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Using sources in both Japanese and Portuguese, this article examines how maritime connections on the island of Kyushu facilitated the spread of Christianity there during the Jesuit mission to Japan in the mid-sixteenth century. Part I builds upon recent Japanese-language scholarship on the prevalence of maritime activity and transportation on Kyushu and highlights the importance of so-called 'sea peoples' for individual daimyo (regional lords) who ruled the island. Part II reveals how the first Jesuits, such as Francis Xavier, used preexisting maritime routes to missionize and founded new Christian communities along the coasts of Kyushu. Many Japanese Christians in these communities had expertise in maritime matters, which proved useful for transporting missionaries, going to church, fleeing persecution, and providing mutual assistance in times of need. In examining how local maritime networks and 'sea peoples' facilitated missionization in Japan, we gain greater insight into how Christianity spread globally during the period. Keywords: Jesuits, Christianity, missionaries, Japan, Kyushu, maritime networks., The connection between the spread of Christianity in Japan and increased international maritime activity centering on the East China sea during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has long been noted [...]

The Irish priest Michael Joseph Ryan referred to his Sydney appointment as a bitter exile. (1) This attitude and the circumstances of his being sent from Ireland were in marked [...]

The pioneer Baptist missionary William Carey (1761-1834) is generally regarded as the father of the modern missionary movement, and is perhaps best known for the challenging declaration 'Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.' Carey was a prolific writer of letters, and a number of publications over the years have helped chronicle his correspondence. (1) Occasionally a hitherto unpublished letter comes to light that provides fresh insight into Carey's life., In 2014 Ms. Joan Cheer, a descendant of Carey through his son Jabez, provided the Angus Library and Archive at Regent's Park College, Oxford, with an unpublished letter of William [...]

The story of the founding of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) mission work in the Holy Land in the 1910s has been told and retold a number of times. For the [...]

Beginning in 1609, English Catholic women in Mary Ward's Institute of English Ladies returned to England to advance the mission of reclaiming England for Rome. The English Ladies typically avoided [...]

The author analyzes the 125 articles published in The Catholic Historical Review between 1915 and the centennial. The first part contextualizes the individual contributions against landmark scholarship in the field [...]

In the late nineteenth century, China's Hunan Province was considered one of the country's toughest mission fields. With its deeply entrenched Confucianism and widespread xenophobia, Hunan was a source of [...]

Even though by the turn of the twentieth century the Protestant missionary enterprise had built an impressive edifice of churches, schools, and hospitals in China, political events in China and [...]

While cross-cultural encounters in the course of Christian mission often occasioned conflict between foreign missionaries and local people, these interactions also led missionaries to a renewed awareness of Christianity. As [...]

Papal impact on peripheral areas in the Middle Ages depended on the means of and possibilities for communication. This case study of the Livonian crusade and mission in the first [...]

Scherer Lecture: February 26, 2013 Most of my presentation focuses on the 'post-China' era and the ELCA's efforts in helping to establish Lutheran churches within ethnic Chinese settings along the [...]

Monasteries of the Church of the East (East Syrian) across Asia were key centers for mission and renewal from the sixth to thirteenth centuries. This advance in mission to the [...]

The concept of place is a powerful theoretical tool in the social sciences and humanities, which can be especially useful in archaeological work that involves community-based collaboration. Using place as a starting point, archaeologists can beneficially use their skills to answer questions that are of relevance to the local communities with which we work while also advancing knowledge about the past. For historical archaeology, this often involves engaging in dialogue across multiple lines of evidence, including material remains from the past, written documents, and local oral traditions. Recent fieldwork on the islands of Erromango and Tanna, Vanuatu, exploring early landscapes relating to Christian conversion uses this kind of approach. A major part of preliminary survey work involves mapping features in the mission sites and surrounding areas. Archaeological cartographic techniques help build a sense of place that provides engaging research for a collaborative environment with local Melanesian communities, while also producing new perspectives on colonialism in the South Pacific. This approach is not limited to the recent past, being applicable to any collaborative, community-based archaeological research that incorporates the use of oral traditions. Keywords: Melanesia, historical archaeology, Vanuatu, missions, landscape archaeology, mapping, oral traditions, community archaeology., INTRODUCTION Much of the work of contemporary landscape archaeology could be said to fit broadly into the framework of constructing narratives about past places. The concept 'place' has been important [...]

Starting in 1828, the Basel Mission, one of the largest Protestant missionary societies of the nineteenth century, sent missionaries to India, Africa, and China, primarily from Wurttemberg, Germany, and from [...]

BERNARD L. FONTANA, INTRODUCTION In 1896 Franciscan missionaries assigned to the Province of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in St. Louis, Missouri, took over the administration of a church and [...]

Europe's division into East and West after World War II was conditioned by both political and ideological motives and actions. The regimes spawned by Communist ideology oppressed the peoples of [...]

One of the most significant changes in American Protestant missions since 1910 has been the rise of what Joel Carpenter calls 'sectarian' evangelical missions. In 1935 evangelicals outside of the [...]

From the very beginning of the modern missionary movement, extensive data have been collected and published regarding the numbers of new church plants, workers in the field, demographics, and the [...]

Koreans have been widely present in many settings outside their traditional homeland--including in many of my classes in the past twenty years. But I was surprised, as readers might also [...]

The first Protestant missionary set foot on the Korea Peninsula in 1884. (1) The growth of Korean Protestantism in the past century and a quarter has been extraordinary by any [...]

On April 20 at midday, we sailed on the ship 'Caroline' coward the sea. It was a happy view. Up to this moment we have had friendly wind and weather. [...]

It is certainly astounding that the pastor of a small village in central Franconia called Neuendettelsau -- Wilhelm Loehes only parish--managed to create from there a launching pad for worldwide [...]

One persistent criticism of the Protestant missionary enterprise in China has been its failure to overcome denominational divisions and create a genuine Chinese Protestant church. This accusation has been made [...]

The attitude of the Anglican Church of Canada toward Jews and Judaism was of a traditionally Christian conservative character. Since one of the characteristics of the Anglican Church was its missionary zeal, two missionary institutions operated for the Jews, in Toronto and Montreal, where most Canadian Jews lived. In 1960, Anglican priest Roland de Corneille, the secretary of the missionary Nathanael Institute in Toronto, initiated a dialogue to bring together the Anglican and Jewish communities in Canada. After a decade of activities interfaith dialogues became a widespread phenomenon. Anglican perishes initiated meetings with Jews. Reform and Conservative rabbis invited church members to participate in Jewish services. Interfaith conferences, visitations, theological dialogues, study courses, and leadership training sessions were held. The Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, the United Church, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion also entered into interreligious cooperation. This essay seeks to analyze the origin, purpose, objectives, and program of the dialogue in order to understand the changes that took place in the 1960's and 1970's that enabled members of the Anglican Church to move from conversion to dialogue., The Anglican Church of Canada, an autonomous denomination, is part of the world Anglican Communion. The census of 1961 reported 2,409,068 members, in 3,600 individual churches, operating in thirty dioceses, [...]

Beginning in the late 18th century, Spanish and Mexican colonization introduced the system of missionization into what is today described as Alta California. Missionaries and soldiers, using native labor, directed the construction of 21 missions along the Alta California coast. The mission complexes--churches, quadrangles, and outlying buildings and structures--were intended to bring about a new order on the native landscape by means of the introduction of European-style architecture, agriculture, and animal husbandry. This introduction began the ecological transformation of the landscape. European plants and weeds came to dominate coastal California well before the California Gold Rush occurred in 1849. This transformation had an immeasurable impact on the local environment, and on the daily life of the native Californians who lived in the missions.

German Moravian missionaries arrived in Labrador, Canada at the end of the 18th century. They intended to introduce Christianity to Inuit peoples without disrupting important aspects of traditional Inuit culture, such as hunting practices. Over time the Moravians began introducing more than just religion: European raw materials, manufactured products, and foods. As a result, Inuit were incorporated into a market economy in which the export of local goods produced by Inuit labor such as seal oil, dried fish, ivory, and fur were exchanged for iron tools, guns, cloth, and ceramics. Simultaneously, becoming part of a larger global economy meant changing aspects of the local subsistence economy. Inuit subsistence strategies were incorporated into a Moravian economic strategy, and ecological relationships changed as a result of colonial influences. Integration into a market economy also altered the spiritual intersection between Inuit and animals.

DISCUSSION of mission in east Roman or Byzantine history has typically focused on imperial ambitions, royal conversions, and a "top-down" approach to Christianization. (1) The Christian emperor, the earthly image [...]

At the end of the 1880s the British South American Misionary Society (hereafter SAMS) established its first missionary station in the Paraguayan Chaco, on the shore opposite the city of [...]

In 1966 Ivan Illich sent the National Catholic Reporter an antimissionary article, but it was returned to him as 'needlessly polemical.' Having declined the magazine's offer to resubmit a milder [...]

Contemporary missiology often embraces an option for the poor, emphasizing that Christian mission must prioritize bringing Christ's Good News to the marginalized. (1) Yet the option for the poor has [...]

The formation of the Church of South India (CSI) in 1947 was looked upon with great interest around the world, particularly as it pioneered the reunion of episcopal with non-episcopal [...]

Missionary Charles Scudder shot into a cave which holds religious significance to the Samburu people of Kenya. The event took place in 1935 and the event is argued as an instance of divinicide which is a Christian missionizing tactic that 'smooths' the conversion of local people.

Healing has been an important element in the proclamation of the Gospel from the very beginnings of Christianity. Jesus healed and ordered his disciples to do likewise in order to [...]

As told many times over, the story of Southern Baptists began with an ironic co-mingling of desires involving both missionaries and slaves. In 1845, the controversy surrounding the refusal of [...]

Norwegian missionaries' conversion of Umpumulo, a19th-century mission station in South Africa, into a space familiar to their religious and cultural ideologies, as they attempted to convert Zulus is discussed. The interaction with the place and local Africans changed the missionaries as well.

A SMALL NUMBER of Pictish symbol stones demonstrate evidence for multiple lives within the Early Historic Period. These stones are reviewed together with their implications for how we view the wider corpus of Pictish stones. The idea that the stones are burial markers is rejected. Instead, it is suggested that they were created in response to, and as a rejection of, Christian missionary activity.

He became head of the seminary's department of missions in 1900, helped in the establishment of the Woman's Missionary Union Training School in 1907 (changed to the Carver School of [...]

Jesuit mission activity among the Guarani of Paraguay ranks as one of the most interesting affairs in the annals of colonial Latin America. Conceived as a means to proselytize among [...]

Catholic missions to convert African slaves in the French Antilles from 1635 to 1800 are discussed. Developments in the second half of the 18th century hampered the Church's efforts and may have had an indirect effect on the Haitian Revolution.

A comparative study of the missions at Sonora, Mexico and Chiquitania, Bolivia, is presented. The economic aspects, differences in culture and ecologies of these missions are examined to discover their development and understand their complexities.

Early critics of Christianity, including 2nd century writer Lucian, portrayed the Apostle Paul and other missionaries as charlatans preying on uneducated rural folk. Paul's visit to gentiles living in the remote area of Lycaonia, described in Acts 14 is examined in light of this accusation.