Why a Mid-Course Correction Was Needed.

The 500 year history of the Reformation can be divided in two parts, before and after 1792:

The first part is a 275 year mission ice age that began at the start of the Reformation 1517 and lasted until 1792. The second part is a 208 year thaw that began in 1792 and continued at least until 1998, when Gerald H. Anderson published The Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Anderson, our source for this creating this timeline. Sixty-one of Anderson’s missionaries served before 1792. One thousand fifty-nine missionaries served after 1792.

Below is the same data in a second timeline, enabling us to answer two questions, “How many of the notable Protestant missionaries were sent by mission societies?” And “How many missionaries were sent directly by their churches?”

Of 1100 notable Protestant missionaries featured in Anderson’s Biographical Dictionary, only about 27 were sent by churches. We can make a prediction: Had the church (as we normally think of church) succeeded in suppressing the establishment of mission societies a Protestant Mission Era would never begin. Paul Pierson could say with confidence, “When a theology says only the organized Church should be involved in mission, that theology has a very serious quarrel with history.”[1] For this reason, there is theological repair to be undertaken, and repair is my mission in every blog I publish. Meanwhile, another critic is knocking on my door, asking, “Blincoe, why are you discrediting the church?” I believe the conditions for repair can be created by an understanding a Biblical Basis for Mission Agencies and studying the Protestant Mission Ice Age to understand what really happened in history.

A Noble Expectation: Luther and Calvin Believed in the Church’s Mission to all the World. Luther expected the entire world to hear the gospel.[2] He said, “Before the last day comes, church rule and the Christian faith must spread over all the world.”[3] In 1523, Martin Luther wrote a missionary hymn based on Psalm 67. It stirs the blood:

May God bestow on us His grace, With blessings rich provide us,

And may the brightness of His face To life eternal guide us

That we His saving health may know, His gracious will and pleasure,

And also to the heathen show Christ’s riches without measure

And unto God convert them.[4]

Thus James Scherer can write enthusiastically,

For Luther, mission meant reestablishing the church on its true evangelical foundation in Jesus Christ and the gospel . . . The church, missionary in its very nature, is God’s instrument sending out his Word into the world. Every baptized believer has both a right and a duty to witness to Christ.[5]

Luther expected that the world would hear the gospel.[6] Though Gustav Warneck has criticized the Reformers “because fundamental theological views hindered them from giving their activity, and even their thoughts, a missionary direction,”[7] later scholars have demonstrated that Luther’s theology and understanding of church and kingdom was “an essentially missionary theology.”[8] In fact, Bosch adds, “he [Luther] provided the church’s missionary enterprise with clear and important guidelines and principles . . . The starting point of the Reformers’ theology was not what people could or should do for the salvation of the world, but what God has already done in Christ.”[9] James Scherer writes,

For Luther, mission meant reestablishing the church on its true evangelical foundation in Jesus Christ and the gospel . . . The church, missionary in its very nature, is God’s instrument sending out his Word into the world. Every baptized believer has both a right and a duty to witness to Christ.[10]

Sails on the Deck. Historians now concur with David Bosch, that the theology of the Luther and Calvin, at least, was “fundamentally missionary.”[11] But even the Lutheran Philip Nicolai (1556-1608), whom Bosch calls “exceptionally important” on account of writing about the need for propagatio[12]—extending the gospel because God would have us love others—offered no means to actualize his ideas. In other words, the Lutheran version of missions was like a fleet of sailing ships in the harbor with their sails lying on the deck. How can such a fleet catch the wind? Ralph D. Winter has suggested that the suppression of orders was “the greatest error of the Reformation and the greatest weakness of the resulting Protestant tradition.”[13] “The first Protestants,” Winter said,

unwittingly created another and even more significant internal schism deriving from and resulting in a truncated view of the church: this other organizational hiatus resulted as the Reformers conceived of an overall church structure getting along nicely without any voluntary sub-communities worthy of being part of the church [emphasis is in original].[14]

Calvin too preached that “our duty everywhere is to make known among the nations the greatness of God.”[15]

A Breathtaking Assumption: What we normally think of “church” would and could send missionaries. David Bosch referred to this assumption:

The fact is that, for more than a century after the Reformation, the mere idea of forming such “voluntary societies” next to the church was anathema in Protestantism. The institutional church, tightly controlled by the clergy, remained the only divine instrument on earth.[16]

Historian Stephen Neill says that Luther and the other Reformers did “exceedingly little” to put his expectation into practice.[17] Here is Neill’s quote in context:

It is clear that the idea of the steady progress of the preaching of the Gospel through the world is not foreign to his [Luther’s] thought. Yet, when everything favourable has been said that can be said, and when all possible evidences from the writings of the Reformers have been collected, it all amounts to exceedingly little.[18]

The graph totals up all 1100 Protestant notable missionaries featured in Anderson’s Biographical Dictionary. Before 1792 there were 61 missionaries, 1.8 every decade prior to 1792. Forty-seven were sent by mission societies. William Carey admired these as early adopters of the mission society model. In column two there were 1059 notable missionaries, or 50 every decade following 1792.

A Catastrophic Suppression of Mission Agencies. Luther dissolved the Catholic monasteries (though Luther himself had been an Augustinian monk!).  The dissolution of the monasteries happened “even though,” writes Paul Pierson, “monastic communities had been the primary vehicle of mission since the fourth century.”[19] Here is Luther in 1520:

The pope must be forbidden to institute, or set his seal on, any more of these Orders. Indeed, he must be ordered to dissolve some, or force them to reduce their numbers. For faith in Christ, which is alone the supreme good, and which exists apart from any of the Orders, suffers no small danger. The many different works and customs may easily lead men rather to rely on these works and customs than to care for faith.[20]

Luther believed that the entire mission of the church should be borne by the local church and its synodical governance structure.[21] The monasteries were of no use to him, though he sometimes wrote favorably of monastic orders, as we will see later. Luther’s colleague Philip Melanchthon held that monastic vows which were a form of slavery “at variance with faith and freedom of the spirit.”[22] Ulrich Zwingli was blunter than still, attacking monasticism for enriching the monks and because they pursued a false god of salvation through outward works.[23]

Had Protestants found a way to allow missionaries to organize a Protestant version of the Franciscans and Jesuits, the “great era of Protestant missions” could have begun in the 16th or 17th or 18th century, instead of enduring a delay until the 19th.

“It would take centuries,” David Bosch wrote, “before anything remotely as competent and effective as the monastic missionary movement would develop in Protestantism.”[24] Attempts by individuals, such as Justinian Welz, to initiate mission enterprises were dealt with firmly. “Because Martin Luther believed in the priesthood of all believers,” Mulholland explained, “he saw no need for the monasteries. Thus, by closing down monasteries Luther dismantled a potential sending structure for Protestant missions.”[25] The other Reformers followed. Unfortunately, writes Andrew Walls, by doing so “they had slain the goose that laid that particular golden egg.”[26]

Historians now concur with David Bosch, that the theology of the Luther and Calvin, at least, was “fundamentally missionary.”[27] But even the Lutheran Philip Nicolai (1556-1608), whom Bosch calls “exceptionally important” on account of writing about the need for propagatio[28]—extending the gospel because God would have us love others—offered no means to actualize his ideas. Ralph D. Winter has suggested that the suppression of orders was “the greatest error of the Reformation and the greatest weakness of the resulting Protestant tradition.”[29]

The interdiction that Luther and the Reformers ordered against religious orders still deters many church leaders from appreciating the biblical basis of, and effectiveness of, voluntary societies in changing the world. There is theological repair to be undertaken, and that repair is my mission in every blog I publish. Meanwhile, I have to see who is at the door . . .

Next: Hundreds of Catholic Missionaries Led the way. This is my tribute.

Previous: A Protestant Mission Era Began After Parliament Passed the Enabling Act of 1779

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[1] Paul E. Pierson, The Dynamics of Christian Mission: History through a Missiological Perspective (Pasadena, CA: William Carey International University Press, 2009), 33.

[2] For a fine selection of Luther’s mission expectations see Vander Werff, Christian Mission to Muslims: The Record: Anglican and Reformed Approaches in India and the near East, 1800-1938; ibid. 11-12

[3] Ibid. 11

[4] “Es woll’ uns Gott Genädig Sein” William Gustave Polack, The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal (Saint Louis, Mo.,: Concordia Publishing House, 1942). 349

[5] James A. Scherer, “Lutheran Missions,” in Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000). 585

[6] However, Hans Kasdorf has written that When Luther spoke of mission he meant mission to the “repaganized” (verheindischte) Catholic Church of Europe. Hans Kasdorf, Christian Conversion in Context (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1980). 170

[7] Gustav Warneck, Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from the Reformation to the Present Time (New York: Revell, 1901). 9

[8] Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. 245

[9] Ibid. 245

[10] Scherer, “Lutheran Missions.” 585

[11] Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. 247

[12] Ibid. 249

[13] Winter, “The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission.” 130

[14] “Protestant Mission Societies and the ‘Other Protestant Schism’.” 202

[15] Sermon by Calvin from Isaiah 12:4-5. Quoted in Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998). Volume 2, 213

[16] Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. 329

[17] Neill, A History of Christian Missions. 222.

[18] Ibid. 222

[19] Pierson, “The Reformation and Mission.” 813. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation gives the number of monasteries in England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland at the beginning of the 16^th century to be thirteen hundred, accommodating approximately fifteen thousand men and women, though by this time the monasteries in Scotland were “in a state of serious decline.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (New York1996). Volume 3, page 72, 76

[20] Martin Luther and John Dillenberger, Martin Luther, Selections from His Writings, 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961). 446

[21] Luther seems to have unacquainted with the durable Celtic tradition, by which the bishop was subordinated to the abbot. In this respect the Celtic tradition was “much less ecclesiastical” than the Anglo-Saxon, as David Bosch has pointed out. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. 235. Also Neill, A History of Christian Missions. 50

[22] The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. 80

[23] Ibid. “Monasticism.” 81

[24] Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, 245.

[25] Mulholland, “From Luther to Carey: Pietism and the Modern Missionary Movement,” 87. There were Protestant mission structures before William Carey; Carey praised as early adopters the Danish-Halle Mission and the Moravian and Wesleyan missions. Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, 10, 35, 36.

[26] Andrew F. Walls, “The Missionary Movement: A Lay Fiefdom?,” in The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002), 220.

[27] Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. 247

[28] Ibid. 249

[29] Winter, “The Two Structures of God’s Redemptive Mission.” 130