The modern missionary movement
- When
- 1792–1910 AD
- Where
- Africa, Asia, Oceania
- Kind
- Migration
European and American missions planted churches across the global south, which is where most Christians now live.
William Carey's departure for Bengal in 1793, funded by a society of Particular Baptists he had argued into existence, is usually taken as the start, though the Moravians had been sending workers for sixty years already. Societies multiplied in Britain, Germany and America, and the missionaries went with the ships and the flags — the movement is inseparable from European expansion, and its record includes both complicity in empire and sustained opposition to it. Its lasting effects were often incidental to preaching: scripture translated into hundreds of languages that had never been written down, and schools and hospitals that outlasted the missions. The churches planted in this period are why most Christians now live in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Bodies it bears on
Began here
Carried it on
Who stands here
- Nikolaus von Zinzendorf
1700–1760
Herrnhut was sending workers sixty years before the societies usually credited
- William Carey
1761–1834
Argued the founding society into existence in 1792
- David Livingstone
1813–1873
Documented the East African slave trade in detail no one could dismiss
- Hudson Taylor
1832–1905
Took the mission inland, in Chinese dress
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.