RELG 330 - History of Christianity
Course Notes
Missionaries
The textbook does not mention many of the leaders of early missionary activity. This page will list some of them, in roughly chronological order
Henry Richards was a missionary to the Congo who was willing to give up all his possessions in obedience to Jesus' message in Luke. This impressed the tribesmen he was working amongst - but it was still 8 years before one of them became a Christian.
Abdul Masih (1776-1826) was an Indian missionary, who was born into a Muslim family and became a Muslim scholar. He met Henry Martyn and heard him preaching, and became a Christian (1811). On baptism, he took the name Abdul Masih (Servant of the Messiah). He worked for 8 years with the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society, then was ordained as a Lutheran pastor.
In 1825 he re-joined the Anglican Church and was ordained as a priest. He traveled around India, engaging Muslims in dialogue so that he could introduce them to the Christian Gospel. He became ill and died in 1827
Daniel Wilson (1778-1858) was one of the Clapham Sect who started his ministry as an Anglican clergyman in England, and was appointed as Bishop of Calcutta (India) when he was over 50 years old in 1832. He tried to reform the caste system in India. Due to his ministry and evangelism, thousands of Indians became Christians.
Henry Martyn (1781-1812) was an Anglican missionary to India and Persia (what is now Iran). He was an undergraduate at Cambridge University when he heard Charles Simeon speaking of William Carey's missionary work in India. After that, he read an account of the life of David Brainerd and his mission to Native Americans, and felt the call to become a missionary himself. He was ordained as an Anglican priest, and went to India as a Chaplain with the British East India Company (1806).
He translated the New Testament into Urdu (the language of what is now Pakistan) and Persian. He traveled to Persia, and arranged to have a New Testament given to the Shah of Persia. He had caught a fever, and it was decided that he should return to England, but when he reached Tokat (in northern Turkey) he was too ill to travel further. He died there in 1812.
Robert Morrison (1782-1834) translated the Bible into Chinese (it took him 25 years), and arranged for the scriptures to be distributed. His father was a shoemaker, and Robert followed his father into that trade, but in 1801 felt called to be a missionary, and started to learn Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and theology. In 1803 he started training as a Congregational minister, and started preaching and work among the poor and the sick. His mother did not want him to leave her, but she died in 1804, and he was free to join the London Missionary Society, where it was decided that he should go to China. So he started to learn Chinese while also studying medicine.
He was ordained in 1807 and set off for China via America. China was very antagonistic towards foreigners - they allowed a few traders, but that was all, and they would not teach their language to foreigners. The Roman Catholic missionaries who were already in China were also antagonistic towards Protestant missionaries.
Morrison tried dressing and eating like a Chinese, but it seemed to make the Chinese more suspicious of him, so he went back to wearing Western dress. He was almost destitute, and his health was suffering, but he continued to work, and learned both Cantonese and Mandarin. In 1809 he met and married Mary Morton in Macau (at that time a Portuguese colony in China), and was appointed as a translator for the East India Company. Morrison returned to Guangzhou, but left his wife in Macao, as European women were not allowed to live in Guagzhou. In 1813 he had completed the translation of the New Testament, and printed it. He arranged for distribution through-out the region. During this time, the Chinese government decreed the death penalty for printing and publishing Christian literature, and Morrison was accused of undermining Chinese religion.
Morrison left China temporarily, and went to England during 1824-1825, where he taught Chinese and aroused the interest of the people for China.
He returned to China in 1826, and was successful in equipping native Chinese converts to continue the work. He died in 1834 in Guangzhou, and was buried in Macao.
John Williams (1796-1839) was a missionary in the South Pacific. He started a career as a foundry worker, but felt a call to missions, and the London Missionary Society commissioned him in 1817 and sent him and his wife to Tahiti. They visited many of the islands in the South Pacific and established mission stations.
He published the New Testament in the Rarotongan language. Although he had a wide-reaching missions network, he was killed and eaten by cannibals when he visited the island of Erromanga to try to evangelize them.
Francois Liberman (1802-1852) was born into a Jewish family, but became an agnostic, and then a Christian in 1826. He formed a Roman Catholic missionary order to ex-slaves in Reunion, Haiti, and Mauritius. The order was merged with the "Congregation of the Holy Ghost" and they became the "Holy Ghost Fathers" (or the Spiritans)
Johann Krapf (1810-1881) was a German explorer who was also a missionary - he was one of the first Europeans to see Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro, and to explore the East coast of Africa.
Before becoming a missionary explorer he was a Lutheran village pastor in southern Germany. He joined with an Anglican group (the Church Missionary Society) to go on a mission to Ethiopia (1837-1842). He then started his exploration of East Africa, and started work on several African languages and Bible translations.
Samuel Joseph Isaac Schereschewski (1831-1906), (or Schereshewsky) (pronounced sher-eh-SHEV-ski) was born in Lithuania, as a member of a Jewish family. His family wished him to become a rabbi, and he was studying in rabbinic school when he was given a copy of the New Testament in Hebrew. As he studied the New Testament, he was convinced that Jesus did fulfill the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and he left rabbinic school and traveled to Germany for further study.
He emigrated to the USA in 1854, and was baptized in a Baptist church in 1855. He studied, first with the Baptists, then the Presbyterians, and then with the Episcopal Church, where he was ordained as a deacon in 1859. By this time he had been accepted as a missionary to China.
After his arrival in China he was ordained as an Episcopalian priest (in 1869), and served as a missionary in Peking, where he founded a Christian College and worked on translating the Bible into Chinese dialects. In 1877 he was made the Episcopal bishop of China, but he resigned in 1883 when he started to develop Parkinson's disease and was stricken with paralysis and confined to a wheelchair.
In 1895 he moved to Shanghai to continue his translation work, completing a Mandarin Bible in 1895, and a Wenli Bible in 1902. He typed the last 2,000 pages with the middle finger of his partially crippled hand.
Four years before his death he said: "I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted."
He died in Tokyo in 1906.
James Hannington (1847-1885) was an English Anglican clergyman, who felt the call to go as a missionary to Africa. Two missionaries had already been murdered, and James' Hannington's health had been endangered by the climate of Africa, but he set out in 1884 to travel to Buganda, where there had been a Kabaka (King) who had claimed to be a Christian. However, that Kabaka had died, and his 16-year-old son Mwanga was the new Kabaka and was very antagonistic towards Christianity. On arrival in Buganda, James Hannington was imprisoned for eight days, and was then shot to death by the Kabaka's men. His last recorded words were "Go tell your master that I have purchased the road to Uganda with my blood"
When news of his murder reached Britain, 53 more young men applied to the Church Missionary Society to become missionaries in his place.
Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe (ca.1860-1885) was sent by his family at the age of 14 to be a page boy at the court of the Kabaka of Buganda. Roman Catholic missionaries came to Buganda in 1879 and Mukasa started to learn about Christianity, and was given the name of Joseph when he was baptized in 1882. Later that same year, the Roman Catholic missionaries left Buganda because the situation there was unsafe, and Joseph Mukasa became the leader of the group of African Christians who remained. Joseph Mukasa remained at court, and became the Majordomo (court official) to the new young Kabaka, Mwanga II. However, there was increasing tension between Mukasa and Mwanga. Mukasa had interceded when some of the Christian converts were being persecuted, and he rebuked Mwanga for the murder of James Hannington. He also rescued some of the African boy pages from Mwanga's sexual abuse.
In retaliation, Mwanga ordered that Mukasa be burned alive. When facing death, he told his executioner "Tell Mwanga he has condemned me unjustly, but I forgive him with all my heart."
The executioner was so moved by Mukasa's conduct, that he killed him swiftly with a knife, and then burned his body.
Mwanga fell into a rage, and ordered all the Christian converts in his court to choose between Christianity and complete obedience to himself and his sexual desires. At least 22 Roman Catholic young men and boys - one only 14 years old, refused to renounce their faith, and were burnt to death. They are now commemorated as the Martyrs of Uganda. Mwanga's persecution continued, and both Protestant and Roman Catholic converts were either speared or burned to death.
Copyright © 2005 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
