Mission history

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In addition to church history or the history of Christianity, mission history, as a sub-area of missiology, deals particularly with the spread of Christianity .

Mission in the Roman Empire from 30 to 500

Early Christianity

In the Gospel according to Matthew there is the often-quoted missionary command :

All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go to all peoples and make all men my disciples; baptize them in the names of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teach them to obey all I have commanded you. Be certain: I am with you every day until the end of the world. ( Mt 28 : 18-20  EU ).

Jesus of Nazareth worked in the Jewish environment for two to three years before his Jewish disciples. After Jesus' death the Jewish Christian community held fast to the memory of him in the “Lord's Supper”, taken from the messianic commemoration of the Passover Haggadah , and awaited his return . An important leader was the “Lord Brother James ”. At that time there were Jews not only in Palestine but also in the diaspora in Asia Minor , Greece, and Italy, and there was a brief period of Jewish proselyte solicitation . The proportion of Jews in the total population of the Roman Empire at that time is estimated at 7%.

Their knowledge of the Tanakh , which Christians called the Old Testament , was a great advantage in understanding the Christian faith, and so the leaders of the young Christian movement were predominantly Jews, as was Paul . A stronger detachment from Judaism began with his theology and mission (around 50 AD) - with that began the decisive phase of Christianity becoming independent.

The great Jewish war against the Romans (66–70 AD) reinforced an eschatological mood; Due to the catastrophe of the destruction of the temple, Jewish Christianity, which was bound to Jewish traditions, also lost its importance within the framework of the Christian movement. There were hardly any Jews among the authors of the post-New Testament texts, such as the Church Fathers , and only a few could speak Hebrew ( Origen , Hieronymus ).

Gentile Christianity

The use of the Greek language, which was the most important commercial language in the Roman Empire, was important for the spread of the Christian faith. All New Testament books are written in Greek. Antioch in Syria was an important center for the spread of the Christian faith among non-Jews (or “ Gentiles ”) . There the followers of Jesus were first called " Christians " (Christianoi) ( Acts 11:26  EU ). From there Barnabas and Paul started their first missionary journey . Initially, individual cities were reached, and from there it began to spread gradually into rural areas.

The Christian faith spread rapidly: around 55 AD a considerable part of the population in Ephesus was Christian, so that the silversmiths, suffering from declining sales, protested against Paul ( Acts 19 : 23-29  EU ), and Paul contacted the congregation in Rome, because he wanted your support for a mission in Spain, because he no longer had a field of work in the Eastern Roman Empire ( Rom. 15 : 18–24  EU ).

The access and involvement of slaves and women in the congregations and in worship was essential for the increase in Christian faith in the Roman Empire. Mercy and support for the needy and poor was seen as an important spiritual task, quickly creating a network of charity.

Mission in the Middle Ages

In Europe from the 6th to 8th centuries, the spread of Christianity was particularly driven by the Celtic-Irish and Anglo-Saxon missions. Originally introduced by Gregory the Great , various individuals were formative in the period that followed, such as B. Columban of Luxeuil , Gallus , Kilian , Willibrord and Boniface . In Eastern Christianity , some Catholic orders (e.g. Cistercians, Benedictines) were active during the time of the Crusades. Some branches such as B. the Monastery of Balamand testify to the presence of the Cistercians in the 12th century in today's Lebanon.

The Catholic Mission from 1500

In the Spanish colonial empire and the Portuguese colonies, proselytizing the indigenous peoples in America , Asia and Africa occupies an important place in general colonial policy. In Mexico, Franciscan missionaries have been involved in proselytizing since the early 1520s . Other Catholic orders ( Augustinian hermits and Dominicans ) were added later. The mission of the Jesuits in Paraguay is particularly well known . But you are also active in other parts of the Spanish colonial empire: especially in the Mojos and Chiquitos regions that are part of Bolivia today , in Chile on the island of Chiloé , in the Amazon region (here especially on the upper reaches of the Amazon ), but especially in the northeast of Mexico, with the Pima and Seri , Jesuit missionary areas are established. In historiography it is controversial to what extent these areas were independent of the actual colonial system. Both the Jesuits and the other orders were active in remote areas, some of which were not yet controlled by the colonial powers. For example, the Dominicans worked on the Orinoco ( Alexander von Humboldt also refers to their work). The example of Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) shows how ambivalent the relationship between mission and colonization is to be assessed . Although he is a Catholic missionary sent by the Spanish state, he is developing into one of the most prominent opponents of the exploitation of the Indians.

The Jesuits were also active in the colonial empire of another important Catholic colonial power, France . Her work is particularly well known among the Iroquois and Hurons in Canada . Well-known martyrs include Johannes de Brébeuf and seven of his companions, whose story is processed in the feature film Black Robe .

In addition to the areas in America, the mission orders were also active in the Philippines . Jesuits, Augustinians and Dominicans can be found especially on the main island of Luzon , but also on Jolo , Mindanao and Zebu . In other parts of Asia they had less success.

Africa became an important area for Catholic missions in the 19th century . In addition to the Jesuits , the White Fathers , for example , and increasingly - following the Protestant model - Catholic lay societies were involved in proselytizing.

In the Christian Orient there was a wave of proselytizing from the 16th century onwards by several Catholic orders, which were active from Armenia to Sudan ( Comboni missionaries ) and from Lebanon (Jesuits, Franciscans) and Anatolia to Iran. They mostly founded schools (in 1875 a Saint Joseph University in what is now Lebanon) and hospitals. The missionaries mostly led to the founding of new churches or splits from the Orthodox or ancient Near Eastern churches: ( Syrian-Catholic , Greek-Catholic ( Melkites ), Armenian-Catholic ( Mechitarists ), Catholic-Coptic churches , the so-called Uniate churches ) or Eastern Catholic churches and for attempts at latinization e.g. B. with the Maronites .

The Protestant Mission from 1600

Justinian von Welz published several works in 1664 on the meaning and feasibility of world missions, but met with strong opposition from Lutheran theologians. The Evangelical Mission Movement begins in 1705/06 with the sending of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and other missionaries to Tranquebar , India by the Danish-Hallesche Mission . The missionary work of the Protestants was more focused on already colonized areas than with the Catholic mission . The early Protestant colonial powers ( England or Great Britain and the Netherlands ) did not, however, show the same and privileged interest in the evangelization of the subject populations.

From the 16th century , there was a connection with the colonialism of the world powers and a connection with the spread of Christianity. Missionaries traveled with traders and soldiers, and in some cases were involved in exploitation, submission, destruction of cultures, violations of human rights and human dignity .

It was not until the 19th century that the British understood missionary work as an instrument of state colonial policy. So the mission societies founded at the end of the 18th century were able to operate under state protection. These societies included the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), the London Missionary Society , the Church Missionary Society, the Scottish Mission Society and, in Germany, the Berliner Missionsgesellschaft or the Leipziger Missionsgesellschaft . Mission areas were special, following the colonial expansion, Africa and India . Contracts were concluded between the individual mission societies so that German missionaries were also allowed to go to English protectorates or colonies. But also individual Caribbean islands, the Philippines through US American companies and China were targets of the missionary work.

There were also a large number of missions that deliberately acted independently of the state or national churches, such as the Basler Mission (founded in 1815) or the China Inland Mission by Hudson Taylor (founded 1865). The missions in Scandinavia founded in the 19th century (Danish Mission Society, 1821; Norwegian Mission Society, 1842; Finnish Mission Society, 1859), like many others - especially interdenominational and international faith missions - were not suspected of supporting national colonial policy.

Missionary Scientist - Department of Mission History

See also

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literature

Overall representations

Lexicons

  • Gerald H. Anderson: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions , Macmillan Reference, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-0286-4604-6
  • A. Scott Moreau (Ed.): Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions , Baker Books, Grand Rapids 2000, ISBN 978-0801020742 .
  • S. Neill, NP. Moritzen, E. Schupp (Ed.): Lexicon for World Mission , Theological Verlag R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1975, ISBN 978-3797400543 .

Individual churches and denominations

Catholic Mission

Protestant Mission

Individual epochs, countries and points of view

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Neill: History of Christian Missions , 1990, p. 22.
  2. ^ Walter Homolka, Walter Jacob, Tovia Ben Chorin: The teachings of Judaism according to the sources. Volume III, Knesebeck, Munich 1999, p. 57ff.
  3. ^ Neill: History of Christian Missions , 1990, p. 24.
  4. ^ Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer: Basis preach. Foundations of the Christian Faith in Sermons. VTR, Nuremberg 2010, pp. 64–71: Christians ally with power , there 66.
  5. ^ David Bentley Hart : Atheist Delusions - The Christian Revolution and its fashionable Enemies , Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2009, ISBN 978-0-300-16429-9 , especially Chapter 12: A Liberating Message
  6. ^ Fritz Laubach (ed.): Justinian von Welz. An Austrian as a thought leader and pioneer of world missions. All writings (studies on the history of Christian movements of the Reformation tradition in Austria; 4). Bonn 2010.