Christian Missions and the Enlightenment: Studies in the History of Christian Missions

Written by Brian Stanley Reviewed By Elizabeth A. Clark

David Bosch contended that ‘(T)he entire modern missionary movement is, to a very real extent, a child of the Enlightenment’ (Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Marynoll, New York, 1991), 274). In this well-edited volume eight scholars interact with this significant statement, approaching it from a variety of perspectives.

Brian Stanley introduces the volume, raising issues, searching for a definition of the Enlightenment, concluding that there was not one but several Enlightenments, the Scottish Enlightenment being particularly influential with regard to mission.

Andrew F. Walls puts the British Protestant Missionary awakening in its European context showing that William Carey entered into a process already established by Pietism and the Moravians. He draws attention to the incompatibility of the pre-Enlightenment concept of Christendom and the desire to retain a Christian society in the face of Enlightenment ideas of individual responsibility and choice.

Evangelical members of the English Parliament put pressure on the East India Company to permit missionaries to work within its territory. Penny Carson describes this debate as an example of the ‘ambiguities of transition’ for both supporters and opponents of missions in India claimed to have the well-being of Indian people at heart.

D. Bruce Hindmarsh works with the changes brought by the Enlightenment that created a heightened sense of introspective conscience and a sense of distinctive self-consciousness, a trend developed from the sixteenth century Reformers. Hindmarsh illustrates his thesis by investigating mission in the 1770s in three areas of contrasting culture. He concludes that evangelical conversion narrative requires the conditions of modern society where the individual has scope for self-determination.

Each of the next three contributions, by a scholar with expertise in a particular geographical area, illustrates and develops aspects of the material already discussed by reference to the process of mission in that area. Jane Samson writes of nineteenth century mission dilemmas in the South Pacific. She describes the variety of ethnic groups and cultures, the reactions and struggles of some early missionaries, the tensions they experienced in seeking to retain faith in the universal message of Christianity in the presence of cultural practices which they found abhorrent.

Ian Douglas Maxwell discusses the nineteenth century Scottish debate on mission methods. Two groups existed within Scottish Presbyterianism: the Evangelical Calvinists maintained there were two instruments of conversion, namely the preached word and the written word (Scripture) whereas the Rational Calvinists believed that a process of civilising would lead to rational conviction. Alexander Duff, a great proponent of the latter, succeeded in gaining support from Evangelicals for the Scottish Church College, Calcutta at the General Assembly of 1835.

Natasha Erland outlines the intellectual and theological context of Scottish missions in the Cape of Good Hope and the changes that took place as Thomas Chalmers’ version of ‘evangelical Enlightenment’ failed to bring about social transformation. The struggling mission benefited from reports of David Livingstone’s travels and from Duffs personal intervention. Education was then seen as the key to mission.

Brian Stanley draws conclusions from the foregoing showing how the Enlightenment effected changes from an earlier simple antithesis between Christian and pagan, raising issues of the relationship between Christianity and civilisation and, in particular, the role of education in mission.

In the final chapter Daniel W. Hardy offers a theological perspective and finally gives a definition of the Enlightenment and its implications for mission.

This well-documented volume is an excellent resource. Students of theology and missiology will find the issues that are raised and the variety of perspectives offered give a necessary background to any thinking about mission in the twenty-first century when the largest section of the Christian church lies beyond Europe and North America.


Elizabeth A. Clark

Lesmahagow