Serampore College, Faculty of Theology

Subject : A Detailed Study of History of Reformation and the

Modern Missionary Movement (BHC52)
Staff in Charge : Rev. Shijoy Abraham Zachariah
Presenters : Jonis Kharthangmaw & Nonpi Chena (Group no.8)
Topic : The Impact of Modern Missionary Movement
Date of Submission : 8th August 2022.
Introduction

Christian missions have been happened since Jesus gave the Great Commission, there
are highlighted mission movements that have caused such an impact that they are worth
mentioning. While mission movement are only movements because vast amounts of people
are a part of them, there typically is a leader or head of missionary movements. A missionary
movement in a Christian context is the furthering of the Gospel, in which many non-believers
become followers of Christ through outgoing missionaries. And also to transform the life of
the people, in this paper we would like to bring some of the impact during the modern
missionary movement.

The history of modern missionary movement

The modern mission’s movement came out of a Spirit led desire to see the lost saved.
Christ’s mandate to His disciples was to go out into the world and to make disciples, teaching
them all that they have learned from Him, and to baptize them in the name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit. Ever since He gave His disciples His mandate, missionaries
throughout history have been spreading all over the world in obedience to the call of the
Great

Commission. The modern missionary movement began with the creation of the Baptist
Missionary Society in England in 1792.1

The famous missionary William Carey was influenced by Fuller and his new
theology. Carey pushed and pushed for the formation of a missionary society to take the
Gospel to the heathen. After much convincing, the Baptist Missionary Society was formed in
1792. This marked the beginning of the modern mission movement. January 10, 1793, John
Thomas and William Carey were appointed missionaries. On June 13, 1793, they sailed for
1
Young, Doyle L. “Andrew Fuller and the modern mission movement.” Baptist History and Heritage
17 no 4, 1982, 17.

1
India. As Fuller noted the great ‘adventure’ was underway. William Carey’s tract An Inquiry
into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens was
published in 1792, and is seen as somewhat of a Symbolic significance and furnishes a
convenient starting point for a movement and an era.2

William Carey’s Mission

William Carey is regarded as the father of modern Protestant missions, primarily

because he founded the baptist missionary society. That society begun in 1792. After 275
years Martin Luther posted his Ninety five thesis on the Wittenberg church door in 1517, at
last gave Protestants a vehicle for sending missionaries to the non-Christian world. Carey,
however did not invent the Protestant missionary movement out of nothing. He constructed
the platform from which the modern Protestant missionary movement was launched out of
series of planks hewed during the centuries between Luther and himself.

One such planks was Pietism, an interdenominational, international, evangelical

movement that sought to revitalize the existing church through small groups devoted to Bible
study, prayer, mutual accountability, and outreach. Pietism first awakened a missionary
vision among Protestants by sending missionaries through the Danish Halle mission to India
and Greenland

The Moravians and Missions

Two others significant planks in Carey’s platform we’re the Moravian Church and
the Puritans. The Moravians were the first Protestants to put into practice the idea that
evangelizing the lost is the duty of the whole church, not just of a missionary society or a few
individuals. Moravians believed missions is the responsibility for the whole congregation.

The Puritans and Missions

When people think of the New England Puritans, probably think of their disciplined
lifestyle and the depth of their theological thought, as they sought to glorify the sovereign
God. The Puritans helped lay the ground work for the modern missionary movement, both by
cross cultural evangelism among the native American population and by their vision for
global missions. Although Puritans missionary concern focused largely on North American
Indians, the lesson learned from that encounter and their commitment to the whole counsel of

2
Alban, Donald, Jr; Woods, Robert H, Jr; Daigle-Williamson, Marsha “The writings of William Carey:
journalism as mission in a modern age.” Mission Studies 22 no 1 2005, 91.

2
God produced a dawning missionary consciousness with global dimensions. Puritan mission
gave William Carey a workable strategy, and inspirational model, and a conceptual
framework for his own missionary endeavors.3

Socio – Religious Movement in India

The Christian missionaries played the role of a socio religious movement , which
indirectly gave birth to Neo Hindu reformist movements. The missionaries zeal to convert
Hindus, criticize societal problems like untouchability and the realization that they were
specially targeting the sections which had been trodden down, lent an urgency to the
determination of reformers to work for the uplift and integration of these sections into the rest
of the Hindu society. The flow of knowledge and education from the west did not brainwash
the educated class so as to consider Christianity as a substitute for Hinduism.

This education class worked for the social reforms mainly for the social reforms
mainly for reform in women life. It was also because most of societal problems of India was
related to women and hence any social reform had large impact on women. The missionaries
zeal to convert Hindus and the realization that they were specially targeting the sections
which had been trodden down, lent an urgency to the determination of reformers to work for
the uplift and integration of these sections into the rest of the Hindus society. One example to
this effect was that missionaries took up the cause of leprosy elimination. The Christian
missionaries had first started attacking the institution of sati though it was a strong
abolitionist campaign under Raja Rammohan Roy, that gave the movement it’s real
momentum.

The social activities of Christian missions were directed towards bringing about
moral reforms in Indian society and helped in the emancipation of individuals including
women from their age old superstitions and other societal problems like sati pratha, child
marriage, untouchability, caste discrimination etc. Modern missionary movement against
societal problems and superstitious practices associated with Hindu religion such as widow
burning, with the support of liberal Hindu leaders and missionaries Governor General
William Bentick introduced several legal measures of social reforms. Generations of young
man and women received modern education, many of whom were endowed with the ideals of

3
Kenneth B. Mulholland, “Planks in the Platform of Modern Missions,” Bibliotheca Sacra 156 (April
– June 1999): 221-32.

3
service and uprightness and rectitude because of the educational institutions maintained by
these missionary societies. 4

Abolition of Sati

Sati was the practice of the immolation of a Hindu woman on the death of her
husband in his funeral pyre. Although this practice does not have any Vedic sanction, it had
become prevalent in some parts of India. The widow was supposed to ascend to heaven and
this was considered the ultimate sacrifice and proof of a woman’s devotion to her husband.
Many cases of Sati were voluntary whereas some were forced. William Carey, an English
missionary also fought against this barbaric practice. In the year 1817 alone, about 700
widows were burnt alive. Even though the British initially allowed it, it was first banned in
1798 in Calcutta.

Lord William Bentinck became the Governor-General of India in 1828. He helped

Raja Ram Mohan Roy to suppress many prevalent social evils like Sati, polygamy, child
marriage and female infanticide. Lord Bentinck passed the law banning Sati throughout the
Company’s jurisdiction in British India. The act was made illegal and punishable by the
courts. Sati Regulation XVII A. D. 1829 of the Bengal Code.5

Religious Impact Movement from Pantheism to Monotheism

The power of religious belief is always a strong factor qualifying human behaviour.
As an integral part of the society, religious exercises great influence on the people in their
social habits. The people were purely religious and they were the lovers of nature and
worshipping various elements of natures. They widely believed in supernatural powers.
Ancestral worship was also a part of their religion. Missionary propagated that Jesus is the
creator, liberator, and saviour of mankind. He symbolizes living God and is the protector of
mankind. The missionaries were the only people who could realise the pathetic conditions of
the people and tried to eradicate it and succeeded also.6

Education
4
Christian Missionary Activities in India (October 23, 2015). accessed August 2, 2022.
https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/10/23/Christian-missionary-activities-in-india
5
Sati Abolition – (December 4, 1829) This Day in History, assessed August 2, 2022,
https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/this-day-in-history-dec04/#:~:text=What%20happened%3F&text=The
%20Bengal%20Sati%20Regulation%20(Regulation,in%20all%20of%20British%20India.
6
Raghumani Naik, Christian Missionaries and Their Impact on Socio-Cultural Development. Volume
2, Issue 3 (Sep-Oct.2012), 1-5.

4
 Missionaries educated children in local language, raised the standard of education,
trained teachers and improved methods of teaching. Missionaries were ahead of their times.
Women empowerment would be possible only when women are educated. So, they began to
open schools for girls. Upper caste men used to ridicule missionaries requesting them to
educate their cows instead of girls.

Sometimes missionaries had to pay incentives to families for sending their girls to
school. Modern Indian women have entered in almost all fields in the nation should be
grateful to missionaries who created opportunities for their empowerment. Education that was
window to the world, key to knowledge, wheels for progress was made available widely for
all children irrespective of their caste or economic status or sex. Today, India aspires for a
superpower status in the globalized world for which missionaries sowed the seed more than
two hundred years ago.7

Medical Education

Promotion of Medical students through scholarship has brought about a great change
in tribal society. As a result today there are hundreds of doctors, nurses, laboratory assistants,
technicians and auxiliary nurses from among the tribal population. Homes for the orphans
and the aged established by the Churches have totally changed the situation of the poor and
marginalized elements of society. Care of the differently abled has made many tribal families
aware that there are new areas of life that need attention. Often corrective treatment, surgery,
physiotherapy can do much to make life normal or at least tolerable to the differently abled
especially children and youth.

Language and Literature

Christians have also made a significant contribution in India in the fields of

languages, literature, and journalism. Constanzio Beschi (1680-1747) reformed Tamil
alphabetical characters, making them more suitable for the printing press. He also produced a
fourfold Tamil dictionary, which was divided according to words, synonyms, classes, and
rhymes. Bishop’s Robert Caldwell’s (1815-1891) comparative Grammar of the Dravidian
Languages and G. U. Pope’s (1820-1908) translations of classics of Tamil literature into
English are noteworthy. Vedanayagam Pillai (1824-1889) and H. A. Krishna Pillai (1827-

7
Spread of education by missionary and voluntary bodies in modern India, Assessed on 2 August
2022, https://karnataka.pscnotes.com/main-notes/paper-ii-general-studies-1/spread-of-education-by-missionary-
and-voluntary-bodies-in-modern-india

5
1900) are two produced some of the first Tamil novels. William Carey and his Baptist
colleagues, beginning in 1818, we’re the first to produce periodicals, journals, and a
newspaper. Their publication, the friends of India, lived on and is now an English daily, the
statesman, published from Calcutta and New Delhi.8

Bible Translation

Bible translation was done by native speakers from pre Christian times up to the
nineteenth century and then by missionaries until recently, when native speakers again took
up the task. The Bible in whole or in part has been translated into 1,910 languages of which
1,768 are living languages, representing 28.65% of the 6,170 estimated languages in the
world. These 1,910 languages are used by an estimated 90% of the world's population. The
other 10%), however, speak about 4,000 languages.

Smalley describes the life and work of the legendary William Carey, the proto typical
missionary-translator-scholar and of Maurice Leenhardt. In the early nineteenth century,
Carey translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Hindi. A self-taught linguist,
Carey supervised his associates in translating the Scriptures into thirty four other languages.
But this massive project was seriously flawed, for Carey and his coworkers failed to
recognize the subtleties of the Indian languages or the nature of the translation enterprise
itself. One reason for this failure is that Carey, a militant Baptist, was deeply antagonistic to
Hindu culture and religion, which he described as having poison in it.9

Conclusion

The impact of modern missionary movement has bring a great change to the society
regarding the abolition of the practice of Sati, and also bring changed the way of people
thinking, the change that the missionary has bring that time to break down the discrimination,
all should be equal. To bring the gospel to the whole world and to make the disciple to
peoples.

Bibliography

8
Christian Impact on India, accessed August 1, 2022,
https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/christian-impact-
india-history
9
William A. Smalley, Translation as Mission. Bible Translation in the Modern Missionary Movement.
Modern Mission (The Catholic University of America Press, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Oct., 1991), pp. 663- 665

6
Christian Impact on India. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-
almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/christian-impact-india-history

Christian Missionary Activities in India, (October 23,2015). Accessed August 2, 2022.

https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/10/23/Christian-missionary-activities-in-india

Doyle L, Young. “Andrew Fuller and the modern mission movement” Baptist History and
Heritage 17 no 4, 1982, 17.

Donald, Alban, Jr; Woods, Robert H, Jr; Daigle-Williamson, Marsha. “The writings of
William Carey: journalism as mission in a modern age.” Mission Studies 22 no 1
2005, 91.

Mulholland, Kenneth B. “Planks in the Platform of Modern Missions.” Bibliotheca Sacra 156
(April – June 1999): 221- 32.

Naik, Raghumani. Christian Missionaries and Their Impact on Socio-Cultural Development.

Volume 2, Issue 3 (Sep-Oct.2012). 1-5

“Sati Abolition,” (December 4, 1829). This Day in History, Assessed August 2, 2022,
https://byjus.com/free-ias-prep/this-day-inhistorydec04/#:~:text=What%20happened
%3F&text=The%20Bengal%20Sati%20Regulati n%20(Regulation,in%20all%20of
%20British%20India

“Spread of education by missionary and voluntary bodies in modern India,” Assessed August
2, 2022 https://karnataka.pscnotes.com/main-notes/paper-ii-general-studies-1/spread-
of-education-by-missionary-and-voluntary-bodies-in-modern-india/

Smalley A, William. Translation as Mission. Bible Translation in the Modern Missionary

Movement. Modern Mission: (Catholic University of America Press, Vol. 77, No. 4
(Oct., 1991), 663- 665.