Global Missionary Activities of Christian Churches in the 20th and 21st Centuries: The Spatial Aspect

The article identifies the peculiarities of Christian churches' missionary activities in the 20th - early 21st centuries at different territorial levels - the world as a whole, its regions and countries. The activation of the Christian churches' missionary activity historically corresponds to the era of colonialism. Thus, Protestant movements are characterized with the catching-up development in comparison with Catholicism. The global scale of missionary activities required from Protestant churches pooling their resources, and developing new methods of missionary work due to the absence of a single spiritual and administrative centre like in Catholic church. It is determined that the most important features of modern missionary work, which enabled it to cover virtually the whole world regardless of the cultural or socioeconomic background, include: (1) an economically independent Christian community functioning without the support from the maternal church is established; (2) special attention is paid to training teams in the field; (3) conversion is no longer perceived as the sole purpose of the missionary; great attention is paid to the improving of the socioeconomic situation of the local population; thus, missionary activity must be combined with social activity (education, medical services); (4) missionary activity has become more focused on regular persons rather than on the elite; (5) local Christian media are created and developed in accordance with the latest technologies, including the Internet; (6) attention is increasingly focused on the culture and traditions of the population that is going to be reached. Special emphasis is put on learning the local language and the translation of the Bible. The authors came to the conclusion that during the past century the structure of the Christian missionary streams changed dramatically, especially that of Protestants. At the beginning of the 21st century missionary activities are multidirectional, there are mutually directed flows between the Global North (Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan) and the Global South (Asia, Africa, Latin America, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, except the above-mentioned countries). The authors revealed three main centers that send Protestant missionaries to other countries: North American, oriented primarily to the countries of the Asia-Pacific region; European more connected with South Asia and Africa; West-Pacific predominantly oriented on Europe and East Asia.

Keywords

Authors

References