LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Concordia Lutheran Seminary

74 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XII
Sunday would have been too difficulty for him, in his view. The following
month, he again wrote about his heavy load; he had responsibility for
preaching all of the sermons during the Passion season. He constantly
suffered from the fever or some other illness. Until August Hermann
Francke died in 1727, he constantly asked for Francke’s advice. In spite of
these shortcomings, Ziegenhagen played a significant role for half a century
in the spreading influence of Halle Pietism in India and North America.
IV
Ziegenhagen had an interest in the mission work in India even before he
became the German Lutheran Court Chaplain. One can safely assume that, if
his parents were influenced by Pietism, the names of Heinrich Pluetschau
and Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg were household words for Ziegenhagen by the
time he was twelve or thirteen years old. Throughout his years of education,
Ziegenhagen undoubtedly read the published letters from the missionaries as
part of his devotional reading. Then, in Hanover, as Count von Platen sought
favours from Francke and consequently also provided financial gifts for
Francke’s projects, the Count’s gifts for the mission in India likely resulted
from encouragement received from Ziegenhagen. On 20 August 1721,
Francke wrote to Ziegenhagen, then still in Hanover, proposing that he
accept a missionary post in Tranquebar which had been vacated by the death
of Johann Gruendler, the leader of the mission. If Ziegenhagen had accepted
the posting, his life would have been very different.
A brief overview of developments in Tranquebar, some of which may not
have been known to Ziegenhagen, is useful to explain why.
Almost from the beginning, the mission had been plagued with conflict—
conflict with the Danish chaplain and the local authorities, conflict with the
largely Roman Catholic Portuguese and with the native population, but
above all conflict among the missionaries. In the initial stages of planting the
mission, Pluetschau and Ziegenbalg appear to have worked together
amicably. But when the next group of missionaries arrived in 1709, conflict
erupted almost immediately between two of the missionaries: Johann Georg
Boevingh and Johan Ernst Greundler. At its core, the conflict seemed to
have been over whether or not Boevingh was a “born-again Christian”. 62
Since the conflict threatened to undermine the mission, Pluetschau returned
to Europe in 1712 to try to gain support from the Danish authorities for the
case against Boevingh. Boevingh also left India and both arrived in Copenhagen
at the same time with their opposing stories.
62 Norgaard 48.