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Christianization (or Christianisation) is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. Christianization has, for the most part, spread through missions by individual conversions, but has also, in some instances, been the result of violence by individuals and groups such as governments and militaries. Christianization is also the term used to designate the conversion of previously non-Christian practices, spaces and places to Christian uses and names. In a third manner, the term has been used to describe the changes that naturally emerge in a nation when sufficient numbers of individuals convert, or when secular leaders require those changes. Christianization of a nation is an ongoing process.
It began in the Roman Empire when the early individual followers of Jesus became itinerant preachers in response to the command recorded in Matthew 28:19 (sometimes called the Great Commission) to go to all the nations of the world and preach the good news of The Gospel of Jesus. Christianization spread through the Roman Empire and into its surrounding nations in its first three hundred years. The process of Christianizing the Roman Empire was never completed, and Armenia became the first nation to designate Christianity as its state religion in 301.
After 479, Christianization spread through missions north into western Europe. In the High and Late Middle Ages, Christianization was instrumental in the creation of new nations in what became Eastern Europe, and in the spread of literacy there. In the modern era, Christianization became associated with colonialism, which, in an almost equal distribution, missionaries both participated in and opposed. In the post-colonial era, it has produced dramatic growth in China as well as in many former colonial lands in much of Africa. Christianization has become a diverse, pluralist, global phenomenon of the largest religion in the world.
David Abulafia and Nóra Berend speak of religious activity in relation to the "frontier" regions at the borders of civilizations. Berend sees a frontier as "a contact zone where an interchange of cultures was constantly taking place". In this way, the missionary religions of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity spread themselves geographically, through teaching and preaching, with interaction sometimes producing conflict, and other times mingling and accommodation.
Alan Neely writes that, "wherever Christianity (or any other faith) is carried from one culture to another, intentionally or not, consciously or not, it is either adapted to that culture or it becomes irrelevant." In his book Christian Mission, Neely provides multiple historical examples of adaptation, accommodation, indigenization, inculturation, autochthonization and contextualization as the means of successful Christianization through missions. Neely's definitions are these:
While Christian theologians such as the fourth century Augustine and the ninth century Alcuin maintained that conversion must be voluntary, there are historical examples of coercion in conversion. Constantine used both law and force to eradicate the practice of sacrifice and repress heresy though not specifically to promote conversion. Theodosius also wrote laws to eliminate heresies, but made no requirement for pagans or Jews to convert to Christianity. However, the sixth century Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I and the seventh century emperor Heraclius attempted to force cultural and religious uniformity by requiring baptism of the Jews. In 612, the Visigothic Sisebut, prompted by Heraclius, declared the obligatory conversion of all Jews in Spain. In the many new nation-states being formed in Eastern Europe of the Late Middle Ages, some kings and princes pressured their people to adopt the new religion. And in the Northern crusades, the fighting princes obtained widespread conversion through political pressure or military coercion.
Individual conversion is followed by the initiation rite of baptism. In Christianity's earliest communities, candidates for baptism were introduced by someone willing to stand surety for their character and conduct. Baptism created a set of responsibilities within the Christian community. Candidates for baptism were instructed in the major tenets of the faith, examined for moral living, sat separately in worship, were not yet allowed to receive the communion eucharist, but were still generally expected to demonstrate commitment to the community, and obedience to Christ's commands, before being accepted into the community as a full member. This could take months to years. The normal practice in the ancient church was baptism by immersion of the whole head and body of an adult, with the exception of infants in danger of death, until the fifth or sixth century. Historian Philip Schaff has written that sprinkling, or pouring of water on the head of a sick or dying person, where immersion was impractical, was also practiced in ancient times and up through the twelfth century. Infant baptism was controversial for the Protestant Reformers, but according to Schaff, it was practiced by the ancients and is neither required nor forbidden in the New Testament.
In the Middle Ages, the Eucharist came to be understood as a sacrament (wherein God is present) that evidenced Christ's sacrifice, and the prayer given with the rite was to include two of thanksgiving and one of petition. The prayer later developed into the modern version of a narrative, a memorial to Christ and an invocation of the Holy Spirit.
Some see baptism, confirmation, and first communion as different elements in a unified rite through which one becomes a part of the Christian church. Others consider confirmation a separate rite which may or may not be considered a condition for becoming a fully accepted member of the church in the sense that one is invited to take part in the celebration of the Eucharist. Among those who see confirmation as a separate rite some see it as a sacrament, while others consider it a combination of intercessory prayer and graduation ceremony after a period of instruction.
When Christianity spread beyond Judaea, it first arrived in Jewish diaspora communities. The Christian church was modeled on the synagogue, and Christian philosophers synthesized their Christian views with Semitic monotheism and Greek thought. The Latin church adopted aspects of Platonism and used the Latin names for months and weekdays that etymologically derived from Roman mythology. Christian art in the catacombs beneath Rome rose out of a reinterpretation of Jewish and pagan symbolism. While many new subjects appear for the first time in the Christian catacombs – i.e. the Good Shepherd, Baptism, and the Eucharistic meal – the Orant figures (women praying with upraised hands) probably came directly from pagan art.
Bruce Forbes says "Some way or another, Christmas was started to compete with rival Roman religions, or to co-opt the winter celebrations as a way to spread Christianity, or to baptize the winter festivals with Christian meaning in an effort to limit their drunken excesses. Most likely all three". Michelle Salzman has shown that, in the process of converting the Roman Empire's aristocracy, Christianity absorbed the values of that aristocracy.
Some scholars have suggested that characteristics of some pagan gods — or at least their roles — were transferred to Christian saints after the fourth century. Demetrius of Thessaloniki became venerated as the patron of agriculture during the Middle Ages. According to historian Hans Kloft, that was because the Eleusinian Mysteries, Demeter, ended in the 4th century, and the Greek rural population gradually transferred her rites and roles onto the Christian saint.
Several early Christian writers, including Justin Martyr (2nd century), Tertullian, and Origen (3rd century) wrote of Mithraism copying Christian beliefs and practices yet remaining pagan.
In both Jewish and Roman tradition, genetic families were buried together, but an important cultural shift took place in the way Christians buried one another: they gathered unrelated Christians into a common burial space, as if they really were one family, "commemorated them with homogeneous memorials and expanded the commemorative audience to the entire local community of coreligionists" thereby redefining the concept of family.
In the fourth century, there were no conversions of temples in the city of Rome itself. It is only with the formation of the Papal State in the eighth century, (when the emperor's properties in the West came into the possession of the bishop of Rome), that the conversions of temples in Rome took off in earnest.
According to Dutch historian Feyo L. Schuddeboom, individual temples and temple sites in the city of Rome were converted to churches primarily to preserve their exceptional architecture. They were also used pragmatically because of the importance of their location at the center of town.
In Eusebius' church history, there is a bold claim of a Constantinian campaign to destroy the temples, however, there are discrepancies in the evidence. Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only four have been confirmed by archaeological evidence. Historians Frank R. Trombley and Ramsay MacMullen explain that discrepancies between literary sources and archaeological evidence exist because it is common for details in the literary sources to be ambiguous and unclear. For example, John Malalas claimed Constantine destroyed all the temples, then he said Theodosius I destroyed them all, then he said Constantine converted them all to churches. Additional calculated acts of desecration – removing the hands and feet or mutilating heads and genitals of statues, and "purging sacred precincts with fire" – were acts committed by the common people during the early centuries. While seen as 'proving' the impotence of the gods, pagan icons were also seen as having been "polluted" by the practice of sacrifice. They were, therefore, in need of "desacralization" or "deconsecration". Antique historian Peter Brown says that, while it was in some ways studiously vindictive, it was not indiscriminate or extensive. Once temples, icons or statues were detached from 'the contagion' of sacrifice, they were seen as having returned to innocence. Many statues and temples were then preserved as art. Professor of Byzantine history Helen Saradi-Mendelovici writes that this process implies appreciation of antique art and a conscious desire to find a way to include it in Christian culture.
Aspects of paganism remained part of the civic culture of the Roman Empire till its end. Public spectacles were popular and resisted Christianization: Gladiator ( munera), Venatio ( venationes), Ludi ( ludi scaenici), and Chariot racing ( ludi circenses) were accommodated by Roman society even while that society disagreed and debated the definition and scope of christianization. Historian of antiquity Richard Lim writes that it was within this process of debate that "the category of the secular was developed ... which helped buffer select cultural practices, including Roman spectacles, from the claims of those who advocated a more thorough christianization of Roman society." This produced a vigorous public culture shared by polytheists, Jews and Christians alike.
The Roman Empire cannot be considered Christianized before Justinian I in the sixth century, though most scholars agree the Empire was never fully Christianized. Archaeologist and historian Judith Herrin has written in her article on "Book Burning as Purification" that under Justinian, there was considerable destruction. The decree of 528 barred pagans from state office when, decades later, Justinian ordered a "persecution of surviving Hellenes, accompanied by the burning of pagan books, pictures and statues". This took place at the Kynêgion. Herrin says it is difficult to assess the degree to which Christians are responsible for the losses of ancient documents in many cases, but in the mid-sixth century, active persecution in Constantinople destroyed many ancient texts.
I think that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, and let altars be erected and relics placed. For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the people, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may remove error from their hearts, and, knowing and adoring the true God, may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have become accustomed.When Benedict moved to Monte Cassino about 530, a small temple with a sacred grove and a separate altar to Apollo stood on the hill. The population was still mostly pagan. The land was most likely granted as a gift to Benedict from one of his supporters. This would explain the authoritative way he immediately cut down the groves, removed the altar, and built an oratory before the locals were converted.
Christianization of the Irish landscape was a complex process that varied considerably depending on local conditions. Ancient sites were viewed with veneration, and were excluded or included for Christian use based largely on diverse local feeling about their nature, character, ethos and even location. In Greece, Byzantine scholar Alison Frantz has won consensus support of her view that, aside from a few rare instances such as the Parthenon which was converted to a church in the sixth century, temple conversions (including the Erechtheion and the Theseion) took place in and after the seventh century, after the displacements caused by the Slavic invasions.
In early Anglo-Saxons, non-stop religious development meant paganism and Christianity were never completely separate. Archaeologist Lorcan Harney has reported that Anglo-Saxon churches were built by pagan barrows after the 11th century. Richard A. Fletcher suggests that, within the British Isles and other areas of northern Europe that were formerly , there are a dense number of holy wells and holy springs that are now attributed to a saint, often a highly local saint, unknown elsewhere. In earlier times many of these were seen as guarded by supernatural forces such as the melusina, and many such pre-Christian holy wells appear to have survived as baptistries. According to Willibald's Saint Boniface, about 723, the missioner Boniface cut down the sacred Donar's Oak also called the 'Oak of Jupiter' and used the lumber to build a church dedicated to St. Peter. By 771, Charlemagne had inherited the long established conflict with the Saxons who regularly specifically targeted churches and monasteries in brutal raids into Frankish territory. In January 772, Charlemagne retaliated with an attack on the Saxon's most important holy site, a sacred groves in southern Engria. "It was dominated by the Irminsul ('Great Pillar'), which was either a (wooden) pillar or an ancient tree and presumably symbolized Germanic religion's 'Axis mundi'. The Franks cut down the Irminsul, looted the accumulated sacrificial treasures (which the King distributed among his men), and torched the entire grove... Charlemagne ordered a Frankish fortress to be erected at the Eresburg".
Early historians of Christianization wrote of dramatic events associated with Christianization in the manner of political propagandists according to who references the 1987 survey by the historian of medieval Scandinavia, Birgit Sawyer. Sørensen focuses on the changes of names, both personal and place names, showing that cultic elements were not banned and are still in evidence today. Large numbers of pre-Christian names survive into the present day, and Sørensen says this demonstrates the process of Christianization in Denmark was peaceful and gradual and did not include the complete eradication of the old cultic associations. However, there are local differences.
Outside of Scandinavia, old names did not fare as well.
The highest point in Paris was known in the pre-Christian period as the Hill of Mercury, Mons Mercuri. Evidence of the worship of this Roman god here was removed in the early Christian period and in the ninth century a sanctuary was built here, dedicated to the 10000 martyrs. The hill was then called Montmartre, the name by which it is still known (Mont Martres) (Longnon 1923, 377; Vincent 1937, 307).San Marino in northern Italy, the shrine of Saint Marino, replaced a pre-Christian cultic name for the place: Monte Titano, where the Titans had been worshipped (Pfeiffer 1980, 79).
The Monte Giove "Hill of Jupiter" came to be known as San Bernardo, in honour of St Bernhard (Pfeiffer 1980, 79).
In Germany an old Wodanesberg "Hill of Ódin" was renamed Godesberg (Bach 1956, 553). Ä controversial but not unreasonable suggestion is that the locality named by Ädam of Bremen as Fosetisland "land of the god Foseti" is to be identified with Helgoland "the holy land", the island off the coast of northern Friesland which, according to Ädam, was treated with superstitious respect by all sailors, particularly pirates (Laur 1960, 360 with references).
The practice of replacing pagan beliefs and motifs with Christian, and purposefully not recording the pagan history (such as the names of pagan gods, or details of pagan religious practices), has been compared to the practice of damnatio memoriae.
While enduring three centuries of on-again, off-again persecution, from differing levels of government ranging from local to imperial, Christianity had remained 'self-organized' and without central authority. In this manner, it reached an important Threshold model between 150 and 250, when it moved from less than 50,000 adherents to over a million, and became self-sustaining and able to generate further growth. There was a significant rise in the absolute number of Christians in the third century.
According to historian Michelle Renee Salzman, there is no evidence to indicate that conversion of pagans through force was an accepted method of Christianization at any point in Late Antiquity. Evidence indicates all uses of imperial force concerning religion were aimed at heretics (who were already Christian) such as the Donatism and the Manichaeism and not at non-believers such as Jews or pagans.
However, Constantine must have written the laws that threatened and menaced pagans who continued to practice sacrifice. The element of pagan culture most abhorrent to Christians was sacrifice, and altars used for it were routinely smashed. Christians were deeply offended by the blood of slaughtered victims as they were reminded of their own past sufferings associated with such altars. Richard Lim writes that "Putting an end to blood sacrifice ... thus became the singular goal of Christianization (Barnes 1984; Bradbury 1994, 1995)".
There is no evidence that any of the horrific punishments included in the laws against sacrifice were ever enacted. There is no record of anyone being executed for violating religious laws before Tiberius II Constantine at the end of the sixth century (574–582). Still, Bradbury notes that the complete disappearance of public sacrifice by the mid-fourth century "in many towns and cities must be attributed to the atmosphere created by imperial and episcopal hostility".
Tacitus describes the nature of German religion, and their understanding of the function of a king, as facilitating Christianization. Missionaries aimed at converting Germanic nobility first. Ties of fealty between German kings and their followers often produced mass conversions of entire tribes following their king. Afterwards, their societies began a gradual process of Christianization that took centuries, with some traces of earlier beliefs remaining.
In all cases, Christianization meant "the Germanic conquerors lost their native languages. ...or the syntax, the conceptual framework underlying the lexicon, and most of the literary forms, were thoroughly latinized".
Saint Boniface led the effort in the mid-eighth century to organize churches in the region that would become modern Germany. As ecclesiastical organization increased, so did the political unity of the Germanic Christians. By the year 962, when Pope John XII anoints King Otto I as Holy Roman Emperor, "Germany and Christendom had become one". This union lasted until dissolved by Napoleon in 1806.
Saxons went back and forth between rebellion and submission to the Franks for decades. Charlemagne (r. 768–814) placed missionaries and courts across Saxony in hopes of pacifying the region, but Saxons rebelled again in 782 with disastrous losses for the Franks. In response, the Frankish King "enacted a variety of draconian measures" beginning with the massacre at Verden in 782 when he ordered the decapitation of 4500 Saxon prisoners offering them baptism as an alternative to death. These events were followed by the severe legislation of the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae in 785 which prescribes death to those that are disloyal to the king, harm Christian churches or its ministers, or practice pagan burial rites. His harsh methods of Christianization raised objections from his friends Alcuin and Paulinus of Aquileia. Charlemagne abolished the death penalty for paganism in 797.
The Christianisation of Anglo-Saxon England began in the late 6th century when the Gregorian mission was launched, leading to the conversion of Æthelberht of Kent around 600. After this, further kings converted such as Eadwine of Deira around 628 and Sigeberht of Essex around 653. Although the traditional religion often regained royal support after the conversion of the first king, Christianity did nonetheless become dominant in England, with the last heathen Anglo-Saxon king Arwald of Wihtwara being killed in battle in 686 and his two sons forcefully baptised and executed. Closely related Nordic forms of paganism were introduced by Scandinavian settlers during the 9th and 10th centuries. Christianity was likely adopted within several generations, with the last potentially heathen king to rule in England being Erik Bloodaxe, who died in 954. Suppression of paganism in England is first recorded as having taken place in the mid 7th century during the reign of Eorcenberht of Kent and continued into the 11th century, with law codes prescribing punishments such as fines, fasting and execution. Not all Germanic cultural elements were suppressed however, with many blending with Christian ones and some continuing in folklore into the modern period.
In 529, Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy. He wrote the Rule of Saint Benedict based on "pray and work". This "Rule" provided the foundation of the majority of the thousands of monasteries that spread across the continent of what is now modern day Europe, thereby becoming a major factor in the Christianization of Europe.
Gregory adds his view that "it is admirably clear that organized paganism survived well into the sixth century throughout the empire and in parts of Greece (at least in the Mani Peninsula) until the ninth century or later". Pagan ideas and forms persisted most in practices related to healing, death, and the family.
At the time of the South Slavic incursion and the threat of ethnic turbulence in the Albanian-inhabited regions, the Christianization of the Albanians had already been completed and it had apparently developed for Albanians as a further identity-forming feature alongside the ethnic-linguistic unity. Church administration, which was controlled by a thick network of Roman bishoprics, collapsed with the arrival of the Slavs. Between the early 7th century and the late 9th century the interior areas of the Balkans were deprived of church administration, and Christianity might have survived only as a popular tradition on a reduced degree. Some Albanians living in the mountains, who were only partially affected by Romanization, probably sank back into the Classic Paganism.
The reorganization of the Church as a cult institution in the region took a considerable amount of time. The Balkans were brought back into the Christian orbit only after the recovery of the Byzantine Empire and through the activity of Byzantine missionaries. The earliest church vocabulary of Middle Greek origin in Albanian dates to the 8th–9th centuries, at the time of the Byzantine Iconoclasm, which was started by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian. In 726 Leo III established de jure the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople over the Balkans, as the Church and the State established an institution. The Eastern Church expanded its influence in the area along with the social and political developments. Between the 7th and 12th centuries a powerful network of cult institutions were revived completely covering the ecclesiastical administration of the entire present-day Albanian-speaking compact area. In particular an important role was played by the Theme of Dyrrhachium and the Archdiocese of Ohrid. Survived through the centuries, the Christian belief among Albanians became an important cultural element in their ethnic identity. Indeed, the lack of Old Church Slavonic terms in Albanian Christian terminology shows that the missionary activities during the Christianization of the Slavs did not involve Albanian-speakers. In a text compiled around the beginning of the 11th century in the Old Bulgarian language, the Albanians are mentioned for the first time with their old ethnonym Arbanasi as half-believers, a term which for Eastern Orthodox Christian Bulgarians meant Catholic Christian. The Great Schism of 1054 involved Albania separating the region between Catholic Christianity in the north and Orthodox Christianity in the south.
Regardless of the Christianization, ancient paganism persisted among Albanians, and especially within the inaccessible and deep interior – where Albanian folklore evolved over the centuries in a relatively isolated Albanian tribes – it has continued to persist, or at most it was partially transformed by the Christian, and later Muslim and Marxist beliefs, that were either to be introduced by choice or imposed by force.; ; Albanian traditions have been Oral tradition through memory systems that have survived intact into modern times. The Albanian traditional customary law (Kanun) has held a sacred – although secular – longstanding, unwavering and unchallenged authority with a cross-religious effectiveness over the Albanians, which is attributed to an earlier pagan code common to all the Albanian tribes. Historically, the Christian clergy has vigorously fought, but without success, the pagan rituals practiced by Albanians for traditional feasts and particular events, especially the fire rituals (Zjarri).
The king of the country then was the founder of the Arsacid dynasty of Albania Vachagan I (but not his grandson Urnayr), and the king of Armenia was Tiridat III the Great, also Arsacid. As M. L. Chaumont established in 1969, the latter, with the help of Gregory the Illuminator, adopted the Christian faith at the state level in June 311, two months after the publication of the Edict of Sardica "On Tolerance" by Galerius (293–311). In 313, after the appearance of the Edict of Milan, Tiridat attracted the younger allies of Armenia Iberia-Kartli, Albania-Aluank' and Lazika-Egerk' (Colchis) to the process of Christianization.In the first half of 315, Gregory the Illuminator baptized the Albanian king (who had arrived in Armenia) and ordained the first bishop Tovmas (the founder of the Albanian church, with the center in the capital Kapalak) for his country: he was from the city of Satala in Lesser Armenia. Probably, at the same stage, Christianization covered the whole of antique Albania, i.e. territory north of the Kura River, to the Caspian Sea and the Derbent.
Christianization took many generations and was not a uniform process. Byzantine historian Robert Thomson writes that it was not the officially established hierarchy of the church that spread Christianity in Armenia; "It was the unorganized activity of wandering holy men that brought about the Christianization of the populace at large". The most significant stage in this process was the development of a script for the native tongue.
Scholars do not agree on the exact date of Christianization of Georgia, but most assert the early 4th century when Mirian III of the Kingdom of Iberia (known locally as Kartli) adopted Christianity. According to medieval Georgian Chronicles, Christianization began with Andrew the Apostle and culminated in the evangelization of Iberia through the efforts of a captive woman known in Iberian tradition as Saint Nino in the fourth century. Fifth, 8th, and 12th century accounts of the conversion of Georgia reveal how pre-Christian practices were taken up and reinterpreted by Christian narrators.
In 325, the Kingdom of Aksum (Modern Ethiopia and Eritrea) became the second country to declare Christianity as its official state religion.
In 416, the Germanic Visigoths crossed into Hispania as Roman allies. They converted to Arian Christianity shortly before 429. The Visigothic King Sisebut came to the throne in 612 when the Roman emperor Heraclius surrendered his Spanish holdings. Sisebut banished all Jews who would not submit to baptism. Roman historian Edmund Spenser Bouchier says 90,000 Hebrews were baptized while others fled to France or North Africa. This contradicted the traditional position of the Catholic Church on the Jews, and scholars refer to this shift as a "seismic moment" in Christianization.
Historian Ivo Štefan has written, "Although Christian authors often depicted the conversion of rulers as the triumph of the new faith, the reality was much more complex. Christianization of everyday life took centuries, with many non-Christian elements surviving in rural communities until the beginning of the modern era".
Stephen suppressed rebellion, organized both the Hungarian State (with strong royal authority), and the church, by inviting missionaries, and suppressing paganism by making laws such as requiring people to attend church every Sunday. Soon the Hungarian Kingdom had two archbishops and 8 bishops, and a defined state structure with province governors that answered to the King. Saint Stephen was the first Hungarian monarch elevated to sainthood for his Christian characteristics and not because he suffered a martyr's death. Hungarian Christianity and the kingdom's ecclesiastical and temporal administrations consolidated towards the end of the 11th century.
According to Peter Brown, Scandinavians adopted Christianity of their own accord c.1000. Anders Winroth explains that Iceland became the model for the institutional conversion of the rest of Scandinavia after AD 1000. Winroth demonstrates that Scandinavians were not passive recipients of the new religion, but converted to Christianity because it was in their political, economic, and cultural interests to do so.
Stage 2 began when a secular ruler took charge of Christianization in their territory, and ended when a defined and organized ecclesiastical network was established. By 1350, Scandinavia was an integral part of Western Christendom.
Romanian historian Ioan-Aurel Pop writes "Christian fervor and the massive conversion to Christianity among the Slavs may have led to the canonic conversion of the last heathen, or ecclesiastically unorganized, Romanian islands". For Romanians, the church model was "overwhelming, omnipresent, putting pressure on the Romanians and often accompanied by a political element". This ecclesiastical and political tradition continued until the 19th century.
One result of the northern crusades, according to historian Aiden Lilienfeld, was that: " The conquering forces of the Northern Crusades brought more territory under German control than nearly any other concerted expansion in the history of the Holy Roman Empire"—emphasizing that duty to the faith could often go hand-in-hand, from the perspective of prospective crusaders, with political and material benefit.
Combining their personal priorities with a need to permanently stop the raiding, they requested permission to subdue the Baltic instead. In 1147, Eugenius' Divini dispensatione, gave the eastern nobles full crusade indulgences to do so. The Northern, (or Baltic), Crusades followed, taking place, off and on, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316.
Acquisition of territory and wealth was a major aim—perhaps the major aim—in undertaking military action, on the part of the Christian rulers west of the Oder, and clerics such as Helmond complained that the nobles' demands for tribute hindered the process of conversion; on the other hand, the Christianization of the locals—and the putative rewards in the hereafter to ensue from its success—was a powerful motivator as well. In some cases, voluntary conversion of the local aristocracy—usually followed by the populace, under this influence—was recognized, and stayed the hand of war; in others, naked ambition and greed for material wealth resulted in military actions against ostensibly already-converted peoples. In most cases, conversion was ultimately the result of conquest.
According to Fonnesberg-Schmidt: "While the theologians maintained that conversion should be voluntary, there was a widespread pragmatic acceptance of conversion obtained through political pressure or military coercion". There were often severe consequences for populations that chose to resist, though in some instances local rulers were able to successfully plead a case for withholding attempts at the forcible Christianization of the populace—both ruler and crusaders cognizant of the risk of armed rebellion (and hence disruption of profitable trade or tribute), were such attempts to proceed.
The Teutonic Order was a mostly German crusading organization from the Christian Holy Land founded by members of the Knights Hospitaller. Medieval historian Aiden Lilienfeld says "In 1226, however, the Duke of Mazovia ... granted the Order territory in eastern Prussia in exchange for help in subjugating pagan Baltic peoples". Over the course of the next 200 years, the Order expanded its territory to cover much of the eastern Baltic coast. In 1384, Jadwiga, the ten year old daughter of Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Poland and his wife Elizabeth of Bosnia, was crowned king of Poland. One year later, a marriage was arranged between her and the Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania. Duke Jogaila was baptized, married, and crowned king in 1386, thus beginning the 400 year shared history of Poland and Lithuania. This would seem to obviate the need for religious crusade, yet activity against local populations, particularly the peoples of the eastern Baltic, continued in a frequently brutal manner.
The Teutonic Order eventually fell to Poland-Lithuania in 1525. Lilienfeld says "After this, the Order's territory was divided between Poland-Lithuania and the Hohenzollern dynasty of Brandenburg, putting an end to the monastic state and the formal Northern Crusade. All of the Order's most powerful cities–Danzig (Gdansk), Elbing (Elblag), Marienburg (Malbork), and Braunsberg (Braniewo)–now fall within Poland in the 21st century, except for Koenigsburg (Kaliningrad) in Russia."
The Rus' dukes maintained exclusive control of the church which was financially dependent upon them. The prince appointed the clergy to positions in government service; satisfied their material needs; determined who would fill the higher ecclesiastical positions; and directed the synods of bishops in the Kievan metropolitanate. This new Christian religious structure was imposed upon the socio-political and economic fabric of the land by the authority of the state's rulers. According to Andrzej Poppe, Slavic historian, it is fully justifiable to call the Church of Rus' a state church. The Church strengthened the authority of the Prince, and helped to justifiy the expansion of Kievan empire into new territories through missionary activity.
Christian clergy translated religious texts into local vernacular language which introduced literacy to all members of the princely dynasty, including women and the general populace. Monasteries of the twelfth century became key spiritual, intellectual, art, and craft centers. Under Vladimir's son Yaroslav I the Wise (1016–1018, 1019–1054), a building and cultural boom took place. The Church of Rus' gradually developed into an independent political force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
In the early 13th century, Bishop Thomas became the first known bishop of Finland. There were several secular powers who aimed to bring the Finnish tribes under their rule. These were Sweden, Denmark, the Republic of Novgorod in northwestern Russia, and probably the German crusading orders as well. Finns had their own chiefs, but most probably no central authority. At the time there can be seen three cultural areas or tribes in Finland: Finns proper, Tavastians and Karelians. Russian chronicles indicate there were several conflicts between Novgorod and the Finnic tribes from the 11th or 12th century to the early 13th century. The influence of Russian Orthodoxy was extended to the area around Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga and the Häme (Tavastians) there were converted.
Accessed 26 Aug. 2023.Cook Jr, Weston F., and Andrés Bernaldez. "The Cannon Conquest of Nasrid Spain and the End of the Reconquista'." Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon: Medieval Warfare in Societies Around the Mediterranean 13 (2003): 253.
Isabel and Ferdinand married in October 1469 thereby uniting Spain with themselves as its first royalty. In 1478, they established the Spanish Inquisition, telling the Pope it was needed to find heretics – specifically Jews pretending to be Christian so they could spy for Moslems who wanted their territory back. In actuality, it served state interests and consolidated power in the monarchy. The Spanish inquisition was originally authorized by the Pope, yet the initial inquisitors proved so severe that the Pope almost immediately opposed it and attempted to shut it down without success. Ferdinand is said to have pressured the Pope, and in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the inquisition to the Spanish crown. According to Spanish historian José Casanova, the Spanish inquisition became the first truly national, unified and centralized state institution.
History also connects Christianization with opposition to colonialism. Historian Lamin Sanneh writes that there is an equal amount of evidence of both missionary support and missionary opposition to colonialism through "protest and resistance both in the church and in politics". In Sanneh's view, missions were "colonialism's Achilles' heel, not its shield". He goes on to explain this is because, "Despite their role as allies of the empire, missions also developed the vernacular that inspired sentiments of national identity and thus undercut Christianity's identification with colonial rule". According to historical theologian Justo Gonzales, colonialism and missions each sometimes aided and sometimes impeded the other.
Different state actors created colonies that varied widely. Some colonies had institutions that allowed native populations to reap some benefits. Others became extractive colonies with predatory rule that produced an autocracy with a dismal record.
Early attempts at Christianization in India were not very successful, and those who had been converted were not well instructed. In the church's view, this led them into "errors and misunderstandings" that were often defined as heresy. In December 1560, the state controlled Portuguese Inquisition arrived in Goa. This was largely the result of the crown's fear that converted Jews were becoming dominant in Goa and might ally with Ottoman Jews to threaten Portuguese control of the spice trade. After 1561, the Inquisition had a practical monopoly over heresy, and its "policy of terror ... was reflected in the approximately 15,000 trials which took place between 1561 and 1812, involving more than 200 death sentences".
Spanish missionaries are generally credited with championing efforts to initiate protective laws for the Indians and for working against their enslavement. This led to debate on the nature of human rights. In 16th-century Spain, the issue resulted in a crisis of conscience and the birth of modern international law. Jesuits opposition to the enslavement of native Amerindians inadvertently contributed to the proliferation of black African slaves in their place.
In words of outrage, Junipero Serra wrote of the depredations of the soldiers against Indian women in California in 1770. Following through on missionary complaints, Viceroy Bucareli drew up the first regulatory code of California, the Echeveste Regulations. Missionary opposition and military prosecution failed to protect the Amerindian women. On the one hand, California missionaries sought to protect the Amerindians from exploitation by the conquistadores, the ordinary soldiers and the colonists. On the other hand, Jesuits, Franciscans and other orders relied on corporal punishment and an institutionalized racialism for training the "untamed savages".
Great Britain's colonial expansion was for the most part driven by commercial ambitions and competition with France. Investors saw converting the natives as a secondary concern. Historian of British history and culture, Laura Stevens, writes that British missions were "more talk than walk". From the beginning, the British talked (and wrote) a great deal about converting native populations, but actual efforts were few and feeble. Historian Jacob Schacter says these missions were universally Protestant, were based on belief in the traditional duty to "teach all nations", the sense of "obligation to extend the benefits of Christianity to heathen lands" (just as Europe itself had been "civilized" centuries before), and a "fervent pity" for those who had never heard the gospel. Schacter adds that "ambivalent benevolence" was at the heart of most British and American attitudes toward Native Americans. The British did not create widespread conversion.
The history of boarding schools for the indigenous populations in Canada and the US is not generally good. While the majority of native children did not attend boarding school at all, of those that did, recent studies indicate a few found happiness and refuge while many others found suffering, forced assimilation, and abuse.
Historian William Gerald McLoughlin has written that, humanitarians who saw the decline of indigenous people with regret, advocated education and assimilation as the native's only hope for survival. Over time, many missionaries came to respect the virtues of native culture. "After 1828, most missionaries found it difficult to defend the policies of their government" writes McLoughlin.
The beginning of American Protestant missions abroad followed the sailing of William Carey from England to India in 1793 after the Great awakening.
Some imperial practices, (combined with pre-existing conditions in the colonial states), have had negative long-term effects on the colonial states, socially and Political decay, as well as on economic development, the development of democracy, and the ability of local governments to accomplish policy goals. The political legacies of colonialism include political instability, violence and ethnic exclusion, which is also linked to civil strife and civil war, while contact with the colonial slave trade has had additional harmful effects.
According to political scientists Alexander de Juan and Jan Henryk Pierskalla, the legacy of Protestant Christianization is largely one of beneficial long-term effects in the areas of human capital, political participation, and democratization. De Juan and Pierskalla add that "Sociologists have identified the key role of Christian missionaries, in particular Protestant missionaries, in generating a democratic legacy for many former colonies, through the spread of literacy, Printing, and voluntary organizations..."
Theologian Justo Gonzales has written that, while the sixteenth century has generally been seen as the "great age of Catholic expansion", the nineteenth century was that for Protestantism. This included translating the Bible and other Christian writings into the local language (in more than half of the world's over 7000 languages). Missionaries of this era worked with indigenous people to create a written grammar, a lexicon, and a dictionary of their spoken language, (in approximately 90% of those languages). Tracing the impact of this shows local native cultures have responded with "movements of indigenization and cultural liberation".
Sanneh writes that "The translated scripture ... has become the benchmark of awakening and renewal" in Africa. According to anthropologist Elizabeth Isichei, it is the transition to literacy that translation of scripture and missionary schools created that engendered much of the transformation that followed. In Sanneh's view, this means that western missionaries pioneered the "largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in the history" of Africa.
In 1900 under colonial rule there were just under 9 million Christians in Africa. By 1960, and the end of colonialism there were about 60 million. By 2005, African Christians had increased to 393 million, about half of the continent's total population at that time. Population in Africa has continued to grow with the percentage of Christians remaining at about half in 2022. According to Isichei, "The expansion of Christianity in twentieth-century Africa has been so dramatic that it has been called 'the fourth great age of Christian expansion'."
Whether Kimbanguism is a political or a religious movement is resolved by making a distinction between the genuine Kimbanguists and the pseudo-Kimbanguists, also known as the Ngunzists. Of first importance to genuine Kimbanguism is unquestioning acceptance of the intercession of Christ. Measured according to Reformation criteria, the Church of Jesus Christ of this Earth by the Prophet Simon Kimbangu (EJCSK) is a Christian religion. However, as James W. Fernandez says, it is a mistake to identify Christianity only with its European version.
Jules Rosette shows how ritual symbolization is the training ground, the interface, for the translation of the African into the Christian, "how ritual vocabulary translates tradition into new practices". Christianity, she suggests, provides the grammar and syntax, as it were, and traditional customs the lexicon that is formulated by Christianity into a new religious argument.
Anne Marie Stoner-Eby writes, "The Christianization of initiation rites in the Anglican Diocese of Maasai in what is now southeastern Tanzania is arguably the most famous instance of 'adaptation' in African mission Christianity." It has long been assumed that Vincent Lucas, Bishop of Maasai (1926–1944), initiated the Christianizing of the initiation rites in an effort to adapt, and not destroy African cultural life, publishing what became a famous essay on 'The Christian Approach to Non-Christian Customs'.
Initiation was one of a chief's most important and prestigious responsibilities, but long before 'adaptation' became a missionary watchword, Maasai clergy had taken advantage of a crucial increase in their numbers to place jando la kikristo (Christian initiation) in place of unyago wa lupanda (Lupanda initiation in ancestor worship) by 1913.
In the early twenty-first century outside the United States, Kenya has the largest yearly meeting of Quakers. In Uganda, more Anglicans attend church than do so in England. Ahafo, Ghana is recognized as more vigorously Christian than any place in the United Kingdom. There is revival in East Africa, and vigorous women's movements called Rukwadzano in Zimbabwe and Manyano in South Africa. The Apostles of John Maranke, which began in Rhodesia, now have branches in seven countries.
In the post-colonial world, it has become necessary for Christianization to break free of its colonial moorings, says Sanneh. Mark Boyle writes that:
Christianity's historical alignment with the Western project and the histories of colonialism and imperialism raises questions about its capacity to serve as a progressive force in global affairs today. Placing Christianity under postcolonial scrutiny, ... Christianity offers a variety of complex, contradictory, and competing approaches to peace building that variously defend the hegemonic ambitions of the West on the one hand, and support critical practices that usurp and decenter the sovereign supremacy assumed by the West on the other.
In the early twenty-first century, Christianity has been declining in the West and growing in former colonial lands. Sanneh says Christianity has become the most diverse, pluralist, fastest growing religion in the world.
Christianity grew as a grassroots movement in rural areas first, through self-propagation and native agency. This led to an overlap of religious, kinship and territorial identities, so that when the socio-political order shattered, the church was able to step in. Lee sees this as revealing "the importance of the church as a major building block and a viable civic institution in the midst of widespread chaos and unrest".
Lee writes that hostility toward Christianity as expressed in the Anti-Christian Movement (1925–1926) and in the anti-religious Maoist Era (1949–1976), "the impact of regime change, encounters with secular state-building, the church's involvement in transforming local religious and socio-economic landscapes, and the importance of religious agency", are all key factors in Chinese Christianity. There exists a multiplicity of Chinese Christian experiences and religiosity, and they all tend to reject the view that Christianity is incompatible with modern Chinese culture.
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