Heralding the Apocalypse in ‘the most Distant Part of the Earth’: US New Christian Movements in Greenland, 1953–2024

Abstract

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.