1. Introduction
When we look at the history of
Christianity, there were many movements that mold and shape the Christianity
today. Among many, Protestant Reformation Movement is one which has contributed
to a great extent in Christianity. Initially the Protestant movement neglected
the aspect of mission to some extent because of many factors. But in the later
part, the Protestant movement has contributed vitally in the Christian mission.
In this paper, we will try to analyze what were some of the problems in the
initial Protestant movement and what are some of the contributions of the
Protestant movement and in the mission, in the history of Christianity roughly
between the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
2. Historical
background of Protestant Reformation
Retrospection of Christian history
gives the view of how Protestant Reformation has impacted the Christianity in
many ways. Through the Protestant Reformation, it brought a new face to the
world of Christianity. To understand the Protestant Reform Mission, it is
appropriate to get the glimpse of the historical background of the Protestant
Reformation briefly. The impact of the Protestant Reformation though it broke
out in Europe, it spread all over the world and it change the future course of
Christianity. In order to understand the Protestant Reformation it is necessary
to recall that in the time before the storm people were intensely religious(Hillerbrand
xiii).
And in order to understand the context of the Reformation, it is vital to
understand the socio-political, economic and religious context, which will
enhance our understanding of the Reformation movement better.
2.1 Socio-Political
When we trace back to history there
are many people who are responsible for the outbreak of reformation in the
sixteenth century. But precisely, the historians begin with Martin Luther as
the one who started the Reformation era with his ninety five theses. First and perhaps
the foremost is the fact that it was a phenomenon of European dimensions. While
the intensity of Protestant belief and measures of eventual success differed
from country to country, virtually all Europe was affected-Italy no less than
Sweden, England no less than Poland( xx). The acceptance of the
Protestant faith was in some instances the least prudent political policy to
pursue. This was certainly true in Germany between 1521 and 1525, when it was
virtually political suicide to accept the new faith(xxi). The peasants’ uprising of
1524-1525, in support of the Reformation of Lutheran, dismayed those charged
with the maintenance of law and order(Hillerbrand
xxi).
The political power was predominantly controlled by the Catholics and for which
it become difficult for the followers of reformation to break away from the
Catholic Church.
The great theme of the age was, as
Ranke observed, the interaction of religion and politics. Religion alone does
not suffice as a full explanation for the events that took place, for in many
ways political considerations intruded upon the ecclesiastical course of events(Hillerbrand
xxi).
Zwingli’s quest for a Protestant alliance, the formation of the League of
Schmalkald, and the ecclesiastical transformation in Poland or France, show
that Protestantism was Politically involved(Hillerbrand
xxi).
Around the end of the fifteenth
century, feudal governance was being replaced with rising absolute monarchies,
spurred on by Machiavelli’s “principle of state,” which either ignored religion
or made it a tool of the state(Bevans and Schroeder 172). During this time the power
of the throne was overtaking that of the church. There was also important
scientific discoveries which made it possible, for example, to improve
compasses-most likely originally invented in China and Europe independently-
and therefore to travel further across the unknown seas(172). As a result there was a
discovery of many routes and geographical discoveries. The opening of new trade
routes was important, furthermore, for the commercial revolution in Europe,
which was replacing the disintegrating feudal and agricultural systems(172).
At the time of Luther’s formal
censure by church and state, the character of events underwent a change. The
Luther affair increasingly became a broadly based movement for spiritual
edification and reform(Hillerbrand,
The World of the Reformation 28). A movement appeared, vague,
undefined, heterogeneous, and unstructured. Concerned about the religious
matter, it was not devoid of economic and political notions. While to echo
Luther’s cause was to support a man who was declared both heretic and political
outlaw, people seemed able to reconcile their endorsement with allegiance to
the Catholic church(28).
2.2 Religious Condition
The period’s new euphoria also
touched the religious imagination with the inspiring possibility that all these
“new” people would soon become Christian. Just as the Muslims were finally
expelled from Europe after seven hundred years in the Iberian Peninsula and
Sicily, there were now many “waiting” t embrace the Christian faith in the New
World(Bevans and Schroeder 173). It was a moment of
missionary enthusiasm and optimism. The Protestant spectrum in the sixteenth
century included a group of radicals for whim the label “Spiritualists” has
become accepted nomenclature(Hillerbrand,
The World of the Reformation 67). In contrast to all other
religious groups in the sixteenth century, however, they made no real attempt
to alter the prevailing ecclesiastical status quo(67). They have criticized the
existing forms of religion, but they never decided to form a new church.
A parallel religious renewal in
Europe was evident in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Without denying
other political, economic and social factors, certainly Protestant represented
a human spirit that strove for a more radical gospel life(Hillerbrand,
The World of the Reformation 173). The initial revival of
Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century would be
followed in the seventeenth century by the emergence of the Puritans, the
Quakers and the beginning of Pietism. While it was certainly fueled by
anti-Protestant polemic, and so could be called a Counter-Reformation,
nevertheless Catholic efforts to reform the church in this context of general
religious renewal might well be called a reformation in its own right(Bevans and Schroeder 173).
3. The Birth
of Protestant Mission
Martin Luther Roman Catholic priest had
heart-searching question “How shall I find a gracious God?” He started reading
the Bible in search of his question but he found out several other facts about
the Christian faith and practices, which were not taught in the Roman Catholic
Churches. They were not discussed nor
explained in the Catholic faiths. The Pope was claiming the headship of the
Universal Church by the will of God. “From the eleventh century onward the
Popes began openly to claim to be superior to the Emperors. The Popes, they
maintained, is the representative on earth of the God whose servant the Emperor
is. To disobey the Pope is to disobey God and to forfeit one’s right to rule”(Lefever 7). The political power was control by the Pope and the
Catholic Church. In 1309 the Papacy was transferred from Roman to Avignon in
French. The real reformation was started at Avignon because the French King
started ruling the office of the Catholic orders and the Papacy was control by
them. Other felt resentment and frequent
extortions of money by the Popes was greatly increased especially in England.
The French King was supported by the Catholic Mission money. The King was
announced as the defenders of the Church in their land. “The Emperor, like the
Pope, receives his authority from God alone, and both Emperor and Pope should
respect each other in their respective spheres” (16). The German Reformation
started with Luther’ opposition and protest against the sale of indulgences. 
The
Protestant reformation was the result of Martin Luther’ 95 Theses were nailed
on the church door at Wittenberg on 31st October, 1517. Luther
articulate his teaching in small groups that
1. Man is saved not by own merit
but by God’s grace. 2. God has manifested His grace in Christ. 3. Man’s
response to God’s grace is faith, personal trust in God and in His work in
Jesus Christ. 4. The result of this response is that man becomes a new
creature, and lives a new life of sanctification. 5. There is a fundamental
contrast between Law and Gospel. 6. There is a real distinction between the
outward visible Church and the ideal or spiritual one [61].
The Jesuits mission order was flourishing till
fifteenth century. There missionaries
have reached almost all the countries and the Roman Catholic religion was
growing with its non theological doctrine. The Pope and Roman were given more
important than the scriptural authority. The Roman Catholic Church was
monitored by the Pope. The normal people were restricted to use the scripture.
In Firths words the Protestant reformation means, “Political, cultural
scientific as well as theological factors were intermingled to produce the
complex situation which we call the Reformation” (5).
4. Reason for
failures in Protestant Mission
One of the puzzling riddles of Christian history is
the lack of missionary zeal on the part of the Magisterial Reformers—Luther,
Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox. It took the Protestant churches almost two centuries
to begin any really significant missionary enterprise. Reasons for the “Great Omission” of the Protestant could be matter that led to
the relative omission of mission from thinking and activity of the Reformers
was faulty hermeneutics(John Mark Terry, Ebbie Smith,
and Justice Anderson 194). The successor of the
Reformers took passages in Romans 10 and Psalm 19 to explain that the great
commission of Mathew 28 was completely fulfilled by the apostles and their
immediate successors. Therefore, Christians of their day were not under the
mandate(194).
A second factor in the great omission sprang from the Reformers’
struggles to establish their reform. The reformers were so much engaged in the
life-and-death struggle to defend and promote their principles that they had no
time to think of a world mission(195). Religious war also contributed to the
neglect of missions among the Reformers. The whole period of the Reformation
was a time of mortal conflict between the Catholic and Protestants which
required a fortress mentality and which prevented any mobilization for
offensive missionary activity(195).
Hrangkhuma describes seven reasons for failures of
Protestant Mission which will give more details of the reason why it was a
failure;
a.
In their concern for the contemporary
theological war the reformers overlooked the great commission of the Lord
Jesus.
b.
The reformers had no material resources since
they were enmeshed in a momentous political and military struggle against the
Roman Catholics.
c.
Both Luther and Calvin believed that the princes
and other public authorities were responsible for maintaining public worship
and spreading of Christianity, and therefore, both neglected missions and had
no direct contact with non-Christians.
d.
The reformers stretched their every nerve to
re-evangelize, re-Christianize Europe.
e.
The reformers lacked the whole view of world mission
as they were preoccupied in consolidating their positions in Europe.
f. Unlike
the Roman Catholics, the Protestant Churches had no missionary structure through
which to spread the gospel(Hranghuma 275).
One of the major reasons for the lack of missionary outreach among the
Protestants related to their lack of effective missionary organizations. It was
so because the Protestantism rejected monasticism. Monasticism was the
missionary arm of the Roman Catholic Church. The Reformers did not replace
these monastic orders with anything else. This lack of organized groups limited
Protestant endeavors(195).
5. Protestant Mission in the
period
The two centuries after the
Reformation were not completely devoid of Protestant mission awareness. Near
the end of 1650, several isolated individuals challenged the popular belief and
initiated some significant , yet abortive attempts to mount a Protestant missionary
movement(195). Some Calvinist Huguenots
established a Protestant community and mission on the coast of Brazil (1555)
with the approval of John Calvin(195). Several men of the period
emphasized the need for missions. Hadrian Saravia (1531-1613), a Reformed
Pastor from Belgium, Count Truchess (1651), a prominent Lutheran layman, and
Justinian Von Welz (1664), an Austrian nobleman, all treatises urging the
churches to assume their missionary responsibility(195). Although the Reformers
neglected the missionary overt mandate, they laid the doctrinal foundation for
later missions. The Anabaptist and Pietist movement built their missionary zeal
on the basis of reformed theology, and they became the harbingers of the modern
missionary movement. As the Protestant began to consider their missionary
responsibility in 1650, inspired by the rise of the Pietist movement, the Roman
Catholic were consolidating the tremendous gains they had achieved during the
Counter-reformation(196).
The four movements namely the
Puritanism, Pietism, Moravianism, and Evangelical revivals of the eighteenth
century became the pad for the Protestant churches’ world missionary movement(Pierson 177). The needed renewal first
sprang from a movement within the Lutheran state churches called “Pietism.” The
Pioneer of Pietism was Philip Spener (1635-1705), who sought to renew the
spiritual life of Lutherans by small-group prayer meetings and Bible study(197). The famous of all the
Pietists, however, was Count Ludwig Von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) and the Moravian
mission. These Pietist efforts became forerunners of the Wesleyan revival and
William Carey’s Baptist Missionary Society(197). One of the Protestant
missionary antecedent must be mentioned, namely: the Anglican societies’ work
among the Indians of New England. Beginning around 1639, three of these
societies, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, served the colonist and the Indians(198).
One of the significant aspect of
Protestant mission was the translation of Scripture from the original language
into vernacular languages and distribution of those translations among
believers have essential characteristics of all Protestant mission work(John Mark Terry, Ebbie Smith,
and Justice Anderson 223). In the seventeenth century the Netherlands,
England, and Denmark became important sea power. This opened the possibilities
for Protestant mission work overseas(224). Seventeenth-century mission work was
usually carried out in the wake of trade. “The religion of truth” accompanied
“the religion of trade”(225).
David Bosch is of the view that in
order to appreciate the Protestant Reformation’s unique contribution to the
understanding of mission it is important to highlight the areas in which it
differed from the Catholic Paradigm. He highlights five features which may help
us to discern the contours of “Protestant theology of mission”, features which
are to be found in all manifestations of sixteenth-century Protestanism,
whether Lutheran, Calvinist, Zwinglian, or Anabaptist(Bosch 301). These five features are as
follows:
1.
It is beyond dispute that for the Protestant
Reformation the article of justification
by faith is the starting point of theology. It is the article by which
church stands or fall.
2.
Connected with the centrality of justification
was the view that people were primarily to be seen from the perspective of the fall,as lost, unable to do anything
about their condition.
3.
The Reformation stressed the subjective dimension of salvation.
4.
The affirmation of the personal role and
responsibility of the individual led to the rediscovery of the priesthood of all believers.
5.
The “Protestant idea” found expression in the centrality of the scriptures in the life
of the church(303).
6. Protestant
Mission era in India
The King Frederick IV of Denmark, a Lutheran was
instrumental in conceiving the idea of sending Protestant missionaries to
India. He assigned his court chaplain to find right candidates in Denmark but
he could not find the right candidates so he approached his friends in Germany.
There were two young theological students from the University of Halle,
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Pluetschu accepted the offer of going to India
as missionary(Firth
134–136). They were from Pietism
movement, which lead the Germany in the Lutheran Church in the seventeenth
century. They were sent out to Tranquebar as ‘royal missionaries’ at the
personal expenses of the King and they arrived at Tranquebar on the 9th
of July, 1706. They got bad treatment by the Danish commandant, J. C. Hassius
in India but with help of other junior officials, they could survive. They
learned Portuguese and Tamil language because the European traders were using
Portuguese language and native were using Tamil language for communication(137). Therefore they could conduct the worship for the German
soldiers in the Danish East India Company’s.
They put request to the commandant for issuing leave
for two hours every day to receive Christian teaching. Five soldiers join them
and first catechism class was begun in November 1706 further they were baptized
in the Danish Church(137).
The missionaries adopted orphan children from their
guardians after making some payment, so that a small orphanage was formed. Further the children’ were baptized and were
taught German. A Portuguese and a Tamil language school were introduced.
Ziegenbalg started discussing with the Hindus in Tamil
language about their religious beliefs and he never lack audience. In result of
this first small congregation was found in August 1707 and nine Tamil converts
were baptized. Within two years of time he translated the New Testament in
Tamil language(140). He contributed a Tamil-German dictionary.
Three other missionaries, Gruendler, Jordan and
Boevingh arrived with a large sum of money and the Kings order for the Dutch
commander to help them in all their work of mission and social work. A big
campus was built with three schools, Tamil, Portuguese and Danish further large
houses were built for the missionaries(143). The ministry flourished in
Tranquebar and Tanjore area.
The eighteenth century was known as the modern
missionary movement because many mission societies were born in England and
USA. This was fruit of Evangelical
revival in the Church of England. The Pietist Movement in Germany was leading
Protestant missionary movement. The SPCK and SPG old mission societies were
working fine but new mission societies were found such as: The Baptist
Missionary Society in 1792, the London Missionary Society in 1795, the Church
Missionary Society in 1799 and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in
1813. In 1810 American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions was first mission society in America(144).
Nevertheless the flag was followed by the cross were
ever the Roman Catholic and the Protestant missionaries went. Meanwhile the
father of modern mission William Carey arrived in Bengal- Calcutta in November
1793(144).
7. Conclusion
Thus, in conclusion, we can see how the Protestant
reformation movement built the importance of mission in the history, as a
result of which many missionaries were sent to different places and has
impacted upon the life of the people. In the beginning it was not so smooth,
yet the Protestantism never ceased to be part of the mission in the world. They
have contributed to a great extent in the field of mission which cannot be
bypassed in the study of the history of Christian mission.
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C. B. An Introduction to Indian Church History. Madras: The Christian
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Hillerbrand,
Hans J. The World of the Reformation. Michigan: Baker Book House, 1981.
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Hillerbrand,
Hans J., ed. The Protestant Reformation. New York: Harper & Row
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Hranghuma,
F. An Introduction to Church History. Bangalore: Theological Book Trust,
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John
Mark Terry, Ebbie Smith, and Justice Anderson, eds. Missiology: An
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Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998. Print.
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H. C. The History of Reformation. Madras: The Christian Literature
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Paul E. The Dynamics of Christian Mission: History Through Missiological
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