American Baptist Research Articles

Baptist Mission in Nineteenth-Century Burma

With determination, zeal, and commitment, American Baptist missionaries arrived in Burma in 1813 and proselytized the ethnic Burman and the ethnic Karen. Whereas their mission efforts among the Burman ended in failure, they converted many Karen to Christianity. This article has explored why they failed among the Burman, but relatively succeeded among the Karen. The thesis of this essay is that American missionaries failed among the Burman, mostly because Buddhism already permeated Burman society for centuries, and that they Christianized many Karen, largely because they still practiced a cosmic religion.

Contested customs in the Naga hills: Baptist reformers, colonial ethnography and the construction of a modern Naga identity

ABSTRACT This paper directs attention to the Naga Hills, an outlying hill district in British India’s Northeast frontier, that became a site of conflict between the early Baptist converts and the non-converts over the nature and authority of customs which were recorded in the colonial archive as ‘Christians vs Ancients’. These conflicts produced two opposing discourses on ‘tribal’ customs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the reformism of the American Baptist missionaries and the romanticism of the colonial anthropologists. However, the path of self-determination that the Nagas chose defied these established paradigms even as they fashioned a modern Naga political identity that appropriated strands of both colonial ethnography and Baptist Christianity. This article contends that the Christian-Ancients conflicts are significant not only for understanding the ideological underpinnings of Naga ethnonationalism but also for providing a historical intervention into contemporary debates on Naga customary law.

"It is an experience which never lacks interest": John Paton Davies' Letters from Postwar Moscow

John Paton Davies Jr. was born in China in 1908 into a family of American Baptist missionaries. Throughout his life he had the warmest relationship with his parents. Davies received his education in the United States and China, graduated from Columbia University in 1931 and immediately entered the diplomatic careers. In 1933, after a short-time service as a Vice-Consul in Windsor, Ontario, he was sent to China and remained there until 1940. In August 1942, John Davies married Patricia Louise Grady (1920–2000), daughter of American diplomat Henry F. Grady (1882–1957), for love. Patricia played a significant part in Davies’ work and was known as a well-educated, keenly observant, and broad-minded person.

Selecting ‘History’: Baptist Mission in Nineteenth Century Naga Hills

The article traces the efforts made by the American Baptist missionaries in the nineteenth century to connect with the local communities of the Naga Hills. The success of the mission has been credited to the mission’s successful use of terminologies drawn from local oral traditions in translating the Bible. While the article builds upon this argument, it also shows that while missionaries turned to such traditions to find context and cultural relevance for their evangelism work or acquire legitimacy for their choices, for example, in the form of selecting the print language for the ‘tribes’, in other instances oral tradition was branded rather as ‘doubtful stories’ and ‘strange legends’. Within this context, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the systematic attack and dismantling of local social and cultural practices sustained by the locals’ oral tradition.

The Latin American Bullring: US Evangelicals and the Reception of Anti-Protestant Violence from Cold War Colombia

In the shadow of the Cuban Revolution, American Baptist preacher Billy Graham and US President John F. Kennedy barnstormed South America through overlapping tours in 1961 and 1962. Kennedy's presidency has often been presented as an intermission in the drama of evangelical political power, but grassroots activism provides new angles for analysis at the intersection of the US and Latin America. While claiming an apolitical stance, Graham worked alongside the US State Department, planting spiritual seeds on the tilled ground of foreign policy. Graham – and Protestant leaders orbiting him – curated acts of violence, painting a picture of persecution for a watching public. This narrative employed violence to draw lines of worldwide spiritual affiliation and political obligation. US evangelicals placed themselves as custodians of America's most sacred values at home and abroad, responsible for upholding democratic values, including religious tolerance, the rule of law, and anticommunism. Graham's tactics created an entangled relationship with Kennedy, where Graham arose as a metaphorical matador, fighting for persecuted Christians. Here, American evangelicals could flex their growing political muscle, while operating as an imagined religious minority community. Narratives, discourses, and representations of violence circulated transnationally and acquired differing meanings depending on the political interests of those mobilizing them.

On the Origins of the Récades of the Kings of Dahomey

On the Origins of the <i>Récades</i> of the Kings of Dahomey

“Ghosts of Missionaries”

Abstract From the late 1980s, foreign—primarily American—missionaries started to travel to Ukraine in large numbers. This article is concerned with the impact of American Baptist missionaries and how their influence was perceived locally in 2016, the time of my fieldwork. When I set out to conduct my fieldwork research among Baptist believers in Lviv, I was surprised that local believers denied the impact of foreign missionaries on their communities and worship style. Moreover, many local Baptist churchgoers I met claimed they had never encountered an American missionary and insisted that foreign missionaries had not played any significant role in the development and transformation of Ukrainian Baptism. In this article, I present the data from the fieldwork and analyze the Ukrainian Baptists’ reasons for minimizing the influence through the perspective of religioscapes, and glocalization as the dialectic process between homogeneity and heterogeneity.

‘Some Agreeable Conversation’: Jonathan Edwards Among Early American Baptists

Abstract Jonathan Edwards has long been recognized for his theology, philosophy, biblical studies, and pastoral ministry. The influence of Edwards’s life and ministry has stretched both far and wide. While his effect among English Baptists has been examined in a variety of ways, less attention has been given to his influence among early Baptists in North America. This article provides a survey of the research concerning Edwards’s influence upon early Baptists in North America. It argues that early Baptists in North America have been more influenced by Edwards than previously recognized. These Baptists looked to Edwards for instruction on Scripture, theology, piety, conversion and revival, preaching and pastoral ministry, and missions. Yet, more work needs to be done to understand the full scope of the reception of Edwards by early Baptists in North America.

20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America by Ryan P. Burge

Reviewed by: 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America by Ryan P. Burge Mark Mattes 20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America. By Ryan P. Burge. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022. ix + 249 pp. Avoid this book if you do not like hot button topics! But if you want some clear-headed, evidence-based reasoning about how faith intersects with public life, this book is valuable. Both a professor of political science and an American Baptist pastor, Ryan Burge corrects widespread perceptions about matters as diverse as how religious groups tend to vote, whether religion is in decline in America, how Christians view Donald Trump, whether education leads to secularism, as well as flash points like immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Once you start, this book is hard to put down. It is impossible in a short review to describe every myth that Burge busts. I can only share highlights. He notes that Republicans assume that as much as 36% of Democrats are atheists when in truth it is only 9%. The flipside is that Democrats assume that 44% of Republicans are 65 or older when in reality it is 21%. Likewise, Democrats assume that 50% of Republicans earn $250,000 or more annually when in fact just 2% do. Burge is committed to a statistics-driven "empirical worldview" precisely because it is able to cut through caricatures. [End Page 114] Many of the false perceptions that Burge challenges deal with Evangelicals. This is not due to any bias against other groups like Muslims or Mormons. Accurate statistics require a sizable pool to assess. Evangelicals, along with Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, have sufficient numbers to provide such information. Interpreting such statistics, however, also requires a knowledge of history and political dynamics. Burge has all these skills. Burge counters the claim that Evangelicalism is in decline by noting that it experienced a "short-lived burst" in the 1990s (15) and that its recent waning is a return to pre-1990s levels. In response to the view that Donald Trump was not the choice of devout Republicans, a stance which assumes that over time the Republican Party is less religious, Burge notes that in 2011 30% of Americans felt that elected officials who are privately immoral could still fulfill their duties in public life while by 2016 the number had changed to 72%. In other words, for many Americans, politicians' private lapses matter little with regard to their ability to deliver in public. Strangely, some people identify as Evangelical but seldom attend church. Burge contends that it is likely that non-church-going Republicans assume that Evangelicalism is congenial to their political platform and so self-identify accordingly (94). Burge notes that the number of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped by 20% since the 1970s. Interestingly, higher levels of education do not contribute to this drop. There is no evidence that college-educated young people are more likely to lack religious affiliation (57). The assumption that people return to faith late in life is not born out by the facts. What appears to be true is that those who stick with church never left it in the first place (118). That said, there is no doubt that secularization is growing in America. But note: "Of those raised nones, about 20 percent became evangelical as an adult, with another 9 percent becoming mainline and 6 percent becoming Catholic. Summed up, over 35 percent of people raised nones became Christians as adults" (168). Problematic is that political divisiveness defines the church: "Thus, many people who would like to find a church home are left with a landscape that is either theologically conservative and incredibly devout on one side or completely irreligious on the other. Left with those choices, [End Page 115] many Americans seem to be choosing to become a none rather than an evangelical or conservative Catholic" (183). Burge's is a refreshing voice because he does not follow a script from either the right or the left. Instead, like Sergeant Friday in Dragnet, "just the facts" is his motto. His goal is to help produce a humbler and gentler America. Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines...

Making Sense of the Missionary Life of Adele Fielde, Woman of Religious Belief, Science, and Activism

This paper proposes a new narrative of the life of nineteenth-century American Baptist missionary, activist, and scientist Adele Fielde. In the common historical narrative, her separation from the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU) after over twenty years of mission service in Siam and China marks her shift towards careers devoid of religious beliefs, in suffrage, activism, and science. Rather than perpetuating this deconversion narrative, I propose that she demonstrated continuity in her beliefs and interests, exercised through diverse careers and starting as a missionary. By looking to biographical accounts by her friends, colleagues, and later historians alongside her writing and life, I highlight her unorthodox Christian beliefs that motivated not only her missionary life but her later careers in science and activism in the US. Reframing Fielde’s life in this way offers a more realistic model of the intertwined beliefs and motivations of female missionaries, activists, and scientists in the nineteenth century.

What Became of Horse Y?

Many breeds of horses have become extinct over time. As recently as 200 years ago, The Yorubas rode a pygmy breed of horse that now appears to be extinct. What became of this breed? “For the accommodation of me and my wife, the missionary of the American Baptist Mission, Mr. Priest, had kindly provided two horses of pure African breed. Mine was so small that my feet nearly touched the ground and it was with great difficulty, when I went down a steep place that I could keep from falling over his head on to mine. But this equine pigmy carried me seven miles with so much ease that at times he was even unruly. His strength and endurance were truly wonderful”.

Pious Ambitions: Sally Merriam Wait's Mission South, 1813–1831 by Mary Tribble

Reviewed by: Pious Ambitions: Sally Merriam Wait's Mission South, 1813–1831 by Mary Tribble David T. Moon Jr. (bio) Keywords U.S. South, Missionaries, Baptist Church, Evangelicalism Pious Ambitions: Sally Merriam Wait's Mission South, 1813–1831. By Mary Tribble. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2021. Pp. 242. Paper, $25.00. After her baptism in 1813, eighteen-year-old Sarah "Sally" Merriam of Brandon, Vermont, envisioned herself answering a call from God to serve in the jungles of Burma. Sally hoped to follow the trail blazed by missionary Harriet Atwood Newell and the famed couple Ann and Adoniram Judson, but her calling ultimately followed that of her husband's, the young Baptist preacher Samuel Wait, whom she wed in 1818. Instead of Burma, Sally settled for North Carolina where Samuel became the first president of the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute (now Wake Forest University) in 1834. Pious Ambitions, Mary Tribble's biography of Sally Merriam Wait, reveals the winding path that brought Sally to that place. Positioning her research among other studies of evangelicalism and marriage in the early republic, Tribble chronicles the evolution of a young and fervent Baptist woman as "the power of pious ambitions" (xviii)—that is, religious duty—guided her, compelling her to either sacrifice or redefine her own aspirations to become a submissive helpmeet and matriarch of a minister's household. [End Page 484] Samuel Wait's pastoral calling first took Sally from Vermont to Sharon, Massachusetts, where he led a small Baptist congregation between 1818 and 1820, and then to Washington, DC, where he worked as a tutor for Columbian College from 1822 to 1826. Samuel's journey next brought Sally to New Bern, North Carolina, in 1827 where he served as pastor for the burgeoning port's Baptist church, and, finally, to a small community near Raleigh where he presided over Wake Forest. Marriage required Sally to temper her own ambitions and "accept the limits of a woman's role in the secular and evangelical communities" (67). Those limitations occasionally taxed Sally's body, mind, and soul. The couple spent only seven of their first thirteen married years together as Samuel's own pious ambitions drew him from home and family. Between 1820 and 1822, for example, he boarded in Philadelphia while studying at the Philadelphia Theological Seminary; without an income, Sally returned to her family in Vermont where she supported herself and her husband's education by crafting and selling bonnets with her sister. Besides financial hardships, Sally shouldered emotional trauma during Samuel's extended absences. In 1829, with Samuel itinerating in North Carolina for the state Baptist convention, Sally once again returned to Vermont where their youngest child fell ill and died. (The inability of a young minister—particularly an itinerant—to both support a household and administer his clerical duties initially caused the Methodists to discourage their preachers from marrying.)1 During these periods of isolation and separation, Sally coped by leaning on her religious convictions and resigning herself to the will of God. As Tribble iterates, Sally "had the comfort that their separation was guided by their shared duty to God" (172). Sally—a modified Calvinist—drew inspiration from Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (much of Sally's journal is an amalgamation of her own words and scripture, a significant point that Tribble does not address). Sally had to reassure herself constantly that her marriage satisfied a higher purpose, as evinced when she wrote to Samuel in 1821, "That which providence has designed for me, is for me the best" (72). Sally's acquiescence did not come easily, as she struggled to reconcile her desire to establish a stable home with the knowledge that God might require her to support her husband from afar. [End Page 485] Besides exploring the dynamics of the Wait household and Sally's interpretations of womanhood and faith, Pious Ambitions traces how the Waits's path from New England to North Carolina mirrored the social and economic progress of American Baptists in the early nineteenth century. Not long after her baptism, musings about modest Christian attire and behavior filled Sally's writings, and later, when marketing bonnets, she worried that some of...

Christian missions and northeast India

The British colonized the India in eighteenth century and eventually control over the northeast region in the nineteenth century, the region inhabited basically by the Indigenous peoples, served to open doors to the region for the missionaries. The pioneer missionaries who came to Northeast India in the nineteenth century belonged to the American Baptist Foreign Mission and Welsh Presbyterian missions. It was a known fact that there was a working relation between the British colonial powers and Christian missions in Northeast India. Both the colonial power and missions held the "civilizing responsibility" as their shared goal. Therefore, the concern of the paper is to study the proliferation of Christianity and impact of Christian missionary activities on the people of Northeast India with special reference to the tribal society.

Retracing Baptists in Rhode Island: Identity, Formation, and History

Ever since Roger Williams organized his renegade colony in southeastern New England, Rhode Island has played an important role in American Baptist history. Retracing Baptists in Rhode Island is a thorough institutional history of Rhode Island Baptists from 1635 to the present. Using a multitude of published and unpublished documents, J. Stanley Lemons traces the histories of multiple denominations, many congregations, famous ministers, influential educators, wealthy benefactors, and political leaders. He makes a major contribution to understanding of Baptist history in the Ocean State. Lemons divides his study into four sections (Awakenings, Transformations, Divisions, and Remakings) that gradually proceed from the colonial era into the present. Several major themes stand out. First, Rhode Island was the center for Baptist activity prior to the First Great Awakening in the 1740s. Second, other than a common grounding in “believer's baptism,” “soul liberty,” and “congregational autonomy,” Baptist groups and denominations have argued about...

Performing Heritage, Theology and ‘Land’ in the Lujam Songs of the Rongmei Nagas of North-east India

The Zeliangrong Nagas (Zeme, Liangmai, Rongmei and Inpui) inhabit the contiguous regions of the present-day Indian states of Manipur, Assam and Nagaland. The Rongmeis first embraced Christianity in the 1920s through converts and evangelists from their neighbouring communities, who were themselves influenced by the American Baptist missions. Through these encounters, indigenous singing practices of their neighbouring Thadou-Kukis were translated and incorporated into Rongmei Christianity as the lujam. The lujam songs have survived in popular practice and print culture, coexisting alongside translations of English hymns and, in more recent years, contemporary Christian worship music. In tracing the journeys of the lujam, this paper presents the gradual indigenisation of Christian teachings and practices among the Rongmeis. It argues that the lujam, as practised among the Rongmeis, embodies an effective mode and method of theologising among the Rongmeis. At the same time, the paper teases out inherent tensions that are managed in the lujam (if awkwardly), between traditional ‘landed’ lifeworld and the lujam’s ‘heavenly’ lifeworld. Thus, the study highlights the theological agency of Rongmei Nagas in their encounters with Christianity as evidenced in the lujam practice.

Denominating “Justification” and “Faith”: Catholics, Lutherans, and a North American Baptist's Response to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

That the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Unity attempted a joint declaration on the doctrine of justification is worthy of commendation. The resulting Joint Declaration constitutes some of the best contemporary efforts at ecumenical dialogue in the spirit of Christian union. This essay outlines the development of both medieval Catholic and subsequent Protestant conceptions of justification that led to disunion in the Western Church, reviews the initial points of division on the doctrine during the era of the Reformation for the purpose of grasping more fully the ecumenical feat of the JDDJ, and seeks to clarify what issues appear to remain unclear or unresolved in the document. The article also outlines the history of how Baptists in America have understood the doctrine of justification in order to consider how such Baptists might perceive the promise and potential lingering challenges or questions regarding the joint declaration.

Richard E. Jackson, JD: 5th District

Richard E. Jackson, JD:5th District Judson L. Jeffries Richard E. Jackson, a son of Nashville, has made a lasting imprint on higher education administration, the legal community, and a number of grassroots efforts. For the past seven years Jackson has served as the executive vice president for Administration, Finance, and Legal Affairs at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he has oversight of all the college's non-academic operations. Prior to that, he was special assistant to the president at Middle Tennessee State University where he oversaw issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion. For eight years, Jackson was Austin Peay State University's vice president for legal affairs and strategic planning and before that its senior advisor to the president for Diversity, Affirmative Action and Legal Affairs. One would be remiss if I did not call attention to Jackson's major contribution to one of the nation's most prestigious medical schools—serving as the vice president for Policy Management and Legal Affairs as well as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at historically Black Meharry Medical College during David Satcher, MD's, presidency (former US Surgeon General). As general counsel Jackson coordinated the negotiations with the city of Nashville, resulting in the historic consolidation of the city's acute care hospital services into renovated facilities on the campus of Meharry. Finally, Brother Jackson is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, one of the nation's oldest honor societies for leadership. Below is an interview that spanned over the course of a week in mid-April of 2021. Judson L. Jeffries: Good Evening Brother Jackson, I appreciate your willingness to be a part of this project. Richard Jackson: Thank you very much for including me, I'm humbled, I really am. JLJ: Let's get right to it if you don't mind. RJ: I don't mind at all. JLJ: You're a graduate of Vanderbilt University, aka the Harvard of the South [laughter]. What was your major Brother Jackson? RJ: Political science. [End Page 309] JLJ: You must have had really good grades to have been accepted into Vanderbilt. RJ: Yes, I did, I graduated as my school's valedictorian. JLJ: Whaaat? You were your school's valedictorian Brother Jackson? RJ: In fact, I was the first African American ever to graduate number 1 in his class at an integrated high school in Nashville. JLJ: What high school was that Brother Jackson? RJ: Nashville Maplewood High School. JLJ: With those kinds of credentials, you could have gotten into darn near any college in the country. RJ: I'd like to think so. JLJ: So, what year do you enroll in Vanderbilt? RJ: 1968. JLJ: And graduated four years later? RJ: Right, graduated in 1972. JLJ: What was it like going to a lily-white southern school like Vanderbilt University? Now, we all know that Vanderbilt is located in the city of Nashville, but it certainly didn't and still doesn't reflect the city's racial composition. RJ: No, it didn't, not even close. JLJ: What was it like being a student at Vanderbilt during the late 1960s and early 1970s? RJ: It wasn't easy, that's for sure. At any one time there probably were no more than 60 Black students during a given year and may have been as few as 25 during a given year. One year, and I'm positive about this, there were fewer than 20 Black men in the student body. JLJ: Talk a little bit about the climate, Brother Jackson, if you would please. RJ: Not a comfortable environment Brother Jeffries, not a comfortable environment at all. But let me just say this—I had attended a summer program at Vanderbilt, so I knew something about Vanderbilt, the school wasn't a total surprise to me. I had made up my mind that Vanderbilt was not going to affirm my self-worth. JLJ: What did you do in order to mitigate the kind of impact that a school like Vanderbilt could have had on your psyche? RJ: I decided that I wasn't going to live on campus, I wasn't going to be a resident student...

George Liele: Liberated slave and African American Baptist Missionary to Jamaica

Liele introduced Baptist witness to Jamaica and served as pastor and educator of churches in Kingston and Spanish town cities there. Further, Liele was responsible for the conversion and baptism of another African American, Moses Baker, who migrated to Jamaica in 1783 and was a leader in establishing Baptist churches in western parishes in Jamaica. Beyond his work in Jamaica, Liele’s ministry reached as far afield as Nova Scotia, Canada, and Sierra Leone, Africa, through the influence of his protege, David George, who was first known as David, until he changed his name to “David George” in honor of his friend and mentor George Liele.

Sermons to Address Obesity in Partnership With African American and Latino Churches

Sermons to Address Obesity in Partnership With African American and Latino Churches

Peering into Prisons, Gazing upon Graves: Early U.S. Missionary Media from Burma

This article examines the nineteenth-century print culture and religious imagination inspired by the imprisonment of an American Baptist missionary to Burma during the First Anglo-Burmese War, 1824–1826, and by the death of his wife and child shortly thereafter. Adoniram Judson had been incarcerated on charges of spying for the British but was eventually released to serve the king of Burma as a translator for the treaty that ended the war. Eight months later, his wife, Ann, and their two-year-old daughter, Maria, died from fevers. Stories of the Judsons’ suffering began to circulate widely after an illustration of Ann’s and Maria’s graves was published in 1839 and an illustration of them visiting Adoniram in prison was published in 1853. These scenes of buried and chained bodies were reproduced, redrawn, and reimagined in the nineteenth-century Protestant press and took on new shape in twentieth-century film and twenty-first-century commemorative displays. This article argues that the multiple iterations of these wrenching scenes created an imagined world of redemptive missionary sacrifice that travelled from the 1830 s through to the twenty-first century along circuitous routes, changing shape and repopulating along the way. Collectively picturing the Judsons’ extreme physical suffering in a foreign land primed generations of Baptist communities to see missionary labor and its domestic support as acts of righteous sacrifice.