Serampore: Telos of the Reformation
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SERAMPORE: TELOS OF THE REFORMATION by Samuel Everett Masters B.A., Miami Christian College, 1989 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Religion at Reformed Theological Seminary Charlotte, North Carolina December, 2010 Accepted: ______________________________ Dr. Samuel Larsen, Project Mentor ii ABSTRACT Serampore: the Telos of the Reformation Samuel E. Masters While many biographies of missionary William Carey have been written over the last two centuries, with the exception of John Clark Marshman’s “The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman and Ward: Embracing the History of the Serampore Mission”, published in the mid-nineteenth century, no major work has explored the history of the Serampore Mission founded by Carey and his colleagues. This thesis examines the roots of the Serampore Mission in Reformation theology. Key themes are traced through John Calvin, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, and Baptist theologian Andrew Fuller. In later chapters the thesis examines the ways in which these theological themes were worked out in a missiology that was both practical and visionary. The Serampore missionaries’ use of organizational structures and technology is explored, and their priority of preaching the gospel is set against the backdrop of their efforts in education, translation, and social reform. A sense is given of the monumental scale of the work which has scarcely equaled down to this day. iii For Carita: Faithful wife Fellow Pilgrim iv CONTENTS Acknowledgements …………………………..…….………………..……………………...viii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………….9 The Father of Modern Missions ……………………………………..10 Reformation Principles ………………………………………….......13 Historical Grids ………………………………………………….......14 Serampore and a Positive Calvinism ………………………………...17 The Telos of the Reformation ………………………………………..19 2. REFORMATION ROOTS …………………………………………………..20 Religious Trends ……………………………………………………..22 Early Protestant Limitations …………………………………………24 The Power of Theology ……………………………………………...27 Sola Scriptura: Back to Biblical Authority ………………………….28 A Theology of Conversion …………………………………………..30 A Theological Road Block …………………………………………..32 Calvin, Evangelism and Missions …………………………………...34 From Theology to Mission Endeavor ………………………………..37 3. PURITAN EVANGELISM ……………………………………………….…38 The Last Puritan ……………………………………………………...39 Lights of the World …………………………………………………..45 Evangelical Literature ………………………………………………..49 The Puritan Hope …………………………………………………….53 Puritan Missions to the New England Indians ……………………….54 The Grandfather of Modern Missions ………………………………..59 4. BAPTIST REVIVAL ……………………….………………………………..63 Carey’s Spiritual and Theological Formation ……………………….65 Dismantling Hyper-Calvinism ………………………………………72 Carey and the Northamptonshire Association Baptists ……………..78 5. THE ENQUIRY ………………………………………………….…………..81 v The Enlightenment and the Power of Ideas ……………………….…81 The Enlightenment and Evangelical Calvinism ……………………..83 Carey and Enlightenment Influences ………………………………..84 The Advocate ………………………………………………………..86 The Enquiry ………………………………………………………….88 A Binding Commission ……………………………………………...89 The Call of Duty ……………………………………………………..91 The Enquiry and Eschatology ……………………………………….93 An Urgent Call to Action ……………………………………………94 6. THE USE OF MEANS ……………………………………………………...99 A Blue Collar Approach ……………………………………………101 A Theology of Means ………………………………………………104 Means and Providence ……………………………………………...106 Providence, Prayer and Practicality ………………………………...109 Pitfalls ………………………………………………………….……112 7. INNOVATIVE INSTITUTIONS ………………………………….………..115 A Voluntary Society ......................................................................116 The Society and Baptist Polity ……………………………………...121 The Serampore Mission……………………………………………...125 Serampore’s Decline ………………………………………………..132 8. INDIAN CONVERSIONS AND THE PREACHING OF THE CROSS. …137 Hard Thumps – Satire in Apologetics……………………………….139 The Preaching of the Cross………………………………………......144 Conversion ………………………………………………………...…147 Expansion ……………………………………………………………151 Translation and Publication ………………………………………....152 Cross-cultural Preaching ………………………………………….…154 Indian Preachers……………………………………..…………….…155 Church Planting ……………………………………………………..157 9. SERAMPORE CHRISTIANITY AND INDIAN CULTURE …………......160 vi For the Love of India………………………………………………...161 Opposing the Darkness ……………………………………………...162 Understanding India …………………………………………...........165 Engaging the Culture ………………………………………….…….166 The Bible Publishing Enterprise …………………………………….170 Caste and the Church ………………………………………………...175 10. CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………..……….182 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………...184 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the Rev. Dr. Lalchungnunga and his wife Hliri for their kind hospitality at Serampore College; the Rev. Dr. Dipankar Haldar of Serampore College for his insight on Carey’s Bengali translation; Mrs. Dipti Rani Gine at the Carey Library and Research Center at Serampore College for her help with resources, especially for making Daniel Pott’s transcription of William Ward’s journal available to me; the Reverend Emma Walsh and her assistant Emily Burgoyne for their gracious and able help at the Angus Library, Regents’ Park College, Oxford; Margaret Williams for arranging tours of Carey related sites in Northamptonshire and for providing a copy of “Carey’s Covenant,” the church covenant from Carey’s pastorate at Moulton where she is a current member; Dr. Michael Haykin at Southern Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky for his encouragement with this project and his assistant Steve Weaver for making available to me materials in Southern’s collection; Rusty Tyron at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City for tracking down hard to find resources; Dr. James Adams of Cornerstone Church, Mesa, Arizona for his encouragement, engagement with the project, and constructive criticism; Dr. Sam Larsen, my thesis adviser at Reformed Theological Seminary whose course on the history of missions whet my appetite for further study, and whose guidance and encouragement were invaluable; Russell Johnson and the congregation of International Bible Baptist Church in Miami for their support and generosity; Centro Crecer, mi familia, in Córdoba, Argentina; my daughter, Sarah Jeffries, who reviewed the rough draft; and my wife Carita who accompanied me on related trips, helped with the typing, ran interference to help me write, and never complained when my mind wandered away to be with Bill and his buddies viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Hooghly River still flows 160 miles from the Ganges to Calcutta and the Bay of Bengal. Small boats negotiate the tidal bore, but the broad river no longer fills with Danish and British sails. On the right bank at Serampore, upriver from Calcutta, the Greek portico of Serampore College looks out over the river towards Barackpore much as it did in the 19th century; but the Serampore mission, once the most renowned Christian endeavor in the world, ceased to exist as an independent organization in 1836. Much of its property was long ago sold to a jute mill to meet the financial needs of the surviving college. Still, every weekday before breakfast, ministerial students walk out the iron gates of the college, turn left along the bank of the Hooghly and stroll past the jute mill to the chapel1 which 200 years ago echoed with the voices of Joshua Marshman, William Ward, and William Carey. This daily stroll takes them past the spot along the river where the first Baptist convert, Krishna Pal was baptized. While this is of interest to Baptist historians, its significance is broader. Serampore has rightly been called the “cradle of modern missions.”2 As such it takes its place alongside Luther’s Wittenberg and Calvin’s Geneva. It is the place where the Protestant Reformation broke out into the wider world. 1 The current chapel was the original mission house. 2 George Howells, The Story of Serampore and Its College (Serampore: Orissa Mission Press, 1927), 3. 9 The Father of Modern Missions William Carey has been called the “father of modern missions.” The title appears in the first major history of Serampore published in 18593 by John Clark Marshman who, as the son of Joshua and Hannah Marshman, grew up at the mission. To describe William Carey’s funeral procession he wrote, “He was followed to the grave by all the native Christians, and by many of his Christian brethren of various denominations, anxious to pay the last token of reverence to the father of modern missions.”4 This designation is sometimes disputed on the grounds that he was not the first missionary of the modern period. For example, Stephen Neill writes, “Books written in English have frequently spoken of William Carey (1761- 1834) as ‘the father of modern missions,’ and of the work he brought into being as the first Protestant mission of modern times. [T]his is a misunderstanding; Carey stood, and was conscious of standing, in a noble succession, as the heir of many pioneers in the past.”5 Carey certainly was aware of his many predecessors. In the second section of his seminal work An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens,6 under the heading “Containing a short Review of former Undertakings for the Conversion of the Heathen,” he mentions the New England Puritans, John Eliot and David Brainerd; “Mr. Ziegenbalg” of the Danish mission to “Tranquebar, on the Coromandel coast in the East Indies . ,” the Moravian