THE “GREAT CENTURY” OF MISSIONS, 1792 – 1910

William Carey Born in 1761 into a poor family in a small village Skin disease Becomes a cobbler Belonged to the Particular Baptists, a nonconformist group Socially, economically, religiously he is on the margins of society I. Birth of the Protestant Missionary Society

William Carey Becomes a pastor of a small Baptist church Challenges his fellow ministers to dedicate one meeting a month to discuss the question, “Does the commission given by our Lord Jesus Christ to His disciples still apply to us today?” I. Birth of the Protestant Missionary Society

In 1792 William Carey authors An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen 1. An enquiry into the obligation of Christians 2. Conversion of the heathen 3. To use means I. Birth of the Protestant Missionary Society

Carey proposed the formation of a mission society: “Suppose a company of serious Christians, ministers and private persons, were to form themselves into a society, and make a number of rules regarding the regulation of the plan, and the persons who are to be employed as missionaries, the means of defraying the expense, etc., etc.” Mobilized thousands of lay volunteers, including women, to go into full-time mission work I. Birth of the Protestant Missionary Society

Some examples: The Baptist Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the Religious Tract Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, etc. These organizations were flexible and could accommodate changing times and visions E.g., Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission (1865)

II. Vernacular Bible Translations Language of the Koran, Upanishads, the Bible Pope Damascus I charges Jerome ( ) to revise the older Latin translations Jerome’s Latin Vulgate – official authorized version of the Bible for the RC Church The Catholic Church resists vernacular translations of the Bible; only three languages to be used to translate the Bible William Tyndale ( ) and Cardinal Wolsey

II. Vernacular Bible Translations Martin Luther’s translation ( ) Robert de Nobili ( ) Ziegenbalg and Plutschau arrived in India in 1706 and Tamil Bible published in 1715 William Carey at the Serampore mission by Nov. 1821: Entire Bible in Bengali, Sanskrit, Hindi, Oriya, Marathi New Testament in fifteen other languages, and portions of the Bible in six more

II. Vernacular Bible Translations William Carey writes to Robert Ralston in Dec. 1827: “The translation of the Sacred Scriptures into the languages of the East, is the work which has from the commencement of the Mission most of all occupied my time and attention, and I bless God that this work has, in several successive editions, been so corrected, that I can leave it to the Indian churches, so far as regards the leading and principle languages of the country, with some degree of confidence.”

II. Vernacular Bible Translations Robert Morrison arrives in China in 1807; translated Bible into Chinese by 1823 Adoniram Judson arrives in Burma in 1812; translated Bible into Burmese by 1834 Robert Moffatt, between 1840 and 1857, translates the Bible into Sechuana During the “Great Century” 400 new language groups received the Bible or the NT in their language Wycliffe Bible Translators asserts: 429 languages have the complete Bible; 1,144 have the NT; 853 have at least one book of the Bible

II. Vernacular Bible Translations Benefits of Bible translation: Cultural affirmation and development of indigenous identity Stirred ethnic consciousness, nurtured nationalism, empowered local cultural agents Mission as translation rather than mission as diffusion Full cultural and theological translatability of the Christian message

Women in other cultures One time outlook of the London Missionary Society: “the word missionary was a ‘male noun which denotes a male actor, male action and male spheres of service’.” Silence of the “Great Century” Women traveled worldwide as evangelists, teachers, catechists, administrators, and even church planters III. Legacy of Women Missionaries

1. Mobilization and Support a. Lay women were often the lifeblood of mission society b. Ann Judson in Burma 2. Professional Employees a.Before 1865 it was wives of missionaries were recruited to fill roles – nurses, teachers

III. Legacy of Women Missionaries 3.Pioneer Missionaries a was a watershed in the history of women in missions b. “the differentiation between male and female candidates and between single and married female workers did not exist” c. Society for Propagating the Gospel (SPG) laid out reasons why women were needed: - medicine, nursing, teaching, relational skills – to develop friendships with educated women - Mission societies started just to recruit women

III. Legacy of Women Missionaries 3.Pioneer Missionaries d. Charlotte “Lottie” Moon ( ) - Went to Tengzhou, China in Moved to Pingtu and started her own work – thirty new Chinese churches, thousands of new Chinese believers were baptized, evangelized in villages, trained new missionaries, published in missions magazines, recruited women missionaries - Gave her food away when a famine was raging, and died on Christmas eve in 1912 on a ship heading back home