Heralding the apocalypse in ‘the most distant part of the earth’: US New Christian movements in Greenland, 1953-2024

Article link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/3J2UNSUFJPDIN8VTYPMF?target=10.1111/1467-9809.70059

My article tracing the history of Seventh-Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness missions in modern Greenland has been published in the Journal of Religious History.

Using missionary periodicals and Greenlandic newspaper archives, the article explores how and why these American apocalyptic groups rushed in after the end of the Lutheran ecclesiastical monopoly in 1953. It argues that they were drawn to Greenland precisely because it was seen as distant, desolate, and isolated. While the number of converts was never great, the mere fact of being in Greenland was presented as a victory, signaling loyalty to Jesus and his Great Commission – the calling to spread the Gospel far and wide, even to ‘the most distant part of the Earth’.

There is a fascinating parallel with the recent geopolitical controversies involving Greenland, with President Donald Trump seemingly implying that his desire to annex Greenland for the US is partially motivated by seeing how large the island appears on the map. In the early twentieth century, Adventist leaders also looked at the map of the world and saw, to their shame, that there was a gigantic landmass in the North Atlantic where they had no mission. It beckoned to them.

Largely through these missions, US cultural influence has increased even as Trump’s demand for annexation has repeatedly been rebuffed by Denmark and the Greenlanders themselves.

The article also argues that the pluralisation of the Greenlandic religious landscape engendered significant cultural changes that far exceeded the actual rate of conversion. Whereas once the average Greenlander had no meaningful alternative to the Danish Folk Church, suddenly they were confronted with a plethora of different options. The Folk Church, in turn, had to adapt to meet the threat from its new rivals.

Since the abolition of the Lutheran ecclesiastical monopoly on the island in 1953, Greenland’s once mono-denominational religious landscape has undergone a steady transformation, with the arrival of other religious groups contributing to a broadening of the range of options available to Greenlanders. The Seventh-day Adventist Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the first to take advantage of the opening, though their arrival met with mixed reactions in Greenland. This article provides an original history of these missions and argues that both organisations viewed Greenland through a primarily symbolic and theological lens that gave the island a significance far outweighing the size of its population or the plausibility of mass conversion. Because they came to associate Greenland with the ‘most distant part of the Earth’ mentioned by Jesus in connection with his Great Commission and Second Coming, expenditure on the island felt justifiable even if the number of converts remained limited.

DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.70059