MISSIONS, FOREIGN

MISSIONS, FOREIGN, were the primary means by which American Christians spread their religion and worldview across cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In sending missionaries, denominations and parachurch organizations sought at various times to convert people to Christianity, found churches, translate the Bible into vernaculars, establish schools and hospitals, dispense relief and development aid, and support human rights. Missionaries were the first scholars to study other religions and to conduct ethnographic studies of tribal peoples. As bridges between American Christians and non-Western cultures, missionaries also worked to shape government policy, for example through defending Asians' rights to American citizenship in the early twentieth century or opposing military aid to Central America in the late twentieth century. Views of missions often reflected popular opinions about projections of American power abroad. They therefore received widespread support in the decades before World War Ibut were accused of imperialism during the Vietnam War era.

In 1812 the American Board (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Reformed) sent the first American foreign missionaries to India. Other Protestant denominations soon organized for mission activity and selected their own "mission fields." By 1870 approximately two thousand Americans had gone as missionaries to India, Burma, the South Pacific, Liberia, Oregon, the Near East, China, and other locations. In the late nineteenth century women founded over forty denominational societies to send unmarried women as teachers, doctors, and evangelists to women in other cultures, and female missionaries began to outnumber males. With the United States itself a Catholic "mission field" until 1908, American Catholics only began supporting significant numbers of foreign missionaries after World War I. Priests and sisters planted churches, ran schools and orphanages, and founded Native religious congregations. During the 1960s

Catholics responded to a call by Pope John XXIII to send 10 percent of church personnel to Latin America. Subsequent missionary experiences living among the poor of the continent were a major factor behind the spread of liberation theology.

Until the 1950s, when Communists conquered China and India and Pakistan broke from British rule, China and South Asia were the largest sites of American mission activity. By the late 1960s a decline in denominational vitality, relativism and self-criticism, and a commitment to partnerships with non-Western churches caused the number of missionaries to drop among older Protestant denominations like Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, and Methodists. Simultaneously the center of the world Christian population shifted from the Northern Hemisphere to sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia. Churches in former "mission fields" began sending missionaries to the United States to accompany their own immigrant groups. Yet interest in sending missionaries remained high among conservative evangelicals, Pentecostals, and nontraditional groups like Mormons, whose combined personnel outnumbered those from older denominations from the late 1960s. In 1980 roughly thirty-five thousand American career missionaries were in service. As the end of the millennium neared, evangelistic missions around the world organized the "a.d. 2000 and Beyond" movement to begin churches among every "people group" by the year 2000. The largest American Protestant mission-sending agencies by the 1990s were the Southern Baptist Convention and the Wycliffe Bible Translators.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dries, Angelyn. The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998.

Hutchison, William R. Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Robert, Dana L. American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997.

Dana L.Robert

See alsoReligion and Religious Affiliation .

foreign missions. Ireland played little part in Christian missionary activity from the end of its European mission in the 9th century until the post‐Reformation period. From the 16th century, the Catholic church was preoccupied with survival, the papacy regarding the kingdom as ‘mission’ territory. Despite its own domestic problems the Church of Ireland took foreign mission initiatives. The ‘Irish Auxiliary’ to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was founded in 1714, followed by the Hibernian Church Missionary Society (1817), an Irish offshoot of the evangelically inspired Church Mission Movement. In 1874 the Leprosy Mission was established while in 1885 the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission was set up. There was also an Irish Presbyterian Mission. Many Irish Protestants were involved in English or international missionary agencies. Today a General Synod Council for the Church Overseas co‐ordinates Anglican missionary activity.

Although many Irish Catholic priests worked in ancien régime Europe, modern Catholic foreign missions were essentially a post‐Catholic emancipation phenomenon. The orders of female religious came first. Nano Nagle's Sisters of the Presentation were active in Newfoundland from 1833 and in India from 1841. Catherine McAuley's Irish Sisters of Mercy had apostolates among Aborigine, Maori, and native American communities, as well as in South Africa, Belize, and Jamaica, beginning in 1839. Frances Teresa Ball's Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loreto Sisters) had members active in India from 1841 and in South Africa from 1879. Male missionaries came later. While Maynooth did found a mission to India in 1838, its attention, like that of the remaining continental colleges, was on the domestic church. The growing Irish diaspora's clerical needs were catered for by the local diocesan seminaries at Kilkenny (1782), Carlow (1793), Waterford (1807), Wexford (1819), and All Hallows, Dublin (1842).

The Irish Christian Brothers, from 1825, and the Patrician Brothers from 1848, served on the diaspora mission. Later in the century, under continental influences, came a drive to produce priests for non‐Christian populations, mostly within the British empire. It was the introduction of French missionary congregations like the Holy Ghost Fathers (1859) and the Society of African Missions (1877) which marked the beginning of a larger mission effort. Native foreign mission movements emerged, notably John Blowick and John Galvin's Maynooth Mission to China (1916) and St Patrick's Society for African Missions (1932). Parallel female missionary congregations flourished, like Lady Frances Maloney's Missionary Sisters of St Columban (1922), Agnes Ryan's Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary (1924), and Mary Martin's Medical Missionaries of Mary (1937). Lay organizations like the Apostolic Work Society, founded in France in 1838, the Legion of Mary's Viatores Christi movement, formally established in 1964, and Edwina Gateley's lay Volunteer Missionary Movement, which spread to Ireland in 1972, were also active.

Very recent mission activity has been affected by the growing autonomy of native churches, involvement in justice issues, the growth of government foreign aid programmes, and a decline in the numbers coming forward for missionary work.

Bibliography

Hogan, Edmund , The Irish Missionary Movement (1990)

Thomas O'Connor

Missionary Societies Organizations for the promotion of Christianity among non-Christians. The first such society was established in New England in 1649. In the 18th century, both the Baptists and Methodists established societies, and the 19th century saw the emergence of interdenominational and geographically specialized societies. The International Missionary Council formed in 1921. Today, governments or agencies, such as Christian Aid, carry out much of the missionary societies' traditional educational and medical work.