5. Dawn of the Protestant missionary movement
Dawn of the Protestant missionary movement It was August Hermann Francke and the Pietism of Halle that first opened the floodgates of Protestant mission. Francke's mentor, Spener, had gone on record that Protestants ought not to leave the global spread of Christianity in Roman Catholic hands. There had been massive Catholic missionary expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries; there was simply nothing comparable from Protestants. Some Protestant theologians, such as John
Calvin, acknowledged in theory that the gospel should be taken to the ends of the earth; the Protestant Churches, however, had not yet experienced any awakening of an effective missionary impulse, except within Europe itself
—evangelizing Roman Catholics. But Roman Catholics did not limit themselves to spreading their faith among Protestants; they went out into all the world. Such a global missionary impulse finally awakened in the Protestant consciousness through German Pietism.
However, we should qualify this by acknowledging that there was some Lutheran missionary activity prior to the 18th century. Some of this was within Europe/Russia, for instance the Lutheran missionaries sent by Swedish King Gustavus Vasa (1523–60) to the Sami people (formerly known as the Lapps) in 1559. The Sami inhabited the area of Sápmi
(covering parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia), and some of this territory had now fallen under Swedish sovereignty. Over a century later, this missionary work found its greatest labourer in Thomas von Westen
(1682–1727), a Lutheran Pietist nicknamed "apostle to the Sami". Again, some early Lutheran missionary activity took place outside Europe but within the bounds of ancient Christendom, such as the work of the lay theologian and physician Peter Heyling (born 1607/8, died some time after 1652) in Ethiopia; working from 1634 as court physician to Ethiopian King
Fasilides (1632–67), Heyling translated the New Testament into Amharic.
When Swedish Lutheran colonists arrived in America, their settlement at New Sweden (present day Wilmington, Delaware) was pastored by John
Campanius (1601–83), who arrived in 1643. As well as ministering to the Swedes, Campanius took a strong interest in the native Lenape people who lived in the locality. He studied their culture, and invented a written script
for their language, translating Luther's Small Catechism. He also preached to the Lenape with (we are told) some positive effect.
These efforts, however, seem like relatively isolated outbursts of missionary zeal, compared to the more focused awakening of missionary consciousness that characterized Francke's Pietism at Halle. Francke himself was possessed with a sense of the necessity of world mission as an integral part of the coming of Christ's kingdom. He did everything in his power to implant this conviction in his students at Halle. There remained, however, the practical problem of how to get missionaries into nonChristian countries and support them while they worked there. Roman
Catholic missionaries had the vast overseas empires of Spain and Portugal to ferry them abroad and protect them. What could Protestants do?
The answer came in the shape of a Protestant king—Frederick IV of Denmark (1699–1730). Frederick had a German Pietist chaplain, Franz
Julius Liitkins (1650–1712), and Liitkins imparted to Frederick the Pietist enthusiasm for mission; the Danish king resolved that he must imitate the zeal of Catholic monarchs in promoting overseas evangelism. There was a Danish colony in Tranquebar, on the coast of south-east India, where the Danes ruled over native Indians whose religion was Hinduism. Frederick decided to send missionaries to work among these Hindu natives. Where would he find people prepared to surrender their lives to such a calling? He consulted Francke in Halle; Francke immediately recommended two of his students, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Henry Plütschau
(1676–1747). They accepted King Frederick's offer, sailed at the close of 1705, and set foot in Tranquebar on 9th July 1706.
Ziegenbalg and Plütschau were the first Protestant missionaries to India.
The Danish Pietist mission they founded at Tranquebar would have a 130 year history (1707–1837), during which 54 missionaries worked in the area.
Since Ziegenbalg wrote regularly to his sponsors back in Europe, we know a lot about the early mission, its trials and triumphs. Certainly it enjoyed significant success; when Ziegenbalg died in 1719, he and Plütschau had established a 350–strong Lutheran congregation in Tranquebar. Not all its members were Hindu converts (some were slaves of colonists, some were ex-Catholics), but many were.
Ziegenbalg and Plütschau laid the foundations of an effective mission by the policies they adopted at the outset. These have been summed up as five major points and hailed as guidelines of enduring validity:
1. Christian education must be a priority. All converts must be able to read the Bible; therefore they must be taught how to read. Church and school therefore go hand-in-hand.
2. The Bible must be translated into the native language. Ziegenbalg himself translated the New Testament into Tamil (the first ever Tamil version); it was published in 1714.
3. Preaching must be grounded in an understanding of the native culture and mentality. Ziegenbalg made an intensive study of Hinduism, and made sure his evangelism and teaching took full account of the beliefs of those among whom he laboured.
4. The mission must pursue the goal of authentic personal conversions, not a merely outward exchange of one lifestyle for another.
5. The mission must aim at establishing an indigenous Indian church as soon as possible. The first native Indian pastor, a man named Aaron, converted from Hinduism, was ordained in 1733, which was quick by missionary standards.
The Danish Pietist mission actually extended outside of the Danish territory in Tranquebar. The British had settlements in that part of India; and the British Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (commonly shortened to SPCK), an Anglican organization founded in 1698, offered to finance the Danish missionaries if they would extend their work into British territories, such as Madras and Trichonopoly. The Danes agreed. The first Danish
Pietist missionary to be active in British territory for the SPCK was a Prussian, Benjamin Schultz (1689–1760), who from 1728 worked in Madras. Now employed by an Anglican body, the Danish SPCK missionaries used the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in worship, translating it into Tamil. Their converts were baptized as Anglicans rather than Lutherans.
Frederick IV's Pietist enthusiasm for mission also expressed itself in Greenland. He supported the venture of Hans Egede (1686–1758), a Danish Lutheran pastor, who sailed to Greenland in 1721 in search of any survivors from the old Norse colony there which had probably died out in the late 15th century. Instead he found the Inuit people,37 and worked as a missionary among them until 1736, winning converts, and initiating a study
of their language that enabled his son Paul Egede (1708–89) to translate the New Testament into Inuit.
Meanwhile, back in Germany, Francke publicized the work of the Pietist missionaries in a newspaper entitled Hallesche Correspondenz ("Halle
Correspondence"), the first ever missionary journal. It circulated not only throughout Germany but across Europe, helping to stimulate at last a concerned Protestant consciousness of the mission field outside the European homeland. It seems that Protestantism owes to Luther the first clarion call to Reformation, and to Lutherans the birth of the modern
Protestant missionary movement.