Well, I have just begun this book and have come across this timely observation:

Kierkegaard’s activity as a writer, he says, was missionary activity on behalf of Christianity. His mission work, unlike that of missionaries to regions previously unchurched, was entirely a work of reflection designed to take account of the fact that the pagans in his mission field thought they were Christians. Suppose you’re a missionary and go to some far-off country to convert the native population to Christianity, but when you get there, the people claim to be Christians already. You are delighted that God has so wonderfully anticipated your arrival. But when you learn their language, talk to them, and observe their way of life, you find that they live in deeply unchristian ways, think about themselves and the world in which they live in very different categories from the Christian ones, and have aims and projects starkly alien to Christianity. You decide to stay among them and try to convert them to real Christianity. But their conviction that they are already Christians makes your project awkward.

Robert C. Roberts, Recovering Christian Character: The Psychological Wisdom of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. C. Stephen Evans and Paul Martens, Kierkegaard as a Christian Thinker (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2022), 1–2.