Global mission

Fundamentalist missionaries can be broadly defined as those who believed that those who had never heard the gospel were destined for hell, and therefore needed urgently to hear it. They gave priority to rapid evangelistic expansion to inland peoples. Many were affiliated to the non-denominational ‘faith missions’. They looked to spiritual and visionary leaders, who were often linked by friendship or marriage in networks that spanned the continents. Yet missionary endeavour had the potential to encourage mutations in fundamentalism. Some missionaries found their theology changing in response to the questions posed by the field. Fundamentalist missions initially participated in ecumenical missionary bodies, but then tended to secede. The churches they founded, however, sometimes chose to affiliate to ecumenical bodies. Women missionaries played prominent roles in fundamentalist missions, sometimes challenging male authority. In the long run, preoccupation with saving souls paradoxically encouraged more corporate understandings of Christian conversion.