A huge contributing factor to the failure of the Catholic Church in creating a lasting foothold in East Asia was its structure, wherein the faithful are supposed to be nominally loyal to the Pope, which created tensions as leaders thought it might compromise their countries to foreign influence. What if instead, "Protestant" (or at least, non-Catholic) missionaries arrived in East Asia first? Would there be similar reactions to the new faith, or would it be tolerated and allowed to grow? How much oversight could be managed, in any case, and would distinct local traditions arise and dominate due to inability to enforce orthodoxy?
WI: Protestant, not Catholic Missionaries?
- Thread starter Tripledot
- Start date
Protestants would have their own problems-if every second missionary came with different teaching they'll lost credibility quickly. Other problem is that Protestantism, calling for purification of Christian faith from "pagan" influences is not capable to assimilate local traditions as Christian like Catholic Church was.
Failure what failure, the third largest church in China, and is very large in SEA, obviously the Philippines is 80% catholic. I mean it hasn't converted the continent but then no group has so it is a bit unfair to expect that of Catholics
To be fair, the first Christian missionaries in East Asia were actually not Catholic. They were Nestorians.
However, I see hard time for Protestant missions in the area for lack of push factors. My understanding is that serious missionary work outside Europe was pretty low priority for most Protestant churches and (critically) their state backers before the nineteenth century. As most Protestant churches were either distinctly national in character (and in many cases, virtually extensions of the State) or represented minorities in their own countries of orgin, they would be either hardly interested in mass conversion of distant and alien strangers, or organizationally challenged to put out the effort.
Also, the Protestant powers with a significant presence in East Asia operated through chartered trading companies who generally discouraged missionary activity as "bad for business" (both the VOC and the EIC were very vocal on that). So did the equivalent French company, to be fair, but it was harder for the French to rein the missionaries in as Versailles had some political reason to support them (while the Estates and Whitehall usually had none). Catholic Iberian powers operated through a more directly state managed effort that implied missionary activity, and of course Rome set out its own (often competing, as in, Dominicans vs. Franciscans vs. Jesuits) activities.
However, I see hard time for Protestant missions in the area for lack of push factors. My understanding is that serious missionary work outside Europe was pretty low priority for most Protestant churches and (critically) their state backers before the nineteenth century. As most Protestant churches were either distinctly national in character (and in many cases, virtually extensions of the State) or represented minorities in their own countries of orgin, they would be either hardly interested in mass conversion of distant and alien strangers, or organizationally challenged to put out the effort.
Also, the Protestant powers with a significant presence in East Asia operated through chartered trading companies who generally discouraged missionary activity as "bad for business" (both the VOC and the EIC were very vocal on that). So did the equivalent French company, to be fair, but it was harder for the French to rein the missionaries in as Versailles had some political reason to support them (while the Estates and Whitehall usually had none). Catholic Iberian powers operated through a more directly state managed effort that implied missionary activity, and of course Rome set out its own (often competing, as in, Dominicans vs. Franciscans vs. Jesuits) activities.
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Maoistic
Banned
"A huge contributing factor to the failure of the Catholic Church in creating a lasting foothold in East Asia"
Hello Philippines, hello Catholic community of India, China and Japan that rivals if not surpasses the Protestant community there, hello Goa, hello Timor and Macau. Seriously, what history did you read? Of course, the British ended up overtaking most of Asia, but Protestantism never became a strong religion in its Asian colonies. Most South and East Asians picture Christianity as Catholic for God's sake.
Hello Philippines, hello Catholic community of India, China and Japan that rivals if not surpasses the Protestant community there, hello Goa, hello Timor and Macau. Seriously, what history did you read? Of course, the British ended up overtaking most of Asia, but Protestantism never became a strong religion in its Asian colonies. Most South and East Asians picture Christianity as Catholic for God's sake.
I will note that while the British did promote their brand of Protestantism in their colonial possessions, it was done in an era in which religious fervor in politics had fallen out of fashion, at least in comparison to the bloody era of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. The British colonial empire was ultimately about the money, for the colonial projects that came earlier like Spain and Portugal's Empires promoting God and the Catholic faith wasn't just 'a' priority, it was the FIRST priority, that's why the Philippines and Latin America are so heavily Catholic now, Spain and Portugal invested in building the Catholic faith there for centuries as part of their primary national policy.
For Britain the religion was secondary AT BEST, it was more important to build up British controlled industry so the British Empire could make MONEY.
The Philippines, Goa, etc. were conquered by Catholic powers, and didn't convert until after they were conquered- I am speaking of people in independent polities converting. The Catholic population of China is puny, and would have been far bigger if the Pope hadn't tried to establish greater authority during the Chinese rites controversy. Japanese Catholicism was brutally repressed due to the Tokugawa Shogunate's mistrust of the church and its institutions, especially as a possible instigator of revolt or foreign influence.
Maoistic
Banned
Can we stop with the stupid idea that Catholics are more fanatical and they mainly cared about spreading their faith? This is pure hogwash. Catholic colonialism was as much about money as Protestant colonialism. It was always about money and expanding commerce and obtain more resources. Catholicism, like the Protestantism that succeeded it, was just the ideological cog - and not even the only one - used to legitimise European rule and make the local population subservient.
Maoistic
Banned
Except that there are more Protestants because Britain colonised parts of China as well as its main neighbours like India, and because the United States has been promoting Protestantism there as well. It has nothing to do with the institution of the Catholic Church itself. And fact is, in Japan, the population of Catholics rivals that of Protestants, while most Asians think Christianity is Catholic, even in places where Protestantism outnumbers Catholicism.
I didn't say that Catholics were more fanatical, back in the heyday of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires they WERE fanatical, just like their English and French counterparts, along with the myriad of mini-states of the Holy Roman Empire.
But by the time the British Empire really got rolling the role of religion in politics had changed dramatically, for most nations in the 18th-19th centuries promoting the Christian religion to their colonial subjects wasn't as important was it used to be.
Maoistic
Banned
And I disagree. The Spaniards and Portuguese brought as many missionaries in the 16th century as the British Empire did in the 19th century. The role of Catholicism in Spanish and Portuguese colonialism is vastly overrated when secular viceroys, generals, mercenaries and merchants were always the main colonisers with the missionaries being far more secondary. Protestant historiography simply left the idea of overzealous Catholic Iberians in order to demonise and delegetimise them, when that overzealousness never really existed except in the Protestant imagination.
I'm saying that the central authority of the Catholic Church impeded efforts in conversion. This cannot be denied. You are getting too hung up on the idea of comparing OTL Protestantism and Catholicism- "Protestant" here simply means "not Catholic" in that there is no religious authority halfway across the globe who claims nominal authority over the faithful.
Maoistic
Banned
Except this is simply not true. Protestants are more numerous nowadays simply because the British colonised parts of China and the main neighbours of China like India (and also because the United States keeps promoting Protestantism in order to make China subservient), not because of the "centralised" authority of the Catholic Church. You keep repeating the centralised authority argument without addressing what I'm saying at all.
Late nineteenth-century missionary work is irrelevant here, and I am completely uninterested in the spread of Christianity as an extension of empire. I am interested in whether the stumbling blocks faced by the Roman Catholic Church (mainly, it being viewed as a dangerous foreign religion) in proselytizing to non-colonized peoples would be avoided if there were no Papal authority to which priests answered to, or whether on balance Catholic organization was what allowed missionaries to make early inroads in the first place.
Maoistic
Banned
If Protestants had arrived first in East Asia, I don't see them faring any better than Catholics. Protestants were just as quick to lay claim to entire lands and Protestantism would still have the same seemingly subversive elements Catholicism had that caused the persecution of Christians and bans in their religion.
Early protestants, were not much interested in converting 'pagans'. Lutheranism quickly turned into German-Scandinavian faith and for Calvinists, pagans were damned people, destined to hell.
Eh? I'd say the central authority helped. Compared to the theological and organizational anarchy of Protestantism, the Catholic Church has a firm central message and hierarchy. That China and Japan clamped down on Catholicism was because of mistakes in understanding for the former and the necessity for stability after decades of chaos for the latter.