Prester John and the Missionary Alibi
In missions, like most everything, the future seems unpredictable. We speculate about geopolitical developments and methodology, about the changes AI will make (or wreak). How are we going to navigate the “scary new stuff” that threatens the old-fashioned ways we love? There’s that little voice of doubt that asks, “what if the next bad thing renders good obsolete?” The Church’s mission to reach the unreached isn’t immune to this anxiety, coming both from within and without. There are movement methodologies that threaten to overwhelm or at least overshadow the slow, plodding biblical faithfulness of elephant churches. Then of course maybe AI will make even those movements obsolete. When you add in hostile governments that labor to keep those made in the image of God in darkness to His name, and secular organizations that incentivize apostasy, it can distract us from the fact that the future of missions, even the end itself, is already written (Revelation 7:9–10).
As churches work to reach the unreached, if that vision of the end isn’t stamped on our brains, it can be appealing to make terms with those fears, to come up with pretexts that make the going easier in the here and now. But there are, tucked away in the stories of those old ways, examples from the past that we can learn from, that illuminate our path forward into the not-as-scary-as-it-looks future.
Way back, in those pages of the past we don’t visit so often anymore, there’s the story of the “Prester John Letter.” You won’t find Prester John in the index of most modern missions books. In fact, it’s a story many would rather forget altogether. But this nearly forgotten passage from the 12th century of the Church holds some wisdom, ready to help the 21st century Church remember its purpose and method as we endeavor to expand the Kingdom of Christ to every language.
The Prester John Story
In 1165 AD, Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos received a letter from one Prester John (or “John the priest”). As we see it in ancient tapestries, this period of the Church appears much different from our churches today, but behind the warp and woof of those tapestries is the same faith, hope, fears, and the same Great Commission we have today.
By the 12th century, the Church had come a long way. For the better part of a millennium she had spread irrepressibly around the Mediterranean into Europe and Asia Minor. A mighty pagan empire had proven unable to resist the bewildering faith of Christian martyrs. Christian missionaries had found miraculous success through expeditions to destinations once believed to be mythical. And the animistic tribes those missionaries reached, once recognized by their painted bodies and rituals of human sacrifice, had not only been converted, they had sent missionaries of their own even further off the map. This seismic expansion eventually culminated in the medieval Christendom which the Prester John Letter reached. Yet, cracks were beginning to show. Only a century earlier the Church had suffered its most significant division to date in “the Great Schism,” when the Eastern Orthodox Church split from Rome. The remains of the old Roman and Byzantine empires, along with the mission field of Europe, remained largely Christian, but the edges had begun to shrink as another religion altogether, Islam, ate away at Christendom’s gains. The result within the borders of Christendom had been largely reactionary. The Church’s focus had turned from the horizon to the ground it stood on.
And so when this letter from Prester John arrived, it came as a balm for many Christians’ fears. Prester John claimed to be a follower of Christ, and not only that, but to be the ruler of a long lost brethren Christian kingdom in India. He claimed to descend from one of the magi who had followed Christ’s star (see Matthew 2:1-2), and went on to boast that his kingdom in India resembled paradise itself—a gated province filled with miraculous flora, bizarre animals, and a large Christian population.
The answer to the Church’s fears had presented itself out of the blue. If contact could be made with John, couldn’t he marshal his forces in the rear of the enemy threatening the crusading armies around Jerusalem? In one decisive, efficient movement the task could be finished.
But there was a problem. Prester John didn’t exist.
Though some may have been incredulous, the power centers of Christendom chose to believe. Copies of the letter appeared throughout Europe. Within a decade, Pope Alexander III determined to send an envoy to contact Prester John. Although this envoy was never heard from again, that the Pope had credited the letter officially legitimized Prester John’s story for many. For more than a century, royal envoys, clergymen, and missionaries would embark eastward in hopes of linking Christendom with a Far Eastern counterpart.
These missions, like the Pope’s envoy, failed to report any evidence of Prester John’s kingdom. However, his legend continued to resurface in times of crisis throughout the centuries, from the Crusades through Genghis Khan. As time passed, his story evolved. In some accounts, John did not hail from the Far East, but from Ethiopia. But by the 1600s, his legend had been debunked. Prester John became what he had always been, a fiction, but not before the Church had spent a tremendous amount of energy, hope, and resources in the effort to locate him.
Today, Prester John is delightful company for the tales of Sinbad, or the embellishments of Marco Polo, but that patina of romance shouldn’t obscure his very real influence on the way missions are more broadly understood. Even more than the actual events of “the Prester John saga” his legacy has survived, as novelist and scholar Umberto Eco put it, as yet another “alibi for the expansion of the Christian world towards Africa and Asia…” Like colonial expansion and civilizing missions, Prester John’s letter lingers on in the critical imagination as “an alibi” for missionary ventures that have served the expansion of earthly kingdoms rather than a heavenly one.
While there are sound historical and rhetorical nuances to those other "alibis," along with providential good that came from them, it remains the case that Prester John’s letter proved to be a lie, and that the efforts predicated on that lie are vulnerable to criticism. In other words, if the “who” of Christian expansion was false, what does that say about the “why?” If your neighbor started digging for the ruins of Atlantis in your backyard, would it matter to you if he sincerely intended to use it for good when he found it?
The Virtue of Veracity
To modern readers, the Prester John Letter is an obvious fantasy and forgery, but it was an appealing fantasy and a plausible forgery to believers in the Middle Ages for a couple of reasons.
First, Prester John’s story captured their imagination and played on their hopes and fears. Everything east of Persia was mysterious and exotic to 12th century Christendom. It’s not hard to imagine the appeal of a distant there where the dreary realities that afflict us here don’t apply. There are echoes of this appeal in the story of The Jesus Film and “movement methodologies”. It’s comforting to believe that simpler, easier missiological methods that wouldn’t (and haven’t) worked at home might work abroad. But, like Brooks Buser says, “if it doesn’t work in Denver, why would it work in Doha?”
Second, to the 12th century Christians, the idea that a kingdom of Christians existed in the Far East seemed plausible because it was. Thomas the apostle had carried the Gospel to those parts in the first century and a group of Nestorian Christians (albeit heretical) had dispersed in that direction too. And later, when Prester John was reported to come from Ethiopia, that plausibility only grew—there was in fact a Christian nation in Ethiopia that had lost touch with Europe. This plausibility is not unlike the reports of “church planting movements” today. We know that the Spirit can work in miraculous ways. It’s entirely plausible that churches are springing up like wildfire in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Whether those particular reports are true, false, or misreported is what needs to be verified.
The Prester John Letter was tailored to a period of crisis. The Church was anxious to protect what it had gained, and its energy had turned vertical rather than horizontal in an effort to hold onto those past gains. Intentionally or not, the letter deftly played on those hopes and fears, offering enough appeal and plausibility to justify, for some, great expenditures in realizing a hope that maybe somewhere over there a flourishing Christian kingdom already existed.
Though the memory of Prester John may have faded, forgery, falsehood, and twisting of the truth are not archaisms from the 12th century. In fact, if anything, we've only grown more adept at polishing and sterilizing deception. When we hear incredible reports of spontaneous mass conversions, revivals, and even church plants, we can rejoice, but joy doesn’t preclude due diligence before revising our missiology or editing our missions budget lines. While your local congregation might not be duped by a mysterious letter, it’s more likely to be wooed by a venture sporting data-rich spreadsheets and trendy pitch decks that in fact serve a bottom line more than the Kingdom.
The antidote to these things is discernment. At a recent conference, Rosaria Butterfield quipped that, “It’s a sin to tell a lie, but it’s also a sin to believe a lie.” While no Christian would disagree with the first part of this statement, the second part is a harder pill to swallow: Is it fair for us to be made culpable for believing someone else’s lie? Of course, as far back as Genesis 3, the answer has been, “Yes.” For the Church to tell the truth at all it first must know the truth, and that means recognizing its presence as well as its absence.
A Christian Confession is Better Than a Christian Alibi
The sorriest part of the Prester John saga is that it was wholly unnecessary. Whether or not the Church would’ve consciously labeled Prester John as their “alibi” (it’s doubtful), for many confessing Christians, the answer to the question, “Why did you come here?” became, “Prester John.” The problem with this answer is, of course, that Prester John never existed, but even if a Magi’s ancestor had ruled a Christian Kingdom in the Far East, any answer that didn’t first confess Christ was merely an alibi.
For the Christian and the congregation that is compelled to obedience, the ultimate cause for the cause of Christ is Christ Himself. The expansion of Christianity has its pretext built-in: Because Jesus told us to (Matthew 28:16-20). We don’t need an additional reason—even good ones like humanitarian aid, civilization, or medical care—to reach the unreached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We will not find a more relevant, expedient, or effective cause for the expansion of Christianity. When it comes to growth, the Church does not need an alibi because our confession’s already been written.
That’s not to say that the Church can disregard legitimate opportunities. There are many stories of very real people pleading for the Church to send missionaries. And the confession of Christ carries with it the whole counsel of scripture which guides and directs us in how to send those missionaries, and the manner in which they should go. But it is incumbent on the Church to have no truck with compromised teleology. Even with the most honorable of missional endeavors, it’s worth asking “why are we doing it?” Is it because a tremendous altruistic opportunity presented itself? Is it because we’d be “fools not to?” Or is it because we’re compulsively obedient to Jesus?
In the end, it will not be alibis that get recited before the throne and before the Lamb. It will be that confession that the Church is tasked with confessing in every language: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”