Abstract:
This dissertation explores the relationship between the missionary activities of Christianity and Buddhism with empire. At pivotal points throughout each religion’s history, scholar-missionaries relied, knowingly or unknowingly, on the framework, technology, and military and political strength of empire to help move their respective religions beyond each tradition’s ethnic and cultural communities of origin.
This dynamic of reliance upon empire is seen in the work of the apostle Paul in the first century C.E. Although the former Jewish Pharisee who became a Christian church planter would die under the sword of the Roman Empire, his missionary travels throughout the provinces of the empire were made possible by his Roman citizenship, as well as by enjoying the passage offered by imperial roads and shipping routes.
Relatively early in each tradition’s history, each religion found an emperor who converted to the respective faith, and then used his political position to promote the movement, including offering the patronage of missionaries. In the case of Buddhism, tradition regards Ashoka of the Mauryan Empire as having convened religious councils, applied the ethics of his adopted religion to his society, and supported missionary activity beyond the borders of his immediate rule. Christianity had as its patron Constantine, who, like his Buddhist parallel, convened the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century C.E., funded sacred architecture, and supported Christian missionary endeavors.
Another parallel is found in the entrances of both Mahayana Buddhism and Protestant Christianity into China. Their movement into China demonstrate this relationship between missionary endeavors and imperial influence, as the work of key missionary translators was connected to the trade of commodities made possible through the strength of empire. Buddhism traveled to China from India along the trade routes of the Silk Road, which originally allowed the export of silk and tea to travel from China to the upper class consumers of the Roman Empire. Fifteen hundred years later, these same commodities would prove desirable to the consumer class of the British Empire, resulting in a trade imbalance with Middle Kingdom. The Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century forced open the whole of China’s interior to the importation of opium, but also allowed Christian missionaries to travel unencumbered.
Connections between empire and religious mission continued in the twentieth century, as the empire-like actions of the People’s Republic of China’s invasion of Tibet prompted the departure of the Dalai Lama to India. From there, he has since become a representative of Tibetan Buddhism on the global stage. The first decades the twenty-first century demonstrate that religion and empire continue to be tied together, even though empire is commonly considered an institution located in the past.
