Imperlialism and Christian Missions

The Missionary Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century

Feb 18, 2009 Michael Streich

Coinciding with Imperialism, Christian missionary activities of the late nineteenth century attempted to convert the "heathen" and usher in the Kingdom of God.

The Christian missionary movement in the late nineteenth century coincided with and often supported the goals of imperialism. Both Protestant and Catholic missionaries flooded countries like India and China and the African continent. As European nations and the United States carved out spheres of influence throughout the world and established varying relationships of dependence and dominance, Christian faith groups seized the opportunity to carry out the “Great Commission” to go into the world and preach the Gospel.

Motives of Christian Missions

Writing about the China Inland Mission and J. Hudson Taylor, Howard Taylor says, “No empire-building, no pyramiding of financial or personal power, no suppression of fellow Christians.” Mission societies viewed their primary goal as preaching the Gospel. Along with that came schools, hospitals, and even the odd attempt at Constitution writing with the king of Tahiti by London Missionary Society representatives George Bennet and Daniel Tyerman. [1]

Late nineteenth century Protestant denominations believed that the world was beginning a millennial period that would culminate in the coming of God’s kingdom. The vast social and economic progress that was turning some European countries as well as the United States into progressive, modern societies characterized by an expanding middle class highlighted the views of progress. Imperialism exported this progress through investment (albeit not as great as investment in other European nations such as Russia), expanded transportation, communication, and western-style “civilization.”

At least in the United States, imperialism was coupled with the duty to spread the Gospel, converting the “heathen.” These efforts were often rejected by native populations. David Gilmour writes that, “…the young Gandhi ‘would not endure’ the way that missionaries used to stand near his school, holding forth and ‘pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods.’” [2] While not all missionaries reflected such tactics (such as J. Hudson Taylor noted above or the Catholic Jesuits in China), many did.

The 1896 Henry E. Nichol mission hymn We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations, still found in many evangelical hymn books, states:

For the darkness shall turn to the dawning,

And the Dawning to noonday bright,

And Christ’s great kingdom shall come to earth,

The kingdom of love and light.

The hymn illustrates perfectly the amillennial beliefs of Protestant missions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The “story” would “set their hearts to the right,” implying that non-western cultures, especially by virtue of different religious beliefs, were wrong. When President William McKinley elected to keep the Philippines after the Spanish-American War of 1898, one motivation was to convert the native population, many of whom were actually Catholic, having been under Spanish rule for hundreds of years.

Other Songs of Salvation

Although written in the eighteenth century by Isaac Watts, Jesus Shall Reign was a favorite Protestant missions hymn in the late nineteenth century. According to G. J. Stevenson’s Notes on the Methodist Hymn Book, the song was used when South Pacific natives from Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa accepted a new Constitution based on a Christian form of government.

From north to south the princes meet,

To pay their homage at His feet;

While Western empires own their Lord.

And savage tribes attend His word.

Mary Thomson wrote O Zion Haste in 1868 in which she says, “Proclaim to every people, tongue, and nation, That God in Whom they live and move is love…” Protestant hymnals frequently still have sections devoted to “missions” hymns, many of which date from this period of worldwide missionary activity.

In many cases missionaries identified strongly with the native peoples they served. Missionaries helped expose Leopold II’s brutalizing of the Congolese people and American missionaries publicized the Turkish mass slaughter of Armenians during World War I. Coming out the imperialist drive, Christian missions used the opportunity to go to the non-western world for good and for ill.

Sources:

[1] Tom Hiney, On the Missionary Trail: A Journey through Polynesia, Asia, and Africa with the London Missionary Society (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000).

[2] David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005) p.101.

Imperlialism and Christian Missions

The Missionary Movement of the Late Nineteenth Century

Motives of Christian Missions

Other Songs of Salvation

Sources:

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