Christian Mission in India

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The following important information is missing from this article or section:
Article so far only deals with the Catholic mission in the 15th-18th centuries. The Protestant mission from Germany (including Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg ), England and the USA from the 18th century is missing .
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
It would be nice if some of the rather steep statements (e.g. clerics lived publicly with concubines, assumption of Christianity out of "pure opportunism") were provided with evidence.

The Christian mission in India developed parallel to the colonization by the Portuguese .

Colonial times

With the papal bull Romanus Pontifex in 1455, the Portuguese were given the patronage for proselytizing new countries behind Africa. At the same time, the Portuguese were granted a trade monopoly for this area. After Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in 1498 , the Portuguese initially only traded with India. The governors of Portuguese India were reluctant to convert people of different faiths because they benefited from the conflicts between Muslims and Hindus . In addition, many officials did not attach importance to an ecclesiastical authority who could criticize or even pass on their actions.

Goa , the "capital of Christianity" in Asia, had four chaplains and a vicar general in 1514 who were responsible for the Portuguese's own needs. The clerics were criticized for living with concubines in public and for being more concerned with their trade than their salvation.

The Portuguese prevented foreign clergy from entering Asia. When the Pope's personal envoy from Italy arrived in Goa, they were arrested and brought back to Europe. Finally, the Portuguese King John III. (João III.) Reminded by the Catholic side that Portugal had promised to spread the faith. He was threatened that the East would be opened to all Catholic Europeans if he did not fulfill his obligation. Thereupon the king proclaimed the epoch of forced missionary work in Asia and around 1540 sent members of the newly founded Jesuit order to Goa, who were to baptize a large number of unbelievers as quickly as possible. Many Jesuits were foreigners who submitted to the Portuguese patronage by oath. The most famous among them was Francisco de Xavier , who arrived in Goa in 1542.

The king obliged the colonial administration to support the proselytizing with their own measures. First of all, every Portuguese in the colonies had to have his slaves baptized. Then a graduated catalog of measures was developed. The poor were given rice in times of need when they were baptized. Military support was offered to feudal lords and rulers in India. The middle-class new converts were offered positions in administration and taxes waived. Parts of the trade were also declared a Christian privilege. This state support enabled the priests to perform mass baptisms. But many “Reish Christians” only stayed with their new faith as long as they needed food.

The proselytizing of the local rulers was only partially satisfactory. Especially those with the least influence had converted to Christianity as they calculated the greatest benefits from it. Through the Christianization of the rulers Portugal came into a protector role, which was very dangerous and mostly not profitable. Because of this, the Viceroys of Goa soon gave up this form of support.

The most effective was the proselytizing of the middle class . Anyone who had a good post with the Portuguese also had their children baptized . But many had adopted the Christian faith out of sheer opportunism and were actually more attached to their old religion than to Christianity.

Since the missionaries saw the purity of their teaching endangered, Francisco de Xavier asked the King of Portugal in 1545 to send the Holy Inquisition to India, which also arrived there in 1554. After the Portuguese had banned the traditional burning of widows , newly baptized Christians were now burned, making the priests many enemies. The consolidation of Goa did not take place until the Portuguese minister Marquês de Pombal , who abolished the Catholic privileges and in 1774 also ended the Inquisition in Goa. After the fall of Pompal in 1777, the Inquisition was set up again in a weakened form.

Evangelical Mission

The first German Protestant missionary in India was Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682-1719), who was sent to Tranquebar (today's Tharangambadi in Tamil Nadu ) by August Hermann Francke as part of the Danish-Halle Mission . From 1882 missionaries of the Schleswig-Holstein Evangelical Lutheran Mission Society to Breklum were active in the Koraput district (in the south of today's Orissa ) . Friso Melzer (1907–1998) is also well known .

In the Anglo-Saxon-speaking world, William Carey (1761–1834) is best known. The founder of the English Baptist Mission settled in Bengal , which was then also occupied by the British.

Missionaries were also killed again and again, in isolated cases even today, such as the Australian missionary family Staines in January 1999 in Orissa . Many missionaries and their descendants have made significant advances in the Indian hospital system , such as Paul Wilson Brand (1914–2003), who made important discoveries in leprology .

Most of the evangelical missionaries working in India are Indian. The internationally known missionaries include Sundar Singh (1888 to approx. 1929) and Bakht Singh (1903–2000).

Under British rule

Until the beginning of the 19th century, the British East India Company prohibited all Christian proselytizing in India. The parliamentarian William Wilberforce (1759-1833) sat against the influence of the East India Company on the participation of the citizens in the formation of opinion. In a total of 837 petitions , which were signed by almost half a million British people, it was proposed to the British Parliament that the upcoming renewal of the British East India Company's Charter , which was due in 1793, be designed in such a way that the East India Company would be obliged to send teachers and deacons. The request initially failed due to the successful lobbying of the company's directors. They feared that turning to Christianity could endanger the power structures that existed in India and thus impair their economic interests.

In 1833 the company lost its trading monopoly. In 1858 the company lost its administrative function to the British government after its Indian soldiers mutinied in 1857 .

This happened with the Government of India Act 1858 , which the British Parliament passed on August 2, 1858 under the influence of Palmerston . The main points of the law were:

  • the takeover of all territories in India from the East India Company, which at the same time lost the powers and powers of control that had previously been transferred to it.
  • the government of the estates on behalf of Queen Victoria as a crown colony . A Secretary of State for India was appointed to head the administrative administration.
  • the takeover of all the company's assets and the entry of the crown into all previously concluded contracts and agreements.

The company was dissolved on January 1, 1874 by the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ann-Charlott Settgast: The man in Tranquebar. A portrait of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg. Brendow, Moers 1987, ISBN 3-87067-303-6 .
  2. ↑ Brigitte Klosterberg: The "mission archive" in the archive of the Francke Foundations in Halle . In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon . 2020, p. 1 .
  3. ↑ Martin Krieger: The sources for the Breklumer Mission in the Koraput district (1882-1990s) . In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon . 2019, p. 1 ( projekt-mida.de ).
  4. ↑ Kellsye M. Finnie: William Carey: By a Trade Cobbler. STL Bromley / Kent / Kingsway Eastbourne 1986, ISBN 0-86065-437-0 .
  5. ↑ Andreas Rapp (ed.) / Glady Staines: You died for Jesus. Brunnen, Basel / Giessen 2000, ISBN 3-7655-3679-2 .
  6. ^ Paul Gäbler: Sadhu Sundar Singh. Dissertation at the University of Leipzig, Leipzig 1937. A. Jesudam Appasamy: Sundar Singh. An Indian witness of the living Christ. Friedrich Reinhardt, Basel, around 1956
  7. ^ Daniel Smith: Bakht Singh. A prophet of God in India. Münchowsch Universitätsdruckerei W. Schmitz, Giessen s. a.
  8. ^ The Charter Act of 1813 - Derby Local Studies Library - accessed December 10, 2011