Charles H. Parker
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300236057
- eISBN:
- 9780300262605
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300236057.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter analyzes Calvinist understandings of conversion and the strategies clergy put in place to bring non-Christian and nominally Catholic peoples to a Reformed Protestant faith. It focuses on ...
More
This chapter analyzes Calvinist understandings of conversion and the strategies clergy put in place to bring non-Christian and nominally Catholic peoples to a Reformed Protestant faith. It focuses on the perspectives of indigenous peoples in their encounters with ministers and company representatives. The missionary goals of propagating the Reformed faith and building religious communities of converted pagans and Moors animated Dutch Calvinists in the age of merchant empire. The chapter highlights a thousand predikanten and many more lay ziekentroosteren that went into East India Company (VOC) and West India Company (WIC) settlements, expecting to establish a worldwide community of Calvinist believers. Utilizing and collaborating with native linguists and teachers, ministers organized and oversaw hundreds of schools across Dutch outposts in the Indian and Atlantic Ocean basins.Less
This chapter analyzes Calvinist understandings of conversion and the strategies clergy put in place to bring non-Christian and nominally Catholic peoples to a Reformed Protestant faith. It focuses on the perspectives of indigenous peoples in their encounters with ministers and company representatives. The missionary goals of propagating the Reformed faith and building religious communities of converted pagans and Moors animated Dutch Calvinists in the age of merchant empire. The chapter highlights a thousand predikanten and many more lay ziekentroosteren that went into East India Company (VOC) and West India Company (WIC) settlements, expecting to establish a worldwide community of Calvinist believers. Utilizing and collaborating with native linguists and teachers, ministers organized and oversaw hundreds of schools across Dutch outposts in the Indian and Atlantic Ocean basins.
Charles H. Parker
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300236057
- eISBN:
- 9780300262605
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300236057.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Calvinism went global in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as close to a thousand Dutch Reformed ministers, along with hundreds of lay chaplains, attached themselves to the Dutch East India ...
More
Calvinism went global in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as close to a thousand Dutch Reformed ministers, along with hundreds of lay chaplains, attached themselves to the Dutch East India and West India companies. Across Asia, Africa, and the Americas where the trading companies set up operation, Dutch ministers sought to convert “pagans,” “Moors,” Jews, and Catholics and to spread the cultural influence of Protestant Christianity. As Dutch ministers labored under the auspices of the trading companies, the missionary project coalesced, sometimes grudgingly but often readily, with empire building and mercantile capitalism. Simultaneously, Calvinism became entangled with societies around the world as encounters with indigenous societies shaped the development of European religious and intellectual history. Though historians have traditionally treated the Protestant and European expansion as unrelated developments, the global reach of Dutch Calvinism offers a unique opportunity to understand the intermingling of a Protestant faith, commerce, and empire.Less
Calvinism went global in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as close to a thousand Dutch Reformed ministers, along with hundreds of lay chaplains, attached themselves to the Dutch East India and West India companies. Across Asia, Africa, and the Americas where the trading companies set up operation, Dutch ministers sought to convert “pagans,” “Moors,” Jews, and Catholics and to spread the cultural influence of Protestant Christianity. As Dutch ministers labored under the auspices of the trading companies, the missionary project coalesced, sometimes grudgingly but often readily, with empire building and mercantile capitalism. Simultaneously, Calvinism became entangled with societies around the world as encounters with indigenous societies shaped the development of European religious and intellectual history. Though historians have traditionally treated the Protestant and European expansion as unrelated developments, the global reach of Dutch Calvinism offers a unique opportunity to understand the intermingling of a Protestant faith, commerce, and empire.
