Historian Woodrow Walton helps us look back over the big events and movement of history to see how God was working to make the story of Jesus known throughout the world. In this postscript to the Resurgence of the Gospel series, he ties together what the challenge of the Turkic-Moslem curtain meant and how it affected the people of Europe and the global mission of Christianity. Part of The Gospel in History series.

Part 1: “The Medieval Prologue and the Remapping of the World”

Part 2: “Recharting the Christian World Mission”

Part 3: “The Challenge of the Muslim Curtain”

Part 4: “The Reconversion of Europe”

This postscript and bibliography is Part 5 of the “Resurgence of the Gospel” series.

Part of Eurasia and Africa, with Europe highlighted in green.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

What has been offered in the “Resurgence of the Gospel” series is an overview of Eurasian and African Christian mission leading up to the time of the Ottoman takeover of Asia Minor and the capture of Constantinople, an action which prompted both recovery of the water route and overland roads to central and east Africa and initiation of deep-water navigation. Not only was Europe re-connected with Asia through this process, but this also opened a never-before meeting of Europe with southern Africa and the Asian countries bordering the Indian and Pacific oceans.

A statue of Olaf Tryggvason stands in Trondheim, Norway.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Global navigation also brought about the happy accident of connection with the Americas. Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway and a convert to Christ several years before 1452, was influential in the baptism of the first European discoverer of North America, Leif Ericson, as well as Hallfred, the Scandinavian poet of skaldic verse. About thirty years before 1452, there was a contact with Greenland in the Atlantic, northeast of Canada. Greenland became Scandinavian property. The last Norwegian shipment of Cod and timber left Greenland approximately ten years before the fall of Constantinople.

A replica of John Cabot’s ship.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Portuguese fisherman also had contact with the North Atlantic. On one Portuguese fishing operation there was a visiting sailor from Venice, Italy, by the name of Cristobal Colombo, known better by the English rendition of his name, Christopher Columbus. In the early 1490s, both Columbus and another Italian made attempts to reach Asia by turning west beyond the Gibraltar into the Atlantic. Columbus made landfall in what is now known as the Dominican Republic on a Sunday. He named the bay, Santo Domingo, “Holy Sunday.”

Columbus sailed under the auspices of Spain. Another Italian sailed under the auspices of England. He reached what is now known as Nova Scotia. His name was Giovanni Caboto, better known in North America as John Cabot.

Gordon Lynch is Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent. His current research concerns a detailed study of post-war British child migration schemes to Australia, which is an extension of this recent volume. The book consists of the rigorous facts, histories, methods, and rationales of children re-location programs that grew “significantly in the United Kingdom and the United States, where more than 300,000 children were re-located away from birth parents and home communities between 1851 and 1970.” These schemes, influenced and strengthened by the moral sentiments of their time, were perceived as a means to grant children “better future and making them better people,” in order to save them from poverty, parental ill-condition, or family breakdown. It is important to note that, to obtain the tickets for the “orphan trains,” the majority of these children had to experience disconnection from their birth parents, family members, and their root community. Christianity played a crucial part in advancing these schemes: the society was dependent on the moral inspiration of the churches and charities and, in many cases, the participating institutions minimized the hidden problematic aspects in order to promote humanitarian piety and moral certainty. What is more, “child migration was presented as an excellent opportunity for relocating children to new environments in which their faith could be nurtured and protected.” Lynch, throughout the book, lays out the findings of his research and constantly reminds the readers to see the “shadow-side of this humanitarian ethos” so that we do not repeat “their failing in different ways today.” In brief, in the process of remembering child migration, one should always acknowledge the gap between the “obligation of the giver” and the “rights of the receiver”—the disparity that can only be mended with the “sensitivity to the experiences of those believed to be its beneficiaries.”