Epilogue: The Productive Figure of the Universal Child

Abstract

Danish mission supporters in the first decades of the twentieth century liked to emphasize the positive influence of foreign missions on Danish society. For instance, in an article published in 1929, Danish theologian and mission historian Lorens Bergmann discussed the importance of the mission abroad to the Church in Denmark. Dismissing criticism that the mission exhausted the economic and spiritual resources of the home community, he asserted that ‘the claim that the Church cannot afford to engage in mission is foolish, because it fails to see the retroactive [tilbagevirkende] force of the mission.’1 While ‘retroactive’ is usually a temporal category, Bergmann employed it to signify two-way movements across socio-geographical space, pointing out a number of specific ways in which the foreign mission, and particularly the Danish Missionary Society (DMS), had enriched the Church at home: It had taught the community of believers to make use of the labor of laymen and women in the work for God’s Kingdom, and it had made clear the necessity and desirability of social work within the Church. In doing this, it had also strengthened religious life in Denmark and expanded the horizons of the religious community.2