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    The end of the age of the missionary agencies

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    Walls Old Age of The Missy Movement

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    The end of the age of the missionary agencies

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    Walls Old Age of the Missy Movement

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    The end of the age of the missionary agencies

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    4 views4 pages

    Walls Old Age of The Missy Movement

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    The end of the age of the missionary agencies

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    254 The Missionary Movement ‘use new means for the proclamation of the Gospel beyond the structures which unduly localize it. Some have taken the word “sodality” beyond its special usage in Catholic practice to stand for all such “use of means” by which groups voluntarily constituted labour together for specific Gospel purposes. The voluntary societies have been as revolutionary in their effect as ever the monasteries were in their sphere. The sodalities we now need may prove oqually disturbing, 19 The Old Age of the Missionary Movement’ (Chistian faith is missionary both in its essence and in its history. At the heart of the Christian faith lie assumptions about the Lord and Ground of the universe and the common nature of humanity and affirmations about Jesus Christ that forbid its appropriation to any person, group, or commu nity as a private possession. The conviction that Jesus is Lord and the testimony that Christ is risen cannot mean that much unless they are to be shared. But both the faith of Christians and the nature of the church are missionary in a much deeper sense, more closely related to the “sending” idea from which the word “missionary” came. “As the Father has sentme,” said Jesus to the first apostles, “so send I you.” The Father sent his Son into the world not simply to spe ‘The Son, for all that his is not simply to add to itself but to bear witness that by his cross and jand defeated the pow- ‘as is the work of Christians and thei ‘every activity that demands But historical circumstances have required a special, technical meaning of the word “missionary.” The missionary movement from the west in recent centuries has introduced us to the idea of the representative of the total Christian community who has in principle exactly the same faith, testimony, and responsibility as all other Christians, but who exercises these in a cross-cultural situation, ‘First published in International Review of Mission 77 Vanury, 1987): 26-32. 255 256 ‘The Missionary Movement Iisa feature of Christian faith that throughout its history it has spread indeed its very survival hasbeen dependent ‘on such contact, This isnot true of all the great faiths; not of Judaism, for instance, found throughout the world, but almost entirely in ethnic com- munities; nor of Hinduism embracing countless millions in the oldest faith in the world, but overwhelmingly concentrated in one nation and people. Buddhism and Islam have indeed repeatedly crossed the cultural divide, but of Christianity we may almost say thatit exists today only because it has d it. For Christian expansion has not been progressive, like Islamic ion, spreading out from a central point and retaining, by and large, the allegiance of those it reaches. Christian expansion has been serial. (Christian faith has fixed itself at different periods in different heartlands, waning in one as it has come to birth in another. ‘The first Christians in Jerusalem, Jews to a man and woman, did not ‘change their religion when they accepted Jesus as Messiah. To be a Jesus person was to be a Jew in a fuller sense; to find new delight inthe law and. in that temple to which they daily resorted. Then somehow, some people— ‘we donot even know their names—introduced the Jewish national saviour to some pagan Greek friends in Antioch. Though this was to lead to some ‘heart searching in the Christian community, its real significance was not ‘lear until thirty years later when the Romans destroyed the Jewish state and the temple and the origistal Christian community faded into the mar- gins of Christian history. Had Christian faith remained as in the early chapters of Acts, Christianity would never have survived the Roman holocaust. What saved it was the action of those people in Antioch. By the time the Jewish state collapsed, most Christians were no longer Jews, but Greeks. In time, the tables were tumed. In A.D. 600 the Christian heartlands, already justly claiming antiquity, lay predominantly among Greek-speak- ing people in the eastern Mediterranean; but the whole of that empire that had crushed the jewish revolt now acknowledged the lordship of Christ By A.D. 600 those eastern Greek-speaking heartlands were not only under Muslim rule; large sections oftheir populations were becoming Muslims. Latin-speaking Christians were deluged in fierce, ugly litle wars; and Latin-speaking African Christians were dying out altogether. How did Chuistianity survive the collapse? Because by the time those events took place Christian faith was taking hold among the northern and western barbarians whom civilized Christians had long feared and despised. New CChaistian lands emezged, replacing the old and shifting the Christian centre of gravity as drasticaly as it had shifted after A.D. 70. For several centuries Christian presence was concentrated (not exclu- sively, but principally) in Europe. The westem Christians, after seeking for 4 time to impose their faith where possible, began slowly to seek to offer and to share it. This process reached a sustained pitch of effort during the nineteenth century. A glance ata religious map of the world atthe time of ‘The OM Age of the Missionary Movement 257 the World Missionary Conference of 1910 might suggest that what they had. accomplished by then was noticeable, but hardly overwhelming; the con- ference still thought in terms of (western) lands “fully missionized” and of the challenge ofthe other “not yet fully missionized.” We can see now what ‘as still hidden from them and which gives the missionary movement most historical significance. Over a long period Christianity in Europe was receding; only after World War Il did it become clear how far that recession hhad gone and how it was accelerating, At present it seems that Europe and Notth America are the only continents where Christian faith and commit- rent is statistically receding. Everywhere else itis expanding. Sub-Saharan Arica provides a massive Christian population. In the Pacific there are now ‘Chuistian nations of the sort that Europe used to have. In Latin America lies the largest single Christian culture group. The new Christian heartlands are in the south, in Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia, inthe Pacific; and the European empites that looked so permanent in 1914, nay in 1940, have all disappeared. This vast shift in the Christian constituency, parallel to those that followed the fall of Jerusalem, the western progress of the Arabs, and the fall of the western Roman Empire, could nothave occurred without that previous cross-cultural diffusion of Christian faith centred in the mission- ary movement. Wecs tian histor i first Christian frontier breakers, those “m “Antioch, were simply talking to their friends. Christians kidnapped and made slaves brought Christianity to the eastern Goths: Crista survivors rom hip ook lag laa, ‘by the church authorities did exist RD ie preaching of wandeing monks waste contact for some centres; others met Christians through the strange, severe life of some who appeared to do little but pray. The expansion out of Europe brought new methods and special organization. The Roman Catholic ‘Church adapted the seligious order to missionary purposes. Protestant ‘Christians in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed the ‘voluntary society, which was o proveso powerful and efficacious thateven the Catholic missionary orders found something to copy. The societies organized the systematic channeling of western Christian energy, work, prayer, and giving, and built up, trained, and equipped a force for cross- Cultural mission. This force established churches, often pastored them, and usually led them. When the operation began, such missionary service was costly in life and health and dubious in outcome or result. It was not long, in terms of total Chistian history, before there were resultant churches all round the world and westem church leaders were talking of “daughter” churches, and then of “younger” churches; and missions had become 258 ‘The Missionary Movement _means not only of planting churches but of servicing a huge international network with educational, medical, social, industrial, translational, and many other branches. ‘We can thus see that, while the element of cross-cultural diffusion runs throughout 1 “missionary” in the technical sense is one present, and ically important, example of a recurrent Christian phenomenon, “The recurrence ofthe phenomenon isitsclfa sign ofits temporary nature inany given situation, When Barnabas came to Antioch he evidently judged that the converted rabbi Saul was the person most needed by the now gentile church there: but it was not long before Paul was elsewhere and the “Antiochene church without either of aT vistian history becomes ‘Anyone who works in the field of African conscious of how in so many cases the missionary period isnow an episode, often an increasingly distant one, in an ongoing story. Yet the same story often reveals how missionaries had sometimes to be shaken out—by inter- rational warfare, political change, economic depression athome, orsimply by schism—before the story could proceed, : Any consideration ofthe future of the missionary movement must take account of the factors that originally produced it. And here we must remember that its origin lay in the territorial idea of Christianity, the association of the faith with one part of the world, the “fully missionized. lands” of 1910, from which the word may go forth to the “not yet fully missionized lands” elsewhere. The missionary movement is in some re spects the last flourish of the Christendom idea, and, in its early days at east, it was bome forward by the hope of adding to Christendom. But now the idea of territorial Christianity, of geographically contiguous Christian states, lies irretrievably broken. It was itself the product of the special historical circumstances of the conversion of the western barbarians. Now ft would be easy to adapt some of 1y need of the heathen—the igno- ance of religion, the immorality, the proneness to warfare, the inhumani= ties and injustice widely accepted in society—asa stirring call to Christians of the southern continents to undertake the salvation of the west. But the southern Christian lands do not constitute a new Christendom Few of them have become homogencous Christian states. Christian faith is now more diffused than at any previous time in its history; not only in the sense that itis more geographically, ethnically, and culturally widespread than ever before, but in the sense that itis diffused within more communi- ties, The territorial “from-to” idea that underlay the older missionary movement has to give way to a concept much more ike that of Christians within the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries: parallel pres- ‘The Old Age ofthe Missionary Movement 259 ences in different circles and at different levels, each seeking to penetrate within and beyond its circle. This does not prevent movernent and inter- change and enterprise—these things certainly marked Christians in the ‘pre-Constantinian Roman Empire—but it forces revision of concepts, im- ages, attitudes, and methods that arose from the presence of a Christendom that no longer exists. “The older missionary movement was the product of a particular phase of western political, economic, and religiots development. TheChristendom idea, which so radically affected its shape, was only one aspect ofthis. We have seen that the characteristic organization developed by the movement ‘was the voluntary society, which developed into the mission agency with its board, its constituency of concemed supporters, and the body of agents and representatives that itsent and maintained abroad. This itself was a product Of the concomitance of certain politica, economic, and religious conditions ‘ata certain period of westem history and not always present even in all parts ‘of the west. In political terms it required regimes permitting free association, a climate in which such association wasnot perceived by the stateasa threat, a type of society in which individual consciousness was highly developed, jn which it was not necessary or appropriate that all should be like their hneighbours. In economic terms it required the existence of surpluses, their ‘enjoyment by a fairly broad spread of the population, and the freedom to move them around. In religious terms it implied not only a substantial “Chistian base with enthusiasm needing outlets, but a sufficiently central- ined or relaxed (or ineffective) style of church organization for such energetic religious activity to be tolerated outside its formal structures, especially as the societies created new power bases and new (often lay) leadership. And for the agencies to operate implied a certain relationship between the west and other pars ofthe world, whereby agents of the societies could normally freely traveland settle and, ifnot necessarily welcomed, a least be tolerated. ‘The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a high degree of convergence of these conditions in certain western countries. For most of these countries that phase of development is now past, In one respect itis clearly past forall of them; no longer can theit citizens take for granted the right of entry or settlement where they choose. Nor are the social, political, or religious conditions what they were in the high days of the missionary movement, But the most marked difference is in the economic sphere. Missionaries are now expensive commodities; in terms of the countries that they serve, sometimes astronomically so. There already a notable number of missionaries from third world countries serving in countries other than their own, but there are good reasons for not expecting a general burgeoning of third world “overseas mission” societies, Such societies can only emerge, whether in the west or elsewhere, against the background of a certain type of economy. They cannot operate where the economy is based on marginal ‘agriculture, orin countries with chronic economic disabilities, or in counties ‘with tight monetary controls. 260 The Missionary Movement Despite the formidable economic obstacles to the continuance of the ‘older missionary movement, there are nevertheless countries where the issionary is a symbol of economic power. There are “broken-back” states, crippled economies, areas unaltractive to or vacated by all large investors, where the missions have the largest and most efficent technological and ‘communications capability in the country. They are the sources of foreign money; they have means of transport and travel and outside commusnica- tion. The immense power has little to do with the local church, except insofar as that church may callin people from outside: it remains foreign inits nature. ‘The changed world situation thus requires us to examine some of the tunintended consequences of a continued projection of the missionary movement. But there are changes also in the church, which must be taken into account. The older missionary movement, as we have already seen, developed a characteristic form of organization, the mission agency based fon the model of the voluntary society. Back in 1792, when voluntary societies were by no means socommon as they were tobecome a generation later, William Carey described how such an association might be formed in his Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means forthe Propagation ofthe Gospel Amongst the Heathen. The formation of the mission society was a “use of means" for a specific purpose. As it developed it became a quite efficient means of ackieving certain ends: sending and equipping people for the purpose of Chistian proclamation and service overseas, and mus- tering “home” interest and support for their work. Noone would claim that this exhausts the needs of the Christian world today, or even that it expresses its primary needs; nor that it appropriately reflects the true relationship between the Christians of the north and of the south. original organs of the missionary movement were designed for onc-W: tlic! for sending, for giving. Perhaps there is now an obligation of Christians to “use means” better fitted for two-way traific, fellowship, for sharing, for receiving, than have yet been perfected. The older missionary movement produced its own spirituality. At the nineteenth-century apex ofthe movement this was expressed inthe selé-

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