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Christian mission

A Christian mission is an organized effort to carry on evangelism or other activities, such as educational or hospital work, in the name of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries. Sometimes individuals are sent and are called missionaries, and historically may have been based in mission stations. When groups are sent, they are often called mission teams and they undertake mission trips. There are a few different kinds of mission trips: short-term, long-term, relational and those that simply help people in need. Some people choose to dedicate their whole lives to mission.

Missionaries preach the Christian faith and sometimes administer the sacraments, and provide humanitarian aid or services. Christian doctrines (such as the "Doctrine of Love" professed by many missions) permit the provision of aid without requiring religious conversion. Nonetheless, the provision of help has always been closely tied to evangelization efforts.

History of Christian missions
The earliest Christian mission, the Great Commission and Dispersion of the Apostles, was active within Second Temple Judaism. Whether a Jewish proselytism existed or not that would have served as a model for the early Christians is unclear; see Circumcision controversy in early Christianity for details. Soon, the expansion of the Christian mission beyond Judaism to those who were not Jewish became a contested issue, notably at the Council of Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul was an early proponent of this expansion, and contextualized the Christian message for the Greek and Roman cultures, allowing it to reach beyond its Hebrew and Jewish roots.

From Late Antiquity onward, much missionary activity was carried out by members of religious orders. Monasteries followed disciplines and supported missions, libraries, and practical research, all of which were perceived as works to reduce human misery and suffering and glorify the Christian God. For example, Nestorian communities evangelized parts of Central Asia, as well as Tibet, China, and India. Cistercians evangelized much of Northern Europe, as well as developing most of European agriculture's classic techniques. St Patrick evangelized many in Ireland. St David was active in Wales.

During the Middle Ages, Ramon Llull advanced the concept of preaching to Muslims and converting them to Christianity by means of non-violent argument. A vision for large-scale mission to Muslims would die with him, not to be revived until the 19th century.

Additional events can be found at the timeline of Christian missions.

Medieval
During the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries and missionaries such as Saint Patrick, and Adalbert of Prague propagated learning and religion beyond the boundaries of the old Roman Empire. In the seventh century Gregory the Great sent missionaries, including Augustine of Canterbury, into England, and in the eight century English Christians, notably Saint Boniface, spread Christianity into Germany. The Hiberno-Scottish mission began in 563.

In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Franciscans such as William of Rubruck, John of Montecorvino, and Giovanni ed' Magnolia were sent as missionaries to the Near and Far East. Their travels took them as far as China in an attempt to convert the advancing Mongols, especially the Great Khans of the Mongol Empire (related to Medieval Roman Catholic Missions in China). In the later part of the fifteenth century, Portuguese missionaries had success in spreading Christianity to the Kingdom of Kongo in West Africa. In 1491, King João I of Kongo converted to Christianity and his nobility and peasants followed suit. The Kongo kingdom remained Christian for the next two centuries.

Catholic missions after 1492

One of the main goals of the Christopher Columbus expedition financed by Queen Isabella of Spain was to spread Christianity. During the Age of Discovery, Spain and Portugal established many missions in their American and Asian colonies. The most active orders were the Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans and Dominicans. The Portuguese sent missions into Africa. These are some of the most well-known missions in history. While some of these missions were associated with imperialism and oppression, others (notably Matteo Ricci's Jesuit mission to China) were relatively peaceful and focused on inculturation rather than cultural imperialism.

In both Portugal and Spain, religion was an integral part of the state and evangelization was seen as having both secular and spiritual benefits. Wherever these powers attempted to expand their territories or influence, missionaries would soon follow. By the Treaty of Tordesillas, the two powers divided the world between them into exclusive spheres of influence, trade and colonization. The proselytization of Asia became linked to Portuguese colonial policy.

From 1499 onward, Portuguese trade with Asia rapidly proved profitable. As Jesuits arrived in India around 1540 the colonial government in Goa supported the mission with incentives for baptized Christians. Beginning in 1552, the Church sent Jesuits to China and to other countries in Asia.

During the time of the Holland (Batavia) Mission (1592–1853), when the Roman Catholic church in the country was suppressed, there were neither parishes nor dioceses, and the country effectively became a mission area in which congregations were called "stations" (staties). Statie, usually called a clandestine church in English, refers to both the congregation's church and its seat or location.

Protestant missions
The Reformation unfolded in Europe in the early 16th century. For over a hundred years, occupied by their struggle with the Catholic Church, the early Protestant churches as a body were not strongly focused on missions to "heathen" lands. Instead, the focus was initially more on Christian lands in the hope to spread the Protestant faith, identifying the papacy with the Antichrist.

In the centuries that followed, Protestant churches began sending out missionaries in increasing numbers, spreading the proclamation of the Christian message to previously unreached people. In North America, missionaries to the Native Americans included Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the well-known preacher of the Great Awakening (c. 1731–1755), who in his later years retired from the very public life of his early career. He became a missionary to the Housatonic Native Americans (1751) and a staunch advocate for them against cultural imperialism.

As European culture has been established in the midst of indigenous peoples, the cultural distance between Christians of differing cultures has been difficult to overcome. One early solution was the creation of segregated "praying towns" of Christian natives. This pattern of grudging acceptance of converts  played out again later in Hawaii when Congregational missionaries from New England went there and converted the native population, including the royalty. In the course of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Catholic missionaries learned the languages of the Amerindians and devised writing systems for them. Then they preached to indigenous people in those languages (Quechua, Guarani, Nahuatl) instead of Spanish, to keep Indians away from "sinful" whites. An extreme case of segregation occurred in the Guarani Reductions, a theocratic semi-independent region established by the Jesuits in the region of the future Paraguay between the early 17th century and 1767.

From 1732 onwards the Moravian Church began sending out missionaries.

In the United States, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was chartered in 1812.

Protestant missionaries from the Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian traditions starting arriving in what was then the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the 19th Century. This eventually let to the creation of what are today the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and the see of the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. Furthermore, it was during this time that the Christian and Missionary Alliance started their missionary activity in Jerusalem.

Methodist missions
Thomas Coke (1747–1814), the first bishop of the American Methodists, was "the Father of Methodist Missions". After spending time in the newly formed United States of America strengthening the infant Methodist Church alongside Episcopal colleague Francis Asbury, the British-born Coke left for mission work. During his time in America, Coke worked vigorously to increase Methodist support of Christian missions and of raising up mission workers. Coke died while on a mission trip to India, but his legacy among Methodists – his passion for missions – continues.

Baptist missions
Missionary organizations favored the development of the Baptist movement on all continents. In England, there was the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792 at Kettering, England.

William Carey write a pamphlet in 1792, "An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of Heathen" and was the first missionary of the Baptist Missionary Society. He went to Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1793. Far from a dry book of theology, Carey's work used the best available geographic and ethnographic data to map and count the number of people who had never heard the Gospel. He has been referred to as the "father of modern missions", and as "India's first cultural anthropologist."

In the United States, "Hard Shell Baptists", "Anti-Mission Baptists", or "Old School Baptists" adhering to strict Calvinism rejected all mission boards, Bible tract societies, and temperance societies as nonbiblical. This faction was strongest in the American South. The mainstream of the Baptist denomination, however, supported missionary work, by the founding of International Ministries in 1814 and International Mission Board in 1845.

China

A wave of missions, starting in the early 1850s, targeted inland areas, led by a Briton Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) with his China Inland Mission (1865– ). Taylor was later supported by Henry Grattan Guinness (1835–1910) who founded (1883) Cliff College, which continues to train and equip for local and global mission.

The missions inspired by Taylor and Guinness have collectively been called "faith missions" and owe much to the ideas and example of Anthony Norris Groves (1795–1853). Taylor, a thorough-going nativist, offended the missionaries of his era by wearing Chinese clothing and speaking Chinese at home. His books, speaking, and examples led to the formation of numerous inland missions and of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM, founded in 1886), which from 1850 to about 1950 sent nearly 10,000 missionaries to inland areas, often at great personal sacrifice. Many early SVM missionaries traveling to areas with endemic tropical diseases left with their belongings packed in a coffin, aware that 80% of them would die within two years.

Missionary activity in China was undertaken by the Protestant churches, as well as the French Catholic Church. According to John K. Fairbank: "The opening of the country in the 1860s facilitated the great effort to Christianize China. Building on old foundations, the Roman Catholic establishment totaled by 1894 some 750 European missionaries, 400 native priests, and over half a million communicants. By 1894 the newer Protestant mission effort supported over 1300 missionaries, mainly British and American, and maintained some 500 stations-each with a church, residences, street chapels, and usually a small school and possibly a hospital or dispensary-in about 350 different cities and towns. Yet they had made fewer than 60,000 Chinese Christian converts."

There was limited success in terms of converts and establishing schools in a nation of about 400 million people, but there was escalating anger at the threat of cultural imperialism. The main result was the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), in which missions were attacked and thousands of Chinese Christians were massacred in order to destroy Western influences. Some Europeans were killed and many others threatened, Britain joined the other powers in  a military invasion that suppressed the Boxers.

British Empire
In the 18th century, and even more so in the 19th century, missionaries based in Britain saw the British Empire as a fertile field for proselytizing for Christianity. All the main denominations were involved, including the Church of England, Scottish Presbyterian, and Nonconformists. Much of the enthusiasm emerged from the Evangelical revival. Within the Church of England, the Church Mission Society (CMS) originated in 1799 and went on to undertake activity all around the world, including in what became known as "the Middle East".

Before the American Revolution, British Anglican and Methodist missionaries were active in the Thirteen Colonies. The Methodists, led by George Whitefield, were the most successful and after the Revolution an entirely distinct American Methodist denomination emerged that became the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. A major problem for British colonial officials was the demand of the Church of England to set up an American bishop; this was strongly opposed by most of the Americans colonists, as it had never happened before. Colonial officials increasingly took a neutral position on religious matters, even in those colonies such as Virginia where the Church of England was officially established, but in practice controlled by laymen in the local vestries. After the American War of Independence, colonial officials decided to enhance the power and wealth of the Church of England in all British colonies, including British North America.

Missionary societies funded their own operations that were not supervised or directed by the Colonial Office. Tensions emerged between the missionaries and the colonial officials. The latter feared that missionaries might stir up trouble or encourage the natives to challenge colonial authority. In general, colonial officials were much more comfortable with working with the established local leadership, including the native religions, rather than introducing the divisive force of Christianity. This proved especially troublesome in India, were very few local elites were attracted to Christianity. In Africa, especially, the missionaries made many converts. As of the 21st century there were more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England.

Christian missions in Australia played a part in both indoctrinating Aboriginal Australians into Christianity, and in controlling their movements and removing children from families, leading to the Stolen Generations. German missionaries ran Lutheran and other mission stations and schools, from the earliest days of colonisation of Australia. One of the largest organisations was the United Aborigines Mission, which ran dozens of missionaries and stations in Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia in the 1900s.

Missionaries increasingly came to focus on education, medical help, and long-term modernization of the native personality to inculcate European middle-class values. They established schools and medical clinics. Christian missionaries played a public role, especially in promoting sanitation and public health. Many were trained as physicians, or took special courses in public health and tropical medicine at Livingstone College, London.

After 1870
By the 1870s, Protestant missions around the world generally acknowledged the long-term material goal was the formation of independent, self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating churches. The rise of nationalism in the Third World provoked challenges from critics who complained that the missionaries were teaching Western ways, and ignoring the indigenous culture. The Boxer Rebellion in China in 1899–1901 involved bloody attacks on Christian missions and especially their converts. The First World War diverted resources, and pulled most Germans out of missionary work when that country lost its empire. The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was a major blow to funding mission activities.

In 1910, the Edinburgh Missionary Conference was presided over by active SVM and YMCA leader John R. Mott, an American Methodist layperson, the conference reviewed the state of evangelism, Bible translation, mobilization of church support, and the training of indigenous leadership. Looking to the future, conferees worked on strategies for worldwide evangelism and cooperation. The conference not only established greater ecumenical cooperation in missions, but also essentially launched the modern ecumenical movement.

The next wave of missions was started by two missionaries, Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran, around 1935. These men realized that although earlier missionaries had reached geographic areas, there were numerous ethnographic groups that were isolated by language, or class from the groups that missionaries had reached. Cameron formed Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate the Bible into native languages. McGavran concentrated on finding bridges to cross the class and cultural barriers in places like India, which has upwards of 4,600 peoples, separated by a combination of language, culture, and caste. Despite democratic reforms, caste and class differences are still fundamental in many cultures.

An equally important dimension of missions strategy is the indigenous method of nationals reaching their own people. In Asia this wave of missions was pioneered by men like Dr G. D. James of Singapore, Rev Theodore Williams of India and Dr David Cho of Korea. The "two thirds missions movement" as it is referred to, is today a major force in missions.

Often, missionaries provide welfare and health services, as a good deed or to make friends with the locals. Thousands of schools, orphanages, and hospitals have been established by missions. One service provided by missionaries was the Each one, teach one literacy program begun by Dr. Frank Laubach in the Philippines in 1935. The program has since spread around the world and brought literacy to the least enabled members of many societies.

During this period missionaries, especially evangelical and Pentecostal missionaries, witnessed a substantial increase in the number of conversions of Muslims to Christianity. In an interview published in 2013 a leader of a key missionary agency focused on Muslims claimed that the world is living in a "day of salvation for Muslims everywhere."

Theologically conservative evangelical, Pentecostal, Adventist and Mormon missionaries typically avoid cultural imperialism, and focus on spreading the gospel and translating the Bible. In the process of translating local languages, missionaries have often been vital in preserving and documenting the culture of the peoples among whom they live.

The word "mission" was historically often applied to the building, the "mission station" in which the missionary lives or works. In some colonies, these mission stations became a focus of settlement of displaced or formerly nomadic people. Particularly in rural Australia, mission stations (known as missions) became home to many Indigenous Australians.

Additional events can be found at the Timeline of Christian missions.

Sending and receiving nations
Major nations not only send and fund missionaries abroad, but also receive them from other countries. In 2010, the United States sent out 127,000 missionaries, while 32,400 came to the United States. Brazil was second, sending out 34,000, and receiving 20,000. France sent out 21,000 and received 10,000. Britain sent out 15,000 and received 10,000. India sent out 10,000 and received 8000. Other major exporters included Spain at 21,000 sent out, Italy at 20,000, South Korea at 20,000, Germany at 14,000, and Canada at 8,500. Large recipient nations included Russia, receiving 20,000; Congo receiving 15,000; South Africa, 12,000; Argentina, 10,000; and Chile, 8,500. The largest sending agency in the United States is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who, at this date 2019, has 67,000 full time proselytizing young missionaries all over the world with many more elder missionaries serving in similar circumstances. The Southern Baptist Convention, has 4,800 missionaries, plus 450 support staff working inside the United States. The annual budget is about $50,000 per year per missionary. In recent years, however, the Southern Baptist foreign missionary operation (the International Mission Board) has operated at a deficit, and it is cutting operations by 15 percent. It is encouraging older missionaries to retire and return to the United States.

Modern missionary methods and doctrines among conservative Protestants
The Lausanne Congress of 1974, birthed a movement that supports evangelical mission among non-Christians and nominal Christians. It regards "mission" as that which is designed "to form a viable indigenous church-planting and world changing movement." This definition is motivated by a theologically imperative theme of the Bible to make God known, as outlined in the Great Commission. The definition is claimed to summarize the acts of Jesus' ministry, which is taken as a model motivation for all ministries.

This Christian missionary movement seeks to implement churches after the pattern of the first century Apostles. The process of forming disciples is necessarily social. "Church" should be understood in the widest sense, as a body of believers of Christ rather than simply a building. In this view, even those who are already culturally Christian must be "evangelized".

Church planting by cross-cultural missionaries leads to the establishment of self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating communities of believers. This is the famous "three-self" formula formulated by Henry Venn of the London Church Missionary Society in the 19th century. Cross-cultural missionaries are persons who accept church-planting duties to evangelize people outside their culture, as Christ commanded in the Great Commission.

The objective of these missionaries is to give an understandable presentation of their beliefs with the hope that people will choose to following the teaching of Jesus Christ and live their lives as His disciples. As a matter of strategy, many evangelical Christians around the world now focus on what they call the "10/40 window", a band of countries between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude and reaching from western Africa through Asia. Christian missions strategist Luis Bush pinpointed the need for a major focus of evangelism in the "10/40 Window", a phrase he coined in his presentation at the missionary conference Lausanne 1989 in Manila. Sometimes referred to as the "Resistant Belt", it is an area that includes 35% of the world's land mass, 90% of the world's poorest peoples and 95% of those who have yet to hear anything about Christianity.

Modern mission techniques are sufficiently refined that within ten to fifteen years, most indigenous churches are locally pastored, managed, taught, self-supporting and evangelizing. The process can be substantially faster if a preexisting translation of the Bible and higher pastoral education are already available, perhaps left over from earlier, less effective missions.

One strategy is to let indigenous cultural groups decide to adopt Christian doctrines and benefits, when (as in most cultures) such major decisions are normally made by groups. In this way, opinion leaders in the groups can persuade much or most of the groups to convert. When combined with training in discipleship, church planting and other modern missionary doctrine, the result is an accelerating, self-propelled conversion of large portions of the culture.

A typical modern mission is a co-operative effort by many different ministries, often including several coordinating ministries, such as the Faith2Share network, often with separate funding sources. One typical effort proceeded as follows:

 * 1) A missionary radio group recruits, trains and broadcasts in the main dialect of the target culture's language. Broadcast content is carefully adapted to avoid syncretism yet help the Christian Gospel seem like a native, normal part of the target culture. Broadcast content often includes news, music, entertainment and education in the language, as well as purely Christian items.
 * 2) Broadcasts might advertise programs, inexpensive radios (possibly spring-wound), and a literature ministry that sells a Christian mail-order correspondence course at nominal costs. The literature ministry is key, and is normally a separate organization from the radio ministry. Modern literature missions are shifting to web-based content where it makes sense (as in Western Europe and Japan).
 * 3) When a person or group completes a correspondence course, they are invited to contact a church-planting missionary group from (if possible) a related cultural group. The church-planting ministry is usually a different ministry from either the literature or radio ministries. The church-planting ministry usually requires its missionaries to be fluent in the target language, and trained in modern church-planting techniques.
 * 4) The missionary then leads the group to start a church. Churches planted by these groups are usually a group that meets in a house. The object is the minimum organization that can perform the required character development and spiritual growth. Buildings, complex ministries and other expensive items are mentioned, but deprecated until the group naturally achieves the size and budget to afford them. The crucial training is how to become a Christian (by faith in Jesus Christ) and then how to set up a church (meet to study the Bible, and perform communion and worship), usually in that order.
 * 5) A new generation of churches is created, and the growth begins to accelerate geometrically. Frequently, daughter churches are created only a few months after a church's creation. In the fastest-growing Christian movements, the pastoral education is "pipelined", flowing in a just-in-time fashion from the central churches to daughter churches. That is, planting of churches does not wait for the complete training of pastors.

The most crucial part of church planting is selection and training of leadership. Classically, leadership training required an expensive stay at a seminary, a Bible college. Modern church planters deprecate this because it substantially slows the growth of the church without much immediate benefit. Modern mission doctrines replace the seminary with programmed curricula or (even less expensive) books of discussion questions, and access to real theological books. The materials are usually made available in a major trading language in which most native leaders are likely to be fluent. In some cases, the materials can be adapted for oral use.

It turns out that new pastors' practical needs for theology are well addressed by a combination of practical procedures for church planting, discussion in small groups, and motivated Bible-based study from diverse theological texts. As a culture's church's wealth increases, it will naturally form classic seminaries on its own.

Another related mission is Bible translation. The above-mentioned literature has to be translated. Missionaries actively experiment with advanced linguistic techniques to speed translation and literacy. Bible translation not only speeds a church's growth by aiding self-training, but it also assures that Christian information becomes a permanent part of the native culture and literature. Some ministries also use modern recording techniques to reach groups with audio that could not be soon reached with literature.

Among Roman Catholics
For Catholics, “Missions” is the term given to those particular undertakings by which the heralds of the Gospel, sent out by the Church and going forth into the whole world, carry out the task of preaching the Gospel and planting the Church among peoples or groups who do not yet believe in Christ.

Vatican II made a deep impact on Catholic missions around the world. The Church's relations to non-Christian religions like Judaism and Islam were revisited.

A steep decline in the number of people entering the priesthood and religious life in the West has made the Church look towards laity more and more. Communities like Opus Dei arose to meet this need.

Inculturation increasingly became a key topic of missiological reflection for Catholics. Inculturation is understood as the meeting of the Christian message with a community in their cultural context.

Liberation Theology and liturgical reform have also been important in forming and influencing the mission of the Catholic Church in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

In relation to mission, Pope Benedict XVI made the re-evangelization of Europe and North America a priority in his own ministry, even while the upper leadership of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the college of cardinals has more members from Latin America, Africa, and Asia than ever before.

Key documents on mission for Catholics during this period are Evangelii nuntiandi by Pope Paul VI and Redemptoris missio by Pope John Paul II.

Print and new media in mission
Christian mission organisations have long depended on the printed word as a channel through which to do mission. At times when countries have been "closed" to Christians, great efforts have been made to smuggle Bibles and other literature into those countries. Brother Andrew, the founder of Open Doors, started smuggling Bibles into communist countries in the 1950s. Operation Mobilisation was established in 1957 by George Verwer. Other Christian publishers, such as Plough Publishing, provide free books to people in the UK and US as a form of mission. The Bible Society translates and prints Bibles, in an attempt to reach every country in the world.

The internet now provides Christian mission organisations a convent way of reaching people in the form of podcasts. Podcasts provide a way of dissemination for a message that has potential to endanger the recipient, since it is very hard to track who has downloaded a specific podcast. An example of this is the Crescent Project. Other podcasts, such as the Life Together podcast, The Sacred, and Harvest are aimed at both non-Christians and Christians in the home country.

Reverse mission
The shift in world Christian population from Europe and North America to the non-Western world, and the migration of Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans to the West has given rise to what some have termed "reverse mission". It demonstrates a reversal of the missionary movement, in that it reverses the direction of earlier missionary efforts.

Inter-organizational missions
Globalization of the 21st century has served as a platform for opportunity for independent Christian organizations to unite together in cooperation for outreach missions and discipleship.

Some organizations are Christian consortiums which organizationally band themselves together like 50,000 persons in the Illinois-based Missio Nexus organization led by Ted Esler.

Other organizations are united by a common source of financial funding, cooperation in outreach projects and digital communications between internal missions personnel around the world and their partners like SIM or the 25,000 people united in the GMNF Global Mission Society, founded by Anton R. Williams of Kalamazoo, Michigan and Grand Rapids, Michigan GMNF Global Mission Society has a unique funding provided by the Anton R Williams Holding Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan

Still other organizations sign legal contacts with an agencies to join for specific functions in missions like the SIMS organization.

Criticism
In 1924, Mahatma Gandhi wrote:

This [Christian] proselytization will mean no peace in the world. Conversions are harmful to India. If I had the power and could legislate I should certainly stop all proselytizing ... It pains me to have to say that the Christian missionaries as a body, with honorable exceptions, have actively supported a system which has impoverished, enervated and demoralized a people considered to be among the gentlest and most civilized on earth.

In India, Hindu organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh assert that most conversions undertaken by zealous evangelicals occur due to compulsion, inducement or fraud. In the Indian state of Tripura, the government has alleged financial and weapons-smuggling connections between Baptist missionaries and rebel groups such as the National Liberation Front of Tripura. The accused Tripura Baptist Christian Union is a member body of the Baptist World Alliance.

"In mid-May, the Vatican was also co-sponsoring a meeting about how some religious groups abuse liberties by proselytizing, or by evangelizing in aggressive or deceptive ways. Iraq ... has become an open field for foreigners looking for fresh converts. Some Catholic Church leaders and aid organizations have expressed concern about new Christian groups coming in and luring Iraqis to their churches with offers of cash, clothing, food or jobs. ... Reports of aggressive proselytism and reportedly forced conversions in mostly Hindu India have fueled religious tensions and violence there and have prompted some regional governments to pass laws banning proselytism or religious conversion. ... Sadhvi Vrnda Chaitanya, a Hindu monk from southern India, told CNS that India's poor and uneducated are especially vulnerable to coercive or deceptive methods of evangelization. ... Aid work must not hide any ulterior motives and avoid exploiting vulnerable people like children and the disabled, she said."

In an interview with Outlook magazine, Sadhvi Vrnda Chaitanya said "If the Vatican could understand that every religious and spiritual tradition is as sacred as Christianity, and that they have a right to exist without being denigrated or extinguished, it will greatly serve the interests of dialogue, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence."

Communicating diseases
European explorers in the Americas introduced Afro-Eurasian diseases to which Amerindian peoples had no immunity, leading to tens of millions of deaths. Missionaries, along with other travelers, brought diseases into native populations. Smallpox, measles, and common cold, have been blamed on their arrivals. David Igler of the University of California, Irvine, includes missionary activity as a cause of spreading germs. However, he says that commercial traders were the main agents of disease: "other diseases arrived on non-commercial voyages; missionary activities certainly spread germs, and Spanish conquests had dispersed deadly germs in parts of the Americas and Pacific prior to the late eighteenth century. Yet, for the period between the 1770s and the 1840s, trading vessels were the main agents of disease, creating in the Pacific what Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has called a 'paroxysm' of the 'microbian unification of the world.' By 1850, the microbes of Europe, Asia, and Africa circulated in almost every Pacific population."

Aid and evangelism
While there is a general agreement among most major aid organizations not to mix aid with proselyting, others see disasters as a useful opportunity to spread the word. One such an occurrence was the tsunami that devastated parts of Asia on December 26, 2004.

"'This (disaster) is one of the greatest opportunities God has given us to share his love with people,' said K.P. Yohannan, president of the Texas-based Gospel for Asia. In an interview, Yohannan said his 14,500 'native missionaries' in India, Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands are giving survivors Bibles and booklets about 'how to find hope in this time through the word of God.' In Krabi, Thailand, a Southern Baptist church had been 'praying for a way to make inroads' with a particular ethnic group of fishermen, according to Southern Baptist relief coordinator Pat Julian. Then came the tsunami, 'a phenomenal opportunity' to provide ministry and care, Julian told the Baptist Press news service. ... Not all evangelicals agree with these tactics. 'It's not appropriate in a crisis like this to take advantage of people who are hurting and suffering', said the Rev. Franklin Graham, head of Samaritan's Purse and son of evangelist Billy Graham."

The Christian Science Monitor echoes these concerns: "'I think evangelists do this out of the best intentions, but there is a responsibility to try to understand other faith groups and their culture,' says Vince Isner, director of FaithfulAmerica.org, a program of the National Council of Churches USA."

The Bush administration has made it easier for U.S. faith-based groups and missionary societies to tie aid and church together. "For decades, US policy has sought to avoid intermingling government programs and religious proselytizing. The aim is both to abide by the Constitution's prohibition against a state religion and to ensure that aid recipients don't forgo assistance because they don't share the religion of the provider. ... But many of those restrictions were removed by Bush in a little-noticed series of executive orders – a policy change that cleared the way for religious groups to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in additional government funding. It also helped change the message American aid workers bring to many corners of the world, from emphasizing religious neutrality to touting the healing powers of the Christian God."

Christian counter-claims
Missionaries say that the government in India has passed anti-conversion laws in several states that are supposedly meant to prevent conversions from "force or allurement", but are primarily used, they say, to persecute and criminalize voluntary conversion due to the government's broad definition of "force and allurement". Any gift received from a Christian in exchange for, or with the intention of, conversion is considered allurement. Voice of the Martyrs reports that aid-workers claim that they are being hindered from reaching people with much needed services as a result of this persecution. Alan de Lastic, Roman Catholic archbishop of New Delhi states that claims of forced conversion are false.

"'There are attacks practically every week, maybe not resulting in death, but still, violent attacks,' Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India tells The Christian Science Monitor today. 'They [India's controlling BJP party] have created an atmosphere where minorities do feel insecure.'" According to Prakash Louis, director of the secular Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, "We are seeing a broad attempt to stifle religious minorities and their constitutional rights ... Today, they say you have no right to convert, Tomorrow you have no right to worship in certain places." Existing congregations, often during times of worship, are being persecuted. Properties are sometimes destroyed and burnt to the ground, while native pastors are sometimes beaten and left for dead.

Political scientist Robert Woodberry claims that conversionary Protestants were a crucial catalyst in spreading religious liberty, education, and democracy. While his historical analysis is exhaustive, the accompanying empirical evidence suffers from severe inconsistencies. Elena Nikolova and Jakub Polansky replicate Woodberry's analysis using twenty-six alternative democracy measures and extend the time period over which the democracy measures are averaged. These two simple modifications lead to the breakdown of Woodberry's results. Overall, no significant relationship between Protestant missions and the development of democracy can be established.

A major contribution of the Christian missionaries in Africa, China, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Korea, and other places was better health care of the people through hygiene and introducing and distributing soap, and "cleanliness and hygiene became an important marker of being identified as a Christian".

Positive or neutral

 * Gailey and Culbertson. Discovering Missions by ISBN 0-8341-2257-X
 * Johnstone Operation World ISBN 1-85078-357-8
 * Moreau, Corwin and McGree. Introducing World Missions ISBN 0-8010-2648-2
 * Olson, C. Gordon. What in the World is God Doing? Global Gospel Publishers, 2003
 * Parker, J. Fred. Mission to the World. Nazarene Publishing House, 1988
 * Van Rheenen Missions by ISBN 0-310-20809-2
 * Winter and Hawthorne, eds. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement ISBN 0-87808-289-1

Critical

 * "Vindicated by time – The Niyogi Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities in Madhya Pradesh (India)"
 * "History of Hindu – Christian Encounters 304 AD to 1996" By Sita Ram Goel, Publisher:Voice of India, New Delhi
 * Shourie, A. (1994). Missionaries in India: Continuities, changes, dilemmas. New Delhi: ASA Publications.
 * Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide by George E. Tinker ISBN 978-0-8006-2576-4
 * The Missionaries: God Against the Indians by Norman Lewis ISBN 0-14-013175-2
 * The Dark Side of Christian History by Helen Ellerbe ISBN 0-9644873-4-9
 * Goel, S. R. (1996). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. ISBN 8185990352
 * Repression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka by the Portuguese (1505–1658) by Senaka Weeraratna
 * Rajiv Malhotra: How Evangelists Invented 'Dravidian Christianity'
 * Peter Rohrbacher: Völkerkunde und Afrikanistik für den Papst. Missionsexperten und der Vatikan 1922–1939 in: Römische Historische Mitteilungen 54 (2012), 583–610.

title: Christian mission


text:
Mark King (musician)

Mark Raymond King (born 20 October 1958) is an English musician. He is the lead singer and bassist of the jazz-funk band Level 42. King is known for his slap style of playing the bass guitar, with MusicRadar describing him as "the guy who put the slap in pop during the 80s". King received a BASCA Gold Badge Award in October 2015 in recognition of his contribution to British music. He won the "Outer Limits" award at the 2017 Progressive Music Awards.

Early life
King was born and brought up in Cowes, Isle of Wight, off the south coast of mainland England. His father, Raymond King, was a dairyman, and the family lived in a tied dairy house. King recalled in a 2006 newspaper interview, "it was post-war, with one brass tap, an outside toilet and a zinc bath in front of the fire". He later lived on the Camp Hill and Albany prison estates on the outskirts of Newport. He attended Kitbridge Middle School where he met his childhood sweetheart Tracey Wilson, later writing a song about her. He then went to Cowes High School.

Originally, King began his musical career as a drummer (starting aged nine after his father bought him his first kit for £10) and learning guitar aged 11. In 1974, when he was fifteen, King met his future Level 42 bandmate Phil Gould, who remembers the young King "came and sat in with the band that I formed, at one of the gigs we were doing. He brought his kit down and blew me off, blew me off the stage because he was so much faster than me". Gould also remembers the young King as being a budding multi-instrumentalist, a "really good guitarist" who would "play around with programming, synth stuff. He was one of those natural musicians."

King received encouragement to pursue a career in music from his music teacher at middle school, but was asked to leave Cowes High School at the age of 17 when he came to school wearing denim jeans. King recalls in a magazine interview: "It didn't go down very well, and I was told my schooling had run its course." King then left home and stayed at a friend's house for two weeks, sleeping on the floor, before getting a job on a production line at a Ronson lighter factory. After quitting this job, King became a milkman, but he was still determined to "prove [he] was not a failure". So, aged 19, King moved to London, along with his milk van, in hope of finding a career in music. He played drums for the band Re-Flex in their early years, before starting his career as a bass player.

Level 42

King moved to London at the age of 19, subsequently forming Level 42 in 1979 with Phil Gould, keyboard player Mike Lindup and Phil's guitarist brother Boon. Although a drummer, King found himself having to learn bass after landing a job at Macari's, a musical instrument store. In an interview with the magazine Music U.K (Issue May 1984), he states:

I kept up playing drums until I moved to London. I'd always wanted to be a good drummer and it's just ironic that I've turned out to be a bass player. The way I started playing bass was that when I arrived in London I was looking for a job, and the only place I could find one was in Macaris in Charing Cross Rd. I wanted to get something involved in music, and that seemed like a good place to be. But Macaris didn't sell drums, and so I lied and said I could play bass. They said, "Fine, you sell the basses, and sweep up and get the coffees and whatever".

Nevertheless, King's natural rhythmic intuition probably contributed to his distinctive bass playing style, along with the popularity of jazz-funk in Britain at the time.

At one of their first gigs, at the La Babalu club in Ryde, Level 42 were spotted by Andy Sojka, the head of small independent record label Elite and signed them. The next year, they were signed to Polydor and King spent the next nine years recording and touring with the band. The first Top 40 single, "Love Games", was released in 1981, heralding the band's first appearance on Top of the Pops. The big breakthrough came with the release of "The Sun Goes Down (Living It Up)" in 1983.

While in Level 42, King found his bass-playing services in some demand. He was invited by Nik Kershaw to play on his second album The Riddle (1984) and by Midge Ure to play on his albums The Gift (1985) and Answers to Nothing (1988).

Level 42 supported The Police in 1981, followed by tours with Steve Winwood and Queen in 1986 and Madonna in 1987.

Level 42 released the album Retroglide in 2006 and a European tour followed.

Level 42 (line up: Mark King, Mike Lindup, Gary Husband, Nathan King, Sean Freeman) toured in autumn of 2008.

Solo work
In 1984, he released his first solo album Influences, which was followed by One Man in 1998.

In 1999, he issued a collection of unused songs in the form of the album Trash; the name hinted at the rough, unpolished nature of the recordings (which were rejected by Virgin Records in favour of the tracks which would ultimately appear on the One Man album).

Trash was a historic release as it was issued without a record company and initially offered to fans via a low-key guestbook entry, made by King, on www.level42.com. Using an Apple Mac, CD burner and inkjet printer, King manufactured the CD himself and posted it directly to fans, charging £17 plus postage. He hand signed and numbered early copies. Clearly not anticipating the popularity of the album, the initial CDs were numbered as part of a series of 100. Word soon spread of the CD and King eventually sold over 1,000 copies.

In the years following Trash, King repeated the successful 'home-made' formula releasing a string of live recordings including Live at the Jazz Cafe, Live on the Isle of Wight and Live at Reading Concert Hall (which despite being performed as a Mark King solo show, was released under the name of Level 42 as King retained the rights to the name shortly before releasing the CD). Despite being contracted to Universal Music imprint W14, King continues to release live shows on his own Summerhouse Record label, of which 2007's Retroglide Live DVD was the first.

Since coming back into the limelight in 1998 with One Man and the supporting UK tour, King has toured consistently around Europe and as far east as Indonesia. With the exception of Trash, he has only issued one new professionally released studio album in the eight-year period, September 2006's Retroglide under the Level 42 banner.

In 2016, King joined supergroup Gizmodrome, also featuring Stewart Copeland, Adrian Belew and Vittorio Cosma. The band released their debut album in September 2017.

In 2019 King played and sang on Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders song "Queen of the Clowns" from the album Get the Money.

Playing style
Mark King helped to develop and popularize the slap and pop style of playing the bass guitar in the 1980s. The slapping and popping style was developed in the 1970s by funk bassists such as Larry Graham and further developed by jazz fusion bassists such as Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller. King developed a rapid playing speed using this technique, and introduced technical elements that enabled him to produce a mix of percussive effects while still playing a bass line.

One of King's greatest influences was the musician Tom Taylor, who gave King guitar lessons when King was 12.

King's bass playing style is largely based on continuous 16th notes (aka semiquavers), sometimes described as "machine-gun" style. This "machine-gun" style consists of playing rapidly using a combination of thumb slaps, pops, hammer-ons, and fretting hand slaps.

King also took part in a comedy skit titled "The Easy Guitar Book Sketch" with comedian Rowland Rivron and fellow British musicians Mark Knopfler, Lemmy from Motörhead, David Gilmour and Gary Moore.

Instruments
King has used various models of bass guitar through the years, the two most commonly used brands have been Jaydee (as exemplified by "Love Games") and Status Graphite (evident on his solo works). The Jaydees were built by John Diggins, a former employee of John Birch; Jaydee is phonetic for his initials, J.D. Mark also used a Pangborn Warlord bass, perhaps two, hand-built by luthier Ashley Pangborn, in the early 1980s.

Mark King has used Status Graphite basses since the 1980s including the Series-2000 and Empathy models. In November 2000, Rob Green and Mark King developed the Status KingBass, a headless, double cut-away bass with a woven graphite through-neck, Status Hyperactive pickups and active electronics. Status LEDs are a custom option on all Status models. Status Graphite basses are handmade in England by Rob Green.

Other known basses he has used are Alembics (specifically custom Series II models), of which there is a Signature Mark King model, Pangborn basses, a Zon bass (on the album "World Machine" for the song "Lying Still"). King's first fretless bass was a Japanese-made "Moon" Jazz-style bass. King also owned two Music Man Stingray basses (mainly used for the recording the Guaranteed and Forever Now albums), a Wal bass, which was fitted with an MB4 MIDI interface (used on the album Guaranteed, on the track "Lasso the Moon").

In 1996, King briefly used Fender Jazz Basses. A limited run of 42 "Mark King" Jazz Basses were made, based on the American Deluxe series, built and set up to King's specifications. They all came fitted with SIM's LED lights, flat-radiused fingerboards and a custom neck plate engraved with his signature. Also in 1999, King used two GB Spitfire basses, handmade in England by Bernie Goodfellow.

King endorses RotoSound strings and uses their Funkmaster set (.30-.50-.70-.90) on his instruments.

Personal life
Just before his divorce from his wife Pia, King moved back to his native Isle of Wight in 1988. During the 1990s, King purchased a pub in Ryde. The pub was named Joe Daflo's, a collaboration of the names of his three children; his son D'Arcy and daughters Jolie and Florrie. King sold the pub in 2000, and it has become part of a pub franchise that operates in the coastal towns in the south of England. King lives with his current wife Ria and his youngest daughter Marlee, who was born in 1996.

He is the elder brother of fellow Level 42 and Frost* member Nathan King.

Activism
King is a longstanding supporter of The Prince's Trust. On 20 June 1986, King and Lindup performed alongside stars such as Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Midge Ure and Elton John, at The Prince's Trust All-Star Rock Concert at Wembley Arena to celebrate the first 10 years of the Trust; a recording was subsequently released on video. He was also a performer at The Prince's Trust Rock Gala at the Royal Albert Hall in November 2010 and 2011.

King serves as a tourism 'ambassador' for his native Isle of Wight.

Discography
For the Level 42 discography, see Level 42 discography.

Albums

 * Influences (1984)
 * One Man (1998)
 * Trash (1999 /DFP Music)
 * Live at the Jazz Cafe (1999/DFP Music) (live)
 * Live on the Isle of Wight (2000/DFP Music) (live)
 * Live in Soho (2012) (live)

Singles

 * "Freedom" (1982) as Thunderthumbs & The Toetsenman (Mark King/Mike Lindup)
 * "I Feel Free" (1984)
 * "Bitter Moon" (1998)

DVDs

 * Mark King – Ohne Filter (1996) (live)
 * Grupo Mark King – Live on the Isle of Wight (2000/DFP Music) (live)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Mark King (musician)


text:
Interlude

Interlude may refer to:

 * a short play or, in general, any representation between parts of a larger stage production
 * Entr'acte, a piece of music performed between acts of a theatrical production
 * a section in a movement of a musical piece, see: Bridge or Break
 * a piece of music composed of one or more movements, to be inserted between sections of another composition: see also intermezzo, and for the Baroque era, sinfonia

Albums

 * Interlude (Billy Taylor album), 1961
 * Interlude (Toshiko Akiyoshi album), 1987
 * Interlude (Kool Moe Dee album), 1994
 * Interlude (EP), a 1999 EP by Iron Savior
 * Interlude (Saint Etienne album), 2001
 * Interlude (David Lyttle album), 2012
 * Interlude (Delain album), 2013
 * Interlude (Jamie Cullum album), 2014

Songs
Many albums contain songs titled "Interlude", or acted as an interlude. Notable songs are listed below.

 * "Interlude" (aka "A Night in Tunisia"), a 1942 composition by Dizzy Gillespie
 * "Interlude" (1957 song), a Skinner/Webster song recorded by the McGuire Sisters in 1957
 * "Interlude" (Timi Yuro song), 1968, later covered by Morrissey and Siouxsie in 1994
 * "A Thousand Miles" (originally "Interlude"), by Vanessa Carlton, 2002
 * "Repeat After Me (Interlude)", by the Weeknd, 2020
 * "Interlude" (J. Cole song), 2021

Films

 * Interlude (1946 film), Swedish film directed by Hasse Ekman and starring Viveca Lindfors and Erik Berglund
 * Interlude (1957 film) an American film directed by Douglas Sirk and starring June Allyson and Rossano Brazzi
 * Interlude (1968 film), a British film directed by Kevin Billington and starring Oskar Werner and Barbara Ferris

Other uses

 * Morality play, a modern critical term describing medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainments that were known as "Interludes"
 * Interlude (visual novel), a 2003 anime and visual novel by Longshot
 * Interlude, an interactive media production company, now known as Eko

title: Interlude


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Compulsory figures

Compulsory figures or school figures were formerly a segment of figure skating, and gave the sport its name. They are the "circular patterns which skaters trace on the ice to demonstrate skill in placing clean turns evenly on round circles". For approximately the first 50 years of figure skating as a sport, until 1947, compulsory figures made up 60 percent of the total score at most competitions around the world. These figures continued to dominate the sport, although they steadily declined in importance, until the International Skating Union (ISU) voted to discontinue them as a part of competitions in 1990. Learning and training in compulsory figures instilled discipline and control; some in the figure skating community considered them necessary to teach skaters basic skills. Skaters would train for hours to learn and execute them well, and competing and judging figures would often take up to eight hours during competitions.

Skaters traced compulsory figures, and were judged according to their smoothness and accuracy. The circle is the basis of all figures. Other elements in compulsory figures include curves, change of foot, change of edge, and turns. Skaters had to trace precise circles while completing difficult turns and edges. The simple "figure eight" shape was executed by connecting two circles; other figures included the three turn, the counter turn, the rocker turn, the bracket turn, and the loop.

Since 2015 with the founding of the World Figure Sport Society and the World Figure & Fancy Skating Championships & Festival on black ice more skaters are training and competing in figures. More coaches are learning the new methods developed by World Figure Sport to teach them to skaters, as some skaters and coaches believe that figures give skaters an advantage in developing alignment, core strength, body control, and discipline. The World Figure Sport Society conducts workshops, festivals and world competitions in compulsory (now known as fundamental figures), special, creative, free, flying figures, and fancy skating

Early history
Tracing figures in the ice is the oldest form of figure skating, especially during its first 200 years of existence when it was a recreational activity practiced mostly by men. Combined skating, or "patterns of moves for two skaters around a common center marked by a ball and later an orange placed on the ice", had a "profound historical significance" to the sport that eventually manifested itself in ice dancing, pair skating, and synchronized skating, and dominated the sport for 50 years in England during the 18th century. The Art of Skating, one of the earliest books about figure skating, was written by Robert Jones in 1772 and described five advanced figures, three of which were illustrated with large color plates. Jones' limited body of figures, which emphasized correct technique, were the accepted and basic repertoire of figures in 18th-century England. The Edinburgh Skating Club, one of the oldest skating clubs in the world, described combined figures and those done by multiple skaters; interlocking figure eights were the most important. According to writer Ellyn Kestnbaum, the Edinburgh Skating Club required prospective members to pass proficiency tests in what became compulsory figures. The London Skating Club, founded in 1830 in London, also required proficiency tests for members and pioneered combined skating, which contributed to the evolution of school figures. Artistic skating in France, which was derived from the English style of figure skating and was influenced by ballet, developed figures that emphasized artistry, body position, and grace of execution. Jean Garcin, a member of an elite group of skaters in France, wrote a book about figure skating in 1813 that included descriptions and illustrations of over 30 figures, including a series of circle-eight figures that skaters still use today.

George Anderson, writing in 1852, described backward-skating figures, including the flying Mercury and the shamrock, as well as the Q figure, which became, in its various forms, an important part of the repertoire of skating movements for the rest of the 1800s. Anderson also described two combined figures, the salutation (already described by Jones) and the satellite. By the 1850s, the most important figures (eights, threes, and Qs) were developed and formed the basis for figure skating at the time. In 1869, Henry Vandervell and T. Maxwell Witham from the London Skating Club wrote System of Figure Skating, which described variations of the three turn (the only figure known before 1860), the bracket (first done on roller skates), the rocker, the Mohawk, the loop, the Q, and other figures. The Mohawk, renamed in Canada to the C Step in 2020, a two-foot turn on the same circle, most likely originated in North America. Figure skating historian James Hines called grapevines, which was probably invented in Canada, "the most American of all figures". The Viennese style of figure skating, as described by Max Wirth's book in 1881, described connecting figures, which ultimately led to modern free skating programs.

In 1868, the American Skating Congress, precursor to U.S. Figure Skating, adopted a series of movements used during competitions between skaters from the U.S. and Canada. Until 1947, for approximately the first 50 years of the existence of figure skating as a sport, compulsory figures made up 60 percent of the total score at most competitions around the world. Other competitions held in the late 19th and early 20th centuries included special figures, freeskating, and compulsories, most of the points they earned going towards how they performed the same set of compulsory moves. The first international figure skating competition was in Vienna in 1882; according to Kestnbaum, it established a precedent for future competitions. Skaters were required to perform 23 compulsory figures, as well as a four-minute freeskating program, and a section called "special figures", in which they had to perform moves or combinations of moves that highlighted their advanced skills.

Compulsory figures were an important part of figure skating for the rest of the 19th century until the 1930s and 1940s. The first European Championships in 1891 consisted of only compulsory figures. In 1896, the newly formed International Skating Union (ISU) sponsored the first annual World Figure Skating Championships in St. Petersburg. The competition consisted of compulsory figures and free skating. Skaters had to perform six compulsory moves so that judges could compare skaters according to an established standard. Compulsory figures were worth 60 percent of the competitors' total scores.

Special figures were not included in World Championships, although they were included as a separate discipline in other competitions, including the Olympics in 1908. The early Olympics movement valued and required amateurism, so figure skating, almost from its beginnings as an organized sport, was also associated with amateurism. Athletes were unable to support themselves financially, so as Kestnbaum put it, "thus making it impossible for those who had to earn a living by other means to attain the same level of skill as those who were independently wealthy or who practiced professions that allowed for flexible scheduling". According to Kestnbaum, this had implications for attaining proficiency in compulsory figures, which required long hours of practice and purchasing time at private rinks and clubs.

In 1897, the ISU adopted a schedule of 41 school figures, each of increasing difficulty, which was proposed by the British. They remained the standard compulsory figures used throughout the world in proficiency testing and competitions until 1990, and U.S. Figure Skating continued to use them as a separate discipline in the 1990s. After World War II, more countries were sending skaters to international competitions, so the ISU cut the number of figures to a maximum of six due to the extended time it took to judge them all.

Demise in 1990 and Modern Renaissance in 2015
The demise and revival of compulsory figures occurred, respectively, in 1990, when the ISU removed compulsory figures from international single skating competitions, and beginning in 2015, when the first competition focusing entirely on figures took place. Judging scandals and the broadcasts of figure skating on television have been cited as the reason for the decline of figures. The U.S. was the last country to include figures in their competitions, until 1999. The elimination of figures resulted in the increase of focus on the free skating segment and in the domination of younger girls in the sport. Most skaters stopped training with figures, although many coaches continued to teach figures and skaters continued to practice them because figures taught basic skating skills and gave skaters an advantage in developing alignment, core strength, body control, and discipline.

A revival of compulsory figures began in 2015. The first World Figure Championships (renamed to The World Figure and Fancy Skating Championships in 2017) occurred in Lake Placid, New York. By 2023, nine championships had taken place. Judging was done blind, after the skaters left the ice and without the judges knowing which competitor completed which figure. The championships were postponed in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, although workshops and seminars were conducted online. Karen Courtland Kelly, 1994 Olympian and figures expert, who founded the World Figure Sport Society (WFSS) and organized its figures championships, was credited with revitalizing figures. By 2020, the championship and the revitalization of figures was supported by many skaters, including U.S. Olympian Debi Thomas, who competed at the 2023 Championships.

Execution of figures
Compulsory figures, also called school figures, are the "circular patterns which skaters trace on the ice to demonstrate skill in placing clean turns evenly on round circles". Compulsory figures are also called "patch", a reference to the patch of ice allocated to each skater to practice figures. Figure skating historian James Hines reports that compulsory figures were "viewed as a means of developing technique necessary for elite skaters". He states, "As scales are the material by which musicians develop the facile technique required to perform major competitions, so compulsory figures were viewed as the material by which skaters develop the facile required for free-skating programs". Compulsory figures has been called "the slow-sports movement" or "yoga on ice". Hines also states that although compulsory figures and free skating are often considered as "totally different aspects of figure skating", historically they were not, and insisted that "spirals, spread eagles, jumps, and spins were originally individual figures".

Skaters were required to trace these circles using one foot at a time, demonstrating their mastery of control, balance, flow, and edge to execute accurate and clean tracings on the ice. The compulsory figures used by the International Skating Union (ISU) in 1897 for international competitions consisted of "two or three tangent circles with one, one and a half, or two full circles skated on each foot, in some with turns or loops included on the circles". The patterns skaters left on the ice, rather than the shapes the body made executing them, became the focus of artistic expression in figure skating into the 20th century. The quality of the figures, along with the skater's form, carriage, and speed in which they were executed, was emphasized, not the intricacy of unique designs of the figures themselves. Skaters had to execute figures by positioning themselves to precisely control the edges of one blade of their skates by leaning in or out, moving forward or backward. They also had to use their right or left foot while balancing the other foot in order to avoid going off course, then they had to repeat everything five more times. Louise Radnofsky stated, "Controlling the trails a skate blade leaves requires timing, precision, body awareness, nailing an upper body turn without throwing the lower body off, tolerating punishing burn on the muscles of one leg". Olympic champion Debi Thomas stated, about the execution of figures, "It takes incredible strength and control. You are literally using every single muscle in your body. It looks slow and easy, but it's not … but if you lay our a great figure, it’s an amazing feeling".

The highest quality figures had tracings on top of each other; their edges were placed precisely, and the turns lined up exactly. The slightest misalignment or shift of body weight could cause errors in the execution of figures. American figure skating champion Irving Brokaw insisted that form was more essential to the production of figures than the tracings themselves because the skater needed to find a comfortable and natural position in which to perform them. He expected skaters to trace figures without looking down at them because it gave "a very slovenly appearance", and recommended that they not use their arms excessively or for balance like tightrope walkers. Brokaw wanted skaters to remain upright and avoid bending over as much as they could. Brokaw also thought that the unemployed leg, which he called the "balance leg", was as important as the tracing leg because it was used as much in the execution of a figure as the tracing leg. The balance leg also should be bent only slightly, since he believed bending it too much removed its usefulness and appeared clumsy.

Writer Ellyn Kestnbaum notes that skaters who were adept at performing compulsory figures had to practice for hours to have precise body control and to become "intimately familiar with how subtle shifts in the body's balance over the blade affected the tracings left on the ice". She adds that many skaters found figures and their visible results calming and rewarding. Sports writer Christie Sausa insists that training in figures "helps create better skaters and instills discipline, and can be practiced over a lifetime by skaters of all ages and abilities". As Louise Radnofsky put it, for skaters that practiced figures, "there's joy in the frustration of never achieving perfection, zen in repetition, inclusivity in voluntarily doing something that generations of skaters complained about -- and, for once in a child-driven sport, superiority in maturity". The German magazine Der Spiegel declared in 1983 that compulsory figures stifled skaters' creativity because not much about figures had changed in 100 years of competitions.

Figure elements
All compulsory figures had the following: circles, curves, change of foot, change of edge, and turns. The circle, the basis of all figures, was performed on both its long and short axes. Skaters had to trace precise circles, while completing difficult turns and edges. Most figures employ "specific one-foot turns not done in combination with other one-foot turns". Each figure consisted of two or three tangent circles. Each circle's diameter had to be about three times the skater's height, and the radii of all half-circles had to be approximately the same length. Half-circles and circles had to begin and end as near as possible to the point in which the long and short axes intersected. The figure's long axis divided it longitudinally into equal-sized halves, and the figure's short axes divided the figures into equal-sized lobes.

Curves, which are parts of circles, had to be performed with an uninterrupted tracing and with a single clean edge, with no subcurves or wobbles. Brokaw insists that curves had to be done on all four edges of the skate while skating both backwards and forwards. He states, "It is the control of these circles that gives strength and power, and the holding of the body in the proper and graceful attitudes, while it is the execution of these large circles, changes of edges, threes and double-threes, brackets, loops, rockers and counters, which makes up the art of skating". Curves also included the forced turn (or bracket) and the serpentine.

A change of foot, which happened during the short time the skater transferred weight from one foot to the other, was allowed in the execution of figures, but had to be done in a symmetrical zone on each side of the long axis. Skaters could choose the exact point in which they placed their foot in this zone, although it typically was just after the long axis, with the full weight of the body on the skate. It was at this point that tracing began. A change of edge happened at the point in which the long and short axes intersected. Its trace had to be continuously and symmetrically traced and could not be S-shaped. The edge change had to be as short as possible, and could not be longer than the length of the skate blade. Turns were skated with a single clean edge up to and after the turn, but with no double tracings, no skids or scrapes, or no illegal edge change either before, during, or after a turn. The turns' cusps had to be the same size, and the entry into and out of a turn had to be symmetrical.

The simple "figure eight" shape was executed by connecting two circles "about three times the height of the skater with one circle skated on each foot". The figure eight has four variations: inside edges, outside edges, backward, and forward. A turn added at the halfway point of each circle increased the level of complexity. Other figures included three-lobed figures with a counter turn or a rocker turn, which were completed at the points where the lobes touched. Counters and rockers had to be executed symmetrically, with no change of edge, with the points of their turns either pointing up or down or lying along the figure's long axis, and could not be beaked or hooked. Brackets, like threes, had to be skated on a circle, their turns' points either pointing up or down or lying along the figure's long axis.

Skaters also performed a group of smaller figures called loops. The diameter of the loop's circular shape had to be about the height of the skater, and they could not have any scrapes or points on the ice. The place in which the skater entered into or exited out of the crossing of both the loop tracing and the center of the loop had to sit on the figure's long axis, where the loop was divided into symmetrical halves. The center of the loop figure to the place in which the skater entered into or exited out of the loop's crossing had to measure five-sixths of the circle's diameter. The loop's length had to be about one-third of the distance from the place in which the skater entered into or exited out of the loop's crossing of the loop tracing to the figure's short axis. The loop's width had to be about two-thirds of its length. The Q figure begins at the tail of the figure, on the skater's outside edge. It can also begin on any of the four edges, and the direction in which it can be skated can be reversed. When the circle is skated first, it is called a reverse Q. Altered forms of the Q figure often do not look like the letter "q", but "simply employ a serpentine line and a three turn". United shamrocks, spectacles (shapes that trace the shape of eyeglasses), and united roses are alterations of the basic Q figures.

Since the goal of figures is drawing an exact shape on the ice, the skater had to concentrate on the depth of the turn (how much the turn extends into or out of the circle), the integrity of the edges and cusps (round-patterned edges leading into or out of the circle), and its shape. There were three types of three turns: the standard three, the double three, and the paragraph double three. The three turn had to be skated on a circle, its turns' points either pointing up or down or lying along the figure's long axis. For the double three, the points of both threes had to be directed towards the center of each circle, and had to divide the circle into three equal curves. The middle curve had to divide the circles into halves by the figure's long axis. The paragraph double three, which was executed at the highest levels of competition, was done by tracing "two circles with two turns at each circle, all on one foot from one push-off". The paragraph double three was difficult to accomplish because the shape and placement of the turns had to be perfectly symmetrical, the turns had to be done on a true edge with no scrapes on the ice, and the circles had to be the same size and exactly round. All combined compulsory figures are illustrated below:

Judging
Der Spiegel compared judging compulsory figures to the work of forensic scientists. After the skaters completed tracing figures, the judges scrutinized the circles made, and the process was repeated twice more. According to Randy Harvey, compulsory figures took five hours to complete at U.S. National Championships and eight hours at World Championships. At the 1983 European Championships, the compulsory segment began at 8 am, and lasted six hours. According to Louise Radnofsky, who claimed that the execution of figures could be "very boring—and worse to watch", the most exciting physical move was a change of direction. Radnofsky also stated, "Results of a performance were generally visible only to skaters and judges before being swept away".

The ISU published a judges' handbook describing what judges needed to look for during compulsory figure competitions in 1961. Skaters were judged on the ease and flow of their movement around the circles, the accuracy of the shapes of their bodies, and the accuracy of the prints traced on the ice. Judges took note of the following: scrapes, double tracks that indicated that both edges of their blades were in contact with the ice simultaneously, deviations from a perfect circle, how closely the tracings from each repetition followed each other, how well the loops lined up, and other errors.

title: Compulsory figures


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Military operation

A military operation (op) is the coordinated military actions of a state, or a non-state actor, in response to a developing situation. These actions are designed as a military plan to resolve the situation in the state or actor's favor. Operations may be of a combat or non-combat nature and may be referred to by a code name for the purpose of national security. Military operations are often known for their more generally accepted common usage names than their actual operational objectives.

Types of military operations
Military operations can be classified by the scale and scope of force employment, and their impact on the wider conflict. The scope of military operations can be:

 * Theater: this describes an operation over a large, often continental, area of operation and represents a strategic national commitment to the conflict, such as Operation Barbarossa, with general goals that encompass areas of consideration outside the military, such as the economic and political impact of military goals on areas concerned.
 * Campaign: this describes either a subset of the theatre of operation, or a more limited geographic and operational strategic commitment, such as the Battle of Britain, and need not represent total national commitment to a conflict, or have broader goals outside the military impact.
 * Battle: this describes a subset of a campaign that will have specific military goals and geographic objectives, as well as clearly defined use of forces, such as the Battle of Gallipoli, which operationally was a combined arms operation originally known as the "Dardanelles landings" as part of the Dardanelles Campaign, where about 480,000 Allied troops took part.
 * Engagement: this describes a tactical combat event or contest for a specific area or objective by actions of distinct units. For example, the Battle of Kursk, also known from its German designation as Operation Citadel, included many separate engagements, several of which were combined into the Battle of Prokhorovka. The Battle of Kursk, in addition to describing the initial German offensive operation, also included two Soviet counter-offensive operations: Operation Kutuzov and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev.
 * Strike: this describes a single attack, upon a specified target. This often forms part of a broader engagement. Strikes have an explicit goal, such as rendering facilities such as airports inoperable, assassinating enemy leaders, or limiting the delivery of supplies to enemy troops.

Definition
Parallel to and reflecting this framework for operations are organized elements within the armed forces which prepare for and conduct operations at various levels of war. While there is a general correlation between the size of units, the area within which they operate, and the scope of mission they perform, the correlation is not absolute. In fact, it is ultimately the mission that a unit performs that determines the level of war within which it operates.

Operational level of war
The operational level of war occupies roughly the middle ground between the campaign's strategic focus and the tactics of an engagement. It describes "a distinct intermediate level of war between military strategy, governing war in general, and tactics, involving individual battles". For example, during World War II, the concept applied to use of Soviet Tank Armies.

title: Military operation


text:
File:Aja album cover.jpg

Summary
Cover of the Steely Dan album Aja.

Fair use rationale for Aja (album)
This image is being linked here; though the picture is subject to copyright, it is asserted that it is covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
 * 1) It is a low resolution copy of a CD album cover.
 * 2) It does not limit the copyright owner's rights to sell the CD album in any way.
 * 3) Copies could not be used to make illegal copies of the album artwork on another CD.
 * 4) The image on the cover is significant because it was made by a famous band, Steely Dan.
 * 5) It is only being used to illustrate the album in question.

title: File:Aja album cover.jpg


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Regions of Tajikistan

Administratively, Tajikistan is divided into:

 * one autonomous region (автономная область; вилояти мухтор)
 * two regions (вилоятҳо, ), sing. viloyat,, область/вилоят)
 * the districts under republic subordination
 * the capital city, Dushanbe.

List of regions

 * Notes:

Administrative divisions
Each region is divided into districts (ноҳия, nohiya or район, rayon), which are further subdivided into municipal units: either as urban municipalities called either as cities (шаҳр, "cities") or towns (шаҳрак, "towns"), or as rural municipalities called jamoats (ҷамоати деҳот, "village communes"), which in turn are further subdivided into villages/settlements (деҳа or қишлоқ, "villages/hamlets").

As of 2020, Tajikistan has a total of 47 (not including 4 districts of the capital city Dushanbe) districts; prior to 2017 it had about 58.

title: Regions of Tajikistan


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Voodoo Science

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud is a book published in 2000 by physics professor Robert L. Park, critical of research that falls short of adhering to the scientific method. Other people have used the term "voodoo science", but amongst academics it is most closely associated with Park. Park offers no explanation as to why he appropriated the word voodoo to describe the four categories detailed below. The book is critical of, among other things, homeopathy, cold fusion and the International Space Station.

Categories
Park uses the term voodoo science (see the quote section below, Page 10) as covering four categories which evolve from self-delusion to fraud:

 * pathological science, wherein genuine scientists deceive themselves
 * junk science, speculative theorizing which bamboozles rather than enlightens
 * pseudoscience proper, work falsely claiming to have a scientific basis, which may be dependent on supernatural explanations
 * fraudulent science, exploiting bad science for the purposes of fraud

Park criticizes junk science as the creature of "scientists, many of whom have impressive credentials, who craft arguments deliberately intended to deceive or confuse."

Examples cited
Park also discusses the Daubert standard for excluding junk science from litigation.
 * Perpetual motion, free energy suppression and fringe physics claims
 * Robert Fludd
 * Garabed T. K. Giragossian
 * The Energy Machine of Joseph Newman
 * Better World Technologies (Dennis Lee)
 * Blacklight Power, formerly HydroCatalysis (Randell Mills)
 * Cold fusion (Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann)
 * Patterson Power Cell (James Patterson)
 * Gravitational shielding (Eugene Podkletnov)
 * Human spaceflight (in terms of actual importance to science since the rise of robotic spacecraft)
 * International Space Station (for claims of necessity to conduct scientific research)
 * Gerard K. O'Neill, L5 Society and space colonization
 * Robert Zubrin, Mars Society, Biosphere 2 and a human mission to Mars
 * Voodoo science protected by government secrecy
 * Project Mogul and the Roswell UFO incident resulting in a loss of public trust, as well as the later alien autopsy video hoax
 * Edward Teller and Lowell Wood's work on the Strategic Defense Initiative (especially regarding the X-ray laser, but also "Brilliant Pebbles")
 * Great Oil Sniffer Hoax
 * Superstitions and pseudoscience
 * Mars effect (astrology) claimed by Michel Gauquelin
 * Parapsychology (e.g. Robert G. Jahn and Dean Radin)
 * Placebos and alternative medicine
 * Vitamin O
 * Homeopathy
 * water memory (proposed by Jacques Benveniste)
 * Animal magnetism
 * Magnet therapy
 * Therapeutic touch (debunked by Emily Rosa at age nine)
 * Other health claims
 * Maharishi Effect (using Transcendental Meditation (TM) to effect a decrease in societal violence; the spike in murders during the 1993 Washington D.C. study is specifically mentioned)
 * Deepak Chopra (who makes claims linking Ayurveda (traditional medicine native to India) with quantum mechanics)
 * Electromagnetic radiation and health (especially related to power lines and cancer risk)
 * "Paul Brodeur and Microwave News in particular, had given the public a seriously distorted view of the scientific facts." (Page 158)
 * Contributing factors
 * Mainstream media reporting voodoo science uncritically as infotainment
 * Abolition of the Office of Technology Assessment
 * Establishment of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Quotes

 * I came to realize that many people choose scientific beliefs the same way they choose to be Methodists, or Democrats, or Chicago Cubs fans. They judge science by how well it agrees with the way they want the world to be. (Pages VIII-IX)
 * [P]ractitioners [of pseudoscience] may believe it to be science, just as witches and faith healers may truly believe they can call forth supernatural powers. What may begin as an honest error, however, has a way of evolving through almost imperceptible steps from self-delusion to fraud. The line between foolishness and fraud is thin. Because it is not always easy to tell when that line is crossed, I use the term voodoo science to cover them all: pathological science, junk science, pseudoscience and fraudulent science. This book is meant to help the reader to recognize voodoo science and to understand the forces that seem to conspire to keep it alive. (Page 10)
 * The integrity of science is anchored in the willingness of scientists to test their ideas and results in direct confrontation with their scientific peers. (Page 16)
 * America's astronauts have been left stranded in low-Earth orbit, like passengers waiting beside an abandoned stretch of track for a train that will never come, bypassed by the advance of science. (Page 91)
 * Few scientists or inventors set out to commit fraud. In the beginning, most believe they have made a great discovery.  But what happens when they finally realize that things are not behaving as they believed? (Page 104)
 * [T]he uniquely American myth of the self-educated genius fighting against a pompous, close-minded establishment. (Page 112)
 * They are betting against the laws of thermodynamics. No one has ever won that wager. (Page 138)

Warning signs
Drawing on examples used in Voodoo Science, Park outlined seven warning signs that a claim may be pseudoscientific in a 2003 article for The Chronicle of Higher Education:

 * 1) Discoverers make their claims directly to the popular media, rather than to fellow scientists.
 * 2) Discoverers claim that a conspiracy has tried to suppress the discovery.
 * 3) The claimed effect appears so weak that observers can hardly distinguish it from noise.  No amount of further work increases the signal.
 * 4) Anecdotal evidence is used to back up the claim.
 * 5) True believers cite ancient traditions in support of the new claim.
 * 6) The discoverer or discoverers work in isolation from the mainstream scientific community.
 * 7) The discovery, if true, would require a change in the understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

Reception
Matt Nisbet in the Skeptical Inquirer noted that the reaction to Voodoo Science has been mostly favorable.

Bob Goldstein in a book review for Nature Cell Biology described Park as an equivalent to Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, scientific writers who have "talent for defending a view of the world that is perfectly rational and free of witchcraft and superstition."

American chemist Nicholas Turro wrote "the book is entertaining and provocative reading... Whether or not you agree with Park's take on voodoo science, a message of the book is that if scientists do not take a more significant role in the way that science is disseminated to the public and especially to politicians, voodoo science will continue to survive."

The mathematician Malcolm Sherman in the American Scientist gave the book a positive review stating "Park does more than analyze and expose various kinds of bad ("voodoo") science. He demonstrates how valid science is distorted or ignored by the media and by those (including scientists) seeking to influence public policy." The physicist Kenneth R. Foster also positively reviewed the book concluding "Park is an articulate and skeptical voice of reason about science."

Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Ed Regis compared it positively to the 1957 book by Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, calling Voodoo Science a "worthy successor" and praising it for explaining why various purportedly scientific claims were in fact impossible. Science writer Kendrick Frazier wrote "Robert Park has brought us a book that has a freshness and originality—and an importance and potential for influence—perhaps not seen since Gardner’s first."

Robin McKie for The Observer described it as "an admirable analysis: wittily written, vivid and put together without a hint of malice."

Rachel Hay in a review wrote that Park had "debunked expertly" pseudoscience topics such as homeopathy, cold fusion and perpetual motion machines but the book is not easily accessible to students. However, S. Elizabeth Bird an anthropology professor recommended it for "students who need to establish a grasp of the scientific method."

Bruce Lewenstein wrote a critical review claiming Park had lumped together pathological science, junk science, pseudoscience and fraud all together as voodoo science but this is problematic as "each category alone is fraught with definitional, historical, and analytical difficulties." Brian Josephson wrote that the book, while giving "the official story regarding a number of 'mistaken beliefs' ", did not provide "the additional information that might lead one to conclude that the official view does not tell the whole story."

Debunking

 * 1023 Campaign
 * Flim-Flam!
 * Frye standard

title: Voodoo Science


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M4 (missile)

The M4 was a French submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) deployed on the nuclear Redoutable-class submarines (except the Redoutable herself, which was not refitted).

They entered service on 1 May 1985. They were the first French MIRV-capable nuclear missiles, with six 150 kilotonne warheads.

They were replaced by the improved M45 SLBM missile which was in service aboard the Triomphant-class submarine.

Operators

 * French Navy
 * French Navy

title: M4 (missile)


text:
Burning times

Burning times may refer to:

 * In neopaganism, a term for the Witch trials in the Early Modern period
 * The Burning Times, a 1990 documentary about the Early Modern European witchcraft trials
 * Burning Times (album), an album by Christy Moore
 * "Burning Times", a song by Iced Earth from the album Something Wicked This Way Comes
 * "Burning Times", a song by Inkubus Sukkubus from the album Wytches
 * "The Burning Times", a song by Testament from the album Demonic

title: Burning times


text:
Jason Schmidt

Jason David Schmidt (born January 29, 1973), is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher. In his career, he has played for the Los Angeles Dodgers (2007–2009), San Francisco Giants (2001–06), Pittsburgh Pirates (1996–2001) and Atlanta Braves (1995–96), by whom he had been drafted in the eighth round, 206th overall, of the 1991 draft.

High school
Schmidt attended Kelso High School in Kelso, Washington, where he played football and basketball in addition to baseball. In 1991 as a senior he tossed a no-hitter, striking out 20 of 21 batters he faced. He was named Washington's Gatorade State Player of the Year and All-State MVP in baseball. He was offered a scholarship to the University of Arizona but chose to sign with the Atlanta Braves after they drafted him in the eighth round of the 1991 MLB Draft.

Early days in the Braves organization
Schmidt made his professional debut with the Gulf Coast Braves in 1991, starting eleven games and finishing with a 3–4 record and 2.38 ERA. He worked his way through the Braves farm system from 1992 to 1995, playing with the Pulaski Braves (1992-rookie league), Macon Braves (1992-Class A), Durham Bulls (1993-Class A), Greenville Braves (1994-Class AA) and Richmond Braves (1995-Class AAA).

He made his major league debut in relief on April 28, 1995, against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Schmidt recorded his first ML victory in his first start, pitching eight scoreless innings against the Chicago Cubs on September 3, 1995.

In 1996 he started the season in the Braves rotation but also spent time in Richmond and on the disabled list before he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates (with Ron Wright) for Denny Neagle on August 30, 1996.

Pittsburgh Pirates
As a member of the Pirates, Schmidt won 10, 11, and 13 games in 1997, 1998, and 1999, respectively. However, he was on a losing team each season in Pittsburgh. He was the last player on the team to wear number 42, as all of Major League Baseball retired it for Jackie Robinson in 1997, except those who chose to keep the number (e.g. Mariano Rivera). Schmidt then switched to number 22 for the remainder of his stay with the team, and wore number 29 after leaving the Pirates.

San Francisco Giants
Schmidt was then acquired by the Giants in 2001 with John Vander Wal in exchange for Armando Ríos and Ryan Vogelsong. Schmidt saw more success in San Francisco. Between his stints in Pittsburgh and San Francisco during the 2001 season, Schmidt compiled thirteen wins. Schmidt re-signed as a free agent with San Francisco that winter, in what would become a five-year $41 million deal. He went on to win thirteen again in 2002 when the Giants made a World Series appearance, but lost to the Anaheim Angels. Schmidt started Games 1 and 5 of the 2002 World Series, picking up the win in Game 1 and a no-decision in Game 5. In 2003, he won 17 games. Schmidt threw a 2–0 shutout in Game 1 of the 2003 NLDS, beating Josh Beckett, but his team lost once again in the playoffs, this time to the Florida Marlins. Schmidt was an All-Star this year as well as the league leader with a 2.34 earned run average. He placed second to Éric Gagné in the 2003 National League Cy Young Award voting.

On May 18, 2004, Jason Schmidt pitched a one-hitter against the Chicago Cubs and Matt Clement. The Giants won the game, 1–0. This performance was overshadowed by Randy Johnson's perfect game against the Atlanta Braves the same day. Schmidt also pitched a one-hitter against the Boston Red Sox one month later on June 20, 2004. Schmidt would go on to win 18 games in 2004 and be voted the TSN Pitcher of the Year in the National League, and fourth in Cy Young voting. He also set a San Francisco single-season record of 251 strikeouts, which was broken when Tim Lincecum struck out 265 in 2008.

On June 6, at AT&T Park, in a 2-1 win over the Florida Marlins, Schmidt pitched a complete game and struck out a career-high 16 batters. The game included a ninth-inning wild pitch that moved base runners to second and third with no outs. Schmidt struck out the final three batters of the game, starting with cleanup hitter Miguel Cabrera, Josh Willingham and Jeremy Hermida. Not only did he tie the franchise all-time single-game strikeouts record originally set by Christy Mathewson of the New York Giants on October 3,, against the St. Louis Cardinals, but he also surpassed Gaylord Perry's San Francisco Giants single-game strikeouts record, when Perry struck out 15 batters on July 22, , against the Philadelphia Phillies. In addition, he set AT&T Park's individual single-game strikeout record in the short history of the ballpark.

Los Angeles Dodgers
Schmidt signed a three-year, $47 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers prior to the 2007 season. After only three starts he missed forty-five days with a right shoulder injury before being reactivated from the disabled list (DL) on June 5. He started three games after his return from the DL, the last two created more concern. On June 18 he was returned to the DL and underwent exploratory surgery to find the cause of his ineffectiveness. The damage to his shoulder was more severe than expected and he missed the rest of the 2007 season due to injury. The Dodgers hoped to have Schmidt back before the end of the 2008 season, but manager Joe Torre later said that Schmidt would not be back, making only a few rehab starts in the minors during the year.

Heading into 2009, Schmidt was expected to compete for a spot in the Dodgers' rotation but pitched poorly in spring training and began the season once more on the disabled list. After several rehab starts in the minors, Schmidt was activated on July 20, 2009, to start against the Cincinnati Reds, his first appearance in a Major League game since 2007. He went five innings, allowed three runs and picked up the win. He made another start on July 26 against the Florida Marlins, but pitched poorly and allowed five runs (four earned) in three innings and was credited with the loss. He started against the Atlanta Braves on July 31 and pitched six shutout innings, getting the win as the Dodgers won 5–0. On August 7, he was again placed on the DL, with Torre speculating that Schmidt's career might be over.

Accomplishments

 * 3× MLB All-Star (2003–2004, 2006)

Records
San Francisco Giants Records
 * 16 strikeouts in a single-game on June 6,, against the Florida Marlins at AT&T Park (tied with Christy Mathewson)

Personal life
Schmidt and his wife Bethany have three children: Makynlee (born January 14, 2001), Mason (born January 29, 2004), and Madden (born April 22, 2007). Schmidt's mother Vicki died from brain cancer on April 22, 2003, at age 53.

title: Jason Schmidt