Zendelinggenootschap (NZG: Dutch Missionary Societyfollowed in 1797. As a
result of increasing tensions between 'modernist' and 'orthodox' wings within
the Dutch Reformed Church Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk) three new missionary
organisations split off from the NZG between 1858 and 1860. From 1834
onwards orthodox groups seceded from the church and founded new churches.
Although these protestants were divided and their numbers remained very
small, they set up their own missionary society and a training school. A much
larger secession in 1885 led by the theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper
had more impact. Kuyper founded the Gereformeerde kerken in Nederland and
favoured a different concept of missionary work: mission was a duty of every
Christian and every Christian church. Local churches and not societies had
to send out missionaries who were academically trained and were ordained as
ministers. After 1900 American missionary organisations like the CMA (Church
Missionary Alliance), that were inspired by evangelical ideas, started missionary
work all over the world and also in the Dutch Indies. Compared to the traditional
societies and the missionary churches their methods were aggressive. Conflicts or
tensions arose as the newcomers did not hesitate to convert members of existing
Protestant churches to their denomination.
Catholic missions
A process comparable to the Protestant missionary fever took place in the
Catholic Church after 1800. Pope Gregorius XVI (1830-1846) was a firm
antagonist of the French Revolution and wanted to restore the pre-revolutionary
order. He propagated the concept of the Catholic church as a supranational state,
a kingdom standing above the national states with temporal as well as spiritual
authority.11 Mission could help to expand this global kingdom by converting
pagans, Jews, Muslims and Protestants. The French Revolution had confiscated
many monasteries but after 1815 the old ideal of monastic life revived. Many
new congregations were founded which wanted to realise the monastic ideal
outside the monastery walls. 12 Teaching poor children and caring for the sick
and elderly was favourite against a life of prayer and silence behind closed gates.13
Moreover, this charitable work fulfilled an urgent need and could be done in
but also outside Europe. One gets the impression that the further away the
chosen mission field, the more attractive it became. Two years after the pope had
approved of the new rules for the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts missionaries
set sail for Hawaii in 1821.14 Six Franciscan nuns from Roosendaal left for
Curacao in 1841, nine years after their congregation had been founded. These
nuns had never been outside the region where they had been born and they had
not been trained for their new work. Several of them died very soon from yellow
fever and other tropical diseases.15 The new congregations attracted a lot of young
men and women who were eager to go into the mission. Some congregations, for
instance the White Friars and the White Sisters, concentrated their efforts on
black Africa and the Sociëteit der Afrikaanse Missiën (Society for African Missions)
focused on Ghana and its neighbour countries.
TON KAPPELHOF ARCHIVES OF DUTCH DHRISTIAN MISSIONARY ORGANISATIONS AND MISSIONARIES
INFORMATION POWER - FROM HAGIOGRAPHY TO HISTORIOGRAPHY
13 Alkemade, Vrouwen XIX, 26.
14 Rademaker, Geroepen om te dienen, 65.
15 Alkemade, Vrouwen XIX, 236-238.
155