Missionary
A missionary is an individual who engages in a religious mission aimed at fulfilling spiritual and community-oriented objectives, most commonly associated with Christianity. The historical roots of missionary work can be traced back to early Christianity, with apostles like John, Paul, and Peter traveling to foreign lands to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ. Missions often involve cross-cultural interactions, where missionaries leave their native cultures to share their faith and values with others, typically aiming to convert nonbelievers or strengthen the presence of Christianity in different regions.
In contemporary practice, missionaries frequently combine spiritual outreach with practical efforts, such as building homes or providing education in underserved communities. While some missionaries dedicate their lives to long-term missions, there has been a shift toward shorter mission trips in recent years. Additionally, other religious traditions, such as Islam and Buddhism, also have forms of outreach, but their approaches and organizational structures differ from traditional Christian missionary work. The history of missionaries is complex, particularly in regions like the Americas, where their interactions with indigenous populations have been viewed through various lenses, ranging from compassionate advocacy to colonial domination. Today, numerous agencies continue this tradition, often involving lay volunteers in initiatives that blend service with proselytization.
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Missionary
A missionary is a person who willingly undertakes a religious mission to fulfill a community-oriented spiritual and/or practical task. Though numerous religious and spiritual traditions offer examples of missionary work, the practice is most closely associated with Christianity. Christian missions historically involve cross-cultural contact, in which the missionary leaves their native culture and travels to another cultural group within the same geographic region or a different part of the world altogether. In both cases, the missionary’s underlying objective invariably involves converting nonbelievers to Christianity or strengthening the presence of the Christian faith in a particular geographic area.
In the contemporary world, Christians often pair their spiritual goals with practical undertakings, such as building houses for communities that lack them or schooling children who do not have regular access to education. In the past, Christian missionaries committed many years or their entire lives to their work. In the twenty-first century, it is more common for missions to span shorter periods of time.
Background
Religious scholars often characterize missionary work as originating with Christianity itself. Several of Jesus Christ’s apostles, including John, Paul, and Peter, traveled to foreign lands to spread the story of Christ’s resurrection following his crucifixion. These early efforts were instrumental in winning believers to the fledgling faith and ultimately set Christianity on the path to becoming one of the world’s most widely practiced religions.
By the end of the fourth century CE, so many people had converted to Christianity that it became the official faith of the Roman Empire. Though the Roman Empire was declining by then, this event marked an important historical turning point as it entrenched Christianity on the European continent, which went on to become its epicenter.
During the Dark Ages (c. 410–800 CE), Christian missionary work focused on spreading the faith to Europe’s pagan peoples. From the Catholic Church’s base in Rome, missionaries traveled northward and westward throughout Europe, reaching frontiers in present-day Ireland and Germany. By the beginning of the Late Middle Ages (c. 1250–1500 CE), Christianity had spread to the Viking cultures of Scandinavia. With virtually all of Europe under Christianity’s hegemony, missionary work became tied to the Crusades (c.1096–1291 CE), a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims fought over control of the Holy Lands in the Middle East.
In the early sixteenth century, Christianity underwent major change as the Protestant branch split from the Roman Catholic Church in a contentious and violent schism. Once the faith stabilized in its aftermath, Christian missionary work entered its global spread phase. During this phase, missionaries brought the religion to virtually every corner of the Earth. They were well-received in some places but persecuted in others, with many losing their lives in hostile foreign environments.
Like Christianity, the Islamic faith also holds that adherents should spread the religion to nonbelievers, though these efforts rarely constitute missionary work in the traditional sense of the term. Buddhism is another major spiritual tradition that uses missions to promote the belief system to new adherents.
Overview
Christian history contains many accounts of devoted missionaries, including Saint Patrick (c. 385–461), the famous patron saint of Ireland, and Saint Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), one of the patron saints of Italy. Examples of prominent missionaries from recent centuries include David Livingstone (1813–1873), a scientist and doctor who spent most of his life in southern Africa. Livingstone created detailed maps of the continent, which he intended to be tools for the many Christian missionaries he expected to follow him. The German-born missionary George Müller (1805–1898) helped popularize the idea of faith missions, which are not endorsed by a specific Christian organization like the Jesuits or the Franciscans but instead draw the support of individual patrons or churches. Müller established orphanages and schools in many countries around the world. Such facilities provided care for tens of thousands of orphans and brought Christian-oriented schooling to an estimated one-hundred and twenty-thousand children. The work of Livingstone and Müller reveals the typical configuration of a Christian mission: pairing work that advances a practical, community-oriented objective with proselytization goals that intend to recruit new believers to the Christian faith.
In the Americas, European missionaries had complex relationships with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. In some cases, they acted as compassionate advocates and protectors in the face of repressive and authoritarian colonial governments. In others, they adopted extreme or violent tactics to achieve conversion to Christianity by force. The history of missionaries in North America remains contentious, with some viewing them as necessary to bring enlightened religious salvation to Indigenous peoples and others seeing them as an institutional extension of European power, dominance, and control.
Missionary work took on its modern character during the twentieth century, when ministries of service emerged as defining features of the practice. Through initiatives aiming to deliver education, literacy training, healthcare, and community development benefits, missionaries continue the tradition of spreading the Christian faith to new believers. In addition to denominational authorities, Christian missions are also conducted by religious agencies that may or may not be affiliated with a particular branch of the religion. Thousands of these agencies work throughout the world today, with many breaking with the standards of the past by placing volunteer members of the lay community in missions rather than exclusively assigning ordained or otherwise credentialed spiritual leaders to field positions. Such agencies also offer participants the opportunity to take part in short-term missions lasting a few weeks or months, rather than committing years or decades to missions as priests and other formal church officials continue to do.
The Islamic principle of dawah asks Muslims to preach their faith to nonbelievers and invite them to join the religion. However, while there are some accounts of organized Islamic missions, the Muslim community has largely opted not to systematically spread the faith through formalized international ministries the way that Christians have. Buddhist traditions also recognize the importance of spreading their belief system to others, but Buddhist missionaries do not view the world as a marketplace where religions compete with one another and vie for supremacy. Instead, they teach tolerance and simply function as a resource for those who voluntarily wish to learn more about Buddhism.
Bibliography
Anderson, Gerald H. Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999.
Clark, James. “What Is the Meaning of Mission in Today’s World?” The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, 6 Jan. 2016, tifwe.org/mission-in-the-modern-world. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.
“First Encounters: Native Americans and Christians.” Harvard University: The Pluralism Project, pluralism.org/encounter/historical-perspectives/first-encounters-native-americans-and-christians. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.
Luckhurst, Toby. “John Allen Chau: Do Missionaries Help or Harm?” BBC News, 27 Nov. 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-46336355. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.
Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions, 2nd Edition. Penguin Books, 1991.
Prill, Thorsten. Luther, Calvin and the Mission of the Church: The Mission Theology and Practice of the Protestant Reformers. GRIN Verlag, 2017.
Stott, John and Christopher J.H. Wright. Christian Mission in the Modern World. Intervarsity Press, 2015.
“What is a Missionary?” Campbellsville University, online.campbellsville.edu/career-outcomes/missionaries. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.