Missionary Movements

I

Introduction

Missionary Movements, groups and organizations arising within a particular religious tradition whose concern is to spread the beliefs of their religion. The principal missionary religions of the world are Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam.

II

Christianity

Christianity, a missionary religion by nature, was first spread by the biblical apostles, particularly St Paul, and by lay believers in the course of their daily life and travels.

A

Early Church

The early Church spread quickly into northern Africa (Ethiopia and Alexandria, Egypt), through Asia Minor, and, by the 3rd century, into India. By the 7th century it had reached China. It spread equally quickly into Europe through Greece, Armenia, and the Italian peninsula. Between the 5th and 9th centuries, Christianity expanded throughout Europe, north to Greenland and Iceland, and among the Slavs—carried from Rome by such missionaries as St Patrick, St Augustine of Canterbury, and St Boniface, and from Constantinople by two brothers, St Cyril and St Methodius, missionaries to the Slavs.

As the Church grew, religious orders systematized the work of missions and carried the teachings of the Church into the Americas and East Asia.

B

After the Reformation

Following the Reformation, both Roman Catholics and Protestants carried on active Christian mission programmes. Among Jesuits, St Francis Xavier was particularly active in East Asia. In 1622 the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith was established by Rome, and Roman Catholic mission work in all parts of the world was, and still is, conducted under the direction of the papacy.

Among Protestants, in 1698, the missionary Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was founded in England, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts worked among British settlers in the colonies from 1701. Probably the most famous missionary in America in its early days was the English-born Presbyterian John Eliot, the “Apostle of the Indians”. During the 18th century missionary societies were founded in many European countries; notable among these was the London Missionary Society (1795). Well-known missionaries of the era were the British Baptist William Carey and the Anglican Henry Martyn, who worked in India.

Franciscans and Jesuits worked in western North America. Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan, was active in California, and the Italian Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kino worked in northern Mexico and what is now the south-western United States.