3. The Beauty in Church History: Part 1

Before examining some of the darkest parts of Christian history, I want to begin somewhere else.

There is much beauty in Christian History.

Across nearly two thousand years, Christians have fed hungry people, cared for abandoned children, tended the sick when others were afraid to approach them, established hospitals and shelters, educated children, visited prisoners, opposed slavery and racism, defended people being exploited, translated the Bible into the language of the people, crossed oceans to serve people they had never met, forgiven enemies, fought injustice, and sometimes given their lives doing what they believed God had called them to do.

Some Christians in history have become personal role models for me.

Amy Carmichael's life inspires me.

William Wilberforce's perseverance amazes me.

Jim and Elisabeth Elliot's willingness to give everything to God—and Elisabeth's willingness to forgive even after devastating loss—challenges me.

And they are only a few among an enormous Christian family spanning almost two thousand years.

There is extraordinary beauty here.

And that beauty begins very early.

The Earliest Christians Cared for People in Need

The New Testament itself presents care for vulnerable people as part of ordinary Christian life.

The Jerusalem church organized the daily distribution of food to widows (Acts 6:1–6).

Christians in Antioch collected money for believers facing famine in Judea (Acts 11:27–30).

Paul organized a large collection from Gentile churches for impoverished Christians in Jerusalem (Romans 15:25–27; 2 Corinthians 8–9).

James described care for orphans and widows as central to “pure religion” (James 1:27).

This did not disappear when the apostolic generation died.

Around the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr described Christian worship in Rome. After Scripture was read, prayers were offered, and Communion was celebrated, Christians who had resources voluntarily contributed money. Justin says the church leader then used these gifts to care for orphans and widows, people suffering through sickness or other needs, prisoners, and strangers traveling through the community. (Justin Martyr, First Apology 67.)

Think about that.

We are looking into an ordinary Christian gathering less than two centuries after Jesus.

Christians gathered.

They prayed.

They read Scripture.

They remembered Jesus.

And then they collected money to take care of people.

Around A.D. 197, Tertullian described a similar practice among Christians in North Africa. Their common fund was voluntary. According to Tertullian, Christians used it to support and bury poor people, provide for children without parents and elderly people, help shipwreck victims, and care for Christians suffering imprisonment or exile. He called it a “deposit fund of piety.” (Tertullian, Apology 39.)

This was not merely theology written on paper.

It was theology becoming food.

Shelter.

Burial.

Hospitality.

And practical care.

Christians Stayed With the Sick

One of the early Christian examples I find especially moving comes from periods of epidemic disease.

Around A.D. 263, Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, described a devastating epidemic in his city. According to the account preserved by Eusebius, many Christians remained with sick people even when doing so endangered their own lives. They visited them, cared for them, and nursed them; some caregivers contracted the disease themselves and died. (Eusebius, Church History 7.22.)

These Christians did not understand medicine the way we do today.

They did not have antibiotics.

They did not have modern hospitals.

They knew that going near a sick person could mean becoming sick themselves.

And some went anyway.

A few decades later, Eusebius described Christians responding during another period of famine and epidemic by caring for and burying the dead and distributing bread to people weakened by hunger. He says their conduct became known even among non-Christians. (Eusebius, Church History 9.8.) Christian faith was becoming visible through compassion.

Basil and a Christian Community Built Around the Sick

By the fourth century, Christian care for people experiencing poverty and illness was developing into more formal institutions.

Basil of Caesarea, bishop from A.D. 370 to 379, became associated with a large charitable complex outside Caesarea that cared for travelers, poor people, and the sick, including people suffering from leprosy. (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43 63–64.)

After Basil's death, his friend Gregory of Nazianzus remembered him approaching people with leprosy whom wider society feared and avoided. Gregory praised Basil's concern for “the sick, and the relief of their wounds” and remembered his willingness to kiss people with leprosy whom others regarded with revulsion. (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43 63–64.) People pushed to the margins of society were welcomed into a Christian community of care. That is beautiful.

“Before All Things and Above All Things”

Around A.D. 530, Benedict of Nursia wrote the Rule of Saint Benedict, which would shape Western monastic Christianity for centuries. Its instructions concerning illness are remarkable. Benedict says care for the sick should come “before all things and above all things”, because sick people were to be served as though they were Christ himself.

The Rule also instructs monasteries to receive guests as Christ and to show particular care for poor people and pilgrims. (Rule of Saint Benedict 36, 53.) That combination is beautiful.

The sick person could represent Christ.

The stranger arriving at the door could represent Christ.

Christian spirituality was teaching people to look for Christ precisely in the person who needed care, which is a wonderful application of Christ's teaching in Matthew 25 to care for the least of these as if they are him. Many monastic communities became places of prayer, hospitality, learning, food, medicine, shelter, manuscript preservation, education, and care for travelers and poor people.

Francis Went Among the Lepers

Centuries later, Francis of Assisi looked back on one of the experiences that transformed his life. Near the end of his life, in his Testament of 1226, Francis remembered that people with leprosy had once seemed unbearable to him. Then something changed. He wrote that the Lord led him among them and that he “showed mercy to them.” What had once seemed bitter, he said, became sweet. (Francis of Assisi, Testament 1–3.) Faith challenged Francis to move toward people he had previously wanted to avoid. Christian history contains many examples of Christians believing that following Jesus meant moving toward the person society pushed away.

Early accounts of Francis's life show that this mercy became intensely practical. Francis did not simply overcome his fear of people with leprosy from a distance. His early biographers report that he went to live among them and personally cared for them. Thomas of Celano says that Francis served them diligently, washing them and cleaning their ulcers. Other early Franciscan accounts describe him visiting a leper hospital, giving alms, washing feet, bandaging sores, and tending wounds. His concern for people with leprosy also became part of the life he expected from his followers: the early friars were sent to stay in leper hospitals and serve the people living there. Francis did not merely learn to tolerate people he had once feared. He moved into their world, touched them, cared for their bodies, and treated people pushed to the margins as people worthy of love. (Thomas of Celano, First Life of Saint Francis 17; Legend of the Three Companions 11; Bonaventure, Major Legend of Saint Francis 2.6.)

Christians Fought to Put God's Word in Ordinary People's Hands

Another part of Christian history I am deeply grateful for is the long struggle to make Scripture accessible to Christians in their own languages. Today I can open a Bible in English almost anywhere. I can own several translations. I can read Scripture on my phone. I can compare translations instantly. It is easy to forget how extraordinary that would have seemed during much of Christian history.

Before the printing press, books were enormously expensive and had to be copied by hand. Literacy was limited, and in Western Europe the Church's principal biblical and liturgical language was Latin. Yet Christians increasingly insisted that all people should be able to encounter Scripture in languages they understood.

It is important to understand why Bible translation could become so controversial. The medieval Church was not universally opposed to Scripture being translated into ordinary languages, and vernacular biblical texts existed in many parts of Europe. But Church authorities often feared unauthorized translations and interpretations, especially when they were associated with movements considered heretical. If ordinary Christians could read and interpret Scripture without depending upon clergy, they might reach conclusions that challenged established doctrine and ecclesiastical authority. In England, these concerns became especially strong after John Wycliffe and the Lollard movement, a movement in England that challenged the teachings and power of the Catholic Church, and restrictions were placed on unauthorized English translations of Scripture. By the time William Tyndale began his work of Bible translation more than a century later, the printing press made the issue even more explosive: a translation could now be reproduced by the thousands and placed directly into people's hands. What reformers saw as giving Christians access to God's Word, sadly, Church authorities often saw as allowing heresy to spread beyond their control.

In England, this struggle came into sharper focus in the late fourteenth century. Followers associated with the English reformer John Wycliffe produced complete English Bibles. The British Library describes one Wycliffite manuscript made around 1385–1390 as the earliest datable copy of a complete Bible in English. Modern scholarship is careful not to attribute every part of the translation personally to Wycliffe, but the movement associated with him played a central role in putting the entire biblical text into Middle English. (British Library, “Wycliffite Bible, Earlier Version.”)

Then there was Jan Hus. Hus was born around 1370 in Bohemia. He became a priest, preacher, university teacher, and reformer who condemned abuses such as simony, religious bribery and corruption, and the sale of indulgences. But his conflict with Church authorities eventually went deeper than corruption. Hus challenged prevailing claims about the authority of the institutional Church itself. He taught that Christ is the true head of the Church, questioned whether popes and church leaders should be obeyed simply because they held religious office, and insisted that ecclesiastical authority could not stand above the truth of Christ and Scripture.

These teachings brought Hus before the Council of Constance. The Council condemned thirty propositions drawn largely from his writings and demanded that he retract them. Hus maintained that some charges misrepresented him and refused to renounce teachings he believed were true unless he could be shown that they were wrong. That refusal was decisive. The Council declared him an obstinate heretic, removed him from the priesthood, and handed him over to the secular authorities. On July 6, 1415, he was burned at the stake. (Council of Constance, session 15.)

Whatever conclusions we reach about every point of Hus's theology, his final choice to stand up for truth in the face of death is incredible. The most powerful religious authorities of his world were telling him to recant. Hus believed that doing so would require him to profess something he did not believe before God. He chose death instead. His followers therefore remembered him not simply as a reformer, but as a martyr—a Christian who was willing to lose his life rather than surrender what he believed was true and right. Hus believed he was responsible before God for what he taught, and he would not purchase his life by repudiating convictions he believed were true and good. More than a century before the Protestant Reformation, Hus courageously died rather than surrender his conscience to the religious consensus surrounding him.

His friend and fellow Czech reformer Jerome of Prague followed him. Jerome traveled toward Constance hoping to support Hus but was himself arrested. Under enormous pressure, he initially recanted his support for teachings associated with Hus and Wycliffe. Months later, however, Jerome publicly withdrew that recantation. He told the Council that he had been wrong to condemn Hus and Wycliffe simply to save himself. The Council consequently declared him a “relapsed heretic.” On May 30, 1416, Jerome was burned at the stake. (Council of Constance, sessions 19 and 21.)

There is something especially moving about Jerome's story. He had already found a way to preserve his life: recant. Then he reversed himself, knowing what that decision could cost him. Whatever conclusions we reach about every point of his theology, he ultimately chose to face death rather than continue professing something he no longer believed. The Hussite tradition rightly remembered both Hus and Jerome as godly men, martyrs of its reforming cause.

Then came William Tyndale. Tyndale's great conviction was that English-speaking Christians should be able to encounter Scripture for themselves. In 1526, his New Testament became the first printed English New Testament translated directly from Greek. Tyndale wanted the biblical text to be intelligible for all people rather than accessible principally through Latin and the educated clergy. His translation was unauthorized, condemned by English ecclesiastical and political authorities, smuggled into England, and publicly burned. Tyndale nevertheless continued translating and revising Scripture while living in exile on the European continent. (Library of Congress, “First Printed English New Testament”; Fineberg, “Let There Be Light.”)

Tyndale's conflict with the authorities extended beyond Bible translation. He embraced Protestant theological positions that Church authorities regarded as heretical, wrote against abuses within the Church, and even angered Henry VIII by opposing the king's attempt to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. So it would be too simple to say that Tyndale was executed only for translating the Bible. But neither should his translation work be separated from his martyrdom. Authorities had condemned his English New Testament, attempted to suppress it, and pursued the man who had produced it. After years in exile, Tyndale was betrayed and arrested near Antwerp in 1535. Following more than a year of imprisonment, he was condemned as a heretic and executed near Brussels in 1536, strangled and then burned. The Library of Congress describes him simply and appropriately as an English martyr. (Fineberg, “Let There Be Light”; Library of Congress, “First Printed English New Testament.”)

And even imprisonment did not extinguish his devotion to Scripture and to God. In his surviving prison letter, Tyndale asked for his Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary so that he could continue studying. I find his courage and dedication incredible. A man imprisoned, facing the possibility of death because of his religious work and convictions, was still asking for books so that he could continue studying the Bible to benefit others. And Tyndale's work survived him.

Miles Coverdale produced the first complete printed English Bible in 1535, drawing in part upon Tyndale's work. Coverdale himself was not a martyr; unlike Tyndale, he survived the dangerous religious upheavals of the period. But he shared in the larger effort to place the entire Bible into English, and his work helped prepare the way for later authorized English Bibles. (Cambridge University Library, “The First Complete English Printed Bible”; Museum of the Bible, “Coverdale Bible.”)

Then there was John Rogers, who had worked with Tyndale and helped preserve and publish his biblical translations after Tyndale's arrest. Under the name “Thomas Matthew,” Rogers prepared what became known as the Matthew Bible, published in 1537 and incorporating substantial portions of Tyndale's translations.

Years later, the religious direction of England changed dramatically under the Catholic queen Mary I. Rogers, by then an outspoken Protestant preacher, refused to return to Roman Catholic doctrine. His prosecution was not simply punishment for helping produce an English Bible years earlier. He was examined and condemned as a Protestant heretic for beliefs that included his rejection of papal authority and Catholic teaching concerning the Eucharist. He was offered the possibility of avoiding death through recantation. He refused. On February 4, 1555, John Rogers was burned alive at Smithfield and became the first Protestant martyr of Mary's reign. (Library of Congress, “America as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century.”)

These men did not agree about everything. Their circumstances were different, and the precise theological disputes that brought them into conflict with religious authorities were not identical. But: they all believed truth and love for God, His Word, and people mattered more than conformity.

Hus would not renounce convictions simply because the institutional Church condemned them. Jerome recanted under pressure and then found the courage to take his recantation back. Tyndale spent years in exile translating Scripture so ordinary people could read it and continued studying the Bible even from prison. Rogers was given the opportunity to preserve his life by abandoning his Protestant convictions and refused.

They challenged the religious authorities of their own day at enormous personal cost. They loved God, loved Scripture, loved people, sought what they believed was true, and ultimately demonstrated that their convictions were worth more to them than safety.

And Protestant Reformers across Europe translated Scripture into vernacular languages, printed it, taught people to read it, preached from it, and insisted that God's Word should not remain the possession of a religious elite. Their actions were not always admirable. Some Reformers who courageously challenged one kind of religious authority later became authorities who needed to be challenged themselves. I examine that elsewhere.

But I remain profoundly grateful for this part of their legacy: They helped put the Bible - they put hope - into ordinary people's hands. And the story did not stop in Europe. It eventually became a worldwide translation movement. I will return to that extraordinary story later.

Finally, there is no way for me to tell this story without also acknowledging how tragic it is. Christians were imprisoned, condemned as heretics, and in some cases killed while fighting to make Scripture accessible and challenging religious authorities they believed were wrong. The circumstances differed, and men such as Tyndale and Rogers were condemned for broader Protestant beliefs as well as their work with the Bible; ecclesiastical courts also generally condemned heretics while secular authorities carried out the executions. But those qualifications should not obscure what happened. Christian authorities participated in condemning Christians whose devotion to Scripture helped place the Bible into the hands of ordinary people. Some of the very translations once treated as dangerous would profoundly influence the English Bibles Christians later treasured. That is a terrible irony in Church history. Yet there is beauty within the tragedy: Wycliffe's followers, Hus, Jerome, Tyndale, Rogers, and others were willing to question powerful religious institutions, search for truth, and in some cases risk or lose their lives rather than surrender convictions they believed they held before God. I am profoundly grateful for their courage—and profoundly saddened that such courage was ever required of them by Christian institutions and authorities.

The Radical Reformation: Christians Who Refused the Sword

The sixteenth-century Reformation produced still another Christian tradition that exhibitied remarkable courage and love for God in the midst of great hostility. The Anabaptists were among the most persecuted Christians of the Reformation era. Catholic authorities persecuted them. Lutheran authorities persecuted them. Reformed authorities persecuted them. Many were imprisoned, tortured, drowned, burned, or otherwise executed because of their beliefs. (Oyer, “Persecution.”)

Why were Christian authorities willing to imprison and execute the Anabaptists over these beliefs? The answer lies partly in how closely Church and state were intertwined in sixteenth-century Europe. Baptism was not regarded merely as a personal religious decision; infant baptism helped mark a person's place within Christian society itself. By rejecting infant baptism and insisting that faith and baptism must be chosen voluntarily, Anabaptists were challenging an entire religious and social system. Many also rejected the use of the sword, refused certain oaths, and argued for a much greater separation between the Church and civil government. To Catholic and Protestant authorities alike, these teachings could appear not only heretical but socially dangerous. Their fears intensified after the violent Anabaptist takeover of Münster in 1534–1535, even though many other Anabaptists emphatically rejected Münster's violence. In 1529, the Diet of Speyer nevertheless made persistent “rebaptism” itself punishable by death, with the support of both Catholic and Protestant rulers. What the Anabaptists often understood as an attempt to follow Jesus and the early Church more faithfully, the established Christian authorities could interpret as both heresy and rebellion against Christian society.

Anabaptism itself was diverse. Not every person associated with the movement was peaceful. But major Anabaptist traditions developed a remarkable commitment to nonviolence, freedom of conscience, simple discipleship, and following Jesus' Sermon on the Mount even while other "Christians" were persecuting and killing them.

In 1527, a group of Swiss Anabaptists gathered at Schleitheim and produced what became known as the Schleitheim Confession. Among other things, it rejected Christian use of the coercive sword within the church and separated Christian discipleship from the magistrate's use of force. (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, “Schleitheim Confession.”) One of the principal figures behind the confession was Michael Sattler. Within only months, Sattler was arrested, tried, tortured, and executed near Rottenburg in May 1527. His wife, Margaretha, was also imprisoned and executed by drowning soon afterward. (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, “Sattler, Michael.”) They were being persecuted by other Christians. And the great majority concluded that following Jesus did not permit them to answer persecution with another sword.

The later Anabaptist leader Menno Simons expressed this beautifully. Writing in the sixteenth century, he described peaceful Christians this way: “Their sword is the sword of the Spirit.” His writings repeatedly emphasized peace and nonviolence. (Menno Simons, Complete Works.) That conviction eventually contributed to the Mennonite peace tradition that survives today. I am amazed by the courage and strength of thse Christians who could be hunted, imprisoned, and killed by others, even other Christians! - and still conclude: We will not build our faith around coercion and violence. We will respond with peace instead of violence.

Anti-Trinitarians and Unitarians Who Defended Conscience

Another group deserves mention precisely because they were among the Christians most vulnerable to religious persecution. Christians who rejected established Trinitarian orthodoxy could face enormous danger. The nonviolent Michael Servetus was burned for heresy, as he did not believe the Trinity was biblical, outside Geneva on October 27, 1553. (Michael Servetus Institute, “Trial of Servetus.”)

But out of the Radical Reformation also arose anti-Trinitarian and later Unitarian communities that became notable advocates of religious conscience. Again, this history needs qualification. Not every anti-Trinitarian was equally tolerant. Not every Unitarian position was identical. And sixteenth-century ideas of religious liberty were usually much narrower than modern ones.

But some developments were remarkable for their time. In Transylvania, the Unitarian reformer Francis Dávid became a major advocate of religious toleration. At the Diet of Torda in 1568, under King John Sigismund, legislation declared that preachers could preach according to their understanding and that they were not to be threatened with imprisonment or loss of office because of their teaching, because “faith is the gift of God.” (Harvard Square Library, “The Diet of Torda.”) This was not modern universal religious liberty. Its protections were limited, and the political and confessional system remained complicated. But in sixteenth-century Europe—while Catholics and Protestants were imprisoning and executing one another over doctrine—it was unique.

A Christian society influenced by anti-Trinitarian reformers was articulating the principle that faith could not simply be produced through force. Something similar happened among portions of the Polish Brethren, an anti-Trinitarian movement that separated from the Polish Reformed Church in the 1560s. Among the early Polish Brethren, especially in the kingdom of Poland, many leaders drew heavily upon Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and rejected participation in warfare, killing, and some forms of coercive civil office. The movement was never completely uniform, and its positions on magistracy and warfare changed over time. (Brock, “Dilemmas of a Socinian Pacifist”; Quatrini, “Reassessing the Polish Brethren.”) Their communities nevertheless placed strong emphasis on Scripture, study, discussion, and attempting to build Christian life around the teaching of Jesus.

Unitarian Christians were emphasizing Jesus' teachings about loving enemies, faith being a free choice without coercion, and using God's Word as a sword, not violence. Even outside explicitly Unitarian circles, some Reformers began reaching similar conclusions about conscience. After Michael Servetus was executed in Geneva, the Protestant humanist Sebastian Castellio publicly challenged the practice of killing people over theology. His words remain powerful: “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.” (Castellio, Against Calvin's Booklet.) That principle may seem obvious to many readers today. In sixteenth-century Christianity, tragically it was far from universally accepted. I am grateful for Christians who said it anyway.

Christians Also Challenged Other Christians

Some of the most noteworthy moments in Christian history occurred when Christians became willing to confront terrible things other Christians were doing. That distinction is extremely important for the history that follows. Christian reform has often come from within Christianity itself. One remarkable example is the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566). Las Casas witnessed the terrible treatment of Indigenous peoples during Spanish colonization of the Americas.

He did not begin his life understanding everything clearly, and his legacy itself is complicated. Early in his advocacy he supported importing enslaved Africans as a way to relieve Indigenous laborers; later in life, his position changed sharply and he condemned the African slave trade as well. (Clayton, “Bartolomé de las Casas and the African Slave Trade.”)

But he eventually became one of the most determined Christian voices protesting the exploitation and destruction of Indigenous communities. (Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.) In 1542, he completed the work later published in 1552 as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, describing atrocities committed against Indigenous people and appealing to Christian and royal authorities for reform. (Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.)

Christians Challenged Slavery

Slavery is one of the clearest examples. Christians defended slavery. That history has to be faced honestly. But Christians also became some of slavery's determined opponents.

On April 18, 1688, four Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania—Francis Daniel Pastorius, Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff—signed an extraordinary protest against slavery. It is generally recognized as the first written protest against slavery by a religious body in the English colonies. (National Park Service, “Germantown Friends' First Protest Against Slavery, 1688.”) They appealed directly to Christian morality and the Golden Rule. They asked people to imagine themselves being kidnapped, separated from spouses and children, transported to another country, and sold. They argued that Christians who condemned stealing could not simply justify purchasing people who had effectively been stolen. Their fellow Quakers did not immediately adopt their position; the petition was passed upward through several Quaker meetings and ultimately set aside without a formal judgment for or against slavery. (National Park Service, “Germantown Friends' First Protest Against Slavery, 1688.”) But, these four Christians were willing to challenge their own Christian community. And over subsequent generations, Quaker opposition to slavery grew much stronger.

Then there was William Wilberforce (1759–1833). Wilberforce was far from alone.

Thomas Clarkson, Quaker abolitionists, Black abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano, women organizing boycotts and petitions, formerly enslaved people telling their own stories, and countless less famous people were essential to British abolitionism. Wilberforce's Christian faith was central to his own decades-long campaign. He repeatedly brought abolition before Parliament. He lost. He returned. He lost again. He continued.

After approximately eighteen years of parliamentary campaigning, the Slave Trade Act received Royal Assent on March 25, 1807, ending British participation in the legal transatlantic slave trade. Parliament passed broader legislation abolishing slavery throughout most of the British Empire in 1833, the year Wilberforce died. (UK Parliament, “Parliament Abolishes the Slave Trade” and “Key Dates.”)

Wilberforce has always inspired me. He saw something he believed was profoundly wrong, believed his faith required him to act, and kept working when success was anything but immediate.

The Modern Missionary Movement: Crossing Languages and Cultures

Many missionaries left comfortable lives, learned unfamiliar languages, translated Scripture, established schools, provided medical care, challenged slavery or harmful practices, lived among people very different from themselves, and sometimes never returned permanently to the countries where they had been born. Some served for decades. Some died there. Some were buried there.

The Moravians

One of the most remarkable missionary movements began not with a great empire or wealthy denomination, but with a tiny Christian community at Herrnhut in what is now Germany. Yet in 1732, this community of roughly three hundred people sent Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann to St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies. (Moravian Church Board of World Mission, “History”; Moravian Church Unity Archives, “The Province Eastern West Indies.”) That became the beginning of an extraordinary international missionary movement. Within the next decade, Moravians had sent missionaries to places including Greenland, southern Africa, the Caribbean, and communities in North America. (Moravian Church Board of World Mission, “Herrnhut Congregational Affirmation.”) Their movement helped demonstrate that mission was not something reserved for wealthy national churches. A small Christian community could look outward toward the world.

One especially important part of the Moravian mission was their work among enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. In the Danish West Indies, Moravians deliberately ministered among enslaved communities and made education an important part of that work. They taught enslaved people to read and write at a time when such opportunities were severely limited, and the Moravian Church eventually developed schools specifically for enslaved children. Their record was not perfect—the early Moravians did not consistently challenge the institution of slavery itself—but their willingness to teach, worship with, and build Christian communities among people whom the slave system treated as property was nevertheless significant. The Moravian Church became one of the earliest organized Christian bodies in the West Indies to make education for enslaved people a sustained priority. (Moravian Church Board of World Mission, “Eastern West Indies”; Hüsgen, “Recruitment, Training and Conflicts”; Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival.)

And those communities did not remain simply European missions to Africans. African Christians themselves became important teachers, evangelists, and leaders. One remarkable example was Rebecca Protten, a formerly enslaved Caribbean woman who joined the Moravian movement on St. Thomas and became an evangelist among enslaved Africans. Historian Jon Sensbach describes her preaching to hundreds and helping to shape what became one of the earliest African Protestant communities in the Americas. Later in life, she and her husband traveled to the Gold Coast in West Africa, where she taught African children. The Moravian story therefore became more than Europeans crossing oceans to preach: people who had themselves lived under slavery became Christian leaders carrying faith and education to others. (Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival.)

William Carey and the Languages of India

Then there was William Carey (1761–1834). In 1792, Carey published An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. That same year, a small group of Baptists formed what became the Baptist Missionary Society. Fourteen people were present at the founding meeting in Kettering on October 2, 1792. (Carey Center, “An Enquiry” and “Baptist Missionary Society.”) Carey eventually went to India.

One of the most important aspects of his work was language. At Serampore, Carey worked alongside other missionaries and, critically, Indian scholars and language experts in a vast translation and printing enterprise. (Carey Center, “Bible Translations.”)

The Serampore mission press began operating in 1800. During Carey's lifetime, the Serampore team produced or prepared biblical translations in numerous South Asian languages. (Carey Center, “Baptist Mission Press” and “Bible Translations.”) This was not the achievement of one European genius acting alone. Translation depended heavily upon Indian scholars and collaborators. Carey's conviction was: People should encounter Scripture in languages they actually understand. That conviction now stretches across the world.

Carey's work also extended far beyond Bible translation. Education became one of the major projects of the Serampore mission. Working with Joshua Marshman, William Ward, Indian teachers, and other collaborators, Carey helped build a network of schools across Bengal. By 1816–1818, the Serampore missionaries had established more than one hundred elementary schools. In 1818, Carey, Marshman, and Ward founded Serampore College, offering higher education in the arts and sciences as well as Christian studies. Remarkably for its setting and period, the college was intended to admit students without distinction of caste or creed. Carey therefore did not merely want people to receive Christian preaching; he helped create institutions through which people could receive a broader education—and Serampore College still exists more than two centuries later. (Laird, “Contribution of the Serampore Missionaries”; Senate of Serampore College, “Serampore College.”)

Carey also became involved in efforts to challenge practices he believed were causing terrible human suffering, particularly sati, the burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres. Carey and his Serampore colleague William Ward helped gather information about the practice around Calcutta; their 1803 survey became part of a larger network of evidence and advocacy reaching Christian reformers such as Claudius Buchanan and William Wilberforce. Carey should not be portrayed as single-handedly ending sati—Indian reformers, most importantly Ram Mohan Roy, were indispensable to the campaign, and the history belongs to them as well. But Carey was one of the Christians who saw the deaths of widows occurring around him, believed the practice should end, and used his scholarship, publishing work, and connections to help oppose it. When the British Indian government finally prohibited sati in 1829, Carey had spent decades among those pressing for change. (Major, “Evangelical Connections.”)

David Livingstone

David Livingstone (1813–1873) became one of the most famous missionary explorers of the nineteenth century. Livingstone was also a trained physician, and medicine was an important part of the way he understood Christian mission. Throughout his years in Africa, he treated people he encountered for a remarkably wide range of conditions, including eye diseases, tumors, fevers, tuberculosis, and obstetrical problems. He believed medical care gave missionaries an opportunity to serve people practically and wrote about offering others “medical skill and remedial aid.” His extensive observations of disease also contributed to nineteenth-century knowledge of tropical medicine, particularly malaria and other febrile illnesses. Livingstone did not simply travel through African communities as an explorer; for significant portions of his career, he also entered them as a doctor and healer. (Livingstone Online, “Livingstone’s Life & Expeditions” and “Critical Reflections on the Manuscripts (2).”)

But the cause that increasingly consumed Livingstone was slavery. As he traveled through central and eastern Africa, he repeatedly encountered slave trading, displaced communities, captives, and violence connected with the trade. Rather than merely recording what he saw privately, Livingstone used his books, journals, letters, and enormous public reputation to force British readers to confront it. In 1871, he witnessed the massacre of hundreds of people at the market at Nyangwe and sent an account of the violence to Britain. His descriptions circulated widely and strengthened an already developing abolitionist campaign against the East African slave trade. In 1873, only weeks after Livingstone's death, British pressure helped secure a treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar that closed Zanzibar's public slave market and prohibited the seaborne slave trade. Livingstone did not accomplish that victory alone—British abolitionists and especially diplomat John Kirk played crucial roles—but historians identify Livingstone's eyewitness reports as an important force mobilizing public support for the campaign. (Livingstone Online, “Livingstone in 1871”; “Livingstone’s Life & Expeditions”; “The Letter with Annotations.”)

He spent decades traveling under extraordinarily difficult conditions, practiced medicine among people he encountered, and increasingly devoted his influence to exposing a slave trade whose human cost he had seen firsthand. By the end of his life, abolition had become one of the central purposes of his work. David Livingstone wanted the suffering he witnessed to stop—and he used the platform he had to make people thousands of miles away see it too.

Hudson Taylor

In 1865, the English missionary Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission.

Taylor had become convinced that enormous populations within China's interior had little contact with Christian missionaries. On June 25, 1865, while walking on Brighton Beach in England, he prayed for twenty-four additional workers and committed himself to forming a mission devoted specifically to inland China. (OMF International, “Our Story.”) Taylor became known for attempting to identify more closely with Chinese culture than many Western missionaries of his era. He wore Chinese clothing and encouraged missionaries to learn local languages and adapt culturally where they could. (OMF International, “Our Story.”)

Mary Slessor

Then there was Mary Slessor (1848–1915). Slessor was a Scottish working-class woman who arrived in Calabar, in what is now Nigeria, in 1876. She learned local languages, lived for decades in the region, and became especially known for advocating for women and children. One aspect of her work involved protecting twins and their mothers in communities where twin births could lead to the infants being killed and the mother being ostracized. She also adopted and cared for a number of rescued children. (Livingstone, Mary Slessor of Calabar; Mary Slessor Foundation, “Twins and Adopted Family.”) She left her Scotland home and spent decades protecting vulnerable children.

William and Catherine Booth: Christianity in the Streets

Christian mission was also occurring inside industrial cities. In 1865, William and Catherine Booth began the work in London's East End that eventually became The Salvation Army. (The Salvation Army, “History.”) They went especially toward people whom respectable churches often failed to reach or welcome: impoverished people, people experiencing homelessness, prisoners, people struggling with alcohol, and others living at society's margins. The movement combined evangelism with increasingly practical social work.

The Salvation Army opened soup kitchens and washing facilities. In 1883, it opened a prison-gate home in Melbourne for former prisoners. In 1884, it opened a women's rescue home in London. It participated in the campaign that helped raise Britain's age of consent in 1885. In 1890, it opened a labor exchange to help unemployed people find work. That same year William Booth published In Darkest England and the Way Out, proposing an ambitious Christian response to poverty and social exclusion. (The Salvation Army, “History.”)

They preached.

They provided people with food.

Housing.

Work.

Protection.

Community.

The Salvation Army continues practical humanitarian work around the world today. (The Salvation Army, “History.”)

Amy Carmichael: “Amma”

Then there is Amy Carmichael (1867–1951). Her story is especially meaningful to me for many reasons. Her own writings and biography, written by another missionary, Elisabeth Elliot, had a profound impact on my faith. I have always been amazed at Amy's sacrificial love, courage, and devotion to God.

Carmichael was born in Northern Ireland in 1867 and arrived in India in 1895. In 1901, she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship. She remained in India for the rest of her life—more than fifty years. The Fellowship became especially known for caring for vulnerable children, including girls whom Carmichael believed were at serious risk of exploitation. (Dohnavur Fellowship, “Amy Carmichael” and “History.”) Carmichael did not merely write about suffering from a safe distance. She built a life around caring for children. She became known to them as Amma: Mother. (Dohnavur Fellowship, “Amy Carmichael.”)

Jim and Elisabeth Elliot: Love After Loss

The story of Jim Elliot (1927–1956) and Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) is another Christian story I find deeply moving. Jim had been thinking for years about what it meant to give his entire life to God. On October 28, 1949, while still a young man, he wrote the sentence for which he later became famous: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” (Jim Elliot, journal entry, October 28, 1949; published in Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty.)

He eventually went to Ecuador. Jim, together with Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Roger Youderian, hoped to establish peaceful contact with the Waodani people. On January 8, 1956, all five men were killed. (Elisabeth Elliot, “Timeline.”) That could easily have been the end of the story.

It was not.

Less than three years later, on October 8, 1958, Elisabeth Elliot, her young daughter Valerie, and Nate Saint's sister Rachel Saint went to live among Waodani people. (Elisabeth Elliot, “Timeline.”) Elisabeth later described living near people involved in her husband's death. She did not go seeking revenge. Elisabeth's forgiveness and love is extraordinary.

Her husband had been killed.

Her daughter had lost her father.

And Elisabeth's response was not to build her life around hatred.

Eventually, some of the people whose lives had been divided by the killings formed genuine friendships; Elisabeth's own timeline, for example, notes that Gikita, one of the men involved in the attack, later became her friend. (Elisabeth Elliot, “Timeline.”) I am inspired by Jim Elliot's willingness to give his life to what he believed God called him to do. I am equally inspired by Elisabeth's willingness to respond to devastating loss with love and forgiveness instead of choosing hate and bitterness.