronage (patronato real, or padroado), monarchs of
both nations accepted responsibility for evangelizing the newly found peoples.
Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and, from 1542, Jesuits staffed the
resulting missions.
By 1600 France was becoming the third great imperial Roman Catholic power and
was also deeply involved in mission. At the same time England, Holland, and
Denmark--all Protestant--began an imperial thrust that challenged the Roman
Catholic powers in their own territories.
When the Europeans arrived in the Americas, the Indian population south of
the Rio Grande numbered some 35,000,000, but in North America there were at most
1,200,000 Indians--a marked difference. The great majority of European males
entering Latin America were unmarried and quickly produced a mestizo, or mixed,
population. European settlers, who expected to instruct the Indians in the faith
and protect them, gained their labour. The Indians were used widely as slaves
and often were treated cruelly. Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566)
championed their cause but, ironically, favoured increasing the already growing
number of African slaves. (see also Index: American Indian)
Despite its weaknesses, the Roman Catholic mission gained vast numbers.
Although later modified, a 1555 decree which held that Indians, mestizos, and
mulattos could not be ordained proved ruinous. Never inspired to produce their
own clergy, the new Christians became dependent upon European clergy.
Franciscans and Dominicans traveled widely and built mission churches. The
most notable development--used widely but most fully developed by Jesuits in
Paraguay--was the appearance of the reducciones In these mission-operated
villages Indians were instructed in the faith, taught to develop trades, and
protected from the Europeans. Despite good intentions this environment did not
produce strong Christians. The movement dissolved when the Jesuits were
disbanded in 1773.
Much of the evangelization appeared to be an integral part of military
conquest. Yet in whatever way Indians and mestizos intermingled past beliefs and
practices with their Christian faith, the majority thought of themselves as
Roman Catholic.
Evangelization in French North America followed a somewhat different course.
In 1534 Jacques Cartier claimed New France (Canada) for his homeland. A century
later French missionaries began to enter the territory. In their work these
missionaries sought to reshape Indian life as little as possible.
In Asia, chiefly through the Jesuits, some of the most productive missions
appeared. Under a papal commission the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier
(1506-52) reached Goa in 1542. He established Christian communities in India,
built a college in Goa for training priests, began a prospering mission in
Japan, and died off the coast of China while hoping to enter that land.
By 1600 there were about 300,000 Christians in Japan. Christianity was
proscribed, thousands were martyred, and the Japanese sealed themselves off from
the West.
China also was closed to foreigners, but the Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo
Ricci (1552-1610) arrived in 1582 and eventually reached the capital. His
efforts brought success, and other Jesuits followed. An edict of toleration was
proclaimed in 1692. Ricci's conviction that the honouring of ancestors and
Confucius was a social rite that could be accommodated within the church
produced the Chinese Rites Controversy (1634-1742). It brought bitter opposition
from Dominicans and Franciscans. Attempts at papal intervention at the beginning
of the 18th century angered the Emperor. The Chinese forced missionaries to
leave the country and persecuted Christians. Yet by 1800 some 250,000 remained,
and since the 16th century the church has been continuously present in China.
(see also Index: Chinese Rites Controversy)
In India Jesuits were welcomed to the court during the reign of Mughal
emperor Akbar (1556-1605). The noted Jesuit Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) sought
points of agreement between Hinduism and Christianity as a means of
evangelization, but this caused difficulty with the church. The missionaries
also worked among India's existing Christian communities. In 1599 the Roman
Catholic Church brought the South Indian Christians (Nestorians) into its fold,
but in 1653 about 40 percent of the Syrian, or Thomas, Christians revolted and
linked themselves with the Jacobites. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholics retained
a solid base of Christians on which to build.
To provide knowledgeable oversight and to coordinate policy, in 1622 Pope
Gregory XV established the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith
(Propaganda Fide), or the Propaganda. It provided a library for research and a
school for training priests and missionaries, assigned territories, and directed
ecclesiastical matters overseas. The Foreign Missionary Society of Paris (1663),
directed exclusively toward outreach to non-Christian peoples, sought to produce
rapidly an indigenous secular clergy (i.e., one not bound to a religious
order), and focused its efforts on Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.
With the suppression of the Jesuits (1773-1814) and the decline of Spanish
and Portuguese influence, Roman Catholic missions found themselves at low ebb,
but French and other European missionaries steadily took up the slack. Between
1800 and 1950 new vigour paralleled that seen in Protestantism and brought new
orders--such as the Society of the Divine Word (1875) and the Catholic Foreign
Missionary Society of North America (1911) of Maryknoll fathers and sisters--and
voluntary societies to promote and support missions. The missionary force
remained overwhelmingly European.
Protestant missions emerged some 275 years after Martin Luther launched the
Reformation in 1517. Reasons for the delay included Protestantism's thorough
rejection of the theocratic and universal claims of the papacy and its rationale
for papal mission. It also vigorously rejected monasticism and lacked the
structure for mission that monasticism had supplied. Some
Protestants--especially the Anabaptist but also other prophetic voices,
including Adrian Saravia (1531-1613) and Justinian von Welz (1621-68)--called
for mission but were scarcely heard. (see also Index: Protestantism)
Protestants began to expand overseas through migration, notably to North
America. To minister to the colonists' needs, individual Anglicans formed the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK; 1698) and the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG; 1701), whose chaplains were
also to spread the Gospel among non-Christians. The Dutch East India Company
trained ministers in Leiden to serve their employees in Indonesia and Ceylon
(Sri Lanka), but they were also encouraged to catechize and baptize local
people.
European colonization of North America aroused interest in the American
Indians, and the Virginia and Massachusetts charters enjoined their conversion.
The mission of John Eliot (1604-90) to the Pequot Iroquois and that of the
Thomas Mayhew family encouraged formation of supporting societies in Britain.
The German Lutheran Pietists were the first Protestant group to launch
church-supported continuing missions from the Continent. Philipp Jakob Spener
(1635-1705) and August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) at the Pietists' University
of Halle trained Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1683-1719) and Heinrich Plütschau
(1678-1747). From 1706 they served the Danish mission of King Frederick IV at
Tranquebar, in South India. Also trained at Halle, Nikolaus Ludwig, Count von
Zinzendorf (1700-60), received Moravian refugees at his Herrnhut estate and in
1732 molded them into a missionary church. Their small, self-supporting
communities spread from Greenland to South Africa. (see also Index:
Pietism, Halle-Wittenberg, Martin Luther University of, Moravian church)
William Carey's
Enquiry
into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the
Heathens (1792) became the "charter" for Protestant missions and
produced the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1793 Carey went to India. His first
letter to an England stirred by the Evangelical Revival resulted in the
formation of the London Missionary Society (1795). The Scottish Missionary
Society (1796) and the Netherlands Missionary Society (1797) soon appeared,
Anglican evangelicals organized the Church Missionary Society (1799), and many
others followed. Like the SPCK and SPG, they were founded not by churches but as
autonomous societies supported chiefly by denominational constituencies.
Similarly, in Europe these organizations were usually created
geographically--such as the Basel (1815), Berlin (1824), and Leipzig (1836)
societies.
With separation of church and state in the United States, American churches
made plain that mission was the responsibility of each Christian. Most
denominations developed their own boards or societies. The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810) was the first, and the pattern of
denominational societies spread.
Until 1890 American Protestant missions centred on the new immigrants and
those following the westward-moving frontier, but from 1890 they turned their
attention to areas abroad. In 20th-century "overseas" missions,
English-speaking participants have represented from 80 to 89 percent, and North
Americans about 67 percent, of all Protestant missionaries.
Women have not only provided the major support for mission in the modern era
but also early recognized the need to found their own societies and send their
own missionaries. In much of the world, because of local customs, women
missionaries could perform services for other women and for children, especially
in medicine and education, that men could not undertake. Their greatest impact
was in the production of vast corps of able and educated women, especially in
Asia, who played major roles in the professions and in church leadership.
Nondenominational faith missions viewed J. Hudson Taylor's China Inland
Mission (1865; after 1965 called the Overseas Missionary Fellowship) as the
great prototype. Missions such as these often sought to work in areas unoccupied
by other missionaries, guaranteed no salaries, and left financial support in
God's hands; but most bodies made their financial needs known to a wide
constituency. Their chief aim has been to proclaim the Gospel and eschew the
provision of social services. These societies joined together in the
Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA; 1917). Since the 1960s
they have cooperated with the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA;
1945), the missionary arm of the National Association of Evangelicals (1943),
and, at the international level, with the World Evangelical Fellowship (1952).
In the early 19th century in India, William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and
William Ward--the Serampore trio--worked just north of Calcutta. Their
fundamental approach included translating the Scriptures, establishing a college
to educate an Indian ministry, printing Christian literature, promoting social
reform, and recruiting missionaries for new areas as soon as translations into
that area's language were ready.
Alexander Duff (1806-78) gave India the pattern for an entire educational
system, including colleges. By the 1860s education for women had advanced and
nurses' training had begun; the education of women physicians began at the turn
of the century. The Vellore Medical College is a monument to the missionary
physician Ida Scudder (1870-1959). The vast majority of Indian nurses also have
been Christian. (see also Index: nursing)
In Indonesia, Dutch chaplains established churches in the 17th century. In
the mid-19th century, the German Rhenish Missionary Society enabled the Batak
Church of Sumatra to grow in size and commitment and to provide leadership for
the nation. Other strong churches developed in various parts of predominantly
Muslim Indonesia. (see also Index: Batak Protestant Christian Church)
Following the Opium War treaties of 1842-44 and 1858-60, China was opened to
Westerners. Although Roman Catholics remained from the efforts of the
16th-century Jesuit mission, the Chinese viewed Christianity as entering their
homeland at gunpoint. The Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1900 brought death to
thousands of Chinese Christians and several hundred missionaries. Yet what
Protestant schools, colleges, and hospitals represented attracted Chinese youth
to the Christian faith. With the fall of the Ch'ing, or Manchu, dynasty in 1911,
Sun Yat-sen, a Christian favouring parliamentary government, became the
provisional president. The Christian influence in China, particularly in
education, was significant. In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was
formed, Christians represented only 1 percent of the Chinese population, but
they exercised an influence out of all proportion to their size.
The Chinese government expelled all missionaries in 1950-51, confiscated
churches, and brought pressure on Christians. During the Cultural Revolution
(1966-76) no churches or other religious bodies could operate. Christians
continued to exist in China, but they suffered grievously. From 1976, as the
government allowed some churches to open, Christians reemerged throughout the
country. Roman Catholic and Protestant churches were filled, and in varied ways
"silent" house-churches testified that the underground church had been
dynamically growing. The state of the church in China, despite persecution, is
considerably larger and stronger than it had been in 1949.
Koreans baptized as Roman Catholics in China returned in 1784 but remained
underground when their faith was soon proscribed. A handful of American
Presbyterians and Methodists entered Korea in 1884, and the faith they planted
flourished through the 20th century, despite Korea's long wartime devastation.
Evangelistic and self-supporting Korean churches were known throughout Asia for
their effective promotion of Bible study. Helen Kim, a Korean graduate of Ewha
College, built it into the world's largest women's university.
Unlike other Asian countries, Korea did not experience Christianity's arrival
with Western imperialism but rather saw that faith as reinforcing Korean
nationalism against Japanese imperialism from 1910 to 1945. Korean
evangelization enabled the church to grow in less than a century to about
one-third of the population in South Korea. In the late 20th century, strong
annual compounding growth continued--a situation unique among the Asian nations.
The vast Pacific Ocean, with tiny, scattered island kingdoms among the
Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian peoples, early attracted missionaries.
Most of them were laypeople of deep Christian faith. It was the effort of the
Christian islanders, however, that achieved virtually total evangelization of
the Pacific. (see also Index: Pacific Islands)
In the Middle East, Protestants emphasized schools, colleges, and hospitals
and witnessed to Muslims, though few Muslims became Christians. Humanitarian
assistance by the Near East Relief, begun by American Protestant missions,
helped those suffering during and after World War I, but this organization made
its greatest efforts to aid the Armenian victims of genocide and forced
deportation by the Turks. Later mission work was undertaken by the Near East
Christian Council for Missionary Cooperation in Beirut (1924, 1929), which
became the broadly ecumenical Near East Council of Churches in 1964.
Three major religions appear in sub-Saharan Africa: African traditional
religion, Islam, and Christianity. Protestant missionaries were working
in most of the West and Central African colonial nations in the 19th century,
but in some parts of East Africa mission began only in the 20th century. After
Ghana gained freedom in 1957, many former colonies were granted independence.
Cataclysmic change appeared everywhere: in building new nations; rapid shifts
from a rural to an urban population; coping with the massive problem, especially
in cities, of some 2,500 languages; and developing literacy. Amid all this,
Christianity grew with increasing rapidity. By 1980 more than half of the
sub-Saharan African population was Christian. African independent, or indigenous
nonwhite, churches proliferated, and several of the largest ones joined the
World Council of Churches. These churches remain an important factor in African
Christianity.
In the 19th century Evangelical churches were begun in Latin America by
Protestant missionaries who were largely from the United States but also in some
instances from Britain and Germany. Most of these churches have remained small.
The exception was the explosion of Pentecostalism throughout the region, with
heaviest concentration in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Evangelicals also have
gained members in Central America.
Protestants quickly discovered the need for cooperation and unity. As tiny
minorities in lands of other religions, new Christians and missionaries together
saw that denominational separatism hindered evangelization. Four streams led to
the cooperation and unity reflected in the World Missionary Conference (WMC)
held in Edinburgh in 1910.
First, missionary "field" conferences affirmed comity (separation
of spheres of work), cooperation in Bible translation and missionary councils,
and shared sponsorship in major enterprises such as hospitals and colleges. A
second stream involved missionary conferences in England and the United States
from 1854 to 1900. A third force flowed through the missionary concern of the
international student Christian and missionary movements. The fourth stream
arose in the West from continuing interdenominational conferences of mission
leaders to face common concerns and forge common policies. Among others, these
included the Continental European Missions Conference (1866) and the Foreign
Missions Conference of North America (1893).
The Edinburgh conference was unique--a landmark and watershed for all that
was to follow. Largely Western in membership, but with 17 Asian delegates, it
created a Continuation Committee that in 1921 became the International
Missionary Council (IMC). The IMC consisted of a worldwide network of Christian
councils and the Western cooperative agencies. WMC continuation conferences in
Asia (1912-13) reproduced the earlier conference in settings that incorporated
national leaders of the Asian churches.
From the WMC and IMC also flowed the Faith and Order Movement (concerned with
doctrine and ministry), Life and Work Movement (on the churches' moral
responsibility in society), and the World Council of Churches (WCC; 1948). The
IMC's member bodies became national councils of churches. The IMC and the WCC,
officially "in association with" each other, worked closely together.
In 1961 the IMC became the Division of World Mission and Evangelism of the WCC.
Virtually the entire outreach of the Russian Orthodox mission extended to the
peoples of the vast Russian Empire across Asia. Its outstanding missionaries
included the linguist and translator Nicholas Ilminsky (d. 1891) and Ivan
Veniaminov (1797-1879), who in 1823 went as its first missionary to the Aleutian
Islands. Veniaminov eventually became Metropolitan Innocent of Moscow, and in
1870 he founded the Russian Orthodox Missionary Society. The Russian Orthodox
Church opened a mission to Japan in 1854 and in 1941 turned over all church
property to its members.
For some decades the church appointed missionaries to its highest posts.
Tikhon (1865-1923), who in 1917 became the first patriarch in two centuries, and
Sergius (Stragorodsky; 1867-1944), who followed him in that post, had both
served missions abroad. Following the 1917 Revolution, Russian missions became
impossible.
The African Orthodox Church, founded in Uganda in the 1920s by Reuben M.
Spartas, spread to Kenya and Tanzania.
During the third transition, Christianity had spread worldwide from a base in
Europe. The fourth transition brought the reality that more Christians lived in
Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and Latin America than in the old
Christendom, part of a long-term, continuing shift in Christianity's numerical
and vivifying centre. The growing churches brought new life and dynamism to the
faith, along with new theologies and concerns.
The growth of the world Christian community kept pace with the 20th-century
population explosion, and in the fastest-growing areas the growth rate in
numbers of Christians was almost three times greater than the general population
increase. The majority of the world's Christians lived in non-Western nations; a
universal church had come into being.
In this transition two issues were especially prominent. First, the church
found itself engaged with those of traditional or new religions and those for
whom ideologies had become religions. In that setting the Roman Catholic Church
and the Orthodox and Protestants in the World Council of Churches affirmed
evangelization to be essential but also advanced dialogue for clarity,
understanding, and basic engagement with other religions. This effort brought
dissent and tension from many.
Second, "Third World theologies" often brought angry debate. The
underlying questions concerned the identification of what was essentially
Christian in Western Christianity and theology and whether Western church
structures and theologies were universally normative. But the most basic
question asked how Christians of all races could manifest the unity and
obedience for which their Lord prayed.
Another force was the worldwide growth in the number of Pentecostals and
charismatics. They formed new churches, appeared in traditional churches, and
found outlet in many nonwhite indigenous bodies. Pentecostals and charismatics
were most heavily concentrated in Latin America and Africa but also had grown in
Asia and in the West. They forced theological reflection--perhaps best developed
by Roman Catholics--on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and on authority within
the church.
The second Vatican Council (1962-65) stood as the most important
ecclesiological and missiological event for Roman Catholics since the 16th
century. Theologically it set itself within the dynamics of the faith's fourth
transition. The council's Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity (Ad Gentes)
built theologically on the council's foundational document, the "Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church" (Lumen Gentium "Light of the
Nations").
The "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church" rooted the church and
mission in the triune Godhead, insisted upon evangelization but presented a
larger understanding of God's grace for those outside the church, and urged
missionaries to pursue dialogue.
In 1975 Pope Paul VI, responding to the ensuing debate, declared in Evangelii
Nuntiandi ("Evangelization in the Modern World") that God can
achieve salvation in anyone through God's own ways, but that witnessing to and
preaching the Gospel is the regular pattern given to Christians. The Pope also
presented a theology of liberation. In many respects his statement refined and
replaced "The Church's Missionary Activity" (1965).
In 1968 the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) at Medellín,
Colom., worked to apply the insights and intent of Vatican II to Latin America:
first, to identify with the aspirations of the masses, and, second, to seek
"re-evangelization" and "reconversion" in Latin America. At
CELAM III (1979) in Puebla, Mex., the final document, "God's Saving Plan
for Latin America," set forth a structure built upon Evangelii
Nuntiandi.
The translation of the Holy Scriptures has constituted a basic part of
mission. During the Middle Ages few could read the Latin Bible. Within 80 years
of the invention of printing in the West, however, Reformation leaders such as
Luther and Calvin focused on the Word of God. Their cardinal principle remained
that each should be able to read the Bible in his own tongue. The result was the
development of education and literacy. The printing press greatly aided
Protestantism, and widespread literacy again became the hallmark of a civilized
society. (see also Index: biblical translation)
In the 20th century most of the world's people speak one of about 75 primary
languages. A small minority speak one of 450 secondary languages, and more than
4,400 other languages are in use. Through Christian world mission, printed
Scriptures have become available in the mother tongues of almost 99 percent of
the world's people. That unprecedented accomplishment marks the greatest
achievement in the history of written communications. Bibles are available in
more than 300 languages, complete New Testaments in nearly 700 languages, and
some portion of the Scriptures is available in 1,000 other languages. The
translation effort, most of which has occurred during the past 200 years, has in
many cases reduced a language to writing for the first time. The effort involved
the production of grammars and dictionaries of these languages as well as
scriptural translations, and an additional benefit has been the written
preservation of the cultural heritage by native speakers of the language.
Bible societies, including the United Bible Societies (1946), have
coordinated and aided the translation work of missionaries in this task for
almost 200 years. Wycliffe Bible Translators (1936) concentrated its work among
the language groups having the smallest numbers of speakers. From 1968 Roman
Catholics and the United Bible Societies have coordinated their efforts and
cooperated in translation and production wherever possible.
Christianity, unlike some of the other world religions, is a translating
faith. In that area of God's mission the chief work in recent centuries has come
from the Protestant community and has been offered as a gift to the church
universal. This constitutes one of the great contributions of Christian mission
to the world. (W.R.H.)
The word ecumenism comes from a family of classical Greek words: oikos,
meaning a "house," "family," "people," or
"nation"; oikoumene,
"the whole inhabited world"; and oikoumenikos,
"open to or participating in the whole world." Like many biblical
words, these were invested with Christian meaning. The oikoumene describes
the place of God's reconciling mission (Matthew 24:14); the unity of the Roman
Empire (Luke 2:1) and of the kingdoms of the earth (Luke 4:5); and the world
destined to be redeemed by Christ (Hebrews 2:5). In the biblical community the
vision of one church serving the purposes of God in the world came to reflect a
central teaching of the early Christian faith, the essence of the church.
In later centuries the word ecumenical was used to denote those councils (e.g.,
Nicaea, Chalcedon) of bishops whose decisions represented the universal church,
in contrast to other church councils that enjoyed only regional or limited
reception. The honorary title of ecumenical patriarch was given to the Greek
Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople because his see was located in the capital
of the oikoumene
and his leadership was accepted as primus inter pares (first among equals) in
the faith and mission of the whole church. The Apostles', the Nicene, and the
Athanasian creeds are called ecumenical because they witness to the universal
faith of all Christians. In the 19th and 20th centuries ecumenism denoted the
movement of the renewal, unity, and mission of Christians and churches of
different traditions "so that the world may believe." (see also Index:
ecumenical council)
Ecumenism is a vision, a movement, a theology, and a mode of action. It
represents the universality of the people of God, which affects the way
Christians think about their faith, the church, and the world. Ecumenism, which
is a long process, includes Bible study, dialogue, prayer, eucharistic worship,
common witness, diaconal service, and ecclesial unity that draws Christians
together, uniting their life and mission and bringing the Body of Christ and the
human community closer to the fulfillment of God's purposes. To be involved in
ecumenism means to participate in those ideas, activities, and institutions that
express a spiritual reality of shared love in the church and the human
community. It involves the work of officially organized ecumenical bodies, the
confessing and witnessing of Christians in local places, and the spirituality
and actions of those who live together in love and prophetic proclamation. Far
more than a program or an organization, ecumenism is, according to the British
ecumenist Oliver S. Tomkins, "something that happens to the soul of
Christians." (see also Index: mystical body of Christ)
Any unity worthy of this vision cannot be identified with political or
spiritual coercion, strategies of dominance or superiority, calls for "a
return to the mother church," or expectations of monolithic uniformity or a
super-church. When serving the cause of faith, the weapons of faith are not
those of force or intolerance; neither can divisions be overcome nor authentic
unity manifested by syncretism, a least-common-denominator theology, or a casual
friendliness. Ecumenism accepts the diversity of God's people, given in creation
and redemption, and strives to bring these confessional, cultural, national, and
racial differences into one fully committed fellowship.
Ultimately the purpose of ecumenism is to glorify the triune God and to help
the one missionary church to witness effectively and faithfully among all
peoples and nations. In the last half of the 20th century Christians have
learned and confessed new dimensions of this vocation, especially in relation to
what divides the churches. Progress has been made on historical theological
issues that have alienated Christians through the centuries--baptism, the
Eucharist, and ministry. But equally divisive among Christians are the divisions
of the human family: racism, poverty, sexism, war, injustice, and differing
ideologies. These issues are part of the agenda of ecumenism and bring a
particular context, dynamic spirit, and urgency to the pursuit of Christian
unity as well as of justice and peace. The church's unity becomes essential for
the renewal and unity of the human family. Through its unity the church becomes
a sign, the firstfruits of the promised unity and peace among God's peoples and
the nations.
The unity of the church and of all creation is a dominant motif in the Bible.
This witness begins in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, not the New
Testament. God established a covenant with the Hebrew people and gathered the
disparate tribes into one religious nation, Israel, taking steps to overcome the
alienation between God and humans and to reconcile God's people. The tradition
of ancient Judaism, therefore, was based on the reality of the one people of
God. Their unity was an expression of their monotheistic faith, the oneness of
God (Yahweh). As Genesis records, God created the world as one cosmos, an
ordered unity determined by one single will in which all creatures are
responsive to the purposes of the Creator. Yahweh chose Israel from all the
nations of the world and entered into covenant with its people. Whenever men and
women sinned and alienated themselves from God and from one another, God acted
to bring about their reconciliation. Israel's mission was to preserve the
faithfulness and unity of all God's people and to prepare them for the
realization of the Kingdom of God.
The vision of unity is central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the
teachings of his Apostles. Those who confess Jesus as Lord and Saviour are
brought together in a new community: the church. All New Testament writers
assume that to be "in Christ" is to belong to one fellowship (Greek: koinonia).
Jesus clearly gave the mandate when at the Last Supper he offered his
high-priestly intercession, praying that the disciples and all those who believe
in him "may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee . .
. so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:21). This
unity was evidenced in the miracle of Pentecost (Acts 2) and other actions that
constituted the primitive church--e.g., the epoch-making Council of
Jerusalem (Acts 15), which negotiated conflicts between Jewish and Gentile
Christians.
The early church nevertheless had many tensions and conflicts that called for
ecumenical proclamations and pleas from the writers and Apostles of the New
Testament. Tensions arose between Jewish Christian churches and Gentile
Christian churches, between Paul and the enthusiasts, between John and early
Catholicism. Peter and Paul disagreed strongly over whether Gentiles had to
fulfill Jewish requirements in order to be welcome at the Lord's Supper
(Eucharist). That theological aberrations challenged the young church is shown
in the New Testament: Colossians refutes Gnosticism; the Johannine Epistles warn
against Docetism; 2 Peter and Revelation attack false prophets.
None of this diversity created schism nor allowed a break in fellowship.
There were no denominations or divided communities, as were to develop later in
the church's history. Division among Christians is a denial of Christ, an
unthinkable distortion of the reality of the church. Amid their diversity and
conflicts the early Christians remained of "one accord," visibly
sharing the one Eucharist, accepting the ministries of the whole church,
reaching out beyond their local situation in faith and witness with a sense of
the universal community that held all Christians together. As Paul taught the
Ephesians, God's ultimate will and plan is "to unite all things in him
[Christ], things in heaven and things on earth" (chapter 1, verse 10).
While unity is given in Christ, church history chronicles two diametric
forces in the church's life. One is the tendency toward sectarianism and
division; the other is the conviction toward catholicity and unity. Ecumenism
represents the struggle between them. Some of the schisms were theological
conflicts foreshadowed in the apostolic church; others were internal quarrels
related to liturgical differences, power politics between different
patriarchates or church centres, problems of discipline and piety, or social and
cultural conflicts. Nevertheless, according to the American historian John T.
McNeill, "the history of the Christian Church from the first century to the
20th might be written in terms of its struggle to realize ecumenical
unity."
A long and continuing trail of broken relations among Christians began in the
2nd century. Early in the 2nd century the Gnostics presented a serious doctrinal
error and broke fellowship. Quartodecimanism, a dispute over the date of Easter,
pitted Christians from Asia Minor against those from Rome. Montanism--which
taught a radical enthusiasm, the imminent Second Coming of Christ, and a severe
perfection, including abstinence from marriage--split the church. The Novatians
broke fellowship with those Christians who, under pressure, offered sacrifices
to pagan gods during the persecutions of the Roman emperor Decius in AD 250. In
the early 4th century the Donatists, Christians in North Africa who prided
themselves as the church of the martyrs, refused to share communion with those
who had lapsed (i.e., who had denied the faith under threat of death).
The church in Rome received the lapsed back into fellowship after services of
repentance. This schism--like many since--reflected regional, national,
cultural, and economic differences between the poor, rural North African
Christians and the sophisticated, urban Romans. (see also Index: Novatian
Schism)
In each century leaders and churches sought to reconcile these divisions and
to manifest the visible unity of Christ's church. But in the 5th century a
severe break in the unity of the church took place. The public issues were
doctrinal consensus and heresy, yet in the midst of doctrinal controversy
alienation was prompted by political, cultural, philosophical, and linguistic
differences. Tensions increased as the church began to define--amid critical
distortions by some--the relationship between God the Father and God the Son and
later the relation between the divine and human elements in the nature and
person of Jesus Christ. The first four ecumenical councils--at Nicaea (AD 325),
Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451)--defined the consensus
to be taught and believed, articulating this faith in the Nicene Creed and the
Chalcedonian Definition, which stated that Jesus is the only begotten Son of
God, true man, and true God, one person in "two natures without confusion,
without change, without division, without separation." Two groups deviated
doctrinally from the consensus developed in the councils. The Nestorians taught
that there are two distinct persons in the incarnate Christ and two natures
conjoined as one; Monophysites taught that there is one single nature, primarily
divine. Several churches refused to accept the doctrinal and disciplinary
decisions of Ephesus and Chalcedon and felt that they had no alternative but
schism. These churches, called pre-Chalcedonian or Oriental Orthodox, became
great missionary churches and spread to Armenia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Persia,
and the Malabar coast of India in isolation from other churches. (see also Index:
Christology, Nicaea, Council of, Chalcedon, Council of, Christ, two natures of)
The greatest schism in church history occurred between the church of
Constantinople and the church of Rome. While 1054 is the symbolic date of the
separation, the agonizing division was six centuries in the making. The friction
was ignited by several issues. The Eastern Church sharply disagreed when the
Western Church introduced into the Nicene Creed the doctrine that the Holy
Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone--as earlier Church Fathers taught--but
from the Father and the Son (Latin: filioque). When the Roman Empire was
divided into two zones, Latin-speaking Rome began to claim superiority over
Greek-speaking Constantinople; disputes arose over church boundaries and control
(for example, in Illyricum and Bulgaria). Rivalry developed in Slavic regions
between Latin missionaries from the West and Byzantine missionaries from the
East, who considered this territory to be Orthodox. Lesser matters related to
worship and church discipline--for example, married clergy (Orthodox) versus
celibacy (Roman Catholic) and rules of fasting--strained ecclesial relations.
The tensions became a schism in 1054, when the uncompromising patriarch of
Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, and the envoys of the uncompromising Pope
Leo IX excommunicated each other. No act of separation was at this time
considered final by either side. Total alienation came a half century later, as
a result of the Crusades, when nominally Roman Catholic Christian soldiers made
military campaigns to save Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims. In 1204
the Fourth Crusade was diverted to attack and capture Constantinople brutally.
Thousands of Orthodox Christians were murdered; churches and icons were
desecrated. As a consequence undying hostility developed between East and West.
(see also Index: Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism)
Even so, certain leaders and theologians on both sides tried to heal the
breach and reunite East and West. In 1274 the second Council of Lyon sought
reunion. Agreements among the negotiators were achieved, including Orthodox
acceptance of papal primacy and the acceptance of the Nicene Creed with the filioque
clause. But the agreements were only a rushed action conditioned by political
intrigue. As a result, reunion on these terms was fiercely rejected by the
clergy and laity in Constantinople and other Orthodox provinces. A second
attempt at reunion came at a council that met in Italy at Ferrara in 1438 and
Florence in 1439. A formula of union was approved by both delegations, but later
it was rejected by rank-and-file Orthodox Christians. (see also Index:
Ferrara-Florence, Council of)
The 16th century experienced the next dramatic church division in the
Reformation in the West. Like other schisms this one does not yield to simple
analysis or exegesis. The Reformation was a mixture of theology, ecclesiology,
politics, and nationalism, all of which led to breaks in fellowship and created
institutional alienation between Christians in Germany, France, Switzerland,
Scotland, England, and elsewhere. In one sense it was a separation, especially a
reaction against the rigid juridical structures of medieval Roman Catholicism
and its claim to universal truth and jurisdiction. In another sense, however,
the Reformation was an evangelical and ecumenical renewal of the church as the
Body of Christ, an attempt to return to the apostolic and patristic sources in
order, according to Calvin, "to recover the face of the ancient Catholic
Church." All the continental Reformers sought to preserve and reclaim the
unity of the church. (see also Index: mystical body of Christ)
Once the separation between the Roman Catholic Church and the emerging
Protestant churches was conclusive, irenic persons on both sides tried to
restore unity. Roman Catholics such as Georg Witzel and George Cassander
developed proposals for unity, which all parties rejected. Martin Bucer,
celebrated promoter of church unity among the 16th-century leaders, brought
Luther and his colleague Philipp Melanchthon into dialogue with the Swiss
Reformer Zwingli at Marburg, Ger., in 1529. In 1541 Calvin (who never ceased to
view the church in its catholicity), Bucer, and Melanchthon met with Cardinal
Gasparo Contarini and other Roman Catholics at Ratisbon (now Regensburg, Ger.)
to reconcile their differences on justification by faith, the Lord's Supper, and
the papacy. Another attempt was made in 1559, when Melanchthon and Patriarch
Joasaph II of Constantinople corresponded, with the intention of using the
Augsburg Confession as the basis of dialogue between Lutherans and Orthodox. On
the eve of the French religious wars (1561) Roman Catholics and Protestants
conferred without success in the Colloquy of Poissy. It would seem that the
ecumenical projects of theologians and princes in 16th-century Europe failed
unequivocally, but they kept alive the vision and the hope. (see also Index:
Marburg, Colloquy of)
During the 17th and 18th centuries storms of contention and division
continued to plague the churches throughout Europe. The Church of England,
severed from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century by Henry VIII and his
English theologians, experienced its first internal split when it was unable or
unwilling to embrace John Wesley and the Methodist Church's insights for
spiritual renewal.
During these two centuries there was an eclipse of official, church-to-church
attempts at unity. Instead, ecumenical witness was made by individuals who
courageously spoke and acted against all odds to propose Christian unity. John
Amos Comenius, a Czech Brethren educator and advocate of union, produced a plan
of union for Protestants based upon the adoption of a scriptural basis for all
doctrine and polity and the integration of all human culture.
In England, John Dury, a Scots Presbyterian and (later) an Anglican minister,
"a peacemaker without partiality," traveled more extensively than any
other ecumenist before the 19th century, negotiating for church unity in his own
country and in Sweden, Holland, France, Switzerland, and Germany. Richard
Baxter, a Presbyterian Puritan, developed proposals for union, including his
Worcestershire Association, a local ecumenical venture uniting Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, and Anglicans.
Efforts were undertaken in Germany as well. The German Lutheran George
Calixtus called for a united church between Lutherans and Reformed based on the
"simplified dogmas," such as the Apostles' Creed and the agreements of
the church in the first five centuries. Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf applied
his Moravian piety to the practical ways that unity might come to Christians of
all persuasions. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz worked tirelessly for
union between Protestants and Roman Catholics, writing an apologia interpreting
Roman Catholic doctrines for Protestants.
Orthodox Christians also participated in the search for union. Metropolitan
Philaret of Moscow and the Russian Orthodox theologian Aleksey S. Khomyakov
expressed enthusiasm for ecumenism. Cyrillus Lukaris, Orthodox patriarch of
Alexandria and later of Constantinople, took initiatives to reconcile a divided
Christendom. People throughout Europe held tenaciously to the dream of
ecumenism, although no attempt at union reached fruition.
In the 19th century a worldwide movement of evangelical fervour and renewal,
noted for its emphasis on personal conversion and missionary expansion, stirred
new impulses for Christian unity. The rise of missionary societies and volunteer
movements in Germany, Great Britain, The Netherlands, and the United States
expressed a zeal that fed the need for church unity. As missionaries in
different countries began to experience the harmful results of Christian
divisions, cooperation among Protestant missionaries began to take place in
India, Japan, China, Africa, Latin America, and the United States.
In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society came into existence to bring
Protestants and Anglicans together in the translation and distribution of the
Scriptures. This was followed, 40 years later, by the founding of two important
Christian organizations in England: the Young Men's Christian Association (1844)
and the Young Women's Christian Association (1855). Their international bodies,
the World Alliance of YMCAs and the World YWCA, were established in 1855 and
1894, respectively. The Evangelical Alliance, possibly the most significant
agent of Christian unity in the 19th century, held a unique place among the
volunteer associations of individuals for common service and mission. Founded in
London in 1846 (with an American section in 1867), the alliance sought to draw
individual Christians into fellowship and cooperation in prayer for unity,
Christian education, the struggle for human rights, and mission.
Also pivotal in the 19th century were advocates for the visible unity of the
church. In the United States, where the most articulate 19th-century unity
movements were heard, the witness to the unity and union was led by three
traditions. Among Lutherans, Samuel Simon Schmucker and Philip Schaff pleaded
for "catholic union on apostolic principles." Among Episcopalians, the
visionaries for unity included Thomas Hubbard Vail, William Augustus Muhlenberg,
and William Reed Huntington, who proposed the historic "Quadrilateral"
of the Scriptures, the creeds, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper,
and episcopacy as the keystone of unity. Among the Disciples of Christ the
biblical vision of unity was dramatically offered by Thomas Campbell and his
son, Alexander, and Barton Warren Stone--all of whom taught that "the
Church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally and constitutionally
one." Ecumenism was enflamed in the hearts of 19th-century Christians and
in the next century began to shape the churches as never before.
The 20th century experienced a flowering of ecumenism. Four different
strands--the international Christian movement, cooperation in world mission,
Life and Work, and Faith and Order--developed in the early decades and, though
distinctive in their emphases, later converged to form one ecumenical movement.
The modern ecumenical era began with a worldwide movement of Christian
students, who formed national movements in Great Britain, the United States,
Germany, Scandinavia, and Asia. In 1895 the World Student Christian Federation,
the vision of American Methodist John R. Mott, was established "to lead
students to accept the Christian faith" and to pioneer in Christian unity.
The World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh (1910) inaugurated another aspect
of ecumenism by dramatizing the necessity of unity and international cooperation
in fulfilling the world mission of the church. In 1921 the International
Missionary Council (IMC) emerged, bringing together missionary agencies of the
West and of the new Christian councils in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for
joint consultation, planning, and theological reflection. The Life and Work
movement was pledged to practical Christianity and common action by focusing the
Christian conscience on international relations and social, industrial, and
economic problems. Nathan Söderblom, Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala,
inspired world conferences on Life and Work at Stockholm (1925) and Oxford
(1937). The Faith and Order movement, which originated in the United States,
confronted the doctrinal divisions and sought to overcome them. Charles H.
Brent, an Episcopal missionary bishop in the Philippines, was chiefly
responsible for this movement, although Peter Ainslie, of the Disciples of
Christ, shared the same vision and gave significant leadership. World
conferences on Faith and Order at Lausanne (1925), Edinburgh (1937), Lund
(1952), and Montreal (1963) guided the process of theological consensus-building
between Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics, which led to approval of the
historic convergence text on Baptism,
Eucharist, and Ministry (1982).
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a privileged instrument of the
ecumenical movement. Constituted at Amsterdam in 1948, the conciliar body
includes more than 300 churches--Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox--which
"confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the
Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the
glory of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Its general
secretaries have been among the architects of 20th-century ecumenism: W.A.
Visser 't Hooft, (The Netherlands), Eugene Carson Blake (United States), Philip
Potter (Dominica), and Emilio Castro (Uruguay). The witness and programs of the
WCC include faith and order, mission and evangelism, refugee and relief work,
interfaith dialogue, justice and peace, theological education, and solidarity
with women and the poor. What distinguishes the WCC constituency is the forceful
involvement of Orthodox churches and churches from the Third World. Through
their active presence the WCC, and the wider ecumenical movement, has become a
genuinely international community.
Roman Catholic ecumenism received definitions and momentum at the second
Vatican Council (1962-64), under the ministries of popes John XXIII and Paul VI,
and through the ecumenical diplomacy of Cardinal Augustin Bea, the first
president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. The church gave the
ecumenical movement new hope and language in the "Decree on Ecumenism"
(1964), one of the classic ecumenical teaching documents. Another result of
Vatican II was the establishment of a wide variety of international theological
dialogues, commonly known as bilateral conversations. These include Roman
Catholic bilaterals with Lutherans (1965), Orthodox (1967), Anglicans (1967),
Methodists (1967), Reformed (1970), and the Disciples of Christ (1977). Topics
identified for reconciling discussions include baptism, the Eucharist,
episcopacy and papacy, authority in the church, and mixed marriage.
Critical to 20th-century ecumenism is the birth of united churches, which
have reconciled formerly divided churches in a given place. In Asia and Africa
the first united churches were organized in China (1927), Thailand (1934), Japan
(1941), and the Philippines (1944). The most heralded examples of this ecumenism
are the United Church of Canada (1925), the Church of South India (1947), and
the Church of North India (1970). Statistics of other united churches are
revealing. Between 1948 and 1965, 23 churches were formed. In the period from
1965 to 1970 unions involving two or more churches occurred in the West Indies
in Jamaica and Grand Cayman, Ecuador, Zambia, Zaire, Pakistan, Madagascar, Papua
New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Belgium. Strategic union conversations were
undertaken in the United States by the nine-church Consultation on Church Union
(1960) and by such uniting churches as the United Church of Christ (1957), the
Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (1983), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (1988).
Spiritual disciplines play a key role in ecumenism, a movement steeped in
prayer for unity. During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, celebrated
every year (January 18-25), Christians from many traditions engage in prayer,
Bible study, worship, and fellowship in anticipation of the unity Christ wills.
(P.A.C.)
A spiritual encounter and discussion of Christianity with other world
religions has begun only during the 20th century as a consequence of change in
the general religious, political, and economic situation of the world. The
global spread of Christianity through the activity of the European and American
churches in the 18th and 19th centuries led to Christianity's immediate
encounter with all other existing religions. Until the beginning of the 19th
century there were still places on Earth where non-Christian religions never
came into contact with Christianity. Since then, Christianity has entered into a
direct contact with all living non-Christian religions in the world. The close
connection between Christian world missions and political, economic, technical,
and cultural expansion has, at the same time, been loosened.
After World War II, the former mission churches were transformed into
independent churches in the newly autonomous Asian and African states. The
concern for a responsible cooperation of the members of Christian minority
churches and its non-Christian fellow citizens became the more urgent with a
renaissance of the Asian higher religions in numerous Asian states. Since World
War II Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam have been trying to regain their
former position of leadership in intellectual and spiritual life, mainly in the
educational systems of their countries in the Asian states and--in the case of
Islam--in some African states. (see also
Index: Asia)
All Asian higher religions have also turned to activities in world missions
in Christian countries in Europe, the Americas, and Australia. Hinduism, for
example, has founded numerous Vedanta centres in North America and Europe
within the framework of the Ramakrishna and Vivekananda missions. South Asian
Theravada (Way of the Elders) Buddhism and the Mahayana
(Greater Vehicle) Buddhism of Japan (mainly Zen Buddhism, an
intuitive-meditative sect) have begun world missionary activities under the
influence of a Buddhist renaissance. This influence has penetrated Europe and
North America not so much in the form of a directly organized mission as in the
form of a spontaneously received flow of religious ideas and methods of
meditation through literature, philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy. As a
result, Christianity in the latter part of the 20th century found itself forced
to enter into a factual discussion with non-Christian religions, particularly
because the constitutional privileges once enjoyed by certain religions had been
rescinded in most states.
Modern history of religions, on the other hand, has caused a general
transformation of religious consciousness in the West since the middle of the
19th century. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the knowledge of
non-Christian higher religions was still the privilege of a few specialists. In
the meantime, in a second wave of enlightenment, a wide range of people have
studied the results of research in the form of translations of source materials
from the non-Christian religions. The spreading of the religious art of Tibet,
India, and the Far East through touring exhibitions and the possibility of a
direct participation in non-Christian religious ceremonies through radio and
television has created a new attitude toward the other religions in the broad
public of Europe and North America. The knowledge of the plurality of the world
religions characterizes the religious consciousness of the 20th century in a way
that was unknown in former centuries. In recognition of this fact, numerous
Christian institutions for the study of non-Christian religions have been
founded: e.g.,
in Bangalore, India; in Rangoon, Burma; in Bangkok, Thailand; in Kyoto,
Japan; and in Hong Kong,China. There are also a number of more specialized
centres in several countries.
The readiness of encounter or even cooperation of Christianity with
non-Christian religions is a phenomenon of modern times, with few precedents in
the history of the struggle of Christianity and the non-Christian religions.
Until the 18th century, Christianity showed little inclination to engage in a
serious study of non-Christian religions. Four hundred years after the beginning
of the struggle with the Muslims in Spain, almost half a century after the
proclamation of the First Crusade against Islam, Peter the Venerable,
abbot of Cluny, issued the first translation of the Qur`an (the Islamic
scriptures) in 1141 in Toledo; but he was not understood by his contemporaries.
Bernard of Clairvaux, the propagator of the Second Crusade, even refused to read
it. Four hundred years later, in 1542/43, Theodor Bibliander, a theologian and
successor of the Swiss Reformer Zwingli, edited the translation of the Qur`an
by Peter the Venerable again. He was subsequently arrested, and he and his
publisher could be freed only through intervention by Luther.
Knowledge of Hinduism was sometimes deliberately delayed by the missionaries.
August Hermann Francke, the supporter of the Lutheran Tranquebar mission in
India, prevented the publication of the work of the missionary Bartholomäus
Ziegenbalg about the religion of the non-Christian Malabarese of India. The name
Buddha is mentioned for the first time in Christian literature--and there only
once -- by Clement of Alexandria about AD 200; and it vanished after that from
Christian literature for a full 1,300 years. Pali, the language of the
Buddhist canon, remained unknown in the West until the beginning of the 19th
century, when modern Buddhology was founded. (see also Index: Pali
language)
The reasons for such reticence toward contact with foreign religions were
twofold: (1) The ancient church was significantly influenced by the Jewish
attitude toward the pagan religions of its environment. Like Judaism, it viewed
the pagan gods as "nothings" next to the true God, the Creator of the
world and, in the case of the Christians, the Father of Jesus Christ; they were
offsprings of human error that were considered to be identical with the wooden,
stone, or bronze images that were made by humans. (2) Besides this, there was
the tendency to degrade the pagan gods as demons, evil demonic forces engaged in
mortal combat with the true God. The conclusion of the history of salvation,
according to the Christian understanding, was to be a final struggle between
Christ and his church on the one side and the forces, powers, and thrones of the
Antichrist on the other, culminating finally with the victory of Christ. (see
also Index: paganism)
The history of religion, however, continued even after Christ. During the 3rd
and 4th centuries a new non-Christian world religion appeared in the form of
Manichaeism, which countered the Christian Church with new holy books, a new
institution, and a new universal claim of validity. The Christian Church never
acknowledged Manichaeism as a new religion but considered it a Christian heresy
and opposed it as such. (see also Index: Apologist)
When Islam was founded in the 7th century as a new higher religion, it
considered revelation as received by the Prophet Muhammad to be superior
to the former levels of Old and New Testament revelation. Christianity also
fought Islam as a Christian heresy. This new threat was seen as the
fulfillment of the eschatological prophecies of the Apocalypse concerning the
coming of the "false prophet" (Revelation to John). The apocalyptic
interpretation of Islam as the religion of the "false prophet"
also coined the archetypal struggle of the Christian Church of the Middle Ages
against foreign religions, namely, the crusade. The idea of the Crusades deeply
influenced the self-consciousness of Western Christianity even in later
centuries. (see also Index: false prophecy)
The dialogue of the 15th-century German theologian Nicholas of Cusa on the
peace of faith (1453) is the first Christian document that calls for the
establishment of an eternal peace among world religions. In spite of this, the
idea of the crusade remained the model for the fulfillment of the new missionary
task that arose within the Roman Catholic Church with the discovery and
exploration of the American continents by Spain and Portugal. Only the
penetration of the Islamic wall that had separated Europe spiritually and
economically from the empires of the Asian higher religions and only the
encounter with these higher religions in countries such as China and
Japan--which could not be subjugated to the rule of Roman Catholic kings by the
sword--led to a gradual overcoming of the idea of the crusade. In China and
Japan the missionaries saw themselves forced into an argument with the
indigenous higher religions that could be carried on only with intellectual
weapons. The old Logos theory prevailed in a new form that was founded on
natural law, particularly among the Jesuit theologians who worked at the Chinese
emperor's court in Peking.
The philosophy of the Enlightenment in the 18th century spread the
acknowledgment of a plurality of higher religions among the educated in Europe,
partly--as in the case of the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz--in
immediate connection with the theories of natural law of the Jesuit missionaries
in China. This insight pointed to the striking convergence of non-Christian
higher religions with Christianity and in that way prepared the development of
the comparative study of religion. Only in the philosophy of the Enlightenment
was the demand of tolerance, which thus far in Christian Europe had been applied
solely as a postulate of behaviour toward the followers of another Christian
denomination, extended to include the followers of different religions.
The missions that were carried out in the late 18th and the 19th centuries by
pietistically or fundamentally oriented churches ignored this knowledge or
consciously fought against it. Simple lay Christianity of revivalist
congregations demanded that a missionary denounce all pagan
"idolatry." The spiritual and intellectual argument with non-Christian
higher religions simply did not exist for this simplified fundamental theology,
and in this view a real encounter of Christianity with non-Christian higher
religions did not, on the whole, occur in the 18th and 19th centuries. (
E.W.B./J.Hi.)
The 20th century has seen an explosion of publicly available information
concerning the wider religious life of humanity, as a result of which the older
Western assumption of the manifest superiority of Christianity has lost
plausibility in many minds. Early 20th-century thinkers such as Rudolf Otto, who
saw religion throughout the world as a response to the Holy, and Ernst
Troeltsch, who showed that socioculturally Christianity is one of a number of
comparable traditions, opened up new ways of regarding the other major
religions.
Given that the central concern of both Christianity and the other great world
faiths is salvation, Christians today adopt one of three main points of view.
One is exclusivism, which holds that there is salvation only for Christians.
This theology underlay much of the history outlined above, expressed both in the
Roman Catholic dogma extra
ecclesiam nulla salus ("outside the church no salvation") and in
the assumption of the 18th- and 19th-century Protestant missionary movements
that outside the proclaimed Gospel there is no salvation. The exclusivist
outlook was eroded within advanced Roman Catholic thinking in the decades
leading up to the second Vatican Council (1962-65) and was finally abandoned in
the council's pronouncements. Within Protestant Christianity there is no
comparable central authority, but most Protestant theologians, except within the
extreme Fundamentalist constituencies, have also moved away from the exclusivist
position.
The move, among both Roman Catholics and Protestants, has been toward
inclusivism, the view that, although salvation is by definition Christian
salvation, brought about by the atoning work of Christ, it is nevertheless in
principle available to all human beings, whether Christian or not. The Roman
Catholic theologian Karl Rahner expressed the inclusivist view by saying that
good and devout people of other faiths may, even without knowing it, be regarded
as "anonymous Christians." Others have expressed in different ways the
thought that non-Christians also are included within the universal scope of
Christ's salvific work and their religions fulfilled in Christianity.
The third position, to which a number of individual theologians have moved in
recent years, is pluralism. According to this view, the great world faiths,
including Christianity, are valid spheres of a salvation that takes
characteristically different forms within each--though consisting in each case
in the transformation of human existence from self-centredness to a new
orientation toward the Divine Reality. The other religions are thus not
secondary contexts of Christian redemption but independently authentic paths of
salvation. The pluralist position is controversial in Christian theology because
it affects the ways in which the doctrines of the person of Christ, atonement,
and the Trinity are formulated.
Christians engage in dialogue with the other major religions through the
World Council of Churches' subunit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and
Ideologies and the Vatican's Secretariat for Non-Christians, as well as a
variety of extra-ecclesiastical organizations, such as the World Congress of
Faiths. A multitude of interreligious encounters takes place throughout the
world, many initiated by Christian and others by non-Christian individuals and
groups.
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