Recollect missionaries' missiology reflects nascent global church consciousness

What is it about?

Recollects in 17th century New France are frequently depicted in negative terms in comparison to their Jesuit missionary counterparts. Their strategy of creating mixed settlements of settlers and indigenous people, in contrast to the segregationist strategy of the Jesuits, has been described as lacking adaptability and even assimilationist. I re-read early Recollect sources in order to show that their missionary vision, while assimilationist in some ways, also reflected a conviction of human equality, a nascent understanding of the church as a political alternative to empire, and a willingness to learn from and adapt to indigenous cultures. I show that Franciscan practices of poverty and the missionaries’ extended interactions and friendships with indigenous people both played an important role in shaping the development of this vision over time.

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Why is it important?

This article retrieves the particularities of the Recollects’ missionary vision both from the overshadowing role later played by the Jesuits and from a tendency to interpret the mission to New France too exclusively in light of a wider New World missionary context. It brings together insights into both the political and missiological aspects of the Recollects' vision, which tend to be articulated separately in the literature, and so sheds light on the integrated nature of the Recollects’ politico-religious missionary vision. Even from an early date, Recollects were taking received assumptions about civilization and Christianization and inserting them into their own frame of reference, which was decidedly sympathetic to the humbler classes, hostile to the interests of trade or business, and prone to recognize Christian equality across cultures.