Describe the missionary expansion in the 15th and 16th century and its affect to the church.
Answers
Answer:
Spreading the Word: The missionary expansion of Christianity
Article written by:
Brian Stanley
Themes:
Christianity, Living Texts
Published:
23 Sep 2019
Professor Brian Stanley looks at the history of how European Christians spread their message, using key texts from around the world, including China, West Africa and New Zealand.
Christianity is not a western religion. It originated on the Western fringe of Asia – what we tend to call the ‘Middle East’. However, for many centuries the expansion of Christianity was directed from Europe and became entangled with the growth of the great European empires. Today over two-thirds of the world’s Christians live outside Europe, which has reverted to what it was in the days of the early Church – unbelieving territory on the margins of the faith. The texts that you can look at here tell part of the story of how European Christians spread their message. They reveal some of their assumptions that we might now find strange or unacceptable. They also point to some of the reasons why Christianity would eventually take deep roots in other cultures – not least through the translation of the Bible into many different languages.
Who were the missionaries?
The Christian Church has sent out missionaries from the days of the Apostle Paul down to the present day. In the 16th and 17th centuries many of them belonged to the Catholic religious orders – societies of men (and later women) who followed a strict rule of life and committed themselves to the task of spreading the faith. The Society of Jesus – or Jesuits – established by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1534 was especially influential in China.