% For a brief description of Carey's Enquiry and his ecumenical views on
Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517-1914 107
five years later, when Carey summoned Christians to missionary obedience, he spoke to hearts stirred by the Evangelical Awakening. The response that issued then has continued to grow.
"The examples of Eliot, Brainerd, the Moravians, and the Roman Catholics, Jonathan Edwards' An Humble Attempt to Promote an Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People Through
the World, in Extraordinary Prayer, for the Revival of Religion, and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth," Captain James Cook's Voyages, the influence of the Anglican Thomas Scott,
Bible study, geographical and ethnographical research, his own
evangelical concern, the weight in his heart produced by the un-
converted near at hand—these coalesced in Carey to make him a
man of unshakable and zealous missionary conviction. All this
found expression in his An Enquiry into the Obligations of Chris-
tians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens—the "char-
ter of modern missions." 18
Among a group of strict Calvinistic Baptists, some of whom had been reading Edwards and found their Calvinism thereby modified, and at Carey's urging, in 1792 there was formed The Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Heathen. The title honored the older Anglican body but signif- = icantly added "amongst the Heathen." Its purview was universal, not colonial. Supported by church members, the society made its
first grants to the Moravians and in 1793 sent Carey and the physician John Thomas to India. The. rest is history.
Carey supported himself in Bengal. There he cared for his insane wife twelve years before death released her from her suffering. A self-taught linguist and scientist, Carey translated the Bible into several Indian tongues, launched training for Indian ministers, stimulated social reforms, and through his botanical research gained a Europe-wide reputation. = Carey did not use the term "foreign missions." He knew only one
- mission to be carried out on all fronts. He knew there should be
only one missionary agency for all, but recognized the practical and denominational difficulties in his day. He urged a decennial
71748. The only work cited in a note in Carey's Enquiry. — es % For a brief description of Carey's Enquiry and his ecumenical views on missions see W. R. Hogg, Ecumenical Foundations (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp. 5-8, 17.
108 HISTORICAL STUDIES
world missionary conference to encourage unity and to encourage an over-all, coordinated approach to the Christian mission.
Founding of Missions.—Carey's first letter from India stimulated the formation of the interdenominational London Missionary Society (LMS) in 1795. Edwards' influence and that of an Anglican chaplain in Sierra Leone—this colony for freed slaves was itself an outgrowth of Evangelical concern—also played a part. In 1799, Anglican Evangelicals loyal to "the church principle" founded what became the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and thus drew Anglican participation away from the LMS. Also in 1799 the Religious Tract Society was formed, and five years later the British and Foreign Bible Society began its work. In 1817-1818 the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society took shape.
The impulses thus released quickly spread. In 1798 the Netherlands' Missionary Society was begun. New missionary societies grew up in Scotland. In New England, influenced by the theology of Edwards and Hopkins, Samuel J. Mills, Adoniram Judson, and other students were responsible for the emergence of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1812. Judson went to India and en route his study caused him to accept the Baptist view on believers' baptism by immersion. He and several others were baptized by Carey in Calcutta. To support these new Baptist missionaries, the American Baptists in 1814 began their society. By 1821, American Methodists and Episcopalians had established their mission boards. The cumulative effect of these events encouraged the formation of regional missionary societies in Germany, and by mid-century there were nine, all sprung from Pietism. Other societies arose in Scandinavia.
Protestant Missions Cover the Earth, 1815-191 4 '
In the years between Waterloo and Sarajevo, Protestant missions, in Latourette's phrase, experienced their "Great Century." Theologically, that century began with F. D. Schleiermacher (d. 1834) who, influenced both by Pietism and Kant, was optimistic about man and rejected Biblical literalism. The century also saw the rise of Biblical criticism. Albrecht Ritschl (d. 1889) marked the century's close. Distrusting metaphysics, rejecting Schleiermacher's foundation of "religious feeling," and starting with the Gospel as determined by "scientific history," he saw Christianity primarily as ethics. Faith leads to realization of the kingdom—humanity at its
Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517-1914 109
highest bound together by loving action. Thus, by the century's end optimism about man's capabilities for progress was influencing wide segments of Protestantism, including some in its foreign missionary outreach.1®
Missionary Motivation.—Yet one must guard against assuming that a prominent motif in nineteenth-century theology was alldeterminative for missions in this period. The Protestant world did
look to Germany for leadership in theology, history, and Biblical
studies, and German scholarship exercised real influence. But there
were several schools of theological thought in Germany, some very
conservative. Significantly, Germany's missionary outreach came
mainly from those of conservative background.
Nineteenth-century Protestant missionary motivation is a vast and complex subject.*° Although motives and understanding were modified from decade to decade, a strong and recurring eschatological strain among the Germans viewed foreign missions as the fulfillment of a condition needed for the Lord's return. Although both men were British Evangelical Christians, contemporaries, and worked in China, Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission (the first great "faith mission"), was from a different — background and differed sharply in theology from the Baptist Timothy Richard, who had strong social concern. Those of the SPG and of the missionary bodies that grew out of the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholic revivals had a different motivation from either Taylor and Richards or the German Lutherans.
Wide acceptance in many denominations of the Westminster Confession's interpretation of the Scriptures often gave appeal to the Great Commission's unchallengeable authority. The Moody re-
vivals in the United States and Britain, the Student Christian Movement, the Student Volunteer Movement with its frequently misunderstood watchword, "The Evangelization of the World in This Generation" ?!—all of which are intimately related—had enormous © influence in the final quarter of the century. These produced an unprecedented outpouring of lives from universities for service over-
39Cf. James S. Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress" (3 vols.; New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1897-1906). :
LE.
» Several doctoral dissertations of the scope and thoroughness of J. van den ~ Berg's Constrained by Jesus' Love, and tracing specific developments in the period, would be of tremendous worth.
2 John R. Mott, The Evangelization of the World in This Generation — (New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1904).
110 HISTORICAL STUDIES
seas. Between 1887 and 1900, for example, the number of missionaries under the CMS tripled.
Colonial Expansion.—One must also record the considerable importance for missions of the high-water marks of Western European colonial expansion. In mid-century, China and Japan were opened to the West. In the final quarter the European powers divided Africa among themselves. At the same time, Korea was opened, and a few years later the Philippines came under American control. Here was the peak of Western impact upon the nonWestern world.
Anglican missions flourished in British colonies, Reformed missions in Dutch colonies, Lutheran missions in German territories, and Roman missions in the possessions of Latin European coun-
tries. Yet, as Latourette has shown, Protestant missions in this period were more independent of governments—and more critical of colonial policies—than in any century since the fourth. Indeed, by 1910 probably a majority of the Protestant missionaries were at work in lands in which their home governments had no control. This was new in Christian history.
Other Factors—When the Great Century began (1815), several hundred persons would amply have accounted for the total Prot-
estant missionary force. When it ended (1914), there were some 22,000 missionaries—half of them women. Single women comprised more than one-fourth of all missionaries. Moreover, the emergence of the unmarried women missionaries occurred mainly within the century's final three decades.
By 1900 almost every church recognized that missions are the responsibility of the churches and of all Christian people—a remarkable transformation within a century's time. In the process, Protestantism de novo built up its missionary agencies. (In a notable parallel development voluntary societies for the support of Roman missions also emerged.) One outstanding result of this was the planting of Protestant churches among almost every people.
Missionary evangelism includes the spoken and the written word. Yet many peoples among whom missionaries labored had no written language. Accordingly, to help men read the Bible, missionaries reduced hundreds of languages to writing (in Romanized script), taught people how to read, and by 1910 had translated the Scriptures into more than five hundred tongues. This process went on vigorously in the twentieth century. The first literature for
Rise of Protestant Missionary Concern, 1517-1914 111
newly literate peoples has been the Gospels. The full meaning of this one fruit of modern Protestant missions may be much clearer three centuries hence.
Education and medicine provided the two major forms of Christian missionary service. By 1910 Protestant missionary secondary and higher educational institutions enrolled 180,000 students in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Of the 86 institutions of college
or university grade, enrolling some 8,600 students, India and China
together had the majority, with India alone providing 58 per cent
of the students. Medical missions appeared in the second half of
the century. They sometimes provided the only Christian witness
allowed or possible. By 1910 more than one thousand missionary
doctors served overseas—one third of them women. The large
majority of hospitals and dispensaries were in China and India,
which lands also had the outstanding medical-training institutions.
Denominationalism and a variety of interpretations of the Gospel were part of this outreach. There was growth in nondenominational = and "faith missions." Yet in remarkable fashion there was widevas spread and growing cooperation among Christians "on the mission oS
field." There was new concern for the Church, its nature, its min- - er istry, and its unity. Moreover, missionary conferences were establishing a pattern of cooperation that helped to shape "Edinburgh, — 1910," and contributed to the Eayelo ea: of national Christian councils a few years later.
On the eve of World War I, when mankind paced from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, the World Missionary Con- — ference at Edinburgh in 1910 symbolized Carey's hope and re_ flected the most dynamic and creative forces in a century of mis_ sionary endeavor. Moreover, "Edinburgh, 1910" stands as the root _ symbol of the Ecumenical Movement in the twentieth century. The crucial significance of these two inseparable facts will become i in- - creasingly clear in future eee
'The Free Church View of Missions
BY FRANKLIN H. LITTELL
Until fairly recently it was common practice for Protestant historians to present the history of Christianity and its expansion within the framework of a traditional and ethnocentric periodization. Thus, early church history would be discussed within the context of the Mediterranean matrix, shifting from the synagogues of the Diaspora to the Latin-speaking world of the Pax Romana. As centuries went by, the center of Christendom shifted from the Mediterranean area to the Holy Roman Empire. The shift to the north was confirmed and completed by the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Thereafter, Western Europe—and perhaps even the German Empire—was taken for granted as the center of Christendom.' Missions, when presented at all, were treated from the
*In the Handbook der Kerkgenschiedenis of J. N. Bakhuizen van den Brink and J. Lindeboom, published at The Hague by D. A. Daamen's Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1946, in two volumes, the churches of Great Britain and North America are given a brief treatment together (p. 328 f.): ecumenical concern and missions receive thirty pages (p. 363 f.), but the discussion still centers in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands. The famous and much-printed Kompendium der Kirchengeschichte_of Karl Heussi, published in many editions, the 10th here used (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr,
1949), is even more ethnocentric, with brief treatment of "Protestantism . outside Germany" (pp. 491-506) and "World Missions" (pp. 513-15). Although Friedrich Loofs was better informed on non-European Chris-
tianity, his Grundlinien der Kirchengeschichte (2nd ed.; Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1910) is centered in German Protestantism, giving two pages to the
112 ;
The Free Church View of Missions 113
"center" outward. The missionary churches were handled as minor deposits of European church life.
Within the last few decades, however, church historians have been brought to the conclusion that the "younger churches" of America, Africa, Asia and the islands of the sea can no longer be discussed as provinces of European Christendom. There are several reasons for this return to more ecumenical and universal perspec-
tives in the writing of church history. In two World Wars and two
types of totalitarianism (Nazism and Communism), the self-satis-
faction of the European religious establishments was thoroughly
shaken and the disillusionment of the "new Christians" very great.
Moreover, the disenchantment with European Christendom came
at the end of the "Great Century" of the founding of new churches,
at a time when the leaders of the "younger churches" were begin-
ning to be aware of a certain self-consciousness and independence
of white, West European cultural forms. Finally, it has been plain
since the 1928 Interpretative Statistical Survey of the World Mis-
sion of the Christian Church that the center of support for Chris-
tian expansion has shifted from Western Europe to the Free
Churches. Not only are the large majority of Protestant missionaries. supported by the Free Churches in Great Britain and America, with
the latter widening the gap steadily, but the change of pace has
been marked in Roman Catholicism-and Judaism as well. The
major proportion of support for Roman Catholic undertakings has come from the United States since before the First World War. The
shift of Jewish culture and civilization to the New World was com-
pleted during Hitler's control of the old centers of Christian civiliza-
tion.
With the end of the nineteenth-century culture religion on the Continent, a new period of church history is at hand for Western
Europe, the former center of world Christianity. It is frequently — termed, especially by those who have made a study of totalitarian-
churches in North America in the nineteenth century. In the 10th "improved" edition of Hans von Schubert's Grundziige der Kirchengeschichte (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1937) edited by Erich Dinkler, the discussion centers entirely in German-speaking Christianity. Other examples could be given, but four of the best European handbooks by four of the great church historians" ee, have been chosen.
3 Edited by Joseph I. Parker and published by the International Mesioge 'Council in New York.
114 HISTORICAL STUDIES
ism in its various phases, the "post-Christian era" or the "postConstantinian period." The newer experiments in the disciplines of discipleship, lay movements which endeavor to capitalize on the lessons in discontinuity learned during the church struggle with Nazism,* have broken both in theology and educational method from the comfortable old identification of Western civilization with "the Christian religion." In doing so, they have found a heartening response from the members of the churches of Asia and Africa. As instruments of evangelism, movements such as the Kirchentag and Evangelical Academies have been greeted by the leaders of the "younger churches" with an enthusiasm and fraternal warmth no longer accorded the traditional style of Western-controlled missions. In sum, there are many sections of the earth today where the planting of Christian churches is welcome if the Church be the ecclesia viatorum of the New Testament, but unwelcome if the Gospel be identified with the peculiarly Western style of corpus Christianum.
The old periodization of church history, which culminated in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, left the strong impression that the last four centuries have been a time of steady decline— at best but a sequel to the main act of the play. Yet the Protestant state churches were anything but missionary, and the real epoch of modern Christian universalism did not begin until the rise of Pietism on the Continent and the Evangelical Awakening in the British Isles. Most important of all for a new view of church history, the "Great Century" of the Christian movement was the nineteenth century. During this period, to be bracketed generally from the
* See the author's discussions of this point in "Die Bedeutung des Kirchenkampfes fiir die Okumene," Evangelische Theologie, Vol. XX (1960), pp.
1-21; Guy F. Hershberger (ed.), The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottdale, Penna.: Herald Press, 1957), pp. 119-34; "Totalitarismus," in Weltkirchenlexikon (Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1960), cols. 1466-69. Hereafter, WKL: coedited with Hans Hermann Walz.
"See "Akademien, Evangelische" and "Kirchentag, Deutscher Evangeli-
_ scher" in WKL: cols, 21-24, 727-30; also, the author's "Can America Adopt __ the Evangelical Academy?" in The Christian Scholar, Vol. XLII (1960), -~pp. 39-45.
fe 5 The concept of the "Great Century" has become common coin as a |
It of the impact of the work of Kenneth Scott Latourette: A History of Expansion of Christianity (N.Y. & London: Harper & Bros., 1937-45),
__ Vols. IV, V, VI; see also his "New Perspectives in Church History," The
. - Jour al of Religion, Vol. XXI (1941), pp. 432-43. Two major studies of —
The Free Church View of Missions 115
Congress of Vienna (1815) to the beginning of the First World War (1914), more missionaries worked in the field, the Bible and basic Christian literature were translated into more tongues, the support of the Christian movement was spread over a broader base, more people were reached in more organized ways, than in any other period of church history. If a primary test of the Christian
faith be its universality, the decades which preceded the World
Missionary Conference at Edinburgh (1910)—the first of the
great contemporary ecumenical conferences—were far more criti-
cal in shaping the Christian Church than those decades which
culminated in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Treaty of Westphalia (1648).
Certainly this is true for the "younger churches" of Asia, Africa, and the islands of the sea. Wise observers have come in recent studies to compare their situation to that of the "younger churches" to which Paul addressed his pastoral letters. The new churches of these areas, planted or watered during the Great Century of expansion, are much nearer to the New Testament and early Church than they are to the style of coercive religion which dominated most of Christian Europe from the era of Constantine, Theodosius, — aa and Justinian to the age of the French Revolution. "Christendom," = as defined in medieval political theory and reconfirmed in the aoe teachings of the great Reformers, has been a concept ill-fitted to the situation and needs of the newer churches. From the perspective of the members of the "younger churches," having of necessity no other weapons for their spiritual warfare than those ordained by Scripture, being totally dependent upon the guidance of the _ Holy Spirit for government and the voluntary giving of members for support, there is little real difference in effect between Martin — Luther's "Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation" _
(1520) and Richard Hooker's "The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" (1594 ff.). The "younger churches" are "Free Churches," and they belong to a different period of church history than do those which represent some coloration or other of establishment. ar aaaraae Professor Latourette's work in relation to the theology of history have been
published by Professor Ernst Benz of Marburg: "Weltgeschichte, Kirche: Fe
geschichte und Missionsgeschichte," in Historische Zeitschrift (1952), -"Kirchengeschichte als Universalgeschichte: Das ph clensnet hs von
Latourette," in Saeculum (1950). s
A ®* See - articles in Te "Freikirchen," "Volkskirche," cols.
- 10304 a =o
116 HISTORICAL STUDIES
In a very real sense, the major issue now confronting the American churches can be summarized in this formulation of issues: Is Christianity in America to be understood as a province of European Christendom, with the cultural and ecclesiastical adjustments of the Old World awkwardly adapted to the cultural, religious, and legal pluralism of the New, or are the American churches in truth "younger churches"? At the present time the American churches
are still uncertain as to the answer to that question. Indeed, the whole development of a self-conscious American style of churchmanship has been very slow, as indicated—among other things— by the fact that "American Church History" has been taught only recently in some theological faculties and is still largely neglected by the majority. As recently as 1956, the newly elected president of the American Society of Church History was moved to comment in his inaugural paper: "We cannot forever solve the problem of a right approach to church history by setting aside the experience of the American church as an anomaly." *
How shall the American churches understand the planting of God's Word in the New World? For the first American theologians, the problem was relatively simple. The American churches, like the political entities, were but deposits of European culture and religious life. In the New England "standing order," as well as in the colonies where the Church of England was established, religion was regarded as the capstone of culture and the cement of society. The Christian Indian villages of John Eliot (1604-90) were perhaps the most representative attempts in Puritan missionary state-
craft, since the break of the converts from their tribal society was
as complete as their religious transformation. Both transitions were conceived in vigorously theocratic terms, with fourteen towns of "Praying Indians" organized in terms of Exodus 18:21 ff. The words of the Covenant adopted at Natick, 1651, state clearly the blending of civil and religious affairs:
We doe give up ourselves and our children unto God, to be his people. He shall rule us in all our affairs, not only in our religion and affairs of the church, (these we desire as soon as we can, if God will.) but
"Leonard J. Trinterud, "The Task of the American Church Historian," Church History, Vol. XXV (1956), pp. 3-15, 9. See also Richard C. Wolf's report on the teaching of church history in American seminaries—'Recover.
Our Protestant Heritage!" in The Christian Century for April 30, 1952.
The Free Church View of Missions 117
also in all our works and affairs of this world, God shall rule over us. The Lord is our Judge. The Lord is our Law-giver. The Lord is our King.8
The end of King Philip's War (1675-76) found the Christian Indian villages desolated. Many hundreds shared the fate of their
unbaptized fellow Indians, who were sold off as slaves in the West
Indies when the "rebellion" was shattered. As later with the Chris-
tian Indian settlements of the Moravians ('"Gnadenhiitten," scene
of a massacre of Christian Indians by white men, 1782), neither the
Indian tribes who stayed pagan nor the white society which iden-
tified "Christian religion" with European civilization was able to understand and trust the members of these early Christian mis-
sionary villages.
When the colonial state churches collapsed at the time national independence was established (1776-89), church membership in America fell to its true proportion of the population. As customary with disestablished churches, which normally claim in their previous position of privilege to embrace practically the whole population, the sudden shift to a system of voluntary membership and support revealed the hollowness of the earlier claims to comprehension. Confronted by a mass exodus from the churches, once the compulsory feature was removed (as late as 1819 in Connecticut, and
1833 in Massachusetts), Christian leaders were confronted by a problem of home missions of major proportions. The answer was given by the development of those techniques of mass evangelism which have, more than anything else, given the characteristic stamp
to American church life. The statistics tell the story: at the end of a century and a half of strenuous work in home missions, church membership on a voluntary basis, church attendance, church giving for all purposes, has reached the highest peak both absolutely and proportionately in the whole sweep of church history.? Roman Catholicism and Judaism, as well as Protestantism, have had their whole style of religious association and life shaped by the emer-
® Given in O. Bacon, A History of Natick (Boston: Damrell & Moore, 1856), pp. 21f. As Eliot put it, "I find it absolutely necessary to carry on civility with religion." John Eliot, "Letters of Eliot," Series 3:IV Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: Charles C. Little & James ~ Brown, 1846), p. 88.
°See the discussion, with statistical reports, in the author's The Free 3 ' Church (Boston: Starr King Press, 1957), pp. 116f.
118 HISTORICAL STUDIES
gence of a pattern of voluntaryism and pluralism utterly new in religious history.
This pattern, which the great church historian Philip Schaff saw already emerging in the latter part of the nineteenth century, is based on the separation of the civil covenant from the religious covenant(s). (The familiar terminology, "wall of separation of church and state," is faulty.) As late as the struggle over the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (1785), patriots as distinguished as George Washington and Patrick Henry argued that an established church was essential for a stable commonwealth. In many states, particularly among the former thirteen colonies, there are-residual elements of Protestant privilege to this day. It is this factor which gives particular coloration to the tensions in the Southeastern states, where Protestantism has continued in its position of privilege and semiestablishment right into the twentieth century. Protestant compulsory chapel was maintained at the (state) University of South Carolina until the end of World War II, and the salary and office of the (Protestant) Chaplain are still maintained with state funds today. The dominant Protestant churches in the Southeast, socially if not always legally privileged, are today subject to strong temptation to adopt a "nativist" line in opposition to Jews, Roman Catholics, immigrants generally. The volume of material flooding the area from the "Protestant underworld" is very great, and more respectable organizations such as "Protestants and Other Americans United" receive a response out of proportion to the merits of their case. A century ago, as industrialization was bringing cultural and religious pluralism to the New England and Middle _ Atlantic states, Abraham Lincoln wrote a friend his judgment on
_ Protestant culture religion:
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid as a _ nation. We began a declaring "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When
1¢ Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, ept negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this
_ I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pre-
y fense of loving liberty.1°
' Letter to Joshua F. Speed of Kentucky, 1855; quoted in Carl Sand-
's Centennial Address to Congress (February 12, 1959), "Lincoln, Man _ | el and Velvet," The Penh, escerenile Magazine, Vol. cxvil . ), pp. 239-41. ;
The Free Church View of Missions 119
In terms of religious liberty, the "younger churches" of the United States are maturing into the conviction that that service only is pleasing to God which is voluntary and uncoerced. As Philip Schaff put it, "the glory of America is a free Christianity, independent of
the secular government, and supported by the voluntary contributions of a free people." He further declared that "this is one of the greatest facts in modern history." 11 The next step beyond voluntaryism is, however, willingness to accept the implications of cul-
tural and religious pluralism for the relations between fellow citi-
zens, and for the style of the Christian mission.
Significantly enough, it has been in the area of the Great Plains that the frank acceptance of voluntaryism and pluralism has been institutionalized. From the University of Minnesota to the University of Oklahoma the religious concerns of the state universities are expressed in offices of Coordinators of Religious Activities or Directors of Religious Affairs, with multifaith patterns of group cooperation, counseling, "Religious Emphasis Weeks," "Panel of Americans," and so on. In a growing number of cities, Roundtables of Christians and Jews carry on the mutual concerns of American Catholics, Jews, and Protestants who have learned that - . they can be cordial fellow citizens and still worship at different aa altars. Although in the Atlantic coastline states (and especially in the Southeast) the old claims to Protestant privilege still hang on, and although on the west coast (particularly in California and Washington) there has been institutionalized some of the anticlericalism of the French Revolution and Tom Paine, in the area of the plains states a new and significant pattern of civil and religious cooperation is emerging. In terms of Protestant history, it is significant that this is the area where through the great revivals and mass evangelism the masses were won back to the churches on a purely voluntary basis.'? : : i
™ Germany: its Universities, Theology, and Religion... (Phila. & N.Y.: Lindsay and Blakiston, and Sheldon, Blakeman & Co., 1857), p. 105.
4 Note the studies by Will Herberg, especially Protestant-Catholic-Jew (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1953); Winthrop S. Hudson, -The Great Tradition of the American Churches (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953); -
Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform (N.Y. & Nashville: Abin a don Press, 1957). On the characteristic "activism" of American churches, Smith comments: "Lay leadership, the drive toward interdenominational fellowship, the primacy of ethics over dogma, and the democratization o Calvinism were more nearly fruits of fervor than of reflection" (p. 8).
120 HISTORICAL STUDIES
Will the dominant American churches come to understand their status as "younger churches," with the large majority of their membership "new Christians," or will they increasingly revert to the pretensions of white, privileged, culture religion? The answer to
this question will determine whether they continue to use the form of address which Reinhold Niebuhr has condemned as "moralism." "Moralism" is that style of preaching and proclamation in which the Protestant churches "speak to the world as though it were the church" (W. A. Visser't Hooft). Those churches which conduct themselves in this way have an entirely different view of Christian missions than those which accept the whole world as their parish, which recognize the truth of the great statement by Hendrik Kraemer in The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. Addressing himself to the crisis in Christendom of the old style, Professor Kraemer wrote:
Nothing can demonstrate more clearly that the Christian Church, religiously speaking, in the West as well as the East, is standing in a pagan, non-Christian world, and has again to consider the whole world its mission field, not in the rhetorical but in the literal sense of the word.13
This is to return to the essential genius of the approach of the Free Churches to Christian missions. At a time when Protestant state churches still held to a territorial definition of Christian religion, nonmissionary in character, the forerunners of the modern Free Churches set out to restore church life patterned on the New Testament and early Church. Among their central teachings were lay initiative, voluntary discipline, and literal acceptance of the Great Commission as binding upon every baptized Christian. The "restitution" (Anabaptism) or "restoration" (Alexander Campbell) of the True Church, the Church before "the fall," involved a basic rethinking of the whole missionary imperative.14 At a time when members of European state churches were selling Africans as slaves and maintaining that they had no souls, and shooting the natives of the South Sea islands for the sport of practicing on run-
* (New York: Harper & Brothers), pp. 16-17. "For detailed study of the "restitutionists'" view of the Great Commission, see the author's "The Anabaptist Theology of Missions," The Mennonite Quarterly Review, Vol. XXI (1947), pp. 5-17: "Protestantism and the Great Commission," The Southwestern Journal of Theology, Vol. 11 (Fort Worth,
1959), pp. 26-42; Chapter IV in The Anabaptist View of the Church: An Introduction to Sectarian Protestantism (Boston: Starr King Press, 1958).
The Free Church View of Missions 121
ning targets, "restitutionists" (Quakers, Moravians, Baptists, and others of the "Left Wing of Protestantism") were sending mis-
sionaries to the farthest lands of the earth and gathering in the
"first fruits" of the peoples.
Whether or not the Free Church fathers were naive and nonhistorical in their effort to restore primitive Christianity, the fact
is that their descendants in the "younger churches" find themselves today in a period of church history remarkably like that of the early Church. Mystery religions abound; Montanist and Gnos-
tic sects are everywhere apparent; persecution of the Biblical faith is more widespread than ever before. Cast back into the early Church situation, the Gospel must go into the arena of public life
and thought and triumph through the quality of its voluntary discipline, the power of its preaching and witness, the steadfastness of its discipleship. The political powers which so long served to suppress the opposition and support the Christian religion are either unfriendly or neutral. The "Constantinian era" is at an end.
For the Free Churches, and those who accept the implications of the present status of Christianity throughout the world, a new period of church history is at hand.
The Evolution of Mission Theology among Roman Catholics
BY ANDREW V. SEUMOIS, O.M.I1.
Systematic research in the field of mission theology is a relatively recent development, beginning largely in the twentieth century.* Studies were made in earlier times on various questions pertaining to mission doctrine,? especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,* but they were not sufficiently systematic and complete. When the theological aspect of the mission did receive attention,
it was only according to the mentality of the period; viz., in terms of the missionary duty of the religious Orders and of Christian rulers, the bounds for intervention of the "secular arm" in the
spiritual conquest, the directions to follow in case of persecution, and the qualities and privileges of missionaries. Much attention was given also to moral casuistry, especially concerning the administra-
* This essay is a revision of the writer's article "L'évolution de la théologie missionnaire au vingtiéme siécle" in the symposium Scientia Missionum ancilla (Utrecht: Dekker en Van de Vegt, 1953), pp. 54-65.
*The anonymous treatise "De Vocatione omnium Gentium," composed around 450 (Migne, Patrologia Latina, T. 51), cols. 647-722, can be considered the first essay in mission theology. Some scholars have suggested authorship by Prosper of Aquitaine or Pope Leo the Great.
*A special place of significance must be given to the volume written by Thomas a Jesu, O.C.D. (Diaz SAnchez), De Procurande salute omnium eet (Antwerp, 1613), 926 pp., which was a notable effort of synthesis.
Mission Theology among Roman Catholics 123
tion of the sacraments, as met with—or supposed to be met with —by missionaries in their work.
Furthermore, the few books concerning mission doctrine were
not easily accessible to those who went as missionaries. Recall the complaint of Antony Erington, an Irish Franciscan at the end of
this period (1672), when he said:
It seems perfectly strange and hardly credible that while the arts and sciences are providing the books required for their students, the apostolic
work of propagating and planting the faith is so lacking in treatises
that new missionaries, who have to emigrate to far distant lands, are not able to obtain a single book that could serve them as a faithful companion and guide on all occasions.*
This complaint was still valid at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the writing which marked the launching of the modern missiological movement, Father Robert Streit, after noting that mission literature had already received some consideration from such sciences as ethnology, added:
We would like to be in a position to point out that such consideration has also been given to missions by the theological branches. In fact, however, a short inventory of contributions to mission studies in this
field, from the Catholic side, shows what seems to be a vacuum.... It certainly would be useful to investigate the missionary question with dogmatic accuracy in scholarly books and articles.®
Thus, theological study of the mission apostolate presented itself from the beginning as one of the primary tasks of the modern mis-
"Antony Erington, Missionarium, seu opusculum practicum de Fide propaganda et conservanda (Rome, 1672), p. 4. A bibliography concerning the period 1502-1909 can be found in the first volume (fundamental and general part) of the Bibliotheca Missionum, compiled by R. Streit and
J. Dindinger (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1916), xi + 24 + 877 pp.; and a short one in the first volume (doctrinal missiology) of La Chiesa Missionaria by S. Paventi (Rome: Unione Missionaria del Clero in Italia, 1949), pp
146-67.
® Robert Streit, Die deutsche Missionsliteratur (Paderborn: Schéningh, 1907), p. 6 (previously published in the review Der katholische Seelsorger, 1907, Heft 6-9). Concerning the role played by Father Streit as initiator of the modern missiological movement, see: Johannes Pietsch, P. Robert Streit, — O.M.1., Ein Pionier der katholischen Missionswissenschaft (Schoneck/Beckenried, Schweiz: Administration der Neuen Zeitschrift fiir Missionswissenschaft, 1952), 56 pp.; also my Introduction a la Missiologie Senne eee ; enried, Schweiz: Administration der N.Z.M., 1952), pp. 445-53.
124 HISTORICAL STUDIES
siological movement. But while Streit was desirous of a careful and progressive theological elaboration for missiology, Dr. Joseph Schmidlin, who joined the missiological movement in 1910, seemed to be in great haste. Moreover, Schmidlin was a controversialist. He ran head on into the famous book of mission theory Evangelische Missionslehre, by the German Protestant scholar Gustav Warneck,® and was pleased to find there such definite propositions as well as fine material for controversy. He adopted the plan and methods used in that work, took up its various questions, and reproduced, in great part, the ideas presented by Warneck together with what had already been written from the Catholic side. In so doing, Schmidlin became the first Roman Catholic author of a theology of mission.? His work, however, was very hasty and largely polemical, and its method—like the one used by Warneck —was unsuited for any systematic deepening of mission doctrine. Very briefly, the purpose of missionary activity, according to Schmidlin, is "the christianization of the non-Christians" (pagans, Mohammedans, Jews, and, in a merely accidental way, the Eastern Orthodox Christians, because of their Islamic surroundings). The primary scope of mission is individual conversions, and because the newly converted people require an ecclesiastical organization, the establishment of a local self-sufficient church is considered as a secondary scope, or as a social corollary of the primary end.
Schmidlin's book met with some success in Germany. Its principal parts were presented in digest by Peter J. Louis,® and by the seminarians of Hoeven in 1924.® The polemical trends, however, of Schmidlin's Missionslehre, which suited him, soon had to disap-
*Schmidlin's dependence on Warneck has often been brought to light. See: Hans Scharer, Die Begriindung der Mission in der katholischen und evangelischen Missionswissenschaft (Zollikon-Ziirich: Evang.-Verlag, 1944), 44 pp.; Olav G. Myklebust, The Study of Missions in Theological Educa-
tion, Vol. I (Oslo: Egede Instituttet, 1955), p. 294; Pierre Lefebvre, "L'influence-de Gustav Warneck sur la théologie missionnaire catholique," Nouvelle Revue de Science Missionnaire, 1956 (4), pp. 288-94. _ '
* Katholische Missonslehre im Grundriss (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1919; 2nd ed., 1923), 468 pp.; English translation, Catholic Mission Theory (Techny, Illinois: Mission Press, $.V.D., 1931), 544 pp. 4
® Katholiche Missionskunde: Ein Studienbuch zur Einfiihrung in der Misb> _sionswerk der katholischen Kirche (Aachen: Xaverius Verlag, 1924; 2nd
~ ed., 1925), 271 pp.
*De Katholieke Missie in Wezen en Ontwikkeling (Hoeven: Groot-
_ Seminarie, 1924), 348 pp.
Mission Theology among Roman Catholics 125
pear.'® This is especially clear in the second publication from the Hoeven seminarians, which, while still adopting the plan and ideas of Schmidlin, deliberately omitted the controversial aspect.11
At this point, when the science of missions was not always clearly distinguished from missionary propaganda and was marked by a kind of impulsive enthusiasm, the next stage of development was that of encyclopedism. The thought was that all aspects of missiology could be dealt with in a satisfactory, if not exhaustive, fashion within a single volume. Hence came the "manuals" of missiology.'"
The manuals revealed the importance of searching for a clearer division of the areas in missiology, and when scholars finally arrived at a certain precision in defining the proper area belonging to the theology of mission, it became clear that much of Schmidlin's Missionslehre had to be superseded. His book had been influenced by the concrete situation which shaped the missionary enterprise
and activity in the early part of this century. Many of his considerations were merely an apology for this special situation, or were a methodological explanation of the particular framework, resulting from influences of the psychological, sociological, and
cultural order, which was molding the missionary function at that time, but was not essential to it. Beyond these apologetical or methodological features, the real theological study which remained in the book consisted almost exclusively of statements dealing with the notion of Christian mission and its supernatural motivation. This explains the fact that many manuals restricted their mission theology almost exclusively to a study of the definition and "motives" of the Christian mission.
The majority of the manuals, in dealing with the concept of mission, departed from Schmidlin, preferring instead the thesis of
* J. Beckmann, "Der Einfluss der Missionswissenschaft auf die Beziehungen der christlichen Konfessionen," Katholisches Missionsjahrbuch der Schweiz, 1958 (Freiburg: Akadem. Missionsbund, 1958), pp. 28-35.
™ De Katholieke Missie, 1, Missieleer (Hoeven: Groot-Seminarie, 1933), 155 pp. See PSS for instance, U. Mioni, Manuale di Missionologia (Milano: Ed. "Vita e Pensiero," 1921), 536 pp.; and C. Carminati, Corso di Conferenze — missionarie. Compendio di Missiologia (Bergamo, 1928), 400 pp. These two manuals are not scientific, but are intended for missionary propaganda, a a For encyclopedism see J. E. Champagne, Manual of Missionary Abioae :
(Ottawa; University Press, 1947), 840 pp. ae
126 HISTORICAL STUDIES
Grentrup, as endorsed and popularized by Pierre Charles. For them the specific purpose of the missionary function is the planting of the Church in every region where she is not yet fully established. The criterion is one of geographical order, and is concerned with the regional status of the church organization. When the new regional church is sufficiently established with her own hierarchy and means, the missionary activity is finished.
The manuals followed Schmidlin, however, in dealing with the foundations of the mission, but they elaborated on the positive side of things. Schmidlin was an historian. As such he was naturally inclined to formulate a theology of mission according to the patterns of an historiography, using the textbooks of theology as the sources. The task, as he saw it, was simply to examine the textbooks one by one and extract all that could be more or less related to the mission. From this procedure he arrived at a first "foundation" of the mission with the treatise De Deo Uno, saying that it is because of the oneness of God that missions strive against polytheism and pantheism."%
Such considerations were far from a genuine theology of the mission apostolate,4* and the manuals were rooted in Schmidlin's way of presenting the theological aspect. They were, therefore, unable to enter the realm of systematic mission theology, despite their efforts to the contrary. This was not only due to their defective methods, but also resulted from an almost exclusive restriction of the material object of mission dogma to the "motives" for the missionary task. Of course, the manuals were not silent about the subject, the object and the finality of mission, especially when seeking to define the missionary function, but they did not give adequate theological analysis in these areas. Perhaps it was due to ____ the fact that they relied largely on Schmidlin's Missionslehre, which
_ had developed these points methodologically, but not theologically.
The manuals, furthermore, were inadequate because they were premature. Before encyclopedism could be substantially helpful,
ae Edis: Missionslehre, 1923, op. cit., pp. 70-71.
"The specific theological justification of the missionary function of the
sid navies Since the struggle against polvtheisn< is only one point in the hole range of mission activity, and is not even properly mission activity ecause this is common to the whole cae of the Church, no real and
Mission Theology among Roman Catholics 127
it was necessary that more research and writing of monographs be done on the individual topics of fundamental importance in mission theology. It was particularly important that there be a more precise definition of the nature, the object, and the method of systematic mission theology.
Important advances have been made along these lines in recent years and valuable bibliography on the various topics is readily available.'® In fact, the numerous problems pertaining to the introduction of missiology, which is of crucial importance for a coherent
study in the various fields of missiology, have occasioned a great
amount of research, discussion, and writing.1¢ In 1952, with all
of this material to draw upon, the present writer prepared his book
Introduction 4 la Missiologie, which sought to deal with the various
aspects of the introduction to missiology in a systematic and
coherent fashion." The size of this book may seem enormous,
considering the fact that it is only an introduction, but it seemed
preferable to take into account all the opinions and developments
in this field in order to provide a clear picture of exactly what the
situation is at the present time. . It is important to recognize that theological studies are not based — upon invented ideas, but upon revelation. They must always rely ae upon revelation and should never deviate from it. For an harmonious elaboration of systematic missiology, therefore, it is necessary to produce critical studies in the field of Biblical missiology, and, secondarily, in patristical missiology. Since the time of Streit's
#* An annual bibliography of books and articles in missiology is published — in the Dutch quarterly Het Missiewerk in the last issue for each year. More elaborate is the annual publication Bibliografia Missionaria (Vol. XXIII for — 1959), compiled in Rome (Ed. Unione Missionaria del Clero d'Italia), | which also gives reviews of the more important publications. A good selec- — tion of titles is also mentioned in the quarterly bibliography of the International Review of Missions. 2
© See: Joseph Schmidlin, Einfiihrung in die Missionswissenschaft (Min- —
ster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1917), vi-+ 208 pp.; 2nd ed., © 1925, v+ 188 pp.; G. B. Tragella, Avviamento allo Studio delle Missioni (Milano: Pontificio Istituto Missioni Estere, 1930), 95 pp.; Alphons Mulders, Inleiding tot de Missiewetenschap ('sHertogenbosch: Teulings'Uitg., 1937), x + 225 pp.; (2nd ed.; Bussum: Paul Brand, 1950), 267 pp.; A. Perbal, Lo — Studio delle Missioni, "Orizzonti Missionari" (Roma: Ed. U.M.C. 1946), | 177 pp. . er. ie " Andr. V. Seumois, Introduction a la Missiologie, op. cit.
128 HISTORICAL STUDIES
inaugural booklet,!8 there have been numerous valuable studies in both these fields. In Biblical missiology there has been a variety of publications bearing upon the economy of the primitive Covenant, the mission theology of the Mosaic Covenant (with special emphasis on the question of the contrast between particularism and universalism), the missionary idea in the Psalms and among the Prophets, and, finally, upon the missionary idea in the New Testament—the missionary figure of Christ, the theological aspects of the missionary activity of the Apostle to the Gentiles, and the kerygmatic witness according to Acts. In the vast field of patristical missiology there are also many studies available. Some examine the-mission doctrine of a particular group of Church Fathers. Others are concerned only with one Father in his missionary aspect. This is particularly true of studies of Augustine, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, Clement of Rome, Clement and Cyril of Alexandria, Origen, Ephraem the Syrian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Caesarius of Arles, and Gregory the Great.1® Others present a study of one particular point of mission doctrine in light of the whole tradition of the first centuries. This is what the present writer sought to do in studies dealing with missionary adaptation, the lay apostolate, and missionary prayer according to the tradition of the early Church.?® Although the patristical documents are interesting primarily for the area of practical missiology, they also
* Robert, Streit, Die Mission in Exegese und Patrologie (Paderborn: Schdningh, 1909), 30 pp. (previously published in the review Der katholische Seelsorger, 1909, pp. 296-306, 346-50, 400-07, 445-53).
#" A selection of titles from this field would include: Paul Andres, Der Missionsgedanke in den Schriften des heil. Johannes Chrysostomus, "Mis-
sionswissenschaftliche Studien," Heft 8 (Hiinfeld: Verlag der Oblaten, 1935), xv + 196 pp.; Jean Mesot, Die Heidenbekehrung bei Ambrosius von Mailand, "NZM Supplementa," Heft 7 (Schéneck/Beckenried, Schweiz: Administration der NZM, 1958), xi+ 153 pp.; A. Paulin, S. Cyrille de Jérusalem catéchéte, "Lex Orandi," Nr. 29 (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1959), 256 pp.; J. Wang Tch'ang Tche, Saint Augustin et les vertus des paiens - (Paris: Beauchesne, 1938), viii + 194 pp.; J. Zameza, La conversidn del mundo infiel en la concepcién del "Totus Christus' de San Agustin,
"Biblioteca Misional del Seminario de Misiones," Nr. 2 (Burgos: Seminario de Misiones, 1942), 97 pp.
® See La Papauté et les Missions au cours des six premiers siécles. Méthodologie antique et orientations modernes (Louvain-Paris: "Eglise Vivante,"
1953), 224 pp.; "L'apostolat laic de lantiquité selon les témoignages
_ patristiques," Euntes Docete (Rome), 1952, 126-53; "Missionary Prayer in
the Early Church," Worldmission (New York), 1953 (3), pp. 283-308.