Assignment | Lesson One | The Christian Doctrine of Discovery in the Age of Exploration and Its Impact on Christian Mission Work (15th-17/early 18th Centuries)
April 12, 2026 1:40 AM
Part one:
Reflection should be at least 200 words in length but no longer than 500 words.
Discussion Question:
How should we balance the legacy of 15th-17th century missionaries? To what extent did missionaries truly separate their spiritual goals from the violent military conquests of conquistadors and colonial governors? How do we reconcile their high dedication and social service (i.e., hospitals, schools) with their role in the cultural disruption of Indigenous societies? In what ways did Indigenous populations in the Western hemisphere and Asia resist, reject, or redefine the Christianity presented to them, and how did these responses impact future missionary strategies?
Part two:
Respond to the contributions of at least two other class members. Your responses to others may include acknowledgment of helpful insights gained by a fellow student’s entry, further questions raised by another’s comments, or a respectful critique of another’s argument. Each of these response posts should be at least 150 words in length but no more than 350 words.
This assignment is due on Sunday, June 7.
Discussion (13)
In 2011 I went on a mission trip to a small Haitian town left without any infrastructure by an earthquake. We went to help rebuild the church. Culturally, women were not builders, so our leader suggested that the women make lunch. We jumped to it and 180 ham sandwiches later, we were ready!
Enthusiastically, we arrived to show everyone that we cared, using the tools that we knew. I think the same can be said for the missionaries in the 17th Century. They had the two fold duty of converting the natives and ministering to the colonists, and they did what they knew- metaphorically, they made ham sandwiches.
The belief system of the time was that all those not living under a Christian ruler were lost, and the missionaries stepped in executing the Great Commission. They leaned into their own culture, building missions, hospitals, and schools to minister. These establishments housed and protected native peoples, addressed health issues, and provided education including the creations of writing systems.
Devastatingly, the leaning on their own culture and social conditions resulted in the eradication of whole societies, assimilation into the dominant culture and the stealing of resources.
This is the history of the church, which needs acknowledgement. Yet, there was some push back from the native peoples. Those in the Congo used their own worldview to shape their new faith. The Calusa, in southern Florida, kept what fit and disregarded what did not. Latin countries were slow to convert as they did not want to leave their culture behind. Asian societies, as well, were reluctant to abandon their time honored culture going so far as to shut the door to missionaries
In doing so, missionaries had to pivot. The French installed leadership from within by adding native clergy. Roberto di Nobili, in India, learned the language, adopted the diet and introduced Christ to others meeting them where they were. In China, missionaries sought entrance through trade or educational methods.
These new ways, overall, appeared to have a more positive impact. Learning the culture, adopting societal norms and empowering people in their own right are ways to bridge the gap and build relationships with others.
Today, we can learn from our history. Our 180 ham sandwiches in Haiti were not eaten. Had we taken time, spoken to our partners, and asked what they needed or wanted, the outcome would have been different, and we would have been saved embarrassment. The town leaders were very gracious, promising us that the next day, we would all eat together. They cooked their lunch and we ate ham sandwiches. If we had talked with them with any sort of openness to understanding of who they were, we could have met them where they were and showed that we really did care.
What a great experience! I would love to go on a missionary trip one day. Meeting people where they are at with their own language and culture is what matters to me. How can we take the culture of people that have lived that way most of their lives. It's important to note that when you step into someone else's culture whether to share the gospel or help them in anyway you show that you care by meeting them where they are. That is what most people want no matter the culture, race or ethnicity background but the love in showing that we care.
I'm so glad you had the opportunity to be in Haiti and expand your worldview! I just go back from Sierra Leone this week and it has changed how I look at things for sure. I can only hope to hold onto that as I continue in my every day life.
Sorry...it didn't post my entire message! Here it is in its entirety. :)
I'm so glad you had the opportunity to be in Haiti and expand your worldview! I just got back from Sierra Leone this week and learning to stop and think before every action I made in order to make sure I was being respectful of their culture was a practice that I had to work on. My trip changed how I look at things for sure. I can only hope to hold onto that as I continue in my every day life.
I agree that we need to acknowledge the history of the church. We can only learn and grow from that and begin to try to make right some of what we have done, even if it was done centuries ago. I am struck by the lasting impact of the Doctrine of Discovery and was grateful to see the video about Canada so that I am more aware of how far reaching the impact continues to be on all of our land and the complexities of how we signed it into law!
Often Western cultures think that we have "the keys" to solve problems, and that we can export those keys to other parts of the world. Missionaries, economic development strategies, regime change are all methods for doing this.
Earlier this year in another course, Professor Sandya Jha asked us to consider community engagement with the question "what assets and resources does your community already have". Sometimes we don't need to "export" anything, but come alongside and assist with a communities' self identified needs/strengths. The former method has caused so much destruction and harm to people throughout the world. Thank you for your reflection.
This week’s material put into perspective for me just how linked the European conquest of the Western hemisphere was with Christianity as both permission and cover. I have always understood this primarily from a “white European” aim, but I guess I hadn’t really considered just how much justification was directly linked with the Church using its power and influence as weapon.
Another aspect of this that I think is interesting is the role that culture plays in the European Christian’s understanding of Christianity itself. They had a very ethnocentric view that of course their way of faith and worship was the right way, as exhibited in Inter Caetera, and later with the Chinese Rites decree. There are many expressions of Christianity throughout the world, and culture obviously plays a role. There are Latin American expressions of faith like Santeria, which incorporates aspects of Catholicism as a survival strategy, while Guadalupe-style Catholicism incorporates culturally significant regional iconography into it’s expression of faith. But in Asia, Rome was ignoring that they were attempting to export their own culture while not understanding Asian cultures, and making the mistake of rejecting it, rather than incorporating it.
As with many authoritarian style movements, I would assume there are some participants who participated without full knowledge of the consequences or were not fully in agreement with aspects of the conquest (for example, those who provided social services like education and care), but with a critique like Las Casas, I’m not sure that ignorance is a fully satisfying defense. I think most people would rationally believe that peoples have a pre-existing right to their property, and that if someone showed up at your home and claimed they owned it simply because they were bigger and stronger would be wrong. But of course, trying to convert people with reason is both more time consuming and challenging than full take-over. It requires that you tolerate people who do not convert and yet co-exist peacefully, which is a threat to an empire tied up in a single dogma as “the right way”.
Like you, Max, I didn’t realize how linked the church was in justifying the conquering and claiming of the “New World.” I had some knowledge of it, but not the extent to which it actually happened.
Growing up in California, we learned about the missions, as that is a big part of how our state was formed, and I believe it’s still a fourth-grade project here. Looking at it now and seeing how Eurocentric those teachings were back then, I really hope that it is being taught through multiple lenses today. I fear that it isn’t, as I see so much of our U.S. history being deleted before our eyes for the sake of the comfort of certain groups.
Bringing the history of the church forward seems integral to our society's growth and coming together. Ignoring our past does not allow us to live fully into the future with each other.
Your post has stirred quite a bit of thought for me. I find your example of most people rationally believing in preexisting right of ownership to property an interesting one. I agree with you. With that, I keep thinking of the Doctrine of Discovery video where the Native gentleman was talking about how we don’t think of a rabbit or deer as having the right of ownership of land on which they live. (The book Watership Down comes to mind)
Combining your example with the interview from the video, I was struck with how easily we can discount someone- not only just personhood but everything about them- their history, culture, belief systems. This happen without ever meeting those of the “discovered” lands, and allowed (allows) actions and behaviors that had dire consequences.
I think you have a strong point in that ignorance isn’t really a defense. It has caused me to think about how humanity can be dismissed when face to face with someone. If I were to be honest, I wonder how often I do that to others because of my own preoccupation or arrogance. Thank you for your post
Erin- Just an anecdote: California Missions is still a part of the curriculum. My daughters class in 4th grade studied the missions. I'm grateful that her teacher, who was quite progressive, offered a more nuanced and historically accurate overview. They even went to Sutters Fort in Sacramento (not dressing up like they used to), and got to talk to experts who offered both a "settler" and indigenous perspective. Back when I was in elementary, it was much more "one-sided".
Wow, did this lesson leave me with a heavy heart. The “Doctrine of Discovery” and the lasting damage it has had is tremendous. I had never heard of it before this week, and it will take some time to wrap my head around it all. I am also very struck by the “We know better” and “Our way is the only way” of that time (and really this current time as well!). The ego of the church!! Like many, so much of my education in history was absorbed through the lens of a white person and through the words of a white person. I am grateful for lessons like this one that help me expand my worldview.
Having just returned from Sierra Leone this week, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about westernization and colonialism. Watching in real time as languages, culture, and history disappear to be replaced by the ways of the West was something I found particularly difficult. However, this is happening in parallel to a devastating Ebola outbreak in the African continent, and knowing that if they only had more infrastructure and access, it would save tens of thousands of lives. The reconciliation of the missionaries for their social service both then and now is a delicate one. Bringing in more “advanced” ways of infrastructure and services seems to contribute to the disappearance of the culture that it is being brought into, regardless of intentions. I am unsure how to protect the history in conjunction with this practice.
Taking the context of today’s world and thinking about the legacy of the 15-17th century missionaries, I am unsure if at the time they were aware of the implications and consequences of their work. Working in tandem with the colonial government to further their mission blurred the lines of their spiritual goals. In some cases, the missionaries stood up for the indigenous people, but even that was unbalanced. Bartolome de Las Casas suggested bringing slaves in from Africa in order to free the indigenous people. Let’s trade the freedom of one to spare the other?! Thankfully, he walked that one back, but as we know, slaves were brought over anyway to do the work of that the colonizers did not want to do.
The Western hemisphere and Asia varied in how they responded to the missionaries. The readings reference several times that martyrs were made, which lends to the fact that these civilizations weren’t without religion, as expected, and were not going to be so easily dominated. It also references that some cultures were allowed to bring in traditions to their practice of Christianity. The Chinese government tried to work around things by declaring some of their ceremonies and practices to be civil rather than religious, but then, in the early 1700’s, closed all the churches and declared Christianity to be forbidden.
Thank you for your reflection. Like you, I too have been unable to shake the “heaviness” of the lesson/readings and videos of this week. The arrogance of “we know better” has had such a long lasting impact on the world- one that we can still see today!
I was struck by the overlying racism that was so prevalent in the spreading of the good news especially in the use of words like heathen, savage, etc. I can’t help but relate that to our world today, which I can see the use of language expanding beyond race into other areas- sexism, economics, culture, gender- you name it. We continue to stratify everyone that doesn’t fit into our particular “norm”. Once we stratify, we are then “above” or “better” giving us justification to do whatever… even in the name of progress, like you mentioned.
I agree with you that perhaps those of the time were unaware of the consequences of their actions, so we can look at them with some grace… And then I wonder about us today. What are our actions now that will cause people in the future to shake their heads in wonder.
Thank you for sharing, Erin. I think we are all sitting with the "weight" of this information, which is good! My wife recently took a Chicano studies class at our community college, and we had a great conversation this weekend connecting the dots across the course work. She brought up the fact that Dodger Stadium is built on a Hispanic community, whose living decedents today are in a fight for either equity or recognition as part of the broader "land back" movement. A beach in the SF Bay Area was recently deeded back to a group of Indigenous people who had had this land taken from them long ago.
Most of us are able to recognize the harm that nation-states and governments do when they wage war on other places, but it can be difficult to grapple with our own church history, that an institution supposing to represent God would wage war on entire groups of people (I think both the words "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" are heavy but appropriate terms here). The hubris that we can have when we decide, as you say that "our way is the only way".
It seems the balance of Christian missionaries’ intentions in the 15th to 17th centuries was tipped in favor of supporting the overall project of colonization that went along with conversion rather than being based on altruistic sharing of the gospel. In order to even arrive at the lands in question - across the seas - missionaries had to travel with military or explorer expeditions whose purpose was always extractive and coercive in nature. Even if the spiritual intention was pure, it had to be clear that their mission of sharing the gospel wouldn’t be the only outside force to influence or affect the people they encountered. It’s hard to ignore how much hubris was involved in assuming that the European understanding of culture and faith was always superior to the cultures of the conquered around the world.
Of course, counterexamples exist. The bishops in Mexico that allowed integration of the veneration practices around the Virgen of Guadelupe to become part of Catholic practice made space for Aztec culture to bloom within Christianity. Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci in Japan and China, respectively, saw value in the cultures they inhabited and argued for allowing new converts to continue practicing important social and cultural customs as Christians. Las Casas seems like the most committed of them all to seeing the indigenous people as inherently worthy and capable people, possessing dignity and value that should not be classified as ‘infidels’ or viewed as barbaric.
But reading about these specific names makes it seem like they are held up as the exceptions to what was happening overall. Even with their compassion and kindness and the ways that they could uplift humanity in people of other cultures, there is still a good amount of participation in a system that seems inherently racist and often abusive.
I also understood that the missions that also built schools and hospitals, etc. as part of their conversion efforts were looking for ways to make the faith conversions ‘stick’ by building up Christian infrastructure in places where new Christians might ‘de-convert’ without it. They were also working to fund themselves with these projects. So - are we to view those efforts as selfless and motivated by a purse desire to serve people in need? Or were they necessary parts of a system intent on replacing indigenous culture with something more European in order for the Christian faith to survive?
I was struck by a sentiment linked to David Livingstone that many missionaries never questioned the inherent goodness in linking faith with commerce and civilization, believing that all parts of “western” culture would be an improvement on the dark lives of the heathens they encountered.
So, I suppose my bias is revealed here! The ways that I’ve been taught to value differences, to enter new-to-me spaces with respect and curiosity, the belief I have in inherent value across cultures - these beliefs betray that I’ve been brought up with post-colonial values that are very much at odds (on purpose!) to the practices of this time period.