We are continuing to look at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.

What do intellectual, inquisitive, impassioned young firebrands do when spending four-months on a cramped sailing-ship at sea, in the days before electronics? No television, no radio, no-internet, no phones, no computers, no communications, just time and a few books and the Bible were available to while away the weeks.

This was the situation faced by adventurous Judson, Nott, Newell, Hall, and Rice on their journey as the first American mission educators to British India in 1812, for the newly formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).

The young revolutionaries soon realized a difference in understanding within their ranks. After extensive study on the long voyage to India, Adoniram Judson had a “change in sentiment” about baptism of infants and resigned from ABCFM. The transition was a reformation event, he was leaving the Congregationalist (Puritans) and Presbyterians (Reformed), to become the first missionary for American Baptists (Radical Reformed). Luther Rice on a separate ship to India had develop similar understanding and too transitioned to Baptist (Radical Reformed) philosophy.

Judson’s divergence “occasioned considerable irritation at the time”. Judson’s controversy persisted from 1813-1820, with numerous sermons, pamphlets, and letters with the elder Samuel Worcester, leader of the ABCFM. Remember a letter took four-months in each direction.

Rice and Judson strategized in India about the best plan. They could not with integrity accept support from their sending organization. But they were in a foreign land without a support system or money to live.

They decided Luther Rice would return to America to explain their position to a not so happy ABFCM and to seek support among the Baptists, who did not have a mission support system. Based on Rice’s incessant travel, teaching, and appeals, the American Baptists developed the second mission support organization on the continent.

Adoniram Judson (1788-1850), with his wife Ann (1789-1826), stayed in India until exiled. Judson was forced out by the British East India Company, which was the face of English influence. So, he escaped next door to Rangoon, Burma (Myanmar) in 1813. During the Anglo-Burmese war, Judson was charged as a British spy and imprisoned in 1824. Ann’s resourcefulness brokered his release after 21-months of deprivation, to become a translator for the Burmese government. Unfortunately, Ann, the first American woman missionary, succumbed to smallpox that same year.

Continuing his pioneering work in Burma, as a translator, educator and preacher, he completed the Burmese Bible in 1834. Quite a year for Adoniram, he married a talented linguist, author, and hymnist, the young widow Sarah Hall Boardman (1803-1845). In the frontier regions, the market for spouses was very limited, but nevertheless amazing. Giving birth to eight children and living in the jungle environment, caused her health to deteriorate. So, they headed back to the United States. Completing a very impressive life, Sarah was buried at sea at the young age of 42.

Judson continued to America with his advocacy of educating about this world and the next. He met and married writer, and educator Emily Chubbuck (1817-1854) at Madison University, New York. They returned to Burma, working on a Burmese dictionary. About the time of completion, he acquired a jungle infection. While travelling to a better climate, he joined his friend and early colleague Samuel Mills and his wife Sarah, with burial at sea.

Emily lost her newborn son and returned to America, worked on Judson’s biography, wrote three books of her own, and raised her daughter with five stepchildren, before tuberculosis took her at the young age of thirty-seven.

The point man, Judson was able to educate southeast Asia because Luther Rice (1783-1836) discharged obligations from the ABCFM and began arranging alternate support in America. Rice incessantly visited associations and influential leaders. By 1814, he had stimulated the organization of the Triennial Convention, a forerunner of the Southern Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches USA, to support missionary efforts.

Rice’s continued advocacy for an educated ministry led to formation of Columbian College (now George Washington University) as well as fourteen other Baptist colleges and universities before his exodus.

One of his proteges was Isaac McCoy, the surveyor of Indian Territory, supporter of Union Mission, and founder of the first Baptist church in Indian Territory, now called Fountain Baptist north of Muskogee.

In a very real sense Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson were responsible for all the early education, mission, and survey work of Indian Territory, as well as India. They were founders of first the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions with the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, then the Triennial Convention with Baptists.

Although intellectual disrupters, they still worked to educate and provide support to those with little opportunity.

Life was short and difficult, but they packed it with accomplishment.

Think about the difficulties of their mere existence, what you can still accomplish, and whom you can influence.

Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.

— Psalm 90:10