1806–1899

The expansion of Protestant and Catholic foreign missions in the 19th century

A student prayer meeting at a haystack (1806) sparked a movement that led in 1810 to the founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. It was the first major American Protestant mission agency. In 1886, under Dwight Moody's influence, the Student Volunteer Movement arose. Its motto was "the evangelization of the world in this generation."

In China, Robert Morrison began translating the Bible from 1807, and Hudson Taylor founded the interdenominational China Inland Mission. Despite the Taiping Rebellion (from 1850) and the Boxer Uprising (1899–1901), the number of Christians in China grew. Indigenous Protestant churches were established in Japan from 1854, after Commodore Perry forced it open, and in Korea from 1884.

In parallel, Catholic mission activity revived. It worked through the Lyon-based Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1822) and Cardinal Lavigerie's White Fathers (1868), directed at evangelizing Africa.