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Leonard's Eleven Reasons
for the Spread of Christianity
1) The advance ofthe United States
across the North American conti–
nent ; the extension of British po1iti–
cal dominion around the world,
enforcing peace wbere there had
been nothing but anarchy-the
pax
Britannica;
the partition of Africa
by Europe.
2) The harnessíng of steam power to
travel by ship and rail ; the Suez
Ca nal. (Followed m but a few
decades by the Panama Canal, the
automobile, diesel power and the
airplane.)
3) The telegrapb and the post office.
(And, in due course, the te1ephone,
followed rapidly, once the twentieth
century began, by radio and TV.)
4) World exploration.
S)
The forcible opening of China by
the Opium War, 1842, and of Japan
by Admira! Perry and the American
fleet in 1853.
6) Changes in the charter in 18 13,
1833 and 1857, forcing the British
East India Company to allow mis–
sionaries into their domain, whom
they at first regarded as more dan–
gerous to their possessions and rule
than anything else.
7) Independence in Latín America;
the spread of the idea of religious
freedom even in Iran and the Turkish
intelligent, each one trained to think
and act for himself, with democracy
in the State reacting upon the
Church, a people loving liberty bet–
ter than life" (p. 47).
An Open Door
In America, too, as the eighteenth
century neared its end, zeal, faith
and doct rinal understanding were
low. In Leonard's words, "the only
zealleft was for an ortbodoxy which
was stone dead" (p. 49).
But then a revolution occurred.
"The closing years of the eighteenth
century const itute in the history of
Protestant missions an epoch in–
deed, since they witnessed nothing
14
Empire (which was in the 1800sdomi–
nant over most of the Middle East).
Under this head come all the free–
doms of political democracy.
8) Multiplication of Bib1es and
Christian literature. ("It was not un–
til within a few decades [of Leon–
ard's original writing in the I890s]
that the art of printing emerged
from infancy" [A
Hundred Years of
Missions,
p. 136].) It had taken 1500
years to get the Bible into 23 lan–
guages, and that in manuscripts
only. The complete Bible was pub–
Hshed in Chinese in 1811 and the
trend continued. (The Russians ,
nominally Christian for centuries,
got their first complete translation
only in 1876, but today the Bible is
available at least in part in all but a
handful of the world's 3000-odd
languages and dialects.)
9) The emancipation ofwomen, per–
mitting them a chance to help in
missionary work, either as wives or
as unmarried helpers and teachers.
lO) Increasing availability of con–
verted native personnel.
11) The quickening interest in spiri–
tual things in the homelands. No
small part of this is the awakening
of care for others- in etfect, "broth–
erly !ove."
less than a revolution, a renaissance,
an etfectual and manifold ending of
the old, a substantial inauguration
of the new.... Beginning in Great
Britain, it soon spread to the Conti–
nent and across the Atlantic. It was
no mere push of fervor, but a
mighty tide set in, which from tbat
day to this has been steadily rising
and spreading" (p. 69).
It
was the age of William Carey,
1ooked back on as the beginning of
modero missions and methods
in
backward lands, though even his
work in very few years carne to
naught. lndeed, Leonard shows the
failure of just about every etfort be–
gun before the end of the century.
"Yet his [Carey's] work does repre–
sent a turning point; it marks the
entry of the English-speaking wor1d
on a large scale into the missionary
enterprise- and it has been the
English-speaking world which has
provided four-fifths of the non-Ro–
roan missionaries from the days of
Carey to the present time" (p. 2.61 ).
The Zenlth of Brltaln
and Amerlca
When the United States and Can–
ada experienced the so-called Great
Awakening from about 1790 to
1830, a surge of evange1istic fervor
to reach and convert the masses was
channe1ed into an etfort to Chris–
tianize the frontier. Meanwhile be–
gan the formation of British ,
American and European missionary
and/or Bible societies. From a slow
start in 1804, new societies prolif–
erated after the I820s at the as–
tounding rate of nearly three per
year for the rest ofthe century. Neill
mentions the important societies
formed to 1842. "And then the list
becomes so long ... it is no longer
possible to follow it. By the end of
the century every nominally Chris–
tian country and alrnost every de–
nomination had begun to take its
share in the support of the mission–
ary cause" (Neill, p. 252).
This time- finally-etforts in hea–
then lands began to be markedly
successful. If, until the nineteeoth
century, all missionary activity had
been pushed uoder the door or
thrown through the transom, at last
the door to the world was open.
Leonard points out 11 major fac–
tors in the worldwide spread of
nineteenth-century missions and
Christianity (see box), having prin–
cipally to do with modero tech–
nological achievements and the
predominant part played by the
English-speaking peoples
in
giving
their benefits to the rest of the
wor1d.
To Leonard's categories shou1d be
added at least two more points: first,
a vast increase since about the 1830s
in the materials available for bibli-
l cal studies through Hbraries, prívate
collections and monasteries, and
through archaeological discovery;
second, and perhaps most important
The
PLAIN TRUTH September 1978