Baptist History and Denominational Development — Unit 6: Awakening and Mission: Andrew Fuller, William Carey, and Luther Rice

Key Verse

"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe the condition of many English Baptist churches in the early 1700s and the problem of hyper-Calvinism.

2. Explain Andrew Fuller's argument in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785) and why it mattered for missions.

3. Describe William Carey's Enquiry (1792), the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society, and Carey's work in India.

4. Describe how Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson led to the Triennial Convention in 1814.

5. State the main objections to the Baptist missionary movement and give the Baptist answers.

The Voice of This Unit

This unit is written from inside the Baptist tradition, for Baptist students. It is conservative. We hold that the Bible is God's inspired Word and our final authority. When historians raise hard questions, or when others object to what Baptists have done, we state their view fairly and then give the Baptist answer. Scripture says, "Test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

A Church That Had Grown Quiet

At the end of the 1600s the persecution had eased. In 1689 the Toleration Act allowed Baptists to worship openly. But freedom did not bring growth. Through much of the 1700s many Baptist churches in England were small and inward-looking. Some fell into a cold and dry orthodoxy, correct in doctrine but without warmth. Some lost members.

One cause was a teaching called hyper-Calvinism. The word is used for a view which went beyond the older Calvinism of the 1689 Confession. Those who held it said that since God alone saves His chosen people, preachers should not urge all hearers to repent and believe. They feared that to command the unconverted to believe was to claim that sinners could save themselves. John Gill (1697-1771), a famous London Baptist pastor and writer, is often named in this connection. Historians argue about how far Gill himself held this view, and some say his followers went further than he did. But there is no doubt that a hyper-Calvinist spirit hung over many churches.

At the same time, a new warmth was growing in England. The preaching of George Whitefield and John and Charles Wesley in the 1730s and after brought what is called the Evangelical Revival. Among the General Baptists, Dan Taylor (1738-1816) was touched by this revival and in 1770 formed the New Connexion of General Baptists, which stressed evangelism. Among the Particular Baptists, the same fire was kindled by a group of pastors in the Midlands, in the area around Northampton, Kettering and Leicester.

Andrew Fuller and the Gospel for All

Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) was born into a farming family in Cambridgeshire. He was converted as a young man, baptized, and called to pastor the church at Soham in 1775. In 1782 he moved to the Baptist church at Kettering, where he served for the rest of his life.

Fuller struggled with the question that troubled his churches. Must a preacher offer Christ to everyone? He studied the Bible, and he also read the American pastor Jonathan Edwards, whose writings gave him help in understanding the human will. The result was The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, published in 1785.

His argument

Fuller made these main points.

First, the gospel is addressed to all who hear it. The Bible commands everywhere that people repent and believe (Mark 1:15; Acts 17:30). A command implies a duty. So it is the duty of every sinner to believe in Christ.

Second, the reason people do not believe is not that they are unable to understand, but that they are unwilling. Their hearts are hardened by sin, and they need the Spirit's work to be changed. This does not remove the duty to believe. It shows why we must pray as we preach.

Third, the death of Christ is sufficient for all, and it is the ground on which the gospel can be offered to every sinner. At the same time Fuller continued to teach that Christ's death was designed to save His chosen people. In his view, these two truths were not in conflict.

Fuller's book was opposed from two sides. Strict Calvinists said he had weakened the doctrine of grace. Others, who held that Christ died equally for all, said he had not gone far enough. The Baptist answer to both is the same: the Bible commands us to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15), and the Bible teaches that God saves by His grace. We hold both together, and we do not have to solve every question before we obey.

The importance of this book for missions cannot be overstated. It cleared away the doubt in many pastors' minds. If sinners everywhere are called to repent and believe, then someone must go and tell them.

William Carey and the Enquiry

William Carey (1761-1834) was born in the village of Paulerspury, Northamptonshire. His father was a weaver and the village schoolmaster. Carey was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and for much of his life he made and mended shoes. He was converted as a young man and was baptized as a believer in 1783. He became pastor of the Baptist church at Moulton in 1785, and at Leicester in 1789. He taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other languages while he worked.

Carey was moved by a question: Does the Great Commission still bind the church? Some in his day taught that the command of Matthew 28:19-20 was given to the apostles only. Carey replied that the promise at the end of the same verse ("I am with you always, even to the end of the age") shows that the command continues to the end of the age.

In 1792 Carey published a small book with a long title: An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. It made four points.

1. The Great Commission is still binding on Christians today.

2. The church should look at the whole world, including its peoples and religions, and see the need.

3. Missionary work is not impossible. Earlier Christians had done it. Carey pointed to the work of Moravians and others.

4. Christians must use means: they must form a society, collect money, pray and send people. God works through such means just as He works through the farmer who plants and waters.

In May 1792, at a meeting of Baptist ministers in Nottingham, Carey preached on Isaiah 54:2-3, the passage about enlarging the place of the tent. The sermon moved his hearers to action.

The story of the rebuke

A popular story says that at a ministers' meeting, an older minister rebuked Carey with the words that when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without Carey's help or anyone else's. The story is often told. Historians doubt the exact form of it, and they have not found a clear record of who spoke. We should not rest anything on the details. But the story reflects a real attitude that Carey and Fuller had to face.

The Baptist Missionary Society (1792)

On October 2, 1792, a small group of Baptist ministers met in the home of a widow, Martha Wallis, in Kettering. They agreed to form "The Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen." This is now known as the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS). Fuller became its first secretary and served until his death in 1815. Fuller stayed home, raised the money and pleaded for the work, and Carey went out. Later tradition pictured Carey as one who goes down into a deep well, and Fuller and his friends as holding the rope.

Notice how Baptists organized for mission. The Baptist churches were each independent, and no bishop could order them. They chose to cooperate by voluntary choice. A society collected gifts from many churches, and the churches together sent out the missionaries. This became a Baptist pattern, and it fits the principle of voluntary cooperation (see Unit 7).

Carey in India

Carey sailed in 1793 with John Thomas, a surgeon who had earlier been in India, and with his family. The East India Company, which then ruled much of India, opposed missionaries. For this reason Carey could not at first live in British territory and had to find a place where he could work. In 1800 he settled at Serampore, a Danish settlement near Calcutta, where the Danish authorities protected him. Two colleagues joined him: Joshua Marshman, a teacher, and William Ward, a printer. They are often called the Serampore Trio.

The first years were hard. Carey faced poverty, illness and loss in his family, and for years he saw few converts. Late in 1800 the first Indian convert, Krishna Pal, was baptized. Over the years the Serampore mission did four kinds of work.

Translation. Carey and his colleagues translated the Bible, in whole or in part, into many languages of India and nearby lands. A printing press at Serampore printed these. Carey also compiled grammars and dictionaries. Translation is a work that continues to bear fruit, because it gives people God's Word in their own language.

Education. The mission opened schools. In 1818 Serampore College was founded to train Indian pastors and teachers. Carey also served as a teacher of languages at the Fort William College in Calcutta from 1801.

Preaching and church planting. Carey believed that the aim was the gathering of churches of believers who were baptized, and the training of Indian leaders.

Care for the people. Carey was concerned about the suffering of the people, and he also worked against cruel customs of the land.

He died at Serampore in 1834. He worked in India for about forty years and never returned to England.

Beyond England: Luther Rice and the Triennial Convention

Carey's example moved Christians in America. In 1806, a group of students at Williams College in Massachusetts held a prayer meeting beside a haystack and pledged themselves to mission. Some of these young men went on to Andover Seminary. Two of them, Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) and Luther Rice (1783-1836), joined others in asking a Congregational mission board to send them abroad. In 1812 they sailed separately for India as Congregationalists.

On the voyage and in India, Judson and Rice studied the Bible on the question of baptism, and they were also close to Baptist missionaries in India, including William Ward. Both concluded that believers should be baptized by immersion and they were baptized in Calcutta in 1812. This cost them their support from the Congregational board. Judson then went on to Burma in 1813 and gave the rest of his life to it, where he translated the Bible into Burmese. His wife Ann Judson served alongside him.

Rice returned to America to raise money for the Judsons. He traveled widely, urging Baptist churches to take up the work. In May 1814, delegates from Baptist churches and societies met in Philadelphia and formed "The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions." Because it met every three years, it is usually called the Triennial Convention. It was the first national organization of Baptists in the United States. Rice also led in founding Columbian College in Washington in 1821, to train ministers. He died in 1836.

The Triennial Convention united Baptists from North and South for thirty years. In the next unit we will see how it divided.

Objections and the Baptist Answers

Objection 1: If God has chosen His people, missions are not needed.

Some argued that if God will save the elect, human effort is unnecessary. Our answer. God ordains the means as well as the end. The same Lord who chose His people commanded us to go (Matthew 28:19-20). Paul, who taught election more fully than anyone, was the greatest missionary, and he said, "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Romans 10:14). Carey and Fuller were Calvinists, and election was their encouragement, not their excuse.

Objection 2: Missions served empire and destroyed local cultures.

Some modern historians say missionaries were agents of colonial power. Our answer. We should admit that missionaries were people of their time, with faults and blind spots. But the story of Carey does not fit this charge. The East India Company opposed him, and he was forced to work under Danish protection. He learned the languages, put the Scriptures in the people's own tongues, and trained Indian leaders. Bible translation helped preserve languages. The command we obey does not come from any government but from Christ.

Objection 3: Mission societies and boards are not in the Bible.

Some Baptists in America in the early 1800s opposed mission societies, boards and seminaries. They said these were human inventions, and they were among those who later called themselves Primitive Baptists. Our answer. We respect their concern for the freedom of the local church. But the New Testament shows churches cooperating to send out missionaries (Acts 13:1-3; Philippians 4:15-16). The form of a society is not commanded, but neither is it forbidden. What matters is that every society remain the servant of the churches.

Pastoral Application

You are the pastor of a small Baptist church in a poor village. Your people say, "We cannot send missionaries. We have no money, and we are small." Does this unit have something to say?

A wise pastor will think of Carey, a poor shoemaker. First, he teaches the church the Great Commission and shows that it is for all churches, including small ones. Second, he asks the church to pray for one named people group or nearby town. Third, he starts a monthly mission offering, however small, and reports it openly. Fourth, he helps the church send a team to a neighboring village for a weekend, since mission begins with those who are near. Fifth, he looks for a young person who might be called and supports that person with prayer and training. Sixth, he joins with the other churches of his association, so that small gifts from many churches may send one worker far away. This is how the Baptist Missionary Society began.

Summary

In the early 1700s many English Baptist churches were quiet, and a hyper-Calvinist spirit discouraged urging all to repent and believe. Andrew Fuller answered this in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785), showing that the gospel is to be offered to all and that sinners have a duty to believe. William Carey, a shoemaker, published the Enquiry in 1792, arguing that the Great Commission still binds. The Baptist Missionary Society was formed at Kettering on October 2, 1792, with Fuller as secretary. Carey sailed in 1793, worked from 1800 at Serampore with Marshman and Ward, and gave India the Scriptures, schools and churches. Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson became Baptists in 1812, and Rice's travels led to the Triennial Convention of 1814. We answer the objections from Scripture, and we hold that the election of God is the encouragement of mission.

Further Reading

• Andrew Fuller, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785), public domain.

• William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), public domain.

• H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (1987).

• David W. Bebbington, Baptists Through the Centuries (2010).

• Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn and Michael A. G. Haykin, The Baptist Story (2015).

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