Timeline of Christian Missions - 1700 To 1799

1700 To 1799

Main article: Christianity in the 18th century See also: Timeline of Christianity#18th century See also: Modern history of Christianity#Revivalism (1720–1906)

• 1700 - After a Swedish missionary's sermon in Pennsylvania, one Native American posed such searching questions that the episode was reported in a 1731 history of the Swedish church in America. The interchange is noted in Benjamin Franklin's Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America (1784).
• 1701 - Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts officially organized
• 1702 - George Keith, returns to America as a missionary of the newly-organized Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
• 1703 - The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts expands to the West Indies
• 1704 - French missionary priests arrive to evangelize the Chitimacha living along the Mississippi River in what is now the state of Louisiana
• 1706 Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, missionary, arrives in Tranquebar
• 1706- Irish-born Francis Makemie, who has been an itinerant Presbyterian missionary among the colonists of America since 1683, is finally able to organize the first American presbytery
• 1707 - Italian Capuchin missionaries reach Kathmandu in Nepal. Maillard de Tournon makes public, in Nanjing, the Vatican decisions on rites, including the stipulations against the veneration of ancestors and of Confucius.
• 1708- Jesuit missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti is arrested in Japan. He is taken to Edo (now called Tokyo) to be interrogated by Arai Hakuseki
• 1709 - Experience Mayhew, missionary to the Martha's Vineyard Indians, translates the Psalms and the Gospel of John into the Massachusett language. It will be a work considered second only to John Eliot's Indian Bible in terms of significant Indian-language translations in colonial New England
• 1710 - First modern Bible Society founded in Germany by Count Canstein
• 1711 - Jesuit Eusebio Kino, missionary explorer in southern Arizona and northern Sonora, dies suddenly in northern Mexico. Kino, who has been called "the cowboy missionary", had fought against the exploitation of Indians in Mexican silver mines.
• 1712- Using a press sent by The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Tranquebar Mission in India begins printing books in the Portuguese language
• 1713 - Jesuit Ippolito Desideri goes to Tibet as a missionary
• 1714 - New Testament translated into Tamil (India); the Royal Danish College of Missions is organized in Copenhagen
• 1715 - Eastern Orthodox Church missionary outreach is renewed in Manchuria and Northern China
• 1716 - The establishment of the Alamo Mission in San Antonio is authorized by the viceroy of Mexico. The mission was to be an educational center for Native Americans who converted to Christianity.
• 1717 - Chen Mao writes to the Chinese Emperor about his concerns over Catholic missionaries and Western traders. He urgently requested an all-out prohibition of Catholic missionaries in the Qing provinces.
• 1718 - Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg constructs a church building in India that is still in use today
• 1719 - Isaac Watts writes missionary hymn "Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun"
• 1720- Missionary Johann Ernst Gruendler dies in India. He had arrived there in 1709 with the sponsorship of the Danish Mission Society
• 1721 - Mission San Juan Bautista Malibat in Baja California is abandoned due to the hostility of the Cochimi Indians, as well as to the decimation of the local population by epidemics and a water shortage. Chinese Kangxi Emperor bans Christian missionaries as a result of the Chinese Rites controversy. Hans Egede goes to Greenland under the dual auspices of the Royal Mission College and the Bergen Company.
• 1723 - Robert Millar publishes A History of the Propagation of Christianity and the Overthrow of Paganism advocating prayer as the primary means of converting non-Christians
• 1724 - Yongzheng Emperor bans missionary activities outside the Beijing area
• 1725 - Knud Leem arrives as a missionary to the Sami people of Finnmark (Norwegian Arctic)
• 1726 - John Wright, a Quaker missionary to the Native Americans, settles in southeastern Pennsylvania
• 1728 - Institutum Judaicum founded in Halle as first Protestant mission center for Jewish evangelism
• 1729 - Roman Catholic missionary Du Poisson becomes the first victim in the Natchez Massacre. On his way to New Orleans, he had been asked to stop and say Mass at the Natchez post. He was killed in front of the altar
• 1730- Lombard, French missionary, founds a Christian village with over 600 Indians at the mouth of Kuru river in French Guiana. A Jesuit, Lombard has been called the most successful of all missionaries in converting the Indians of French Guiana
• 1731 - A missionary movement is born when Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf attends the coronation of King Christian VI of Denmark and witnesses two of Egede's Inuit converts. Over the next two years, his Moravian Church at Herrnhut will begin its missionary outreach with work among the slaves in the Caribbean and the Inuit in Greenland.
• 1732 - Alphonsus Liguori founds the Roman Catholic religious institute known as the Redemptorist Fathers with the purpose of doing missionary work among rural people
• 1733 - Moravians establish their first mission in Greenland
• 1734 - A missionary convinces a Groton, Connecticut church to lend its building to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe for Christian worship services.
• 1735 - John Wesley goes to Indians in Georgia as missionary with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
• 1736 - Anti-Christian edicts in China; Moravian missionaries at work among Nenets people of Arkhangelsk
• 1737 - Rev. Pugh, a missionary in Pennsylvania with The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts begins ministering to blacks. He noted that the masters of the slaves were prejudiced against them becoming Christian.
• 1738 - Moravian missionary George Schmidt settles in Baviaan Kloof (Valley of the Baboons) in the Riviersonderend valley of South Africa. He begins working with the Khoikhoi people, who were practically on the threshold of extinction.
• 1739 - The first missionary to the Mahican (Mohegan) Indians, John Sergeant, builds a home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts that is today a museum.
• 1740 - Moravian David Zeisberger starts work among Creek people of Georgia
• 1740 Johann Phillip Fabricius, missionary, arrives in South India
• 1741 - Dutch missionaries start building Christ Church building in Malacca Town, Malaysia. It will take 12 years to complete.
• 1742 - Moravian Leader Count Zinzendorf visits Shekomeko, New York and baptizes six Indians
• 1743 - David Brainerd starts ministry to North American Indians
• 1744 - Thomas Thompson resigns his position as dean at the University of Cambridge to become a missionary. He was sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to New Jersey. Taking a special interest in the slave population there, he would later request to begin mission work in Africa. In 1751, Thompson would become the first S.P.G. missionary to the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana)
• 1745 - David Brainerd, after preaching to Native Americans in December, wrote about the response: "They soon came in, one after another; with tears in their eyes, to know, what they should do to be saved. . . . It was an amazing season of power among them, and seemed as if God had bowed the heavens and come down ... and that God was about to convert the whole world."
• 1746 - From Boston a call is issued to the Christians of the New World to enter into a seven-year "Concert of Prayer" for missionary work
• 1747 - Jonathan Edwards appeals for prayer for world missions
• 1748 - Roman Catholic Pedro Sanz and four other missionaries are executed, together with 14 Chinese Christians. Prior to his death, Sanz reportedly converted some of his prison guards to Christianity.
• 1749 - Spanish Franciscan priest Junípero Serra (1713-1784 arrives in Mexico as a missionary. In 1767 he would go north to what is now California, zealously building missions and converting Native Americans.
• 1750 - Jonathan Edwards, preacher of the First Great Awakening, having been banished from his church at Northampton, Massachusetts goes as a missionary to the nearby Housatonic Indians. Christian Frederic Schwartz goes to India with Danish-Halle Mission
• 1751 - Samuel Cooke arrives in New Jersey as a missionary for the SPGFP
• 1752 - Thomas Thompson, first Anglican missionary to Africa, arrives in the Gold Coast (now Ghana)
• 1753 The disappearance of Erhardt and six companions leads to temporary abandonment of Moravian missionary initiatives in Labrador.
• 1754 - Moravian John Ettwein arrives in America from Germany as a missionary. Preaching to Native Americans and establishing missions, Ettwein will travel as far south as Georgia.
• 1755 - The Mahican Indian settlement at Gnadenhutten, Pa. is attacked and destroyed. Moravian missionary Johann Jacob Schmick remains with the Mahicans through exile and captivity despite almost constant threats from white neighbors. Schmick will join his Indian congregation as they seek refuge in Bethlehem, follow them as captives to Philadelphia, and remain with them after they settle in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.
• 1756 - Civil unrest forces Gideon Halley away from his missionary work among the Six Nations on the Susquehanna River where he has been working for four years under the supervision of Jonathan Edwards with an appointment from the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians.
• 1757 - Lutherans begin ministering to Blacks in the Caribbean
• 1758- John Wesley baptizes two slaves, thus breaking the skin color barrier for Methodist societies
• 1759 - Native American Samson Occom, direct descendant of the great Mahican chief Uncas, is ordained by the Presbyterians. Occom became the first American Indian to publish works in English. These included sermons, hymns and a short autobiography.
• 1760 - Adam Voelker and Christian Butler arrive in Tranquebar as the first Moravian missionaries to India
• 1760 - Methodists first reach the West Indies.
• 1761 - The first Moravian missionary in Ohio, Frederick Post, settles on the north side of the Muskingum.
• 1762 - Moravian Missionary John Heckewelder confers with Koquethagacton ("White Eyes") at the mouth of the Beaver River (Pennsylvania)
• 1763 - The Presbyterian Synod of New York orders that a collection for missions be taken. In 1767 the Synod asks that this collection be done annually.
• 1764 - The Moravians make a decision to expand and begin publicizing their missionary activity, particularly in the British colonies; Moravian Jens Haven makes the first of three exploratory missionary journeys to Greenland
• 1765 - Suriname Governor General Crommelin convinces three Moravian missionaries to work near the head waters of the Gran Rio. They settle among the Saramaka near the Senthea Creek in Granman Abini's village where they are received with mixed feelings.
• 1766 - Philip Quaque, a Fetu youth from the Cape Coast area of Ghana who spent twelve years studying in England, returns to Africa. Supported as a missionary by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Quaque is first non-European ordained priest in the Church of England
• 1767 - Spain expels the Jesuits from Spanish colonies in the New World
• 1768 - Five United Brethren missionaries from Germany, invited by the Danish Guinea Company, arrive in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), to teach in the Cape Coast Castle schools
• 1769 - Junípero Serra founds Mission San Diego de Alcalá, first of the 21 Alta California missions (Habermann, p. 370
• 1770 - John Marrant, a free black from New York City, begins ministering cross-culturally, preaching to the American Indians. By 1775 he had carried the gospel to the Cherokee and Creek Indians as well as to groups he called the Catawar and Housaw peoples.
• 1771 - Methodist Francis Asbury arrives in America; David Avery is ordained as missionary to the Oneida tribe
• 1772 - After visiting Scilly Cove in Newfoundland, Canada, missionary James Balfour describes it as a "most Barbarous Lawless Place"
• 1773 - Pope Clement XIV dissolves the Jesuit Order; two Dominican order missionaries beheaded in Vietnam
• 1775 - John Crook is sent by Liverpool Methodists to the Isle of Man
• 1776 - Cyril Vasilyevich Suchanov builds first church among Evenks of Transbaikal (or Dauria) in (Siberia); The first baptism of an Eskimo by a Lutheran pastor takes place in Labrador.
• 1777 - Portuguese missionaries build a church at Hashnabad, Bangladesh
• 1778 - Theodore Sladich is martyred while doing missionary work to counter Islamic influence in the western Balkans
• 1780 - August Gottlieb Spangenberg writes An Account of the Manner in Which the Protestant Church of the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren, Preach the Gospel, and Carry On Their Missions Among the Heathen. Originally written in German, the book will be translated into English in 1788.
• 1781 - In the midst of the American Revolutionary War, the British so feared Moravian missionary David Zeisberger and his influence among the Lenape (also called Delaware) and other Native Americans that they arrested him and his assistant, John Heckewelder, charging them with treason,
• 1782 - Freed slave George Lisle goes to Jamaica as missionary
• 1783 - Moses Baker and George Gibbions, both former slaves, leave the U.S. to become missionaries in the West Indies
• 1784 - Thomas Coke (Methodist) submits his Plan for the Society for the Establishment of Missions Among the Heathen. Methodist missions among the "heathen" will begin in 1786 when Coke, destined for Nova Scotia, is driven off course by a storm and lands at Antigua in the British West Indies.
• 1785 - Joseph White's sermon titled "On the Duty of Attempting the Propagation of the Gospel among our Mahometan and Gentoo Subjects in India" is published in the second edition of his book Sermons Containing a View of Christianity and Mahometanism, in their History, their Evidence, and their Effects. The sermon was first preached at the University of Oxford.
• 1786 - John Marrant, a free black from New York City, writes in his journal that he preached to "a great number of Indians and white people" at Green's Harbor, Newfoundland. Marrant's cross-cultural ministry led him to take the Gospel to the Cherokee, Creek, Catawba (he called them the Catawar, and Housaw Indians.
• 1787 - William Carey is ordained in England by the Particular Baptists and soon begins to urge that worldwide missions be undertaken.
• 1788 - Dutch missionaries begin preaching the Gospel among fishermen in Bangladesh
• 1789 - The Jesuits establish Georgetown University as the first US Catholic college
• 1790 - Prince Williams, a freed slave from South Carolina, goes to Nassau, Bahamas, where he will start Bethel Meeting House
• 1791 - One hundred and twenty Korean Christians are tortured and killed for their faith. It began when Paul Yun Ji-Chung, a noble who had become a Christian, decided not to bury his mother according to traditional Confucian custom.
• 1792 - William Carey writes An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen and forms the Baptist Missionary Society to support him in establishing missionary work in India
• 1793 - Stephen Badin ordained in U.S. Although much of Badin's ministry was pastoral work among his own countrymen, he did some outreach among the Potawatomi Indians
• 1794 - Eight Russian Orthodox missionaries arrive on Kodiak Island in Alaska. Within a few months several thousand people have been baptized
• 1795 - The London Missionary Society is formed to send missionaries to Tahiti
• 1796 - Scottish and Glasgow Missionary Societies established; In India, Johann Philipp Fabricius' translation of the Bible into Tamil is revised and published
• 1797 - Netherlands Missionary Society formed; The Duff, carrying 36 lay and pastoral missionaries, sails to three islands of the South Pacific; The first Christian missionary (from the London Missionary Society) visits Hiva on the Pacific island of Tahuata; he is not well received.
• 1798 - The Missionary Society of Connecticut is organized by the Congregationalists to take the gospel to the "heathen lands" of Vermont and Ohio. Its missionaries evangelized both European settlers and Native Americans.
• 1799 - The Church Missionary Society (Church of England) is formed; John Vanderkemp, Dutch physician goes to Cape Colony, Africa