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William Carey and fellow missionary John Thomas were riding near Malda, India, in 1794 when they saw “a basket hung in a tree, in which an infant had been exposed; the skull remained, the rest having been devoured by ants.” This “holy” act of infanticide had been committed with religious fervor by a Hindu mother.

Infanticide was not uncommon in India in Carey’s day. But the British government in India ignored such sacrifice of infants—it didn’t want to interfere in religious matters of the people. The Indian masses were ready to sacrifice their lives (and their infants’) for the sake of salvation and to escape the karma-samsara cycle. The people were intensely religious and were following (though sometimes misinterpreting) written religious laws.

William Carey strongly protested these crimes against humanity. He was one of many who prodded the apparently passive government to halt or regulate a variety of harmful social practices.

Killing Infants

In 1802 Carey’s colleague William Ward studied infanticide on the river island of Saugor. Many women made vows to the Holy Ganges River “that if blessed with two children, one would be presented to the River.” As many as 100 children, he estimated (though probably more), were being sacrificed every year.

William Carey, Jr., reported one such sacrifice to his father: A boatman pulled a drowning child into his boat. He presented the infant to its mother. She took the child, broke its neck, and cast it into the river again!

After joining Fort William College as a professor, Carey protested infanticide to Governor-General Wellesley. Wellesley called for a study of the frequency, nature, and causes of infanticide in Bengal. So Carey prepared an exhaustive report; other people were at work as well. Since the attention of the government was now drawn, and Lord Wellesley was convinced, infanticide was abolished in 1802 before Carey even presented his report.

In a letter to John Ryland six years later, Carey explained his contribution: “I have, since I have been here … presented three petitions or representations to Government for the purpose of having the burning of women and other modes of murder abolished, and … in the case of infanticide and voluntary drowning in the river … laws were made to prevent these, which have been successful.”

This marked the first time the British government interfered so directly with religious practice in India. It set the stage for abolition of other practices.

Burning Widows

As scholar E. Daniel Potts explains, widow burning was “based on the religious belief that only by burning could the widow win eternal happiness and bring blessings on her family.” (Sati, or suttee, refers to the act of burning alive a widow on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband; it also names the woman who performs the act.) Voices had been raised against sati for centuries, but no one before Carey had the ability to drown out the voices that encouraged sati.

Carey first witnessed the rite, to his horror, in 1799. (See Burning a Woman to Death in this issue.) The next year, when he saw a group of people assembled for sati, he tried to stop them by (falsely) saying the governor-general had threatened to hang the first man who kindled the funeral pyre!

Carey and other missionaries soon launched a strong protest against sati, saying it was not voluntary but forced. Carey was then asked to submit full information on sati to the governor-general’s council.

In 1803, Carey arranged for a debate of sati at Fort William College. Two years later the governor-general asked the Indian Supreme Court to study how much the practice was based on Hindu law. The report said that sati had a religious sanction, and therefore, any reform would be unwise.

But in 1816, Carey’s former pundit (native teacher), who was now chief pundit of the Supreme Court, determined that sati had no basis in the Hindu Shastras [Hindu sacred writings]. Still sati was debated. Carey’s colleague William Ward and Indian leader Raja Ram Mohan Roy helped influence Parliament to take up the matter in 1821.

Meanwhile, the Baptist missionaries continued their fight. They fired an Indian helper who participated in the sati of his sister-in-law. They continued to write against sati in the periodicals Samachar Darpan and the Friend of India, criticizing the government for inaction.

In 1828, William Bentinck was appointed governor-general. Bentinck, an active Christian influenced by the steady sati debate, had the “stern and unalterable determination … that this atrocious rite should cease absolutely and immediately.” He consulted with Indian leaders and abolished sati in December 1829, which the Serampore missionaries praised as a “bold and decisive step.”

William Carey was the government’s translator into Bengali, and on Sunday morning, December 6, 1829, he received the official declaration that sati had been abolished. He decided that translating the declaration was more important than preparing his sermon. Giving the preaching task to another, Carey raced to translate the declaration by that evening, believing lives hung in the balance every minute he delayed.

Exposing the Sick

The sick and dying often were taken to the banks of the holy rivers and allowed to die. William Ward described such “ghat murders”: “When a person is on the point of death, his relations carry him on his bed, or on a litter, to the Ganges.… A person, in his last agonies, is dragged from his bed and friends, and carried in the coldest or the hottest weather, from whatever distance, to the river side, where he lies, if a poor man, in the open air, day and night, till he expires.” In some cases, the practice veiled simple murder.

William Carey protested against the act in 1802, and later the Serampore journal Friend of India declared that controlling the practice would require “delicate handling, for the strongest religious feelings of the Hindoos” were involved. Yet it was time to halt “barbarous cruelty even in the well meaning.” Till a formal abolition took place, the missionaries occasionally carried home people who were exposed to die and nursed them back to health.

In India’s Cries to British Humanity, Baptist James Peggs brought to the fore the passivity of the government to this “murder.” The Baptist missionaries continuously published against the social evil as well. Finally an otherwise insensitive government was forced to halt such exposures of the sick and dying.

Drowning Lepers

Lepers were rejected by their families and society and sometimes either aided in committing suicide or outright murdered. Carey saw a leper in Katwa in 1812:

“A pit about ten cubits in depth was dug, and a fire placed at the bottom of it. The poor man rolled himself and struggled for that purpose [of getting out of the pit]. His mother and sister, however thrust him in again; and thus a young man, who to all appearances might have survived several years, was cruelly burned to death.

“I find that the practice is not uncommon in these parts. Taught that a violent end purifies the body and ensures transmigration into a healthy new existence, while natural death by disease results in four successive births and a fifth as a leper again, the leper like the even more wretched widow, has always courted suicide.” Others who suffered from what Carey called the “great sickness” were drowned.

The missionaries once again used their vital tool, Friend of India, to make known the lepers’ pathetic state and call for better care. In addition, Carey and Thomas provided medicine, as well as preaching, for many lepers. Missionary wife Ann Grant wrote in 1803, “This morning 34 poor people met before our door … Many with the Leprosy; some with the ends of their fingers, some with their toes eaten off, by the Leprosy, many of them receive two-pence a week. Bro. Carey gives them medicine for their bodies, &the best medicine for their poor souls.”

Protesting Boldly

Carey and his colleagues also objected to slavery (“In some parts of India,” William Ward wrote, “children are as much an article of sale as goats or poultry”). They also spoke out against religious practices involving self-torture and published against the caste system.

One can debate who deserves credit for abolishing the evil practices of infanticide, sati, the slave trade, or the exposure of the sick and the dying. Writers have ascribed the honor to Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Lord Bentinck, and others, as well as Carey.

But Carey definitely raised his voice in protest, and he succeeded in drawing, and keeping, the attention of the government through the publications Friend of India and Samachar Darpan. He and his fellow missionaries stood with the oppressed, reflecting the type of God he believed in—the Friend of India.

Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar is lecturer in theology and ethics at Serampore College, the institution founded by William Carey, in West Bengal, India.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Christian History began ten years ago in the mind of Dr. A. Kenneth Curtis. Ken is president of Gateway Films, a Christian film company he founded more than twenty years ago, and chairman of its companion, Vision Video, Inc. His films have garnered more than 30 awards, including an international Emmy.

Ken earned his Ph.D. in communications from Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has received an honorary doctorate from another alma mater, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Ken continues as senior editor for Christian History and serves on the board of Christianity Today, Inc. He also publishes Glimpses, a lively church-bulletin insert about church history. He recently became a grandfather.

Editors Kevin Miller and Mark Galli joined Ken in his office—a converted barn in the gently rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania—to get the story on Christian History’s early days.

Christian History: Where did you get the idea to start this magazine?

Ken Curtis: Our fledging film company had just put out a film on John Hus, the Bohemian reformer. I had an opportunity to show it at a Christian Film Distributors Association meeting. As I was introducing the film, I asked, “How many of you know who John Hus was?” Out of several hundred people, about three hands went up.

I was surprised, but not nearly as much as later, when I was about to show the film to a group of pastors. Again I asked, “How many of you know who John Hus was?” Only half the group had even heard of him.

I realized that we contemporary Christians have little idea where we came from. Lay people are nearly totally unaware of our past, and ministers receive only a semester or two of church history—hardly enough to get a good grasp of the past.

So we prepared a 16-page guide to accompany the film, to give people more background. For our next film, First Fruits, the story of Count Zinzendorf and the first Moravian missionaries, we upgraded the pamphlet to a magazine format. The response was heartening, so we continued by publishing issues for our films on John Wesley and John Wycliffe.

When did it become a regular magazine?

Starting with the first issue, people were saying, “How can I sign up for this?” It soon became apparent the magazine deserved a life of its own. Our issue on Ulrich Zwingli, our fourth, was the first that didn’t accompany a film. At that point, we announced we would try to publish the magazine quarterly.

We wanted the magazine to introduce lay people to church history, perhaps to become a resource for adult-education classes. Mostly, we wanted to create an appetite, a hunger for knowing the history of the church.

What was the response?

It was two-sided.

On the one hand, people were discovering and loving the magazine. A man from Switzerland told me how much his seminary there appreciated the issue on Zwingli—extra copies were placed in the men’s room for reading there!

On the other hand, experts in Christian publishing were telling me, “starting a magazine is more complicated than you realize. With no capital and no proven constituency, you’re not going to make it.”

In one sense, they were right. I had no idea how to build circulation or to find capital to roll out a direct-mail effort. Fortunately, through word of mouth and inserts in our film shipments, the magazine grew pretty quickly on its own to 10,000 subscribers.

What obstacles did you face at the beginning?

Learning how to put together a magazine was a challenge in itself—especially since I had no editorial training. I had to learn how to coordinate a hodgepodge of articles and images into a pleasing and logical flow. I had to learn proofreading and printer’s jargon. I still can’t remember if a comma goes inside or outside punctuation marks—it’s ridiculous how many times I had to look up that kind of stuff.

So we struggled simply to get each issue organized and published on time. Sometimes that required desperate measures. We got behind on the Zwingli issue, for example, and I felt I needed a professional journalist to help us out. So I called Mark Fackler, who teaches communications at Wheaton Graduate School, and said, “Hey, Mark, I’ve got a couple of free tickets to the Phillies game on Thursday night. Why don’t you come in Wednesday through Friday?” We worked around the clock, except for the excursion to the ballgame, and managed to meet the deadline.

Furthermore, my history background was limited, so I felt inadequate to oversee the magazine—though I felt my non-professional status would keep me in touch with the reader.

You make yourself sound like the least likely person to ever start a church-history magazine.

We certainly had to depend on on-the-job training. Sometimes we did find ourselves in predicaments. As we were finishing the issue on the Anabaptists, I had to take a film trip to Europe, so I left the last stages of the issue in the hands of others. When I returned, they handed me a proof of the cover. The only English words on the entire cover were Christian History. Fortunately, at the last minute we were able to insert a small line at the top—The Radical Reformation: The Anabaptists to give readers some clue as to what the issue was about.

Sometimes our editorial challenges were solved serendipitously. We needed a color image of Wycliffe for the cover, but we couldn’t find the original painting—no English museum or university knew where it was. As the deadline loomed, we phoned another English art museum we’d heard about, but we misdialed and ended up reaching an English pub.

We explained what we wanted, not realizing the mix-up, and the bartender said, “I know where that picture is.” It was in his town, in the Great Hall of the Manchester Town Hall.

Christian History’s original elements—themes, many visuals, columns like “Did You Know”—are still proving to be the best way to organize the magazine. How did you determine the original format?

Actually, it came together within half an hour, although the ideas had been percolating for some time. By the time we sat down to construct a magazine, it fell into place: themes would help us explore issues at some depth; visuals would make history real; a bibliography would help people explore further; interesting facts at the beginning would draw people in; original writings would help people feel the era, and so on.

You keep using; the word we. Who is we?

Christian History was always a team effort. Our film staff (about five people) put in extra time. In particular, Mark Tuttle did a lot of the picture research, and Robin Heller helped solve design problems. But we didn’t have a full-time person helping with the magazine until Issue 16, so various resource people pitched in, mostly on evenings and Saturdays.

Four years ago, your Christian History Institute decided to transfer the magazine to Christianity Today. Why?

It became more than we could handle. It began taking us away from our film work, and we felt we had something unique to contribute there.

We also realized the magazine had more potential than we could help it realize. We had the magazine well established, but it would take someone with more expertise to raise it to new heights.

So for some time I had prayed and kept my eyes open for possible publishers. Then at the end of an Evangelical Press Association meeting in Indianapolis, as I was leaving, I saw Harold Myra, president of Christianity Today, Inc., standing nearby.

Although I’d never met him, I knew who he was, so I walked up to him and said, “Excuse me. I’ve got to run to the airport in ten minutes, but would you have a couple minutes to talk?” I showed him the magazine, which he had already seen, and said, “I’d really like to find a home that would appreciate it for what it is and bring it to its potential.” We took it from there, and now we’re able to reach four or five times as many readers.

There was a sense of divine leading in the creation of this magazine. We needed, sought, and recognized the grace of God for each issue we published. I think it was just as much the leading and grace of God to help us realize we had done what we had been called to do, and it was time to let go and have others carry it forward.

What hopes do you have for Christian History?

I’d like it to become a flagship for a number of church-history projects. For instance, it would be great to have a church-history magazine or books aimed at children. Too many Christian young people grow up ignorant about their heritage. Then they go to a secular college and hear how the church has caused great harm in Western society. That’s hardly the whole story, but when they hear that half-truth, Christian young people often go astray.

Why should people care about church history?

First, it’s just plain interesting. As we were preparing the first issue, I told one of our staff, “You know, I think this may have to be an ongoing magazine—maybe a quarterly.”

She responded, “But is there enough material to keep it going?” Well, there have been thirty-some issues, and we’re just scratching the surface. We’ve had only a taste.

Second, a knowledge of history is vital for the church’s life. As I said in my first editorial [in Issue 2]: “Our conviction is that the Lord of history will continue to direct and lead his people to new levels of understanding and obedience in the future as he has in the past. We believe that we are better prepared to discern his leading as we are grounded in our heritage.”

I recently received a fund-raising letter from a Christian university. It implied strongly that this particular college is “the faithful strand of God’s elect.”

But history shows that we each are just part of a larger tapestry of God’s handiwork. You study the Waldensians, and you realize the roots of the Reformation began way before 1517. You study Medieval monasticism, and you see a deep respect for the authority of the Bible long before Luther. You look at Francis of Assisi and see that concern for nature and the simple life were Christian ideas long ago.

History also shows us that some apparent failures can become great instruments of God—William Carey, for example. And some supposed successes petered out as time went on—take the early dominance of Arianism, for example.

History gives us hope that one person can make a difference. But it also gives us a humility that recognizes others have come before us to prepare the way and others will follow to further our work.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

William Carey

1761-1792,Cobbler and Pastor in England

1761 Aug. 17, Carey born at Paulserspury, Northamptonshire

1773 Teaches himself Latin

1775 Becomes apprentice shoemaker; religious talks with John Warr

1776 Dec., conscience stricken over stolen shilling, begins serious spiritual search

1779 Feb., leaves Church of England; Sept., apprentices with Thomas Old

1781 Marries Dorothy “Dolly” Plackett

1782 June, begins preaching every other week; daughter Ann born

1783 Oct.,baptized by John Ryland, Jr.; daughter Ann dies; seriously ill and loses hair; Dec., when Thomas Old dies, takes over business and cares for Old’s family

1785 Son Felix born; summer, fails trial sermon for ordination; Aug., begins pastoring in Moulton on trial basis; reads Captain Cook’s Journals and begins thinking about missions

1787 Aug., ordained; Oct., baptizes his wife, Dorothy

1788 Son William, Jr., born

1789 Begins pastorate at Baptist church in Harvey Lane, Leicester; son Peter born

1791 Daughter Lucy born?

1792 May 12, publishes An Enquiry on missions; May 31, preaches “Expect great things, attempt great things” sermon; Oct. 2, helps to found Baptist Missionary Society (BMS); daughter Lucy dies

1793-1834, Missionary and Professor in India

1793 Jan. 9, commissioned as missionary to Bengal; May? son Jabez born; June 13, sails from Dover with family; Nov. 11, arrives in India

1794 Feb., settles in Sundarbans jungle; June, moves to Mudnabatti to manage indigo factory; Oct., son Peter dies; suffers attack of malaria

1795 Mar., Dorothy slips into delusions

1796 Son Jonathan born

1797 Completes draft of Bengali New Testament

1799 Summer, moves to Kidderpore; Oct., William Ward, Joshua and Hannah Marshman, and others arrive

1800 Jan., moves to Serampore, helps organize missionary community ; Dec., baptizes son Felix and first Indian convert, Krishna Pal

1801 Feb., first Bengali NT printed by Serampore Press; Apr., appointed teacher at Fort William College, Calcutta

1804 First of 19 mission stations established

1807 Ordains son Felix; granted doctorate by Brown University; Dec., Dorothy dies

1808 May, marries Charlotte Rumohr; Sanskrit NT published

1812 Fire at Serampore destroys years of translation work

1815 Andrew Fuller, last of BMS founders, dies; tensions increase between BMS and Serampore mission

1817 Younger missionaries leave Serampore to form rival mission

1818 Serampore College founded; Sanskrit Bible published

1820 Organizes Agricultural Society of Bengal

1821 May, Charlotte dies

1822 Summer, marries Grace Hughes; son Felix dies

1823 William Ward dies

1827 Serampore severs ties with BMS

1830 Calcutta bank crash; Serampore in financial jeopardy; Serampore reunites with BMS

1834 June 9, Carey dies at Serampore

1837 Joshua Marshman dies; Serampore mission closed

Christianity & Missions

1761-1792,Cobbler and Pastor in England

1769 Junípero Serra founds mission at San Diego

1770 Evangelist George Whitefield dies

1771 Francis Asbury brings Methodism to America

1779 “Amazing Grace” published

1784 New “Sunday school ” movement enrolls 250,000 children

1791 John Wesley dies

1793-1834, Missionary and Professor in India

1795 London Missionary Society (LMS) founded

1796 Scottish and Glasgow missionary societies founded

1797 America’s 2nd Great Awakening begins in Kentucky

1799 Church Missionary Society (CMS) founded in England

1804 British and Foreign Bible Society founded

1807 British slave trade abolished

1810 First American foreign missions group, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

1813 Adoniram and Ann Judson arrive in Burma

1816 Richard Allen elected bishop of African Methodist Episcopal Church

1817 Robert Moffat arrives in South Africa, begins 50 years of work; John Williams, famous South Seas missionary, sent

1820 American missionaries arrive in Hawaii

1825 Charles Finney ignites revival in New York

World Events

1761-1792,Cobbler and Pastor in England

1769 James Watt patents steam engine

1776 Declaration of Independence

1778 James Cook discovers Hawaii; Voltaire dies

1780 Benedict Arnold’s plot

1781 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; planet Uranus discovered; British surrender at Yorktown

1783 Montgolfier brothers’ hot-air balloon

1784 Benjamin Franklin invents bifocals

1785 Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro

1789 French Revolution begins; Washington begins 1st term

1791 U.S. Bill of Rights

1793-1834, Missionary and Professor in India

1793 Eli Whitney invents cotton gin

1796 Edward Jenner improves vaccination against smallpox

1800 Washington, D.C. replaces New York as U.S. capital

1812 Napoleon invades Russia; U.S. declares war on Britain; Grimm’s Fairy Tales

1818 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

1819 Beethoven goes deaf; five years later writes 9th Symphony (“Ode to Joy”)

1820 U.S. Land Law fixes land price at minimum of $1.25 per acre

1826 The Last of the Mohicans

1834 Spanish Inquisition abolished; Abraham Lincoln elected to Illinois legislature

Mark Galli is associate editor of Christian History.

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

William and Dorothy Carey and their four sons arrived in Calcutta on November 11, 1793. They soon exhausted their funds and found themselves dependent on others for food and shelter. In the next seven months, they moved five times.

Dorothy struggled with bleeding brought on by tropical diseases. Then the family sustained a cruel blow on October 11, 1794, when their 5-year-old son Peter died. The painful weeks after his death passed slowly, but at Christmas the family made a brief holiday trip to Malda. William wrote in his last journal entry for the year that they were all much refreshed by the trip.

But no one could have predicted what was going to happen in the next three months. At some point before March 1795, Dorothy slipped across the subjective border between sanity and insanity. She was to remain locked in the grip of psychosis for the remaining twelve years of her life.

Murderous Jealousy

The first acknowledgment of a problem comes from a letter Carey wrote to his sisters in England on October 5, 1795. “I have greater affliction than any of these in my family. Known to my friends here, but I have never mentioned it to anyone in England before, is my poor wife, who is looked upon as insane to a great degree here by both native and Europeans.… I have been for some time past in danger of losing my life. Jealousy is the great evil that haunts her mind.”

The second major piece of evidence comes from a letter that Carey’s colleague, John Thomas, wrote to Andrew Fuller on January 11, 1796. Apparently, Carey and Thomas had planned to wait a number of months before informing the society in England of Dorothy’s poor mental state. Perhaps they hoped her delusions would disappear.

When her condition did not improve, Thomas wrote a detailed description of Dorothy’s plight. “Mrs. C[arey] has taken it into her head that C[arey] is a great whor*monger; and her jealousy burns like fire unquenchable.” Thomas added that Dorothy became obsessed with Carey’s supposed unfaithfulness and would follow him every time he left the house. “[She] declares in the most solemn manner that she has catched [sic] him with his servants, with his friends, with Mrs. Thomas, and that he is guilty every day and every night.… In all other things she talks sensibly.”

Carey and Thomas both wondered if Dorothy could be demon-possessed. After reading a psychiatric textbook, they concluded she suffered from mental illness. Today we would diagnose Dorothy’s condition as a Delusional Disorder (formerly paranoia), Jealous Type. The prognosis for intense delusional conditions is poor today, just as it proved to be for Dorothy 200 years ago. She never improved.

Life soon took on a frantic tone. Thomas wrote, “She has uttered the most blasphemous and bitter imprecations against him, when Mrs. Thomas and myself were present, seizing him by the hair of his head, and one time at the breakfast table held up a knife and said, Curse you. I could cut your throat. She has even made some attempt on his life.”

Plaintive Outpourings

Knowing the nature of Dorothy’s mental illness sheds light on a remarkable section in Carey’s journal. During the first three months of Dorothy’s retreat from reality (January-March 1795), Carey poured out his soul:

January 1–15: “This time I have had bitters (of a family kind) mingled with my soul.”

February 3: “This is indeed the Valley of the Shadow of Death to me.… O what would I give for a kind sympathetic friend such as I had in England to whom I might open my heart.”

February 5: “O what a load is a barren heart.”

February 7: “O that this day could be consigned to oblivion.”

February 17: “O that I had but the spirit to pray for myself.”

March 9–10: “Much to complain of, such another dead soul I think scarcely exists in the world.”

No doubt some of these plaintive outpourings refer to Dorothy’s deteriorating mental condition. William’s efforts to reason with Dorothy were proving futile. The best strategy he and Thomas could design was to confine her, probably in a locked room. During the next 12 years, Dorothy would enjoy only some brief times of liberty.

Life for all of the Careys was difficult. Carey especially worried about his sons in his October 5, 1795, letter to his sisters: “Bless God all the dirt which she throws is such as cannot stick; but it is the ruin of my children to hear such continual accusations.”

Unremitting Psychosis

What caused Dorothy to slip into her unremitting psychosis? We can only speculate.

• Her weakened physical health and the stress of adjusting to new foods, customs, and weather.

• Loss dogged Dorothy’s steps. She had buried two daughters in England and had lost contact with her extended family. (The first mail to arrive in Bengal from friends and family did not arrive until several weeks after Dorothy slipped into her psychotic state.) Her sister Kitty, who had accompanied her to India, married and left Dorothy in mid-1794. And she buried her son Peter in October 1794.

• By temperament, she was a fearful person. Perhaps the loss of Peter triggered the fear she might lose her remaining three sons to tropical diseases.

• She may have lost trust in William’s ability to care for her. Dorothy clearly had told William she did not want to come to India. Only under great pressure did she change her mind. The trust she had placed in Carey when she decided to accompany him to India may have evaporated soon after their arrival. In its place surged a flood of distrust, this time regarding William’s sexual faithfulness.

Fascinating Questions

Dorothy’s paranoia poses fascinating questions.

How did William accomplish all that he did with constant domestic turmoil?

Did Carey ever seek medical help for Dorothy? William may have hesitated having doctors from the British East India Company learn about Dorothy’s accusations. Surely an official investigation would have ensued, and the presence of missionaries in India may have been further jeopardized.

How did Dorothy function as a mother during these years? She did give birth to their seventh child, a son named Jonathan, approximately 11 months after paranoia began.

How did the family move 250 miles from Mudnabatti to Serampore during the first ten days of 1800?

We are left with more questions than answers.

Dorothy died on December 8, 1807, at the age of 51. The public learned of her death by reading a brief, telescoped notice in the 1808 Periodical Accounts: “Mrs. Carey, after having been ill about a fortnight, died.”

Dr. James R. Beck is associate professor of counseling at Denver Seminary and author of Dorothy Carey: The Tragic and Untold Story of Mrs. William Carey (Baker, 1992).

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

William Carey translated the complete Bible into 6 languages, and portions into 29 others, yet he never attended the equivalent of high school or college. His work was so impressive, that in 1807, Brown University conferred a Doctor of Divinity degree on him.

William Carey is often called the Father of Modern Protestant Missions. But the first European Protestant missionaries to Asia arrived almost a century before he did. By the time Carey established his mission community, there were thousands of Christians in a Pietist-led settlement in southern India.

William Carey’s ministry sparked a new era in missions. One historian notes that his work is “a turning-point; it marks the entry of the English-speaking world on a large scale into the missionary enterprise—and it has been the English-speaking world which has provided four-fifths of the [Protestant] missionaries from the days of Carey until the present time.”

Due to an illness, Carey lost most of his hair in his early twenties. He wore a wig for about ten more years in England, but on his way to India, he reportedly threw his wig in the ocean and never wore one again.

This famous phrase is the best-known saying of William Carey, yet Carey never said it this way. In a sermon he declared, “Expect great things! Attempt great things!” The phrases “from God” and “for God” were added by others because the sermon’s context implied God’s role.

Carey was married three times, and he baptized all three of his wives.

At age 12, Carey taught himself Latin. Later, also on his own, he mastered Greek, Hebrew, French, and Dutch. During his life he learned literally dozens of languages and dialects.

Carey was a social-political radical. Unlike most of his British countrymen, he was sympathetic to the American colonists during the American War of Independence. He also boycotted sugar from the West Indies because he so intensely opposed to slavery.

It was illegal for Carey’s father to hear his son preach. In 1719 Parliament prohibited anyone attending a meeting of “Dissenters” (which a Baptist like Carey was) from teaching. Carey’s father was a schoolmaster, so he didn’t hear his son preach for some time. When he finally did come, he crept in the church and sat at the back.

Though William Carey preached one of the most influential sermons of all time (“Expect great things! Attempt great things!”), he failed in his first bid to become ordained. The reason: his preaching was boring. It took two years before the ordination committee was satisfied with his preaching.

When Carey entered India, he was an illegal alien. Any European wishing to live in British India needed a license from the East India Company, which refused to grant licenses for missionary work. It felt that “interfering in the religious opinions of the natives” might cause a backlash among Indians and hurt business. It wasn’t until 20 years later, by act of Parliament, that missionaries could get such licenses.

Carey never took a furlough from missionary service. He lived and worked in India for nearly 41 years.

William Carey helped to found Serampore College, the first Christian college in Asia. It continues today.

Carey’s written English was poor, both in spelling and punctuation. His chief supporter once wrote to him, “I never knew a person of so much knowledge as you profess in other languages write English so bad.”

Carey and the Serampore mission team developed the first Bengali Bible and the first Bengali newspaper. Carey and his colleagues essentially laid the foundation for modern Bengali literature. As one linguist put it, they raised Bengali “from its debased condition of an unsettled dialect to the character of a regular and permanent form of speech,” capable of becoming “a vehicle of a great literature.”

Carey proposed a world missionary conference—an idea 100 years ahead of its time. He proposed a meeting to be held at the Cape of Good Hope in 1810. The idea was considered outlandish. But it was eventually incarnated in 1910 at the now-famous World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh.

Dr. R.E. Hedland is missionary lecturer for the Conservative Baptist Fellowship Mission Society in Mylapore, India. He is the author of The Mission of the Church in the World (Baker, 1991).

Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

In a moment of idealism last January, I made a New Year’s resolution to read all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays in 1992. Each week I look forward to my designated Shakespeare evening. I have found the plays to be unfailingly witty and profound, and oddly up-to-date.

In July, with the Democratic National Convention playing softly in the background, I passed the halfway mark and decided to reflect on what I had learned. “Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked twixt son and father.” Those words from King Lear sounded suspiciously like Mario Cuomo’s nominating speech describing the modern U.S. (Too bleak for most generations’ taste, King Lear was performed for centuries in a happy-ending version. Now, as modern sensibilities have caught up with its dark vision, it has become Shakespeare’s most revered play.)

“Each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows strike heaven on the face.” Was that Macbeth or Jesse Jackson? Shakespeare’s depictions of crime, injustice, war, treachery, and greed demonstrate that, no matter what either political party says, these problems are not mutations in America of the 1990s; they have been around since Eden.

Furred Gowns Hide All

Some major differences between the Elizabethan view of the world and our own stood out as well. Listening to both parties’ political conventions, I got the distinct notion that if we could just get the economy rolling and clean up the drug problem and educate all those misguided kids in gangs—why, then, a golden age would return to America. Social problems (the closest modern equivalent to “evil”) trace back to poverty and lack of education.

Shakespeare would disagree. “They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing,” observed the maid of an heiress in The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare showed genuine respect for the decency of the lower classes. The real villains were rich and powerful, people like Macbeth and Richard III, who had every advantage of education, wealth, and fine breeding.

King Lear states it best: “Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold …” Lear learned this lesson the hard way. Cast out of his own castle by his avaricious daughters, he wandered alone through a terrific rainstorm, finally taking shelter in a cave with a refugee. The experience revealed to him a “theology of reversal,” and for the first time, he understood the plight of the poor and homeless:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’r you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

And show the heavens more just.

It is not the only scene in Lear that rings with overtones of the Incarnation.

Our Hour Upon The Stage

Democrats blame a Republican administration for society’s ills, while Republicans blame a Democratic Congress. Shakespeare’s characters are as likely to implicate God. “Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs and throw them in the entrails of the wolf? When didst thou sleep when such a deed was done?” cries one after a murderous crime. “O God, seest Thou this, and bearest so long?” laments another.

These anguished cries ironically reveal a belief in Providence that underlies all of Shakespeare’s plays. You only rail against God if you still believe him active. As seen most clearly in the four-play cycle revolving around Henry VI, history for Shakespeare involved more than the rise and fall of rulers and nations. The turmoil and civil strife in England signified God’s judgment. This is a harsh message, one not reflected in either political party’s analysis of the problems of the U.S.A.

In Shakespeare’s time, people still lived out their days under the shadow of divine reward and punishment, an assumption that tends to put boundaries around evil. In Richard III, an assassin trembles before his assignment, fearing, “Not to kill him, having a warrant, but to be damned for killing him, from the which no warrant can defend me.” And the Earl of Warwick prays, “Ere my knee rise from the earth’s cold face, I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to Thee, Thou setter-up and plucker-down of kings.” Our leaders could use a dose of such humility.

One last irony struck me as I pondered the Elizabethan era and our own. Comparing Shakespeare’s characters with modern-day politicians, I could not help thinking how we as men and women have shrunk. The “politics of marginalization” rules in the U.S. Rioters riot because they can’t help it; teens get pregnant because their drives overpower them; “prochoice” women choose abortion because they “have no choice.” The message is clear: We are products of our glands, our families, and our cultures, nothing more.

In contrast, the characters in Shakespeare stride like giants across the stage. I find it wonderfully refreshing to read of these characters who have a sense of personal destiny about them. These are not automatons or victims, but free individuals making choices, some malignant and some noble. As the master playwright insists, they must then live with the consequences. Lady Macbeth hoped otherwise: “A little water clears us of this deed,” she said as she and her husband rinsed their hands of blood. She was tragically mistaken.

Lady Macbeth died haunted by guilt, and her husband mourned her with these eloquent words of despair:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare’s plays alone offer enough evidence to refute that nihilism. As the Victorian scholar A. C. Bradley wrote, in words that apply to almost all of Shakespeare’s characters, “No one ever closes a tragedy with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched and he may be awful but he is not small.” It’s enough to make you nostalgic.

Episcopal charismatic leader Graham Pulkingham has been temporarily relieved of his duties as priest after sexual misconduct charges surfaced against him last month. Pulkingham has admitted to conducting several hom*osexual liaisons, some with counselees, over the past two decades. The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, where Pulkingham resides, is investigating the charges. The complaint against him was brought by a woman who claims Pulkingham’s affair with her husband from 1978 to 1982 subsequently ruined their marriage.

Pulkingham, 65, who is married with six children, said he is “deeply ashamed and totally guilty of what I did.” He said he had been “tormented” by hom*osexuality since his teens, but that disappeared when he became a charismatic in 1964. Some time later, he said, he lapsed into hom*osexual practice.

Pulkingham rose to fame in the 1960s as rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Houston, a showplace of charismatic renewal and social action. He currently directs the Community of Celebration, an Episcopal order in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, known for the music produced by its Fisherfolk singing group. His wife, Betty, is a prolific composer and well-known in Episcopal musical circles.

Episcopal leaders have been especially nervous about any clergy sexual misconduct in their dioceses since former Colorado Bishop William Frey was sued for $1.2 million in 1991 for failing to discipline an adulterous priest adequately. Some dioceses, such as Pittsburgh, have formulated their own sexual-conduct guidelines for clergy, since the Episcopal Church has no national policy.

By Julia Duin.

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) has rejected a reapplication for membership submitted by Samaritan’s Purse and World Medical Mission. The ECFA board of directors voted in March to suspend the North Carolina-based ministries for what it described as problems concerning board oversight of the operation (CT. Aug. 17, 1992, p. 47). Both organizations subsequently resigned from the council, but recently submitted their application following discussions with ECFA.

The decision to deny membership was made August 1 by the ECFA executive committee, acting on the recommendations of its board, which reviewed the reapplication. Council officials declined further comment on the matter.

In response to the decision, Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse and World Medical Mission, said in a written statement: “We have always complied with the ECFA standards of financial integrity with full board oversight. We have reviewed, and continue to review, our policies and procedures.” Graham also declined to discuss the dispute further. “We wish for greater evangelical harmony and do not care to engage in debate with ECFA.”

Scholar Bernard Ramm, best known for drawing evangelical theology into dialogue with science and culture, died August 11 in his home in Laguna Hills, California. He was 76, and had suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

In his career, Ramm wrote 18 books and well over 100 articles and reviews for journals and magazines, including CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Though his knowledge and reading covered a breadth of topics, his writing concentrated on Christian apologetics, the Bible and science, and scriptural authority. Ramm was honored in 1990 by the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion with the presentation of a festschrift in his name.

Ramm was born in Butte, Montana, in 1916. “The gospel came to [me],” as he later wrote, at age 17 at a summer camp through the witness of his brother. His conversion radically and deeply changed his life and produced a lifelong love for Christ that was respected and admired by friends and theological opponents alike.

After completing undergraduate work in speech and philosophy at the University of Washington, Ramm studied at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He began his academic career in 1943 at the Los Angeles Baptist Theological Seminary and moved next to the Department of Philosophy and Apologetics at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA). He earned his master’s and doctorate in philosophy at the University of Southern California. His longest tenure came at American Baptist Seminary of the West, where he taught from 1959–74 and 1978–86.

Ramm’s central interest, according to Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson, coauthors of 20th Century Theology, “was that of showing the interface of the Bible—that is, of Bible-centered theology—with the totality of human knowledge, which in the twentieth century has been focused primarily on science.” His openness to modern theology, however, most notably Karl Barth’s, caused some conservative scholars to question Ramm’s evangelical credentials during his later years. Still, Ramm continued to describe himself as an evangelical.

Ramm was influential in the founding of the American Scientific Affiliation, and he taught frequently at Young Life seminars.

One could hardly find a clearer example of the shift away from Western dominance in evangelical missions than the Korean World Missions ’92 conference, held earlier this summer at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. At the gathering, a follow-up to a similar conference held in 1988, speakers challenged 2,400 people, most of them Korean-American students, pastors, and missionaries, to join Christians from Asia, Africa, and Latin America at the head of the missions parade.

“As the political and economic climate changes, we also see a change in world missions,” said Dong Sun Lim, chairman of the Korean World Mission Council, a coalition of leaders from key Korean-American churches and sponsor of the event. “Previously the Western church and missions organizations played the dominant role. But now we see ‘Two-thirds World’ churches taking on a greater share of the responsibility of world evangelism, and among them, the Korean church taking a leading role. Because of the great blessings of God, both spiritual and material, upon the Korean church, I think it fitting that we contribute a greater share of our energy and resource to world mission.”

Worldwide Opportunities

According to the 1990 U.S. Census, about 800,000 people of Korean origin live in America, an increase of 125 percent in just ten years. Organizers of the Wheaton conference say there are about 2,500 Korean-American churches. Leaders pointed to the danger of the Korean church viewing missions merely as reaching other Koreans. But conference speakers repeatedly turned attention to worldwide missions opportunities.

Billy Kim, director of the Far East Broadcasting Company’s work in South Korea, pointed out that some of the largest churches in the world are in Korea. He reminded delegates not only of their opportunities, but their responsibilities. “There is a shortage of missionaries,” he said. “We are ashamed to call the Korean church a missionary church.”

At Korean World Missions ’92, however, excitement about the task was evident. Some 250 young people volunteered for missionary service. Representatives from 40, primarily Western, mission agencies instructed participants at more than 80 workshops on practical issues in missions. Still, several agreed that the Korean church must translate its energy and enthusiasm into tangible results.

Dan Bacon, U.S. director for Overseas Missionary Fellowship, said the Korean church faces many of the same difficult lessons the Western church has encountered. “The church in Korea has a certain amount of momentum,” he said. “They’re really sending out people.… But I think that they’re struggling with the cultural imperialism that the church in America still struggles with, too.”

Conference organizers cited a lack of unity among Korean churches as another challenge to its missions effort, one that was addressed by the gathering, said Korean World Mission Council General Secretary Ilsik (Sam) Choe. “It unified the Korean churches for world mission endeavor,” Choe said. “They caught the vision and worked together in partnership and cooperation.”

By Stan Guthrie.