by Bojidar Marinov

Missionaries
of the AX
L
ocated in the very heart of modern-
day Germany, in the province of
Hesse, is a small humble town of only
15,000 inhabitants. In the middle of that
town stands an imposing old cathedral
built in the 12th-14th centuries of red-
dish stone. Situated in front of that ca-
thedral is the statue of
a man in a monks garb
on a stump of a freshly
felled oak, with a huge
Saxon ax in his hand.
Te humble town
is Fritzlar, called Gaes-
mere in ancient times.
It is known in Germa-
ny as the birthplace of
two beginnings: Here
began the Christian-
ization of Germany,
and heres where the
German Empire was
born as a political en-
tity. Te statue is that
of the Anglo-Saxon monk and mission-
ary Wynfrith, also known as St. Boni-
face, the patron saint of Germany and
the Netherlands. And the stump is the
remains of the tree that belonged to the
highest German god, the Oak of Tor.
Te Oak of Tor was the center of the
pagan religion of the local tribe of the
Hessians, and the most pagan Germans
at the time.
In 723, on his way to Tringia,
St. Boniface stopped at Gaesmere. He
had worked for ve years as a mission-
ary in Frisia, Hesse, and Tringia, and
he had some limited success. Unfortu-
nately, as his biogra-
pher Willibald relates,
those Germans that
converted were never
too stable in the faith;
while giving lip ser-
vice to Christ, they
would secretly go back
to their pagan ways,
bringing sacrices to
the pagan gods, prac-
ticing divination and
incantations, etc. Bon-
iface decided to deal
with the problem once
and for all by attack-
ing at the very center
of their pagan religion. One morning
he appeared at the Oak of Tor with an
ax in his hand, surrounded by a pagan
crowd who cursed him and expected
the gods to intervene and kill him.
He raised his hand against Tor and
delivered the rst blow. According to
Willibald, immediately a strong wind
www.americanvision.org/article/
missionaries-of-the-ax/
St. Boniface
Counsel of Chalcedon Issue 2 2010
24
Missionaries of the Ax
came and blew the ancient oak over.
Seeing that Tor failed to protect his
holy tree and to kill Boniface, the Hes-
sians converted to Christ. Tis event is
considered the beginning of the Chris-
tianization of Germany. From Hesse,
word spread, and other German tribes
turned to Christianity. Boniface went
to many places, destroying the altars
and high places of the pagans, proving
the superiority of the risen Christ over
the blood-thirsty German deities. By
754, when he was martyred by a group
of pagan Frisian warriors, Boniface was
the archbishop and metropolitan of all
Germany, with several bishoprics and
other mission sites established by him,
and all German tribes with the excep-
tion of the Saxons and the Frisians were
converted to Christ.
What made Boniface expose him-
self to the wrath of the pagan Hessians
and risk being slain by them for violat-
ing the central shrine of their religion?
Te rst ve years of failures ob-
viously taught Boniface a lesson: No
matter how many personal conversions
a missionary is able to produce, if they
do not challenge the central idol of the
culture, the new converts will fall away
and go back to paganism. Every pagan
culture has its central idol or idols. Tat
central idol denes and determines ev-
ery relationship, every practice, every
institution, every word and sentence,
every legal rule, every scientic and ed-
ucational standard. Te new converts,
even while professing faith in Christ,
are forced to dene and determine all
their relationships and practices ac-
cording to the central idol in their so-
ciety, and that is their main battle, their
main source of stumbling blocks to fall
away from the faith. Te contradiction
of believing in Christ while living ac-
cording to an idols prescriptions for a
society is the greatest struggle for those
new believers.
Terefore, a missionary who
doesnt do his best to challenge the cen-
tral idol of a culture is producing future
apostates, not true believers. Boniface
learned it the hard way. Terefore, he
changed his strategy. He wasnt a mis-
sionary to the individual souls of the
Germans anymore; he was a missionary
to Germany herself. And he challenged
the central idol of Germany. To save
his spiritual children from apostasy,
he had to take on the chief adversary:
Tor himself. Instead of breaking the
twigs one by one, he laid his ax at the
very root of the German pagan culture.
And the result was the turning of whole
tribes to Christ.
Boniface wasnt the rst to under-
stand this important principle. Te
earliest church, as recorded by Luke in
Acts, was not concerned only about x-
ing the personal morality and the pri-
vate religious life of the new converts.
Te early church was not persecuted
THOR
25 Counsel of Chalcedon Issue 2 2010
Missionaries of the Ax
for producing worshippers of Christ,
neither was it persecuted for the in-
dividual moral purity of its members.
It was the bold and uncompromising
declaration that there is another King,
one Jesus that earned the Christians
the privilege to feed the lions and to
become living torches for the Emper-
ors parties. Te Christian Gospel was
specically directed against the cen-
tral idol in that societythe cult to the
Emperorin its declaration that Jesus
Christ was the King of kings and the
Lord of lords. Only in the context of
such a comprehensive challenge against
the central dogmaor idolof the so-
cial order can an individual soul nd
the emotional fuel and the strength
to remain faithful to their Lord and
Savior in their practical daily life; and
only in the context of a comprehensive
worldview as opposed to the dominant
worldview of the culture can a believer
nd his place in the Kingdom of God as
a civilization alternative to the wicked
parody of civilization he has around
himself. A Christian with a theology for
the salvation of his soul only, without a
theology for the reformation of his cul-
ture to challenge the idols of the day, is
a Christian living double life: His spirit
will serve God while his body and mind
and money and work and relationships
will serve the idols. Eventually, if he is
not equipped with the knowledge that
will close this gap, he will be severely
tempted to let his spirit follow his mind
and body and money and work and re-
lationships, and he will submit to idols.
Tats what happened to St. Boni-
faces spiritual children after his rst
ve years on the eld. He learned his
lesson, and so he acted accordingly.
Very few missionaries today under-
stand this important truth of foreign
missions. Missions today are not com-
prehensive missions to the nations; they
are missions only to save souls. You
will be hard pressed to nd any mission
organizations that train or encourage
their missionaries to identify or con-
front the central idols of a culture. Very
few precious missionaries ever confront
cultural idols; most are only focused on
the mantra of saving souls. As if its
possible to separate the soul of a man
from his culture, from his relationships,
and from the legal, economic, and po-
litical reality of his culture.
Societies today have their sacred
oaks. Te more developed and ad-
vanced a society is, the more sophisti-
cated and rened its idols are, and more
subtle and more devious their hold on
mens souls is. Societies like Europe,
Latin America, or East Asiaand even
the United Statesdont have ocial
sacred shrines anymore. Tey have re-
placed them with a more sophisticated
idol: the idol of the welfare state. It has
no sacred oaks, no visible and material
shrines, no ocial sacrices or divi-
nations or incantations. But it has its
invisible sacrices and shrines. Whole
cultures that pretend to be rational-
istic and scientic are caught in the
nets of this most irrational of all idols
in history; its power is so strong over
the minds of men that in those societies
there is no opposition to it. Even when
the socialist welfare state proves com-
pletely incapable to deliver even a single
one of its promises, the men and women
of these societies still keep laying their
trust and hope at the feet of the idol, not
even thinking for a moment that their
faith is misguided and deceitful.
And yet, we seldom see missionaries
who challenge that central idol of soci-
eties. No wonder Europewhere it has
Counsel of Chalcedon Issue 2 2010
26
Missionaries of the Ax
taken the strongest hold on societyis
believed to be the graveyard of mis-
sionaries. Missionaries would go and
do evangelism, plant churches, convert
souls, and establish regular services.
And when they went back home, it was
only a matter of a couple of years before
those churches disintegrated. And no
wonder: A new convert worships Christ
on Sunday morning, but then starting
from Monday morning through Satur-
day night his life is shaped, dened, and
controlled by the idol of the almighty
welfare state. And because the mission-
ary is usually silent and never challenges
this central idol, the new believer has no
ideology, no worldview, and no alterna-
tives, and he is left without any means to
oppose that control.
Eventually, like St. Boniface found
out, the god of Monday morning takes
over, and the God of Sunday morn-
ing remains only an empty religious
shell. A believer left without means
to defend his faith against a powerful
idol will eventually give in. And when
thousands of missionaries in a culture
see the fruit of their diligent work de-
stroyed, they declare that culture a
graveyard for missionaries.
But such description is wrong. No
culture is a graveyard for missionar-
ies. Te fault lies with the missionar-
ies themselves. Te truth is, they never
even started the real missionary work.
A missionary is not a missionary until
they set their ax against the roots of
the cultures sacred oaks. Tey are not
a missionary until they have issued a
challenge against the central idols of
that culture. A mission that only ad-
dresses the individual soul and never
the society in which that soul operates
is an exercise in futility. Only a com-
prehensive challenge, a message that
proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord over
everythingincluding rulers and pow-
erscan win a nation for Christ.
Tat is a lesson that modern mis-
sionaries need to learn.
St. Bonifaces strategy to destroy
the shrines of the pagan gods cost
him his life. Tirty years after felling
the Oak of Tor, the aged archbishop
was attacked by pagan Frisians, whose
shrines he had destroyed a few days
earlier. His biographer claims that they
only wanted the treasures he carried
in his chests. When they opened the
chests, however, they discovered only
the books he carried with himself.
But well leave books and missions
for another article.
Bojidar marinov