Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2010 "Chosen Race": Baptist Missions and Mission Churches in the East and West Indies, 1795-1875 Kelly R. (Kelly Rebecca) Elliott Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES “CHOSEN RACE:” BAPTIST MISSIONS AND MISSION CHURCHES IN THE EAST AND WEST INDIES, 1795-1875 By KELLY R. ELLIOTT A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2010 Copyright © 2010 Kelly R. Elliott All Rights Reserved The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Kelly Elliott defended on April 6, 2010. __________________________________ Charles Upchurch Professor Directing Dissertation __________________________________ Sarah Irving University Representative __________________________________ Bawa Singh Committee Member __________________________________ Darrin McMahon Committee Member ___________________________________ Matt Childs Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii for my parents iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The criticism, support, and encouragement of my committee members— Professors Charles Upchurch, Bawa Singh, Darrin McMahon, Matt Childs, and Sarah Irving—have greatly improved this project, and I am grateful to all of them. As professors and as critics, they have made me a better historian. I especially appreciate the willingness of Professors Singh and Childs to serve on the committee despite their absence from campus. Most particularly, I thank Professor Upchurch, who supervised all of my graduate work with a depth of knowledge, enthusiasm, and personal encouragement that knew no bounds. Funding and study opportunities provided by the Florida State University London Study Centre and the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives helped make possible the research necessary for this project. I would like to acknowledge the encouragement of Professor Kathleen Paul, and again, I thank Professor Upchurch for the many manifestations of his support in London. At the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville, Tennessee, Director Bill Sumners and Archivist Taffey Hall were helpful and kind. The Heath Street Baptist church in Hampstead, London gave me an opportunity to become an English Baptist myself. Most especially, I would like to thank Sir Godfray and Susan LeQuesne, members at Heath Street, who befriended me and revealed some interesting connections between my research and that church. My family, Crosses, Harmons, and Elliotts, have all supported me during research and writing. Michael and Pam and Karie Cross and Jeremy Elliott have also patiently listened to ideas, approaches, research frustrations, and a great deal of nonsense. I appreciate their forbearance. My husband Jeremy has probably borne the brunt of both the elation and the aggravation of this project, all while working on a dissertation of his own. Thanks, friend. Finally, my parents‟ work ethic and believing lives had much to do with making me the person who wrote this, and so I dedicate it to them. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Note on names vi Abstract vii 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. BAPTIST AND MISSIONARY IDENTITY 27 3. THE COLONIAL RESPONSE TO MISSIONS 58 4. INDIGENOUS RESPONSES TO MISSIONS 88 5. CONVERTS AND MISSION CHURCHES 121 6. CHANGES IN MISSION POLICY157 7. “CHOSEN RACE:” ENGAGEMENT WITH DIFFERENCE193 BIBLIOGRAPHY 224 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 239 v NOTE ON NAMES From source to source, the spellings of names—particularly non-English names—are often inconsistent. For clarification in this manuscript, I use only one spelling of each name. Krishnu Pall is only spelled “Krishnu Pall,” even though in the sources the name appears variously as Kristno, Krishna, Krishna-palla, and Krishnoo-Powl. The same is true for the spelling and capitalization of Indian words such as “Brahman,” which appears in contemporary accounts with and without capitalization, and often as “Brahmin” or “Brahmun.” vi ABSTRACT In 1792, a group of preachers and artisans from the north of England responded to contemporary currents of revivalist religion by founding the Baptist Missionary Society to preach the gospel to the “heathen” abroad. These young Baptists, whose identity was deeply marked by a persecuted past and an ambivalent relationship with state power, carried their free church tradition with them into the mission field, where their belief in divine providence and their commitment to biblical primitivism deeply informed their work. Baptist identity and approach to missions changed over the nineteenth century as Dissenters gained socioeconomic status and political power, and independent voluntarism gave way to the organization and bureaucracy of the modern humanitarian movement. These shifts affected missionary identity and approaches, as well as the way the society leadership and its missionaries viewed converts and the possibility of independent mission churches. In South Asia and the Caribbean, secular colonials and officials viewed mission work warily, suspecting with reason that proselytization would undermine the racial and social hierarchies necessary to imperial success. Missionaries therefore faced significant political persecution in both spheres of empire, where they were viewed as subversive and undermining of colonial authority. Indigenous peoples in South Asia, particularly Bengali brahmans, also often looked upon missionaries with hostility; some, such as Brahmo Somaj founder Rammohun Roy, altered the Christianity they preached to serve their own needs and purposes. Converts lost caste as well as employment, and were often forced to cut all social ties upon professing Christ. Evangelism was more successful in the Caribbean, where slaves who converted often gained literacy, political advocacy, and a sense of community. Overall, convert decisions and experiences show that when colonized peoples chose to adopt Christianity, they built distinctly Asian or West Indian Christian communities which they increasingly led and supported themselves. Despite the fracturing and self-examination occasioned by changes within Baptist identity over the course of the century, the missionary society's commitment to a family of Christ that razed the boundaries of race, caste, and nation did make independent indigenous churches possible. vii Current historiography frequently links British missions to imperialism, viewing missionaries as importers—and constructors—of Englishness and converts as passive receivers of a colonizing Christianity. I hope to redirect our understanding of the missionary enterprise towards a greater sensitivity to the multivalent nature of missionary identity and, most importantly, the crucial contributions of indigenous converts and the communities they forged in the Empire. Baptist emphasis on native Christian church leadership and involvement, as well as missionary children‟s intermarriage with converts, help underline that, for the Baptists, the “chosen race” referred not to skin color or the burden of empire, but to election and sanctification by God. viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1792: The Founding Vision of the Baptist Missionary Society In 1792, a Northamptonshire shoemaker and sometime-preacher wrote a tract that, he hoped, would stir his brethren into godly action. The work of evangelism, the author contended, was being neglected and Christ‟s commission to his disciples to carry the gospel to the world remained unfulfilled: The work has not been taken up, or prosecuted of late years…with that zeal and perseverance with which the primitive Christians went about it. It seems as if many thought the commission was sufficiently put in execution by what the apostles and others have done; that we have enough to do to attend to the salvation of our own countrymen; and that, if God intends the salvation of the heathen, he will some way or other bring them to the gospel, or the gospel to them. It is thus that multitudes sit at ease, and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow- sinners, who to this day, are lost in ignorance and idolatry.1 This missiological call to arms, William Carey‟s Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, made manifest a rising spirit of religious enthusiasm and revival that swept British churches, both Established and Dissenting, in the late eighteenth century. Among the Particular Baptists—William Carey‟s denomination—this flowering of Christian commitment compounded and accelerated the modern Protestant missionary movement, which had begun first among the Germans, whose heart religion touched off eighteenth-century European revivalism and missionary work. Continental Moravians and Pietists first took up the missionary cause, and they were soon followed by Britons like Carey, whose persistence led to the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society at Kettering in 1792.2 Baptist theology during the flowering of religious enthusiasm in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries departed significantly, in some respects, from 1 William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, in which the religious state of different nations of the world, the success of former undertakings, and the practicability of