Abstract
Alec Ryrie considers why, despite rhetorical commitment to the enterprise, British and Scandinavian Protestants were so slow to engage in cross-cultural mission. After surveying the lacklustre efforts made, the chapter briefly considers the theological obstacles to early Protestant mission, before examining the “missions” to the “barbaric” peoples within these kingdoms’ European territories: the Celtic peoples of Britain and Ireland, and the Sámi of northern Scandinavia. The chapter argues that conformity, civility and state-building were the keynotes of those efforts; that figures like Bishop William Bedell in Ireland who bucked that trend were swimming against the tide; and that that model was exported to the New World. After a brief consideration of missions to slaves in the English Caribbean, the chapter concludes by observing the change of tone in the early eighteenth century and by comparing structural, institutional explanations of this history with theological, conceptual ones.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
British Library, London, MS Cotton Cleop. E. iv.
Primary Sources
Bedell, William, Jr. A True Relation of the Life and Death of the Right Reverend Father in God William Bedell, Lord Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland, edited by Thomas Wharton Jones. London: Camden Society, 1872.
Birch, Thomas. The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle. London: A. Millar, 1744.
Boyle, Robert. The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle. 5 vols. London: A. Millar, 1744.
Brinsley, John. A Consolation for Our Grammar Schooles. London: Richard Field for Thomas Man, 1622.
Clement, Mary (ed.). Correspondence and Minutes of the SPCK Relating to Wales 1699–1740. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1952.
Crashaw, William. A Sermon Preached in London Before the Right Honorable the Lord Lawarre, Lord Gouernour and Captaine Generall of Virginea. London: William Welby, 1610.
The Day-Breaking, If Not the Sun-Rising of the Gospell with the Indians in New-England. London: Richard Cotes for Fulk Clifton, 1647.
Gibson, Edmund. Two Letters of the Lord Bishop of London. London: Joseph Downing, 1727.
Godwyn, Morgan. The Negro’s & Indians Advocate, Suing for Their Admission into the Church. London: J. D., 1680.
Holm, Thomas Campanius. Description of the Province of New Sweden, Now Called by the English, Pennsylvania, edited and translated by Peter S. Du Ponceau. Philadelphia, PA: McCarthy and Davis, 1834.
Humphreys, David. An Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. London: Joseph Downing, 1730.
Lechford, Thomas. Plain Dealing, or, Nevves from New-England a Short View of New-Englands Present Government, Both Ecclesiasticall and Civil. London: W. E. and I. G., 1642.
Lund, Eric (ed.). Documents from the History of Lutheranism, 1517–1750. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002.
New Englands First Fruits in Respect, First of the Conversion of Some, Conviction of Divers, Preparation of Sundry of the Indians, 2. Of the Progresse of Learning in the Colledge at Cambridge in Massacusets Bay. London: R. O. and G. D., 1643.
Saravia, Adrien, Of the Diuerse Degrees of the Ministers of the Gospell. London: John Wolfe, 1591.
Scott, Brendan. “Accusations Against Murtagh King, 1638.” Archivium Hibernicum 65 (2012): 76–81.
Shuckburgh, E. S. (ed.). Two Biographies of William Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore: With a Selection of His Letters and an Unpublished Treatise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902.
Winthrop Papers, Vol. II: 1623–30. Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931.
Young, Alexander. Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, from 1623 to 1636. Boston, MA: Little and Brown, 1846.
Secondary Sources
Bottigheimer, Karl S. “The Failure of the Reformation in Ireland: une question bien posée.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985): 196–207.
Bronner, Edwin B. “An Early Antislavery Statement: 1676.” Quaker History 62 (1973): 47–50.
Brown, Sylvia. “The Radical Travels of Mary Fisher: Walking and Writing in the Universal Light.” In Women, Gender and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe, edited by Sylvia Brown, 38–64. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
Brunner, Daniel L. Halle Pietists in England: Anthony William Boehm and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1993.
Canny, Nicholas. “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America.” William and Mary Quarterly 30 (1973): 575–98.
Canny, Nicholas. “Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: une question mal posée.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 30 (1979): 423–50.
Cogley, Richard W. John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians Before King Philip’s War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Dawson, Jane. “Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Scotland.” In Calvinism in Europe 1540–1620, edited by Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke and Gillian Lewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Dawson, Jane. The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots: The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Ellis, Steven. “Economic Problems of the Church: Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990): 239–65.
Fitzgerald, Timothy. Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Forrestal, Alison and Seán Smith (eds.). The Frontiers of Mission: Perspectives on Early Modern Missionary Catholicism. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Gerbner, Katharine. Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
Hsia, R. Po-chia. The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Huddleston, Lee Eldridge. Origins of the American Indians: European Concepts, 1492–1729. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1967.
Hudson, D. Dennis. Protestant Origins in India: Tamil Evangelical Christians, 1706–1835. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2000.
Jefferies, Henry A. “Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland.” Irish Historical Studies 40 (2016): 158–70.
Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976.
Katz, David S. Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Kupperman, Karen O. Providence Island 1630–41: The Other Puritan Colony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Maddison, R. E. W. “Robert Boyle and the Irish Bible.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 41 (1958): 81–101.
McCafferty, John. “Venice in Cavan: The Career of William Bedell, 1572–1642.” In Culture and Society in Early Modern Breifne/Cavan, edited by Brendan Scott, 173–87. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009.
Meriot, Christian. “The Saami Peoples from the Time of the Voyage of Ottar to Thomas von Westen.” Arctic 37 (1984): 373–84.
Morgan, Prys. “Wild Wales: Civilising the Welsh from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” In Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Keith Thomas, edited by Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack, 265–83. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Noorlander, D. L. Heaven’s Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
Pennington, Loren E. “The Amerindian in English Promotional Literature, 1575–1625.” In The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America 1480-1650, edited by K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny and P. E. H. Hair, 175–94. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1978).
Porter, Andrew. Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.
Rasmussen, Siv. “The Protracted Sámi Reformation—Or the Protracted Christianizing Process.” In The Protracted Reformation in Northern Norway: Introductory Studies, edited by Lars Ivan Hansen, Rognald Heiseldal Bergesen and Ingebjørg Hage, 165–83. Stamsund: Orkana Akademisk, 2014.
Ryrie, Alec. “Mission and Empire: an Ethical Puzzle in Early Modern Protestantism.” In Sister Reformations II: Reformation and Ethics in Germany and in England, edited by Dorothea Wendebourg and Alec Ryrie, 181–206. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014.
Scherer, James A. Gospel, Church and Kingdom: Comparative Studies in World Mission Theology. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing, 1987.
Skarsten, Trygve. “Johan Campanius, Pastor in New Sweden.” Lutheran Quarterly 2 (1988): 47–87.
Storm, Dikka. “The Mission Networks and the Religious Situation.” In The Protracted Reformation in Northern Norway: Introductory Studies, edited by Lars Ivan Hansen, Rognald Heiseldal Bergesen and Ingebjørg Hage, 185–207. Stamsund: Orkana Akademisk, 2014.
Storm, Dikka. “The Church, the Pietist Mission and the Sámi: An Account of a Northern Norwegian Mission District in the Early Eighteenth Century.” Norwegian Journal of Missiology 3 (2017): 59–75.
Warneck, Gustav. Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from the Reformation to the Present Time. 3rd edn. Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1906.
Unpublished Sources
McGhee, Patrick. “‘Heathenism’ in the Protestant Atlantic World.” PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ryrie, A. (2020). The Missionary Problem in Early Modern Protestantism: British, Irish and Scandinavian Perspectives. In: Kelly, J.E., Laugerud, H., Ryan, S. (eds) Northern European Reformations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54458-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54458-4_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54457-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54458-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)