Adoniram Judson

Jason G. Duesing, Jason G. Duesing

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781433678363
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito religioso

On February 19, 1812, Adoniram Judson, his wife Ann, and a few others set sail for the Far East from their American homeland. The launching of these missionaries by a newly formed outreach society marked the beginning of Americans formally joining the modem missions movement.With the advent of 2012 comes recognition of the bicentennial of Judson's departure and official start of the American missionary enterprise. This volume seeks to honor the life and mission of Judson while retelling his story for a new generation. With the occasion of the 200-year anniversary of Judson's departure as a fitting context for such a presentation, the his- torians, theologians, and missiologists writing here under the guidance of editor Jason G. Duesing have endeavored not only to serve as Judson's biographers of past events, but also as his interpreters of what they hope will take place in the present and future.Contributors include Paige Patterson, Michael A. G. Haykin, Robert Caldwell, Nathan A. Finn, Candi Finch, Keith E. Eitel, Gregory A. Wills, and Daniel L. Akin.

Chapter 1

Just before Judson

The Significance of William Carey’s Life, Thought, and Ministry1

Michael A. G. Haykin

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The long eighteenth century (1688–1815) saw the English-speaking people, in the face of almost constant war with their French neighbors, establish themselves as the masters of a far-flung empire that encircled the globe. It was in the middle of this century that British troops under the command of Robert Clive (1725–74) defeated a French army in India at the battle of Plassey, which paved the way for the British conquest of Bengal and later all of India. Two years later on September 13, 1759, General James Wolfe (1727–59) defeated the French General Louis Joseph Montcalm (1712–59) at the battle of the Plains of Abraham, then outside the walls of the city of Quebec. Though Wolfe was killed in this engagement, the British victory meant the end of French rule in Canada. Ten or so years later, Captain James Cook (1728–79), a British naval officer, entered upon his world-changing discoveries in the South Pacific, discovering and mapping the coastlines of New Zealand and Australia. There was, of course, one notable loss during this century, namely, the jewel of this empire, the American colonies, who revolted in the final third of the century and established a nation independent of their fellow Anglophones’s empire.

Running parallel to this empire building by the British, though distinct from it, came the kingdom building by English-speaking missionaries. Until the latter part of the eighteenth century, evangelical Christianity was primarily confined to northern Europe and the Atlantic seaboard of North America. But suddenly in the last decade of the century, it was especially English-speaking evangelicals who began to launch out from these two geographical regions and establish churches throughout Asia, Africa, and Australasia. This endeavor, which is often called the modern missionary movement, made of Christianity a truly global faith and must be regarded as the most salient event in the history of Western churches since the Reformation. To be sure, the eighteenth-century missionary movement had earlier historical precedents,2 but the energy with which and scale upon which Western Christian missionaries set out to evangelize the world was a tremendously important turning point in the history of Western Christianity.

Among these missionaries is, of course, Adoniram Judson (1788−1850), the main subject of this book. The shape of Judson’s cross-cultural ministry, though, would have been completely different without another central figure in this missionary movement, namely, William Carey (1761−1834), who has often been described as “the Father of modern missions.” Since there were other Europeans and Anglophones involved in cross-cultural mission before Carey, some have argued that this moniker is quite inaccurate. Ultimately, though, it is a moot point, for there is absolutely no gainsaying the fact that Carey played a major role in the genesis of the modern missionary movement and in shaping Judson’s ministry. This chapter examines the formation of Carey as a mission-minded Christian, along with key aspects of his thought and ministry, both of which influenced Judson and make for an instructive comparison with those of Judson.

How to Interpret the Life of Carey

“Such a man as Carey is more to me than bishop or archbishop: he is an apostle.” This was the estimate that the evangelical Anglican John Newton (1725–1807) once expressed about Carey while the latter was still alive. On another occasion, Newton wrote that he did not look for miracles in his own day on the order of those done in the apostolic era. Yet, he went on, “If God were to work one in our day, I should not wonder if it were in favour of Dr. Carey.”3 Interestingly enough, when, in 1826, two missionaries by the names of George Bennet and Daniel Tyerman happened to visit Carey in India (by that time he had been laboring there more than 30 years), they were struck by what they called his “apostolic appearance.”4

But Carey’s opinion of himself was quite different. He once told his nephew Eustace Carey (1791–1855) that he was essentially “a plodder.”5 In other words, his achievements were not the work of an inspired apostle, but the product of grit, gumption, and, he would have wanted to add, divine grace. Carey was quite conscious that he did not merit being decked out with a halo like some medieval saint, something that the later Baptist and evangelical tradition—following Newton’s lead?—has done. In the final analysis, Carey was convinced that he had simply done his duty as a servant of Christ.6 And for Carey that duty had begun about 55 years prior to his death, when he first fled to Christ for “strength and righteousness.”

Carey’s Family Background

William Carey was born of poor parents in 1761 in a tiny village called Paulerspury in the heart of Northamptonshire. Carey’s parents were staunch Anglicans. His father, Edmund (d.1816), the schoolmaster of Paulerspury, was what was known as the parish clerk. According to William Cowper (1731–1800), the evangelical hymn-writer and close friend of John Newton, the parish clerk had to “pronounce the amen to prayers and announce the sermon,” lead the chants and the responses during the church service, keep the church register of baptisms, marriages, and burials, and chase “dogs out of church and force . . . unwilling youngsters in.”7 Thus, young William was regularly taken to church. Of this early acquaintance with the Church of England, Carey later wrote:

Having been accustomed from my infancy to read the Scriptures, I had a considerable acquaintance therewith, especially with the historical parts. I . . . have no doubt but the constant reading of the Psalms, Lessons, etc. in the parish church, which I was obliged to attend regularly, tended to furnish my mind with a general Scripture knowledge. [But] of real experimental religion I scarcely heard anything till I was fourteen years of age.8

A Passion for Flowers

Also living in Paulerspury was William’s uncle, Peter Carey. Peter had served with General James Wolfe in Canada during the French and Indian War (a.k.a. the Seven Years’ War), and had seen action at the British capture of the citadel of Quebec in 1759, two years before William was born. Peter subsequently returned to England and worked in Paulerspury as a gardener. His tales of Canada almost certainly awakened in young William an unquenchable interest in far-off lands.

Peter also implanted in young William a love of gardens and flowers that remained with him all of his life. When, years later, Carey was established in India, he had five acres of garden under cultivation. Cultivating this garden served as a welcome means of relaxation amid the stresses and strains of ministry in India. It was of this garden that his son Jonathan later remarked, “Here he [i.e., his father] enjoyed his most pleasant moments of secret meditation and devotion.”9

John Warr

Not surprisingly, so much did young Carey love gardening that he wanted to become a gardener like his uncle Peter. At this point in his life, however, Carey suffered from a skin disease that made it very painful for him to spend large amounts of time in the full sun (it is interesting to note that when Carey went to India, he spent a considerable amount of time in the sun, but with no recurrence of this skin disease). And so, in his mid-teens, his father apprenticed him to a shoemaker named Clarke Nichols who lived in Piddington, about seven miles away from his home.

This apprenticeship was to have very significant consequences for William, for one of his fellow apprentices was a Christian. His name was John Warr. He was a Congregationalist and was used of God to bring Carey to Christ. It was known for a long time that Carey’s salvation had come partly as the result of the witness of one of his fellow apprentices. Until the First World War, however, the name of this apprentice had been completely lost. During that war it was found in a letter of Carey’s that had only then come to light. It is a powerful illustration of how the faithful witness of one believer can have immense significance.

At first, when Warr shared his faith with Carey, Carey resisted. It is vital to recall that he was the product of a staunch Anglican home and that he had learned to look down on, indeed despise, anyone who was not an Anglican, that is, not part of the state church. For many, to be English was to be Anglican. But John persisted in his attempts to win Carey for Christ. He lent him books and then invited him to attend on a regular basis the mid-week gathering of Congregationalists in Hackleton, a nearby village, for prayer and Bible study. Carey went and came under deep conviction. He tried to reform his life: to give up lying and swearing, and to take up prayer. But at this point he did not realize that a definite change in his lifestyle could only occur when he had been given, in the language of Scripture, a new heart.

Coupled with Warr’s testimony was an important lesson that young Carey learned from a traumatic incident that took place at Christmas, 1777. It was the custom for apprentices at that time of the year to be given small amounts of money from the trades-people with whom their masters had business. Carey had to go to Northampton to make some purchases for his master as well as for himself. At one particular shop, that of an ironmonger—that is, a hardware dealer—called Hall, he was personally given a counterfeit shilling as a joke. When Carey discovered the worthless coin he decided, not without some qualms of conscience, to pass it off to his employer. Appropriating a good shilling from the money that Nichols had given him, he included the counterfeit shilling among the change for his master. On the way back to Piddington, he even prayed that if God enabled his dishonesty to go undetected he would break with sin from that time forth!

But, Carey commented many years later, “A gracious God did not get me through.”10 Carey’s dishonesty was discovered, he was covered with shame and disgrace, and he became afraid to go out in the village where he lived for fear of what others were thinking about him. By this means, Carey was led, he subsequently said, to “see much more of myself than I had ever done before, and to seek for mercy with greater earnestness.”11 That mercy he found as over the next two years he came to “depend on a crucified Saviour for pardon and salvation.”12

Baptist Convictions and Meeting John Ryland

William Carey continued to go with John Warr to the prayer meetings in Hackleton, but it was not until February 10, 1779, that he actually attended a worship service. On that particular day a man named Thomas Chater (d. 1811), a resident of Olney, was preaching. Chater’s text has not been recorded, but in his sermon he did quote that powerful exhortation in Hebrews 13:13 (KJV): “Let us go forth therefore unto him [i.e., Jesus] without the camp, bearing his reproach.” On the basis of this verse Chater urged upon his hearers “the necessity of following Christ entirely.” As Carey listened to Chater’s exhortation, his interpretation of this text and of the preacher’s words was one that he would later describe as “very crude.” He distinctly felt that God was calling him to leave the Church of England, where, in his particular parish church, he was sitting under “a lifeless, carnal ministry,” and to unite with a Dissenting congregation. Since the Church of England was established by the law of the land, he reasoned, its members were “prot...

Table of contents

• Adoniram Judson
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Historical Foundation
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Biographical Presentation
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Missiological and Theological Evaluation
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Homiletical Interpretation
• Chapter 8
• Conclusion