Christian History · Timeline
The Missionary Centuries
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were an age of revival and mission. Great awakenings under Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards renewed English-speaking Christianity, William Carey launched the modern missionary movement, and believers carried the gospel across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The same faith fueled the fight against slavery, so that a converted William Wilberforce could spend his life seeing the slave trade abolished.
If the Reformation recovered the gospel, these centuries carried it to the ends of the earth. The awakenings began at home, with preaching of the new birth that filled fields and chapels, and overflowed into a missionary movement of extraordinary reach. Carey to India, Morrison to China, Judson to Burma, Taylor into inland China, Livingstone into Africa: ordinary people who believed the whole world should hear of Christ.
That same faith bore social fruit. Revival and abolition were bound together, and the movement that sang ‘Amazing Grace’, written by a former slave-ship captain, John Newton, also gave the world Wilberforce and the end of the British slave trade in 1807.
The timeline
- 1738 to 1740sJohn and Charles Wesley, with George Whitefield, lead revivals that reshape English-speaking Christianity and give birth to Methodism.
- 1730s to 1740sThe First Great Awakening sweeps the American colonies through preaching of the new birth.
- AD 1793William Carey sails for IndiaOften called the father of modern missions, Carey launches the great Protestant missionary movement.
- AD 1807After decades of struggle, the Christian abolitionist William Wilberforce sees the slave trade outlawed.
- AD 1807Robert Morrison reaches ChinaThe first Protestant missionary to China begins the long labor of translating the Bible into Chinese.
- 1854 to 1865Taylor’s China Inland Mission pioneers a humbler, more culturally adaptive model of mission.
- 1840s to 1873David Livingstone in AfricaExplorer and missionary, Livingstone opens central Africa to the wider world and campaigns against the slave trade.
The thread through it all
Read the whole story and one thing becomes plain: through every century, every council and controversy, every rise and fall of empires, one Person holds it together. The church has been divided, persecuted, corrupted, and renewed, and yet it has never once disappeared, because it was never finally ours to keep. Jesus said he would build it, and he has.
Come and meet him yourself
This whole story runs back to a Person you can still meet. You do not have to take the church’s word for it, or ours. Read his own words and see. The Gospel of John is a gentle place to begin, and it costs you nothing but a little quiet and an honest look.
Meet JesusThe whole storyThe church around the worldJesus Christ is Lord.
Frequently asked questions
- What were the Great Awakenings?
- They were waves of Christian revival in the 1700s and 1800s, especially in Britain and America, led by preachers such as John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, marked by fervent preaching of conversion and the new birth.
- Who is the father of modern missions?
- William Carey is often given that title. His departure for India in 1793 helped launch the great wave of Protestant world missions that followed.
- How was Christianity connected to abolition?
- Many leaders of the movement to abolish the slave trade were driven by Christian conviction. William Wilberforce, converted to a serious faith, spent decades campaigning until the British slave trade was outlawed in 1807.