The Legacy of Johann Ludwig Krapf M

15. [awad bin Sabat later reverted to Islam and provided "insider" of many such to convince the Committee at home, by slow degrees, information on Christianity, in his book An Answer to Christians, of the need for organized medical missions." Masih is still a subject which was used by some of the disputing Muslim opponents of worthy of study in 1999, the bicentenary of the CMS. Masih (Powell, Muslims and Missionaries, pp. 114 and 116). 23. Missionary Papers, no. 62 (Midsummer 1831). 16. After the death of Martyn, Corrie wrote to Simeon in Cambridge on 24. Laird discusses the complicated question of the validity (or other June 23, 1813, "Could he look from Heaven and see the Abdool wise) of Lutheran orders in Anglican eyes (Bishop Heber, pp. 27-28). Messee'h,with the translated NewTestamentin his hand, preaching 25. Heber's journal for January 12, 1825,cited in Laird, Bishop Heber, pp. to the listening throng, ... it would add fresh delight to his holy soul" 246--47. (Corrie and Corrie, DanielCorrie, p. 250). 26. G. E. Corrie and H. Corrie cited a witness, "Nothing could equal the 17. For Daniel Corrie (1777-1837) see also Angus D. 1.J. Macnaughton, joy of Mr. Corrie: he appeared as if he could just then adopt the DanielCorrie, His Familyand Friends (London: Johnson, 1969). language of Simeon of old" (Daniel Corrie, p. 383). 18. George Elwes Corrie (1793-1885) was Norrisian Professor of Divin 27. For further fascinating details of the eventual setting up of a perma ity in the University of Cambridge, 1838-55, vice-chancellor, 1850 nent mission at Lucknow after the 1857 uprisings, see Powell, 51, and master of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1849-85. As well as Muslims and Missionaries, pp. 116ff. writing Daniel Corrie's biography, jointly with another brother, he 28. If my suggestion above is plausible, that Corrie commissioned it as wrote papers on English church history and edited works of Angli an ordination portrait, then there may be a double hint, somewhat can theology. See M. Holroyd, ed., Memorials oftheLifeofGeorge Elwes far-fetched, of how it came to be at Ridley Hall. After Corrie's death, Corrie (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1890). a chalice and paten, in his possession, werebroughtto George Corrie 19. Missionary Papers, no. 62 (Midsummer 1831). in Cambridge by Archdeacon Harper on his return to England 20. Daniel Corrie, "Remarks on India," Missionary Register, January (Holroyd, George Corrie, p. 318). In 1885, the year that George Corrie 1816,p. 23, citedby Powell, Muslims andMissionaries, p. 113.See also died,WilliamCarus,Simeon'sbiographer,presentedhis ownmemo Corrie and Corrie, DanielCorrie, pp. 274-75. rabilia of Simeon to Ridley Hall, which included a miniature portrait 21. Powell, Muslims and Missionaries, pp. 113-15. of Martyn and another of Masih (Bullock, Ridley Hall, 1:221 and 22. In the preparations for the 150th anniversary of the CMS in 1949, 2:252). Carus may have arranged for this large portrait also to be there was a series in the CMS newspaper called "Makers of C.M.S. presented. In the writing of the history of Ridley Hall, this may have History." The fifth in the series was on Masih, which, because it was been confused with the smaller one. St. Luke's tide (October 18), focused on his medical work. "The 29. See n. 2 above. pioneer efforts of this first C.M.S. medical missionary were pro 30. In the version printed in MissionaryPapers, this line is translated "Of phetic. Here was the spontaneous response of the man on the spot to all that deck the field or bower." the pressure of humanneed. And it tookthe accumulated experience The Legacy of Johann Ludwig Krapf M. Louise Pirouet he legacy of Johann Ludwig Krapf, first Protestant mis "Krapf and Rebmann, if they were somewhat impractical, had Tsionary to East Africa, has long been a matter of discus vision, tenacity and boundless courage."3 C. P. Groves, in his sion.' His first posting was to Ethiopia, but the mission was pioneering, if now superseded, Plantingof Christianityin Africa, forced to leave before it was properly established. In Mombasa ends his account of Krapf's work on a negative note:" and Krapf and its hinterland he and his companions made only a tiny is barely mentioned in Adrian Hastings' monumental Church in handful of converts, the mission he established became a back Africa, 1450-1950. 5 However, the major study by Roy Bridges, water, and his grand missionary strategy proved a nonstarter. which forms the introduction to the Cass reprint of Travels, This lack of apparent success gave the Church Missionary Soci Researches, andMissionaryLabours Duringan Eighteen Years'Resi ety (CMS) pause for thought: "It was natural that some discour dence in Eastern Africa, discusses Krapf's legacy at length and agement should be felt at the result so far of the large designs concludes that, in spite of all, "Krapf was a remarkable pioneer, formed for the evangelization of Africa; but after the most a good man, and a notable figure in the history of nineteenth anxious and careful review of all the circumstances of the Mis century Africa.:" Trained as he was by the Basel Mission, Krapf sion, the Committee felt that the disappointments hitherto met himself may have been unsurprised that he and his colleagues with must be regarded rather as a trial of their faith than as an made only slow progress. Basel missionaries in West Africa indication of God's will that the enterprise should be aban found their work equally slow at first; the emphasis was on doned.'? faithfulness rather than on spectacular results.' The evaluation of Krapf's work has continued to exercise Krapf was one of a number of Lutherans trained at the Basel historians. "These ... sad and other-worldly men achieved no Missionary Institute who worked for the CMS in the early part of great evangelistic success among the scattered and socially inco the nineteenth century. Born in 1810, near Tiibingen in largely herent Wanyika tribesmen," wrote Roland Oliver; but he added. Protestant Wiirttemberg, he was immersed in Pietism. In Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours in EastAfrica he tells us little M. Louise Pirouet lectured in church history and African Christianity at about his family except that his father was a comfortably-off Makerere University,Kampala, Uganda, andNairobi University,Kenya,before farmer and that he was one of four children. He seems to have returning to Britain, where she lectured in religious studies at Homerton been an overserious child; he suffered a six-month-long illness College, University of Cambridge, until her retirement. following a severe beating for a fault he did not commit, and Apri11999 69 reported, "Leftto myselfmythoughtsdweltmuchuponeternity; The Journals also records a whole series of conversations in and the reading of the Bible and devotional books became my which Krapf appeared to do little but win debating points about delight.:" He might never have gone beyond elementary school religion. Yet in fact he got on well with the king and with his ing, but as the result of a chance encounter by his sister, he was visitors, many of them priests and debtera (men and boys skilled sent to the Osterbergschule in Tiibingen, where he received an in singing the liturgy), who visited him again and again. He education that prepared him for university," taught a small group of men and boys gathered round him, At school he quickly caughtup withhis contemporaries and reading the Scriptures with them and teaching them "universal thenoutstripped them, soakingup languageslike blottingpaper. history" and geography. He seems to have been accepted as He learned Latin and Greek and made a start on French and another kind of religious teacher with his circle of disciples. It is Italian; when he decided to go to the Basel Missionary Institute, impossible to understand why people continued to visit and talk he prepared himself by learning Hebrew and before long had wi thhimunless these visits weremore cordial and less one-sided "read the greater portion of the Old Testament in the original."!" thanhis diary suggests. Probably his visitors enjoyed theological He spent from May 1827 to May 1829 at Basel but then came to debate, and there was plainly more to the conversations than he doubt his missionary call, and he returned to Tiibingen to spend records; his extensive knowledge of Ethiopian religious litera the next five years studying theology." He was ordained in the ture and customs was the result of these and other conversations. autumn of 1834. After less than a year's not altogether happy Krapf's pietism, with its emphasis on individual conversion parish experience, he met Peter Fjellstedt, a Basel-trained Swed and personal religious experience, made it virtually impossible ish missionary, who rekindled his missionary call and encour for him to understand or appreciate Ethiopian Christianity, aged him to offer to the CMS.12 He returned to Basel, where, in which was bound up with ethnic identity rather than being a 1836, he met Dandeson Coates, lay secretary of CMS, and was matter of personal belief. He compared it with medieval Euro accepted by that society. When assigned to Ethiopia, he set to pean Christian practice and belief and thought it stood in equal workto study"Aethiopic," properlyknownas Ge'ez, the archaic need of reformation. He could not understand why people language of the church, and Amharic, the modern speech of the preferred the Scriptures in Ge'ez, the ancient church language, Christian Amhara people, besides studying some Arabic. He which theycould notcomprehend, to the Amharic translation, in also read the HistoryofEthiopia by the great seventeenth-century which, as a good Lutheran, and believing in the importance for German scholar Hiob Ludolf." salvation of the Scriptures in a .people's own tongue, he tried to interest them." But he did recognize that the only way to get Vision in Ethiopia people to accept the Amharic translation was to print it together with the Ge'ez, preferably arranged in parallel columns, and he Krapf's first postingwas to Ethiopia,wherehe worked from 1837 worked to persuade the Bible Society to accept the need for this to 1842, when he was forced to return to Cairo.

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