Missionary Strategies in the New World, 1610-1690 by Catherine Ballériaux

Author:Catherine Ballériaux [Ballériaux, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 17th Century, Religion, Religion; Politics & State, Christian Ministry, Missions
ISBN: 9781317271499
Google: GVaFCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-02-05T16:12:31+00:00

4

Assimilation versus Segregation

Two Competing Missiologies

Missionaries did not operate in a vacuum. The social, political, and religious reforms that they wished to implement amongst native societies often violently clashed with the interests of other corporate groups present in the New World. In this complex context, shaped by various influences in their mother countries and by developments in the colonies, missionaries were competing with understandings of colonisation often different from their own. The monarchies supporting missions frequently were unable or unwilling to facilitate the implementation of their highly moralistic vision of missions among native peoples.

If their work with the natives was destructive of many cultural and social aspects of native societies, missionaries nevertheless often found themselves, as pastors, to be the only defenders of what they considered to be native rights. In the very different contexts of the three colonies, they reacted to widely distinct sets of issues and conflicts. Yet those who were in charge of the evangelisation and pastoral care of native tribes voiced similar criticisms and intended to protect their recently converted natives from encroachments by settlers often judged to be greedy, unscrupulous, or immoral. They relentlessly condemned the European vices—among them greed, selfishness, and pride—that they claimed were threats to their missions. These tensions reveal that imperial and religious ideals in the New World did not necessarily coincide and that missionaries, as a group, should be differentiated from other settlers and colony officials. Ideally, they perceived their work as the possibility to establish new, virtuous commonwealths, which needed to be protected from the nefarious influence of European ills.

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