Joseph Kam: Moravian Heart in Reformed Clothing Susan Nivens ow did Joseph Kam, a Dutch leatherworker who at the Seminarium Indicum, a training program for missionary Hone point went bankrupt, later go on to lead one of the pastors to the East Indies. He had twelve successful students. most significant mission efforts in the Dutch East Indies?1 Kam Although the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, first went to Maluku in the Dutch East Indies in 1815, when he Dutch East Indies Company) opposed forthright evangelism was well into his forties.2 From 1815 to 1833 Kam revitalized and caused the close of this training program,8 the VOC regu- the 200-year-old Indische Kerk (Church of the Indies) in central larly employed ordained ministers in the Indies and sometimes Maluku, thus laying the foundation for the establishment of looked the other way while the ministers pursued evangelism of the church in other parts of Maluku province, Java, northern the local populace. Over 900 ordained ministers were contracted Sulawesi, and Timor. by the VOC to serve in the Dutch East Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although only about 100 of them were Two Religious Communities’ Missional Influence resident pastors.9 From the perspective of the Reformed Church in the late eighteenth century, mission service in the East Indies Joseph Kam was born in September 1769 in the Utrecht region was not a novel idea. of the Netherlands. His father, Joost Kam, operated the family Even as the Dutch Reformed Church endeavored to pursue leatherworks and wig business. The Kams, a devout Calvinist mission through partnership with the Dutch East Indies Trading family, were members of the Reformed congregation in their vil- Company, this collaboration often proved to be limiting to the lage. Joseph’s older brother Samuel became a Reformed minister, indigenous church. From 1624 to 1632 Heurnius, the Reformed so it was left to Joseph to learn the family trade. His father was missiologist who became a missionary, was in conflict with the friendly with the Moravian Brethren who lived in the nearby VOC’s governor-general of Batavia, who wanted a governing town of Zeist and had regular contacts with them through his role in church discipline. When Heurnius resisted, he was jailed business. As a young man, Joseph began to regularly fellowship and then was removed to another VOC office in India. 10 Other with the Moravian Brethren. He attended their prayer meetings similar occurrences involving the governing role of the VOC in his hometown of ’s-Hertogenbosch but remained a faithful or policies that restricted evangelism meant that conflict with member of the Reformed Church. By this time the Moravians in missionaries was common. At times the VOC prevented mis- the region no longer required those who attended their meetings sionaries from returning to a region where they had already to leave the Reformed Church, and in turn the latter allowed begun planting churches. their parishioners to be involved informally in such meetings.3 While missions was not unheard of in the Netherlands, the Pietist movement of the eighteenth century did create renewed The Dutch Reformed Church and mission. From the early stages of its energy for missions in the Dutch Reformed community. In De- inception in 1571, the Dutch Reformed Church pursued missions, cember 1797 Johannes Theodorus van der Kemp led a group of as evidenced in theological discussions and in the training and twenty Dutch Christians, including twelve Reformed ministers, sending of missionary teams beyond their borders. This provided to form an official Protestant sending agency, the Nederlandsch a ready platform for Kam to serve in the Dutch East Indies. Zendeling-Genootschap (NZG, Netherlands Missions Society). Beginning in 1590 with Hadrianus Saravia, Dutch church The NZG was not officially part of the Dutch Reformed Church, leaders began to discuss the Dutch church’s part in missions. but the founders and subsequent numbers of NZG missionaries Saravia, one of the great theologians of the Dutch and Anglican ordained by the Reformed Church created close ties. This Dutch churches, argued for Christian leaders to promote evangelism Reformed missions focus was part of Kam’s church upbringing, among the unreached both at home and afar.4 Twenty-eight and it provided a foundation for the Moravian missions zeal that years later, Justus Heurnius, a young theologian from an influ- Kam later encountered. ential church and university family, wrote a dissertation argu- ing for foreign mission among the indigenous peoples of Asia The Zeist Moravian community. Besides this missions emphasis and proposed a mission methodology.5 His essay brought the within the Dutch Reformed Church, Kam was also deeply af- topic to the floor at the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618, where it fected by a local Dutch Moravian community, with its informal was endorsed.6 Another influential Dutch theologian at Leiden methods of discipleship and its examples of sacrificial mission- University and friend of Heurnius was Gisbertus Voetius. In ary service. By this time, the population of the Netherlands response to theological questions to the church in the Amster- was primarily aligned with the Reformed Church, but Count dam district from a missionary in the East Indies, Voetius penned Zinzendorf’s connections with the European nobility opened the a theology of mission.7 From 1623 to 1633 the Leiden profes- way for Moravian influence in the Netherlands. The dowager sor of theology, Antonius Walaeus, was appointed to run princess of the House of Orange desired Moravian missionar- ies to go to some of the Dutch colonies.11 Through her blessing Susan Nivens and her husband have worked since and the tenacity of Zinzendorf, leader of the new community of 1985 with Wycliffe Asia-Pacific in Bible translation, Herrnhut, a small group of Herrnhutters established a Moravian language development, and training of Asian Bible community in the town of Zeist, only sixty kilometers from ’s- translators. —[email protected] Hertogenbosch. The settlement in Zeist was firmly established in 1746. Not a few nobility visited the community in the 1750s and “showed much satisfaction and pleasure at the regulations of the congregation.”12 Located in the center of the Netherlands near significant crossroads of trade, religion, and education, 164 Intern ation al Bulletin of Mission ary Resear ch, Vol. 35, No. 3 this community became a place for missionaries to rest on their the Reformed Church. Kam’s father had designated Joseph to journeys or prepare for service abroad.13 train in the family trade, so he had not been formally educated Firsthand accounts from outside observers show that the beyond primary school. For this reason a seminary education Zeist Moravian settlement maintained many of the Herrnhut was not accessible to him. Additionally, concern for his aging distinctives in their worship, teachings, and operations. In 1760 parents held him at the family business. When his father died, Samuel Kenrick, a wealthy Englishman descended from a dissent- he felt compelled to maintain the business to support his two ing family, visited the Moravians in Zeist and made a scathing younger sisters, who were frail and unmarried. Not long after report to friends back in England after witnessing the Moravians’ this the business went bankrupt, and Joseph then acquired a job emotional display of love for Christ in their worship services. as a civil servant in The Hague. Nevertheless, he was impressed with their harmonized singing, In 1804 Kam and his two sisters moved to The Hague, where comparing the quality and style to the opera in London.14 Another he continued his association with both the Reformed Church and visitor, the Methodist evangelist John Wesley, wrote of his visit the Moravian Brethren. Although previous generations of Dutch in his journal. Traveling in the Netherlands in 1783, he decided Calvinists had opposed the Moravian settlement at Zeist,18 it is to visit the Zeist community, as he was “sick of inns” and the apparent that by Kam’s time, participation in both fellowships was exorbitant fees he paid in Amsterdam. Arriving on his eightieth accepted. Soon after settling into a new job and location, Joseph married Alida, the sister of a Reformed minister. At the same time, he continued attending Moravian meetings when his work allowed it, loved to sing their missions songs, and still felt great compassion for the lost, although mission work seemed to be a far-off dream. In January 1806 Alida gave birth to their first child, a daughter. Alida, however, died within two months, and their infant died a month later.19 This crisis at age thirty-six turned Kam back toward missions again. In December of the next year, he offered his services to the NZG.20 Kam’s Missionary Training Kam’s unconventional background and late start in ministry came at an unsettling juncture in Dutch history. There was trouble with the British on one side, and occu- pation by France under Napoleon on the other, but these developments set in motion the exemplary cooperation Map by GMI of three different missions groups: the NZG, the Mora- vian community of Zeist, and the London Missionary birthday, he commented that the community resembled a small Society (LMS). This cooperation came in two phases: first in the village, not unlike the larger colleges at Oxford University.15 Netherlands between the Reformed and Moravian groups, and As a tradesman, Kam’s father often visited the Zeist com- then between the Reformed and the LMS. Because he was not munity on his business journeys, and Joseph frequently joined a member of the Moravian Church, Kam applied in 1808 to the his father in these trips.