PART 2
The spread of Protestant Christianity in the three centuries following the Reformation, though notable, gave little indication of what was about to occur in the nineteenth century. In the year 1800, according to Stephen Neill, “It was still by no means certain that Christianity would be successful in turning itself into a universal religion.”1 Christianity appeared to be little more than a Caucasian religion that was being severely battered by a wave of rationalism that was sweeping across the Western world. Would the Evangelical Awakening in the eighteenth century make a difference? Would Christianity survive the modern era? The nineteenth century was crucial. Instead of falling before the onslaught of the Enlightenment, Christianity continued to be reinvigorated by an evangelical fervor that propelled missionaries throughout the world. It truly was the “Great Century” for Christian expansion.
There were a number of factors that made the nineteenth century conducive to worldwide Protestant missions. The Age of Enlightenment and the eighteenth-century rationalism had merged with a new Age of Romanticism. It was a time to question the excessive reliance on reason and to put more stock in the emotions and the imagination. Reform movements sprang up in the newly industrialized nations, and churches and Christian organizations were reaching out as never before through the participation of volunteer workers.
Changes in the world’s religious environment no doubt contributed to the rapid spread of Christianity in the nineteenth century. It was a period of decline for the non-Christian religions. “Hinduism, Buddhism, and [Islam] were relatively quiescent in the nineteenth century,” according to Martin Marty, and “Christians sensed that they could fill a vacuum.”2 Catholicism, too, was on the decline in many parts of the world. The French Rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had taken its toll on the church, and the French Revolution effectively cut the economic purse strings of Roman Catholic missions. In Latin America especially, Roman Catholicism witnessed many reverses. National movements saw the church as “the last bulwark of an outmoded and oppressive regime.”3
Protestantism, on the other hand, was thriving. The nineteenth century was a “Protestant era,” and more specifically an era dominated by evangelical Protestantism. In the British Isles the evangelical Christians exercised powerful influence in the highest levels of government and commerce, and in America church membership increased from ten to forty percent during the course of the century. Denominations were developing rapidly, and the Sunday school movement in both Britain and America was growing at a fast pace.
Politically, the nineteenth century witnessed tremendous changes as well. Although there were revolutions and social upheavals in Europe and a bloody civil war in America, it was an era of relative world peace. Western nations, through scientific and technological advances, were quickly becoming world powers, and their wealth and prestige were viewed with envy and admiration by many non-industrialized nations. Politically, it was also a period of secularization. “From the era of Constantine and the Christianization of the Roman Empire to the latter days of the eighteenth century,” writes Marty, “western men assumed … that religion was to be established by law and sanctioned by the legal arm of the state.”4 But by the nineteenth century that was no longer true. Individuals were taking command of their own personal spiritual condition and their responsibility to reach out to others.
The eighteenth-century evangelical revivals that began in England with Whitefield and Wesley played an important role in awakening Christian leaders and laypeople to the responsibility for evangelism worldwide. “No longer,” according to Harold Cook, “was the state held responsible in any sense for the propagation of the Christian faith.”5 Evangelism was the responsibility of the church and its leaders, and it was this once again rediscovered truth that launched the modern missionary movement with William Carey in England and Samuel Mills in the United States.
But belief was not enough. A vehicle was needed to turn the belief into action, and that vehicle emerged in the form of the mission society. The volunteer mission society, independent in some instances and denominationally oriented in others, transformed Christian missions, opening the way for ecumenical activity and lay involvement. “Never before,” writes Latourette, “had Christianity or any other religion had so many individuals giving full time to the propagation of their faith. Never had so many hundreds of thousands contributed voluntarily of their means to assist the spread of Christianity or any other religion.”6 The first of these new societies was the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), soon to be followed by the London Missionary Society (1795) and the Church Missionary Society (1799). From Continental Europe came the Netherlands Missionary Society (1797) and the Basel Mission (1815); and from the United States, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810) and the American Baptist Missionary Board (1814). There would be dozens more as the century progressed, for it was, as Neill has pointed out, “the great age of societies.”7
As important as the evangelical awakening and the new mission societies were to the spread of the gospel worldwide, without certain secular trends the foreign missionary cause would have been significantly curtailed. Both colonialism and industrialization had far-reaching effects on the expansion of Christianity. The Industrial Revolution had brought new power to Europe, and with that power came an urge to conquer. Colonialism and imperialism were on their way to becoming accepted government policies, and as such they had a significant impact on missions. “Commercial and colonizing schemes had brought the ends of the earth into new contact,” writes R. H. Glover. “The Great East India Companies, Dutch and English, had—without intention or desire, it is true—paved the way for the missionary by making travel to, and residence in, Eastern countries more practicable and safe.”8The close tie between colonialism and missions has caused many historians to charge that the missionaries were merely “following the flag” as tools of imperialism. This is an issue that has been hotly debated by historians. In many cases the missionaries did “follow the flag” and aided colonial and imperialistic schemes. Others preceded the flag but even then, in many cases, bolstered colonialism. Livingstone, among others, pleaded for European commerce and settlements in Africa, and missionaries everywhere welcomed any privileges a favorable colonial power would grant them. Protestant missionaries strongly favored rule by Protestant countries and feared Catholic rule, and vice versa. However, by the year 1900 the majority of missionaries were not working in colonial territories ruled by their own home countries.
But despite this sometimes too cozy relationship between missionaries and the perpetrators of imperialism, the two groups were more often than not at considerable odds with each other. The commercial companies frequently stood in the way of the missionaries, and the missionaries, with few exceptions, decried the lifestyle of the traders and colonists. Rarely was the association harmonious. “The relation between missions and colonial expansion is complex,” writes Andrew Walls. “But one thing is clear. If missions are associated with the rise of imperialism, they are equally associated with the factors which brought about its destruction.”9 Likewise, they are associated with social progress in underdeveloped nations. “Protestant missionary efforts in this period,” according to Winter, “led the way in establishing all around the world the democratic apparatus of government, the schools, the hospitals, the universities and the political foundations for new nations.”10
But valuable as such social progress was, it was not accomplished without the introduction of Western culture, accompanied in some cases by a rejection of native traditions and customs. As the missionaries spread out across Africa and Asia and into the island worlds, they brought their cultural baggage with them. “Only western man,” writes Neill, “was man in the full sense of the word; he was wise and good, and members of other races, in so far as they became westernized, might share in this wisdom and goodness. But western man was the leader, and would remain so for a very long time, perhaps for ever.”11
Imperfect as they were, it was the nineteenth-century missionaries—a tiny company in comparison to other forces impacting the nonwestern world—who, in a relatively short period of time, turned what some may have thought to be a declining Caucasian religion into the largest and most dynamic religious faith in the world. They were common people turned heroes, whose commitment and courage inspired succeeding generations to follow their example. This century was an age when little children dreamed of true greatness—of becoming a Carey, a Livingstone, a Judson, a Paton, a Slessor, or a Hudson Taylor.