Missionaries Agents of Light or of Darkness?​—Part 2

Moving West Into Europe

IF Jesus’ missionary commission was to be carried out, people the world over would have to be reached with the message of Christianity. (Matthew 28:19; Acts 1:8) This fact was emphasized when during the second of three missionary trips, the apostle Paul saw a vision in which he was entreated: “Step over into Macedonia and help us.”​—Acts 16:9, 10.

Paul accepted that invitation, and in about 50 C.E., he stepped over to preach in the European city of Philippi. Lydia and her household became believers, and a congregation was founded. That was only the first stop on Christianity’s triumphant march across all Europe. Paul himself later preached in Italy, possibly even in Spain.​—Acts 16:9-15; Romans 15:23, 24.

Yet Paul was not Christianity’s only missionary. Author J. Herbert Kane notes: “There must have been scores of others, whose names have been lost to history. . . . The Acts of the Apostles does not tell the whole story.”​—A Global View of Christian Missions From Pentecost to the Present.

We do not know, however, the extent to which Jesus’ other followers served as missionaries in foreign lands. Traditional beliefs that Thomas went to India and Mark the evangelist went to Egypt cannot be confirmed. What we do know is that all of Christ’s true disciples had the missionary spirit and that they all did missionary work at least in their homeland. As Kane notes: “This historic event [Pentecost] marked the beginning of the Christian church and the inauguration of the missionary movement, for in those days the church was mission.”

To the Far Corners of Europe

The Jews believed in the worship of one true God. They set their hopes on a promised Messiah. They accepted the Hebrew Scriptures as God’s Word of truth. Hence, citizens of the countries into which the Jews had been scattered were likely somewhat familiar with these beliefs. Since these were aspects of worship that Christians and Jews had in common, the message of Christianity, when it appeared, was not totally new. According to Kane, “these factors were of immense help to the Christian missionaries as they traveled throughout the Roman world preaching the gospel and planting churches.”

The Jewish dispersal thus prepared the way for Christianity. The rapid spread of Christianity took place because Christians had the missionary spirit. “The gospel was preached by laymen,” Kane says, noting: “Wherever they went they gladly shared their new-​found faith with friends, neighbors, and strangers.” Historian Will Durant explains: “Nearly every convert, with the ardor of a revolutionary, made himself an office of propaganda.”

By 300 C.E., a corrupted form of Christianity was widespread throughout the Roman Empire. Such corruption, a falling away from pure worship, had been foretold. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-10) An apostasy actually took place. Durant explains: “Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.”

As professed Christians drifted further away from true Christianity, most of them lost the missionary spirit. One who had a missionary spirit, however, was a child born to Catholic parents in Britain near the end of the fourth century. Named Patrick, he is known for having taken the message of Christ to the western edge of Europe​—to Ireland—​where legend has it that he converted thousands of people and set up hundreds of churches.

Soon Ireland was taking the lead in missionary work. According to Kane, “its missionaries flung themselves with fiery zeal into the battle against heathenism.” One of these missionaries was Columba, who apparently played a major role in converting Scotland. In about 563 C.E., he and 12 companions established a monastery on Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland, which became a center of missionary activity. Columba died shortly before 600 C.E., but for the next 200 years, missionaries continued to be sent from Iona to all parts of the British Isles and Europe.

After professed Christianity spread to England, some English converts copied the missionary spirit of the Irish and themselves became missionaries. For example, in 692 C.E., Willibrord from Northumbria, an ancient Anglo-​Saxon kingdom in northern England, and 11 companions became the first English missionaries to the Low Countries​—the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

In the early eighth century, Boniface, an English Benedictine monk, turned his attention to Germany. Kane says Boniface’s “brilliant missionary career stretching over forty years earned for him the title of the Apostle to Germany” and helped make him the “greatest missionary of the Dark Ages.” When Boniface was over 70, he and some 50 companions were killed by Frisian non-​believers.

The Encyclopedia of Religion describes a method Boniface successfully used to make converts to Catholicism: “At Geismar [near Göttingen, Germany] he dared to fell the sacred oak of Thor. . . . [When he] suffered no vengeance from the resident Germanic god, it was clear that the God whom he preached was the true God who alone is to be worshipped and adored.”

Some missionaries used other methods, evidently thinking the end justifies the means. Kane admits that the conversion of the Germanic Saxons “was effected by military conquest rather than moral or religious persuasion.” He adds: “The unholy alliance between the church and the state . . . prompted the church to employ carnal means to achieve spiritual ends. Nowhere was this policy more disastrous than in the work of Christian missions, especially among the Saxons. . . . Atrocities were committed.” And we are told that when missionaries moved into Scandinavia, “for the most part the transition was peaceful; only in Norway was force employed.”

The use of force? The committing of atrocities? The employing of carnal means to achieve spiritual ends? Is this what we should expect of missionaries serving as agents of light?

Missionaries in a Divided House

Separate missionary campaigns were conducted by the two branches of professed Christianity practiced in Rome and Constantinople. Their attempts to “Christianize” Bulgaria led to confusion typical of a religiously divided house. Bulgaria’s ruler, Boris I, converted to Greek Orthodoxy. Upon seeing, however, that Constantinople severely curtailed the independence of the Bulgarian church, he turned to the West, permitting German missionaries, representing Rome, to bring their version of Christianity. By 870 C.E., it was evident that the Western church was even more restrictive than the Eastern, so the Germans were expelled, and Bulgaria returned to the arms of Eastern Orthodoxy, where, religiously speaking, it has remained ever since.

At about the same time, Western missionaries were introducing “Christianity” to Hungary. Meanwhile, both strands of “Christianity” were finding support in Poland. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion, “the church of the Poles was generally under control of the West, while at the same time marked with significant Eastern influence.” Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were also “caught between the rivalry of Western and Eastern forces, with all its ecclesiastical consequences.” And Finland, after it adopted “Christianity” in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, found itself in the same East-​West tug-​of-​war.

During the ninth century, two brothers from a prominent Greek family in Thessalonica brought Byzantine “Christianity” to Slavic sections of Europe and Asia. Cyril, also called Constantine, and Methodius became known as the “apostles to the Slavs.”

One of Cyril’s accomplishments was his development of a written language for the Slavs. Its alphabet, based on Hebrew and Greek letters, is known as the Cyrillic alphabet and is still used in such languages as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian. These two brothers translated parts of the Bible into the new written language and also introduced the liturgy in Slavic. This was contrary to the policy of the Western church, which wanted to keep the liturgy in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Author Kane says: “The use of the vernacular in worship, a practice encouraged by Constantinople but condemned by Rome, was a new departure and established a precedent which came to full bloom in the modern missionary enterprise of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

By the end of the tenth century, nominal Christianity had also been introduced into areas of what is now the former Soviet Union. Prince Vladimir of Kiev, Ukraine, was baptized, tradition has it, in 988 C.E. It is said he chose the Byzantine form of “Christian” religion over Judaism and Islam because of its impressive ritual, not because of any message of hope and truth.

In fact, “the timing of Vladimir’s conversion,” says Keeping the Faiths​—Religion and Ideology in the Soviet Union, “suggests that he adopted the new religion to serve his political interests, thus beginning a tradition that has run virtually unbroken throughout the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.” The book then adds this sobering thought: “The church has generally been willing to serve the interests of the government, even when the government has infringed upon the interests of the church.”

Vladimir decreed that his subjects be baptized as Christians; they had no choice in the matter. Once he “adopted Orthodoxy as the state religion,” says Paul Steeves, “he embarked on a program of uprooting the traditional religious practices of indigenous Slavic tribes.” On sites where people had formerly sacrificed to pagan idols, for example, he built churches. Steeves adds: “Remnants of paganism nonetheless survived for several centuries and were finally not so much eliminated as assimilated into Russian religious life.”

Despite this shaky foundation, the Russian Orthodox Church zealously supported missionary work. Thomas Hopko of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary says: “The scriptures and services of the church were translated into many Siberian languages and Alaskan dialects as the Eastern regions of the empire were settled and evangelized.”

Intensified Missionary Activity

The 16th-​century Reformation set spiritual fires aglow throughout Europe. The basis for intensified “Christian” missionary work was laid as Protestant leaders, each in his own way, revived public interest in religion. Luther’s translation of the Bible into German was significant, as was also the translation of the Bible by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale into English.

Then, in the 17th century, a movement arose in Germany known as Pietism. It stressed Bible study and personal religious experience. The Encyclopedia of Religion elaborates: “Its vision of a humanity in need of the gospel of Christ made for the initiation and rapid expansion of foreign and domestic missionary enterprises.”

Today, it can be seen that Christendom’s missionaries sadly failed to instill within their European converts a Christian faith and hope strong enough to stem the rise in our 20th century of atheistic Communism and other totalitarian ideologies. Since Communism’s demise in certain countries, missionaries have revived their activity, but Roman Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, and Protestants are not being united in the Christian faith they claim to share.

Roman Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs form part of Christendom’s missionary fruitage. What better illustrates the stigma of being a divided house than that which Christendom bears? What kind of Christian “brothers” first raise their guns against one another and then join in turning them on non-​Christian neighbors? Only counterfeit Christians could be guilty of such unchristian conduct.​—Matthew 5:43-45; 1 John 3:10-12.

Have all of Christendom’s missionaries failed to measure up? Let us continue our investigation by seeing what they accomplished in Asia. Read the article in our next issue entitled “Christendom’s Missionaries Return to Where It All Began.”

[Picture on page 21]

Boniface is said to have demonstrated that pagan gods are powerless

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Picture from the book Die Geschichte der deutschen Kirche und kirchlichen Kunst im Wandel der Jahrhunderte