Missionary
member of a religious group sent to do evangelism
A missionary is a member of a religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.
In the Latin translation of the Bible, Jesus Christ says the word when he sends the disciples into areas and commands them to preach the gospel in his name. The term is most commonly used in reference to Christian missions, but it can also be used in reference to any creed or ideology.
The word mission originated in 1598 when Jesuits, the members of the Society of Jesus sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem (nom. missio), meaning 'act of sending' or mittere, meaning 'to send'.
By religion
Buddhist missions
The first Buddhist missionaries were called "Dharma Bhanaks", and some see a missionary charge in the symbolism behind the Buddhist wheel, which is said to travel all over the earth bringing Buddhism with it. The Emperor Ashoka was a significant early Buddhist missioner. In the 3rd century BCE, Dharmaraksita—among others—was sent out by emperor Ashoka to proselytize and initially the Buddhist tradition through the Indian Maurya Empire, but later into the Mediterranean as far as Greece. Gradually, all India and the neighboring island of Ceylon were converted. Then, in later periods, Buddhism spread eastward and southeastward to the present lands of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Missionary” as member of a religious group sent to do evangelism. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as member of a religious group sent to do evangelism. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q219477. The Library of Congress control number is sh85086017. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1598.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Missionary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.