Reading different theological perspectives. Historical readings express their authors' perspectives, including Arminian and Reformed or Calvinist traditions. Inclusion does not make an author's position settled CTS doctrine. Read with Scripture and the assigned material. A supported answer from another evangelical perspective should be assessed on its reasoning, not penalized simply for differing from the author. If an automated score rejects such an answer, ask CTS for review.

Master’s Assigned Readings (all five)

M.Div. and Th.M. students read all five assigned selections and take their separate exam after activation. The test page states the current rule; valid earlier completions remain valid.

Optional Honors (choose three)

Honors is optional on every track. Certificate and Associate students may read three honors selections without a required-reading exam. Honors does not replace either master’s exam.

The Master's textbook test: read An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians (1792) — William Carey, then take its test: twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once. Correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. It is separate from the reading test on the five digests below: passing one does not pass the other. On the M.Div. and Th.M. tracks both tests are being introduced; each test's page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take them, and a pass is kept in your record.

The Master's reading test: separate from the honors invitation below. Honors asks you to read any three of these digests; the Master's test covers all five. It has twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, four from each reading, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once; correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. You may try again after a short wait. The test is being introduced: its page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take it, and a pass is kept in your record.

Honors option: Complete any three of the five readings below. These readings supplement the course and do not replace its units or examinations.

On this site: Each of the five readings is a Chapala Theological Seminary digest, written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French here on the site — every one opens directly from this page, with nothing to download. Each card names the work its digest is made from.

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Reading 1 · The Great Commission

Still Binding on Us

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section I, “Whether the Commission … be not still binding on us”

Carey, a self-taught shoemaker-pastor, argues that Christ’s command to “teach all nations” was never meant for the apostles alone. If it were, the command to baptize would end too. He tests four ways a command can stop binding, answers those who wait for providence or say there is work enough at home, and calls the church to obey.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Still Binding on Us: Carey and the Great Commission

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the opening section of Carey’s Enquiry, where a village pastor argues that Christ’s command to go to all nations was never given to the apostles alone

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section I, “An Enquiry whether the Commission given by our Lord to his Disciples be not still binding on us.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Enquiry, Section I
Primary source
1792
William Carey

A word before you read. Carey wrote in the English of the 1790s. He uses words such as “heathen,” “savage” and “barbarous” that sound harsh today, and he speaks of Roman Catholics in the sharp Protestant language of his time. CTS keeps his words where we quote him, so that you hear the real voice of the period, and explains them honestly. Reading 3 looks closely at that language. Carey is one historic Baptist voice; CTS presents his views as his own, not as the agreed position of every Baptist.

1.A Shoemaker with a Map of the World

William Carey was born in 1761 in Paulerspury, a village in Northamptonshire, England. His family was poor, and as a teenager he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. Through a fellow apprentice he came to living faith in Christ, and in 1783 he was baptized as a believer in the River Nene at Northampton by John Ryland, who would later become his friend and supporter. Carey joined the Particular Baptists, the Calvinistic branch of English Baptists. He preached in nearby villages while he mended shoes, and in 1785 he became pastor of the small church at Moulton. Later he moved to Harvey Lane, Leicester. He never went to university, yet he taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch and French. Above his workbench hung a large map of the world that he had made himself, with notes on each country’s people and religion. He read the published journals of Captain James Cook’s voyages to the Pacific, and as he read, he prayed. In May 1792 he published, in Leicester, a book of about eighty pages whose long title begins An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians. It became one of the most influential books in the history of Protestant missions.

2.The Question Behind the Book

Why did Carey need to argue that Christians should share the gospel with other nations? Many English Baptists of his day had drifted into what is now called hyper-Calvinism. They believed so strongly that God chooses whom He will save that they thought it wrong to urge unbelievers to repent and believe. A well-known story, told by Carey’s friends years later, says that when Carey raised the subject of world missions at a ministers’ meeting, an older minister told him to sit down, because God would convert the heathen without his help. Whether every word of that story is exact, it shows the mood Carey faced. Change was already coming. In 1785 Andrew Fuller, pastor at Kettering, published The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, arguing that it is every person’s duty to believe the gospel and every preacher’s duty to offer it freely. In 1784 John Sutcliffe of Olney had called the churches of the Northamptonshire Association to a monthly hour of prayer for the spread of the gospel, inspired by the American Jonathan Edwards. Carey’s book took this new conviction and turned it outward, toward the whole world. Baptists today still differ on the doctrines of grace, but almost all agree with Fuller and Carey that the gospel must be offered to everyone.

3.Three Arguments for a Binding Commission

Carey begins with the Great Commission in Matthew 28 and Mark 16. Christ told His apostles to “teach all nations” and to preach “to every creature.” Carey notes that this command was “as extensive as possible.” The apostles obeyed, but later Christians, he says, have not carried it on with the same “zeal and perseverance.” Some thought the apostles had already finished the task. Others believed that the command belonged only to the apostles, since they had no successors. Carey answers with three arguments. First, if the command to teach all nations belonged only to the apostles, then so did the command to baptize, and every church except the Quakers would be wrong to baptize at all. Second, if the command was only for the apostles, then every ordinary minister who has ever taken the gospel to unreached peoples went “without a warrant.” Third, the promise attached to the command, “Lo, I am with you always,” reaches “to the end of the world.” If the promise lasts, so does the duty. Notice the Baptist logic of the first argument. Carey ties evangelism and baptism together. The same commission that sends us to make disciples tells us to baptize them. For Baptists, who baptize believers on their profession of faith, this is a natural link: the church grows as people hear, believe, are baptized and are taught.

4.When Does a Command Stop Binding?

Carey is a careful thinker. He admits that a divine command can cease to bind in some cases, and he names four. A command may be repealed, as the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were. There may be no one left for it to apply to, as with the law of releasing debts when there were no poor in the land (Deuteronomy 15:4). God may give a “counter-revelation,” as when the Holy Spirit forbade Paul and Silas to preach in Bithynia (Acts 16:6–7). Or obedience may be naturally impossible. Paul could not preach in Tahiti, which Carey calls Otaheite, because no one in his day knew it existed. Then Carey tests the Great Commission against all four. It has not been repealed. The world is full of people who have not heard. No new revelation forbids it, and even Paul and Silas, when stopped in one place, simply went to preach in another. Nor is it impossible, since ships now sail everywhere. This is a model for any pastor. Carey does not shout down objections. He states them fairly, then answers them one by one from Scripture and common sense.

5.Waiting for Providence?

Some said that Christians should not “force our way,” but should wait for the leadings of providence. Carey replies that the openings of providence are already present “daily.” What more are we waiting for? We cannot expect to be carried miraculously across the sea, or to receive the gift of tongues when we arrive. Those would be miracles, not providence. Then he points to others who have already gone. Roman Catholic missionaries have crossed every barrier. The Moravian Brethren, a small German-speaking church, have gone to Greenland and Labrador and learned difficult languages. English traders have reached Persia, India, China and Greenland, and even carried on “the accursed Slave-Trade” on the coasts of Africa. If people will cross the world for money, and even for so evil a trade, then ministers can surely cross it for the gospel. Carey also answers those who said that certain prophecies had to be fulfilled before the nations could be converted. Even if that were true, he says, the secret purposes of God are not the rule of our duty. If they were, it would be as wrong to pray for the nations as to preach to them.

6.“Work Enough at Home”

The last objection in this section still sounds familiar. There are many people in our own country, some said, who are as far from God as anyone overseas, so we have work enough at home. Carey agrees that there are thousands at home “as far from God as possible,” and says this should stir us to “ten-fold diligence.” But it does not cancel the duty abroad. People at home, he says, have Bibles, churches and faithful ministers within reach, and they may hear the word if they choose. Many peoples elsewhere have “no Bible, no written language,” and no ministers. Pity, humanity, and “much more Christianity” call for every possible effort. Carey does not set home and foreign mission against each other. He asks for both. That balance has marked Baptist missions ever since, from village preaching in England to church planting in the cities and rural towns of Mexico.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

Carey wrote as a local pastor speaking to other pastors and church members, and his first section offers several lessons for ministry today. First, the Great Commission belongs to every congregation. Baptists believe that each local church is under the direct lordship of Christ, so no bishop or distant board can carry the commission for us. Each church must ask how it will obey. Second, a pastor must deal honestly with excuses, including theological ones. Some of the objections Carey answered came dressed in the language of sound doctrine. A good leader listens, separates truth from excuse, and leads the church back to the plain command of Christ. Third, a pastor teaches the church to see the world. Carey’s homemade map is a simple picture of what good church leadership does. It lifts people’s eyes beyond their own walls. Finally, the commission is joined to a promise. The Christ who sends is the Christ who goes with us “always.” Five months after this book appeared, a small group of ministers met at Kettering and formed the Baptist mission society that would send Carey to India. Today Baptist churches in Brazil, Nigeria, Cuba and Mexico send their own missionaries, and they read Carey’s argument as their own. The commission he defended in 1792 is still binding on us.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Carey showed that the command to “teach all nations” was never meant for the apostles alone. Which objections to mission do you hear most often in your church, and how would you answer them from Scripture as patiently as Carey did? Where does your congregation need “ten-fold diligence” at home, and what is one step it could take beyond its own town? And how does the promise “Lo, I am with you always” give you courage for the task Christ has given you?

Select

Reading 2 · Missions in History

The Gospel on the Move

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section II, “A short Review of former Undertakings”

Carey traces the spread of the gospel from Pentecost, the first deacons and Paul’s journeys through the early church, much of it African, to Eliot, Brainerd and the Moravians. He condemns conversion by conquest, and his story shows leaders sharing responsibility, facing conflict and planting churches. It continues with the Judsons and the Triennial Convention.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

The Gospel on the Move: Carey’s Review of Missions Past

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Carey’s rapid tour of mission history, from Pentecost and Paul’s journeys to the Moravians, and what it teaches church leaders about courage, conflict and conscience

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section II, “Containing a short Review of former Undertakings for the Conversion of the Heathen.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Enquiry, Section II
Primary source
1792
William Carey

A word before you read. Carey’s history depends on the books available to a self-taught pastor in 1792. Some of his dates are rough, and some traditions he repeats, such as where each apostle preached, cannot be proved. He also writes about the medieval church and Roman Catholic missions with strong Protestant polemic. CTS keeps his main lines, corrects or qualifies where needed, and invites you to read history with both gratitude and honesty.

1.Why Carey Tells the Story

After arguing in Section I that the Great Commission still binds the church, Carey turns to history. His purpose is practical. If Christians in every age have taken the gospel to new peoples, often against great odds, then the task is neither new nor impossible. History becomes a sermon of encouragement. Carey walks quickly through the Book of Acts, the early centuries, the medieval period, the Reformation and the Protestant missions of his own century. He writes as a pastor, not a professional historian, and his account is full of names and places. The thread that holds it together is simple: God has always worked through ordinary people who went, preached, suffered and prayed. For a church leader, this section is a reminder that a congregation needs memory. People gain courage when they know how God has worked before.

2.The Church in Acts

Carey begins in Jerusalem. About “an hundred and twenty persons” waited in prayer until Pentecost, when the Spirit came, Peter preached, and three thousand were converted and “immediately after were baptized.” Then came the healing of the lame man and five thousand more believers, followed by opposition, prayer and boldness. Carey slows down at one point that every pastor will recognize. The church grew so fast that some needs were neglected, and complaints arose. The apostles asked the church to choose seven men to care for its practical affairs, so that the apostles could “give themselves to prayer, and the ministry of the word.” Carey calls these seven deacons. Here is a lesson in church leadership: growth brings strain, and wise leaders share responsibility rather than holding everything themselves. Baptist churches have long seen in Acts 6 a pattern for deacons who serve the body and free pastors for prayer and preaching. Carey then follows Stephen’s martyrdom, the scattering of the church, Philip in Samaria and with the Ethiopian official, Peter at the house of Cornelius, and the new church in Antioch, which soon sent out preachers of its own.

3.Paul’s Journeys and a Hard Parting

Carey describes Paul’s four great journeys in Acts, calling the first one the first “attack” on the heathen world. He does not hide the difficulties. Mark deserted Paul and Barnabas and went home. Crowds tried to worship the missionaries, then stoned Paul and left him for dead. Yet on the way back, Paul and Barnabas visited each new group of believers, “formed them into a church state,” ordained elders, fasted and prayed with them, and commended them to the Lord. That is a short description of church planting that still serves today. Carey also tells of the quarrel over Mark that separated Paul and Barnabas. They “could not walk together,” he writes, yet each kept serving Christ. Every church leader faces conflict. Carey’s honest reading shows that godly people can disagree sharply, part ways and still both be used by God. Later in the New Testament Paul calls Mark “profitable” for ministry, so even this story ended in restoration. Carey goes on through Philippi, Berea, where people tested the message by Scripture, Corinth, Ephesus and the voyage to Rome, where Paul preached for two years “no man forbidding him.”

4.The Gospel Outruns the Empire

Next Carey gathers the testimony of the early church. He repeats traditions that Thomas went to India, Andrew to the Scythians and others to Africa and Arabia. Pliny the Younger told the emperor Trajan that Christianity had spread through whole countries. Justin Martyr said there was no people among whom prayers were not offered in the name of Jesus. Tertullian, who lived “at Carthage in Africa,” named a long list of peoples reached by the gospel. Then Carey notes that ten years of persecution under Diocletian could not root out the Christians. It is worth noticing how much of this early story is African. Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine were North Africans, and Carey also mentions the conversion of a king of Ethiopia. Christians in Africa today are not latecomers to the faith; they stand in one of its oldest homelands. Carey then tells of Frumentius sent to the east, of a captive Christian woman who brought the gospel to the Georgians, of Patrick in Ireland and Columba among the Picts. Again and again the gospel spread through slaves, captives and ordinary believers, not only through official missions.

5.Conquest Is Not Conversion

Carey writes that after Constantine, “ease and affluence” brought corruption into the church. Later, he says, the usual method was to “conquer pagan nations by force of arms” and then require them to accept Christianity. He includes Charlemagne’s forced conversions and adds that the Spaniards forced their religion upon South America. For readers in Latin America this is painful history, and it must be read with care. The conquest did bring terrible violence, and many people were baptized without real teaching or free consent. Yet Carey’s summary is one-sided. Within the Catholic Church itself, voices such as the Dominican preacher Antonio de Montesinos in 1511 and Bartolomé de las Casas protested fiercely against the abuse of indigenous peoples. Carey’s main point still stands, and it is a deeply Baptist one. Faith cannot be forced. Conversion is the work of the Spirit in a free heart, and baptism belongs to those who believe. Baptists have long defended liberty of conscience for everyone, not only for themselves. Carey even notes that “blind zeal” and cruelty meant that many so-called Christians “needed conversion” as much as anyone.

6.Eliot, Brainerd, Ziegenbalg and the Moravians

Carey praises the small faithful groups who kept the gospel alive, such as the Waldensians in the valleys of Piedmont, and the Reformers, including Wycliffe, Huss and Luther. Then he reaches the Protestant missionaries of recent times. John Eliot in New England preached to Native Americans, planted churches, and raised up preachers and schoolmasters among them; his Algonquian Bible of 1663 was the first Bible printed in America. David Brainerd, whose diary was published by Jonathan Edwards, saw a remarkable work of God among the Delaware people before he died young in 1747. In 1706 the king of Denmark sent Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg to Tranquebar in southern India. Dutch ministers served in the East Indies. But Carey writes that “none of the moderns have equalled the Moravian Brethren.” From their village of Herrnhut in Germany, this small church had sent missionaries since 1732 to the Caribbean, Greenland and Labrador. Carey closes with the Methodist work in the West Indies among Caribs and enslaved Africans. These were the models he wanted English Baptists to follow.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

Carey could not know that he himself would soon become part of this history. A year after writing, he sailed for India. His work there inspired others. In 1812 the young American missionaries Adoniram and Ann Judson, sailing to India as Congregationalists, studied baptism on the voyage, became convinced Baptists and were baptized in Calcutta by Carey’s colleague William Ward. Their companion Luther Rice returned to America to rally Baptist support, and in 1814 Baptists met in Philadelphia and formed the Triennial Convention, the first national body of American Baptists, mainly to support missions. The Judsons went to Burma, where Adoniram suffered prison and translated the whole Bible into Burmese. The story Carey began to tell has continued through Africa, Asia and Latin America. For a pastor, Section II teaches several things. Remember what God has done, and tell it to your people. Share leadership as the church grows. Expect conflict, and seek restoration. Plant churches that have their own elders. And never confuse the spread of power, culture or politics with the spread of the gospel, which advances by preaching, prayer and willing faith.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Carey found courage in the history of those who went before him. Which stories of God’s work in your own church or country should your people hear again? When growth or conflict brings strain, as it did in Acts 6 and in the parting of Paul and Barnabas, how do you share leadership and seek peace? And where might Christians around you be tempted to spread the faith by pressure or power rather than by persuasion and prayer?

Select

Reading 3 · Surveying the World

A Map on the Workshop Wall

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section III, “A Survey of the present State of the World”

Carey’s country-by-country tables count about 731 million people in 1792, most without a Bible. CTS explains honestly his period words “heathen” and “savage,” notes his insistence that all peoples are “as capable of knowledge as we are,” and shows how Baptists today, now strongest in Africa and Latin America, see mission as partnership among equals bearing God’s image.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

A Map on the Workshop Wall: Carey’s Survey of the World

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Carey’s country-by-country tables of the world’s peoples and religions, his hard eighteenth-century words, and how Baptists today think about mission, partnership and human dignity

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section III, “Containing a Survey of the present State of the World.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Enquiry, Section III
Primary source
1792
William Carey

A word before you read. This section is mostly tables of numbers from 1792. They are historical estimates, not current statistics, and many were guesses. Carey also uses words for other peoples, such as “heathen,” “savage” and “barbarous,” that were common in his day but are hurtful today. CTS quotes them so that you can understand the source honestly, not because we share those judgments. Every people Carey describes was, and is, made in the image of God.

1.Counting the Nations

Section III is the most unusual part of Carey’s book. For page after page he lists the countries and islands of the world in four parts, Europe, Asia, Africa and America. For each he gives its length and breadth in miles, its estimated number of inhabitants, and its religion, which he divides into Christian, Jewish, “Mahometan” (his word for Muslim) and “Pagan.” Great Britain has twelve million people, “Protestants, of many denominations.” China has sixty million, “Pagans.” Small Greek islands appear alongside vast regions such as “Great Tartary” in central Asia. Much of this information came from the geography books of the day and from the journals of explorers such as Captain Cook. Carey admits the limits of his data. For many lands, including Turkey, Arabia, Africa and most of the Americas outside the United States, he says there are no reliable counts. So he calculated the area and estimated an average number of people “upon a square mile.” Remember the shoemaker’s homemade map from Reading 1. These tables are that map turned into a book. Carey wanted his readers to see the world as it really was, as far as he could know it, because people do not pray for or go to places they have never thought about.

2.Seven Hundred and Thirty-One Millions

At the end of the tables Carey adds up his figures. The world’s population, by his calculation, is about “seven hundred and thirty-one millions.” Of these, he counts about 420 million as pagan, 130 million as Muslim, 100 million as Catholic, 44 million as Protestant, 30 million as belonging to the Greek and Armenian churches, and perhaps 7 million as Jews. Modern historians estimate that the world population in 1800 was somewhat higher, close to one billion, and today it is more than eight billion. The point is not the exact number. Carey wanted his readers to feel the proportion. Protestants like himself were a small fraction of humanity, and most people in the world had no access to the Bible at all. He writes that many “have no written language, consequently no Bible.” Here we see one of the great motives of Carey’s life. In India he and his colleagues would translate and print the Scriptures in dozens of languages, because a people without the Bible in their own tongue cannot easily grow strong churches. Bible translation remains one of the central works of Baptist missions today.

3.Hard Words: “Heathen,” “Savage,” “Barbarous”

Carey’s language in this section can shock a modern reader. He describes peoples without writing as led by “childish customs,” repeats Captain Cook’s reports of cannibalism and human sacrifice, and calls them “poor, barbarous, naked pagans.” How should we read such words? First, we should understand them. In the English of 1792, “heathen” was a biblical word. Older English Bibles used it to translate the Hebrew goyim and the Greek ethnē, the “nations,” meaning peoples who did not know the God of Israel. It described religion, not race. “Savage” and “barbarous” were the common words of European travel books for societies without cities, writing or state government. Second, we should be honest. These words also carried a sense that European ways were the measure of what is civilized and human. That sense helped justify colonial rule, and it often wounded the dignity of the very peoples missionaries came to serve. Some reports Carey repeated were exaggerated by sailors and traders. We need not defend his vocabulary in order to learn from his heart. CTS uses it only inside quotations; in our own teaching we speak of peoples, nations and communities.

4.“As Capable of Knowledge as We Are”

Yet Carey himself goes beyond the prejudices of his time in important ways. Right after his harshest description, he writes that these peoples “appear to be as capable of knowledge as we are.” He adds that they have shown “uncommon genius,” and he doubts whether most of the violence reported against Europeans was really cruelty. More likely, he says, it came from “some real or supposed affront” and was “self-defence.” He also makes a painful admission: the vices of Europeans have spread wherever they have gone, so that even non-Christian peoples have been made worse by contact with them. Earlier in the book he called the slave trade “accursed.” Carey’s life in India later confirmed his respect for other cultures. He studied Sanskrit deeply, wrote grammars and dictionaries of Indian languages, and helped translate the Indian epic the Ramayana into English. He worked with Indian scholars as partners. He was a man of his time, but he was also a man whose love for people pushed against the limits of his time.

5.Christendom Needs the Gospel Too

Carey does not spare his own side. He describes Christians of the Greek and Armenian churches as ignorant, and Roman Catholics as “ignorant of divine things,” in the polemical tone of the time. But then he turns to England. The bulk of the Church of England, he says, is little better, and “much looseness of conduct” is found among dissenters “of all denominations,” which includes his own Baptists. The face of most Christian countries, he concludes, shows “ignorance, hypocrisy, and profligacy.” Whatever we think of his judgments on other traditions, his main point is humble and sound. The line between those who need the gospel and those who have it does not run between continents. It runs through every nation and every church. Mission is not a movement from the “Christian West” to the rest. All of us need the grace of Christ, and all of us are called to share it. Carey ends the section with a call to Christians, “and especially to ministers,” to enlarge their spheres of action as much as possible.

6.Mission with Dignity: How Baptists See It Today

Two centuries after Carey, the map of world Christianity has changed beyond anything he imagined. Most Christians now live in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Some of the world’s largest Baptist bodies are the Nigerian Baptist Convention and the Brazilian Baptist Convention, and both send missionaries of their own, within their countries and abroad. Cuban and Mexican Baptists plant churches among their own people and beyond their borders. In 1987 an Ibero-American missions congress in São Paulo spoke of Latin America moving from a mission field to a mission force. Baptists today speak of mission “from everywhere to everywhere.” This change has deepened the Baptist understanding of mission in three ways. First, every person bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27), so no people is lesser or “scarcely human,” as Carey’s age sometimes said. Second, mission is partnership. Churches in every land serve together as equals, learn from one another and share resources both ways. Third, local believers lead. As Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson urged in the nineteenth century, churches should become self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. The Baptist World Alliance, founded in 1905, now links Baptist unions on every continent as brothers and sisters.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

Carey’s tables can seem like the dullest part of the Enquiry, but they hold a lesson for every church leader: know your world. Before Carey could mobilize a church, he did the research. A pastor today can do the same on a smaller scale. Who lives in your town? Which neighborhoods, villages or language groups have no church that speaks to them? Where have migrants arrived, and who among them has no Bible in their own language? Many mission agencies now publish information about peoples still without a church, and this can guide prayer. Second, a pastor guards the dignity of every person in how he or she speaks. Our words about other peoples, other churches and other parts of our own country should reflect the image of God in them. Third, a pastor leads with humility. Carey saw that his own churches needed reform as much as any. Mission begins with repentance at home. Finally, numbers should move us to compassion, not pride. Carey counted people because he cared that they would hear of Christ.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Carey surveyed the whole world so that his readers would pray and act. If you made a “map” of your own town or region, which people would be on it who have no church or Bible in their own language? Are there words you or your church use about other peoples that fail to honor the image of God in them? And how does the change from Carey’s world to today’s, where churches in Africa and Latin America send missionaries, shape your church’s place in God’s mission?

Select

Reading 4 · Overcoming Obstacles

Not Impracticable

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section IV, “The Practicability of something being done”

Carey answers five obstacles to mission: distance, hardship, danger, supplies and language. A minister, he says, is “not his own.” His plan of teams, families and shared work came true at Serampore, where Carey, Marshman and Ward translated the Bible into about forty languages, baptized Krishna Pal and trained Indian leaders, as Carey urged.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Not Impracticable: Carey Answers Five Obstacles

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Carey’s practical case that distance, danger, hardship and strange languages need not stop the church, and how his own life at Serampore tested every word

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section IV, “The Practicability of something being done, more than what is done, for the Conversion of the Heathen.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Enquiry, Section IV
Primary source
1792
William Carey

A word before you read. In this section Carey again uses the period words “savage” and “barbarous,” and once he speaks of peoples who “seem to be scarcely human.” He means it as a description of their supposed condition, not as a denial of their humanity, since in the same paragraph he insists their souls are “as immortal as ours.” Still, the words are wrong, and Reading 3 explains their background. CTS keeps them only inside quotations.

1.Five Objections, Five Answers

Having shown that the command still binds and that Christians have obeyed it before, Carey now asks a practical question. Can something more be done than is being done? He lists five obstacles that people raised: the great distance to other lands, their “barbarous and savage manner of living,” the danger of being killed, the difficulty of getting food and supplies, and the difficulty of learning their languages. Then he answers each one. This section shows Carey at his most practical. He is not a dreamer who ignores problems. He names them, takes them seriously, and proposes realistic solutions. A church leader who wants to start any new work, from a mission trip to a new congregation in the next town, can learn from this approach. Name the obstacles honestly. Answer them one at a time. Then begin.

2.Distance and the Ships of Tarshish

First, distance. Before the invention of the “mariner’s compass,” Carey admits, distance might have been a real excuse. But now ships sail the great South Sea as surely as the Mediterranean. Trading companies already do business in the places where unreached peoples live, and ships regularly visit new lands. Carey sees in this the hand of providence. He quotes Isaiah 60:9, where “the ships of Tarshish” bring God’s sons from far away, and concludes that commerce and navigation will serve the spread of the gospel. Today the point is even stronger. Air travel, the internet and radio reach almost every corner of the earth. Millions of people have moved across borders, so that many nations now live in our own cities. Mexican and Central American believers in the United States, African believers in Europe, and Venezuelan and Haitian migrants in Mexico all show that mission often comes to our doorstep. The excuse of distance has almost disappeared.

3.Hardship and the Love of Ease

Second, the way of life in distant lands. Carey answers bluntly. This is no objection to anyone except those whose “love of ease” makes them unwilling to suffer inconvenience for the good of others. The apostles went to the Germans, Gauls and Britons, the ancestors of Carey’s own people, and did not wait for them to become “civilized” first. They simply preached the cross. Eliot and Brainerd did the same in America. Carey adds a sharp comparison: traders endure every hardship for the profit of “a few otter-skins.” Surely Christians can love souls as much as merchants love money. Carey does assume that the gospel will also bring European-style civilization, and here modern readers should be careful. The gospel transforms every culture, including European culture, but it does not require any people to become European. Still, Carey’s main point holds. Comfort is one of the greatest enemies of mission, then and now.

4.Danger and the Minister Who Is Not His Own

Third, danger. Carey agrees that whoever goes “must put his life in his hand.” Paul and Barnabas risked their lives and were praised for it, while Mark, who deserted them, was blamed. Then Carey turns to the necessaries of life and makes one of the strongest statements in the book about pastoral ministry. A Christian minister, he says, is “not his own”; he is the servant of God. He has promised to go where God sends and to endure what God allows. Ministers should not expect “a numerous auditory,” wealth or comfort, but hardship, hunger and hard work, as the apostles did. Carey even questions whether all ministers are justified in staying home while so many perish without the gospel. Carey lived what he wrote. He reached India in November 1793 and spent years in poverty, managing an indigo factory to support himself. His son Peter died. His wife Dorothy, who had been very unwilling to go, suffered a severe mental illness for the rest of her life. Carey’s story shows both the cost of obedience and the need for churches to care for the families of those they send.

5.Teams, Families and a Little Spot of Ground

Carey also proposes a plan. Missionaries should go at least “two” together, ideally married men with their families, joined by others who would farm, fish and provide food. They would “cultivate a little spot of ground” and soon support themselves, which would reduce the cost of the mission. In India this vision of shared life became real. In 1799 Joshua Marshman, a schoolteacher, and William Ward, a printer, arrived with their families. Carey joined them, and in January 1800 they settled in Serampore, a Danish town near Calcutta where the British East India Company could not expel them. The “Serampore Trio” lived as one household, pooled their income and shared the work. Hannah Marshman opened schools, including pioneering schools for girls. In 1805 they wrote the Serampore Form of Agreement, a covenant describing how missionaries should live, love and preach. Many pastors in Latin America and Africa today serve as bivocational ministers, working a trade while they preach, as Carey once mended shoes. His plan reminds us that faithful ministry is often supported by ordinary work and by teams, not by one hero.

6.Learning Languages and Translating the Bible

The fifth obstacle is language. Carey writes that missionaries must “mingle with the people” until they can speak to them. He was optimistic, thinking that within “a year, or two at most,” anyone could learn enough of any language to share the gospel. His own life became the greatest proof of what language work can do. The Serampore mission translated and printed the Bible, in whole or in part, in about forty languages and dialects of Asia. Carey completed the Bengali New Testament in 1801 and taught Bengali and Sanskrit at Fort William College in Calcutta. In 1812 a fire destroyed the press and years of manuscripts. Carey grieved, then began again, and the work was rebuilt. Translation was not quick, and some early versions needed revision, but the principle was sound. People must hear God’s word in the language of their hearts. Carey also lists the qualities missionaries need: “great piety, prudence, courage, and forbearance.” They must not “despise the poor heathens” or think highly of themselves, but must do good, teach patiently and pray constantly for the Holy Spirit.

7.What a Baptist Pastor Takes from It Today

Carey ends this section with a sentence that was ahead of its time. If God blesses the work, missionaries should “encourage any appearances of gifts” among the new believers, because they know the language and customs of their own people. In other words, raise up local leaders. In December 1800 the Serampore missionaries baptized their first Bengali convert, Krishna Pal, a carpenter, who became a preacher and hymn writer. In 1818 they founded Serampore College to train Indian ministers. Today almost all Baptist churches in India, Africa and Latin America are led by their own pastors, and that is exactly what Carey hoped for. For a pastor today, Section IV offers clear lessons. Face obstacles honestly and plan wisely. Remember that ministry is service, not a career for comfort. Build teams, and care for the families of those who serve. Learn the language and culture of the people you are trying to reach, even in your own city. And from the very start, look for the gifts God has given to others, and train them to lead.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Carey called the minister a person who is “not his own.” Where has the “love of ease” crept into your ministry or your church’s plans? How does your congregation support the families of the pastors and missionaries it sends, especially when they suffer as the Careys did? And whom has God placed around you whose gifts you should be encouraging and training, so that they can lead after you?

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Reading 5 · Prayer, Society and Giving

Pray, Organize, Give

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section V, “The Duty of Christians in general, and what Means ought to be used”

Carey calls for “fervent and united prayer,” then for means: a society with a committee, careful choice of missionaries, and regular giving, even a penny a week or a tenth. At Kettering in October 1792 Baptists answered, forming the Baptist Missionary Society with Andrew Fuller holding the rope, a pattern later carried on by Lottie Moon and churches worldwide.

CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here

The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.

Pray, Organize, Give: Carey’s Plan and the Birth of Baptist Missions

A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the closing section of the Enquiry, where Carey calls for united prayer, a missionary society and regular giving, and the story of how Baptists at Kettering answered him

A CTS digest of William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792), Section V, “An Enquiry into the Duty of Christians in general, and what Means ought to be used.” The original is in the public domain; the short quotations below are from it.

Enquiry, Section V
Primary source
1792
William Carey

A word before you read. This short section changed history. Within months of its publication, English Baptists formed the first Baptist missionary society. Carey writes here with the hopes and the limits of 1792: he speaks of “popery” in the polemical way of his time, and he links the gospel with European “civilization.” CTS presents his plan as his own and adds the story of what followed, including its honest failures.

1.Fervent and United Prayer

Carey has argued that the commission binds us, that history encourages us, that the world needs the gospel and that the task is possible. Now he asks what Christians should actually do. His first answer is prayer. The first and most important duty, he says, is “fervent and united prayer.” All our efforts will fail without the Holy Spirit. Quoting Zechariah 4:6, he reminds his readers that God’s temple among the nations will be built “not by might, nor by power,” and not by the authority of rulers or the eloquence of preachers, but by the Spirit of the Lord. Carey points to Zechariah 12 and 13, where a spirit of grace and supplication leads to cleansing and renewal, and he observes that the greatest works of grace in history have come “in answer to prayer.” Then he speaks of the churches of his own association. Since 1784 they had held “monthly prayer-meetings” for the spread of the gospel. Carey admits that their prayers lacked urgency, yet he believes God has answered them. The churches that prayed have grown, new doors for preaching have opened, and old controversies have become clearer. Many people, he adds, “can do nothing but pray,” and prayer is the one work in which Christians of every denomination can fully unite.

2.Signs of Hope and the Shame of the Slave Trade

Carey sees signs of hope in his own time: the spread of civil and religious liberty, and a “noble effort” to abolish “the inhuman Slave-Trade.” In 1791 the British Parliament had rejected William Wilberforce’s bill to end the trade, but Carey hoped the effort would continue “till it is accomplished.” He also mentions the new free settlement at Sierra Leone, founded for formerly enslaved Africans, and he praises families who had stopped buying “West-India sugar,” grown by enslaved people. Britain ended its slave trade in 1807 and slavery in its colonies in 1833, a year before Carey died. Baptists played an important part, especially the Jamaican Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe and English Baptist missionaries such as William Knibb. Yet honesty requires us to add a painful fact. In the United States, Baptists in the South defended slavery, and in 1845 the Southern Baptist Convention was formed after the national missions board refused to appoint slaveholders as missionaries. In 1995 the Southern Baptist Convention formally repented of this history. Mission and justice belong together, and the church must confess when it has failed.

3.Prayer Must Lead to Means

Prayer is not the end of Carey’s plan. We must not be content with praying, he says, without “exerting ourselves in the use of means” to obtain what we pray for. Carey’s word “means” in the book’s title is important. Hyper-Calvinists feared that using human methods would deny God’s sovereignty. Carey answers that God works through means, just as a farmer prays for a harvest and still plows and sows. To make his point he uses an image from business. When a trading company gets its charter, it goes to the utmost limits of its rights. It chooses ships, officers and crews carefully, crosses the stormiest seas and waits anxiously for its vessels to come home with profit. Why? Because its members put their whole hearts into the project. Christians too have a charter, Carey says, “very extensive,” with rewards far greater than any trading profit. So “every one in his station” should act with all his might for God. A church leader can hear in this a call to good planning. Spiritual work deserves at least as much thought, effort and organization as any business.

4.A Society, a Committee and the Rope-Holders

Carey then makes his concrete proposal. A group of serious Christians, ministers and church members, should form a society with clear rules. From it a “committee” should gather information, receive gifts, examine the character and beliefs of missionaries, and supply their needs. The members must be people whose “hearts are in the work.” Carey warns that careless selection ruined the Dutch missions in the Spice Islands, where men went for profit and their lives brought the gospel into disgrace. He proposes that this society be formed among the “particular baptist denomination,” not because others should not join the work, but because in a divided Christendom each denomination could work better on its own, while praying for the others. Carey’s friends answered quickly. At the end of May 1792 he preached at Nottingham on Isaiah 54:2–3, a sermon remembered by the summary “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” On 2 October 1792, at Kettering, in the home of Mrs. Wallis, a deacon’s widow, a small group of ministers formed the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen, later the Baptist Missionary Society. Their first offering was just £13 2s 6d. Andrew Fuller became secretary and served until his death in 1815, preaching, traveling and raising support. Fuller later recalled Carey’s words as he left: he would go down into the mine, if they would “hold the rope.”

5.A Penny a Week and a Tenth

Carey’s last practical point is money. The rich should give from the wealth God has entrusted to them as “stewards.” But others should give too. If people of moderate means gave “a tenth” of their yearly income, following Abraham, Israel and the Puritans, there would be enough to support the ministry at home, encourage “village preaching” and send the gospel abroad. Even a subscription of “one penny” a week from each church member would raise a great deal. This plan of small, regular gifts from ordinary believers became the backbone of Baptist missions. It reached its best-known form among American Baptist women. Lottie Moon, a Southern Baptist missionary in China from 1873 until her death in 1912, wrote letters urging the women of the churches to organize, pray and give. In 1888 Southern Baptist women formed the Woman’s Missionary Union and took their first Christmas offering for missions, which later received her name. Moon gave away her own food during a famine and died weakened, on a ship bound for home, on Christmas Eve 1912. Today churches in Brazil, Nigeria, Mexico and Cuba also support their own mission boards through regular giving, often from very modest incomes.

6.Treasure, Harvest and a Crown of Rejoicing

Carey ends the book with Scripture. We are told to lay up “treasure in heaven,” and “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” All reward is “of mere grace,” he says, yet it is still encouraging. Think of the harvest awaiting Paul, Eliot and Brainerd. Carey pictures heaven filled with people of many nations, including his own British ancestors, brought to God through faithful labor. Such a “crown of rejoicing,” he writes, is worth aspiring to. So he closes with a call to give ourselves to the cause of Christ “with all our might.” Notice that Carey reminds his readers that the British were once among the peoples who needed missionaries. He sees himself not above others but as one who has received the gospel from others and must now pass it on. This is the heart of mission partnership: every church is both a receiver and a giver of grace.

7.What a Baptist Pastor and Church Leader Takes from It Today

Section V is a short manual of church leadership for mission. Begin with prayer, and make it regular and united, as Sutcliffe’s monthly prayer meeting did. Move from prayer to planning, using means with wisdom. Build structures with accountability: a society, a committee, careful selection and honest reporting. Keep the right motives, because mission done for gain or prestige brings shame on Christ. Cooperate with other churches, and bless those of other denominations even when you work separately. Teach stewardship, so that every member, rich or poor, can give regularly. And remember the rope-holders. Carey went down into the mine, but Fuller and the churches held the rope. Most believers will not cross an ocean, yet every believer can pray, give and support those who go. Baptist churches still work this way, from the Cooperative Program of Southern Baptists to the mission boards of the Brazilian, Nigerian and Mexican conventions. The small offering at Kettering became a movement that reached the world. What God did then through ordinary churches, He can do through yours.

8.Taking It to Heart

For reflection. Carey asked for “fervent and united prayer” and then for wise use of means. How regularly does your church pray together for the spread of the gospel, and what “means” could follow that prayer? Who are the rope-holders in your congregation, and how could you honor and strengthen them? And what would it look like for your church, however small, to give a tenth or even “one penny” a week, faithfully, for the sake of those who have not yet heard?

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Further Study: Four Public-Domain Works

These four works are for further study, for the student who wants to go on reading. They are not part of the honors reading above: that stays as it is — the five CTS digests, any three read in full and recorded on your honor. All four are in the public domain; each link opens the work online, and most can also be found in the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. Most are in English: the Chrome browser can translate a page (right-click, “Translate to…”; on a phone, the browser menu).

The Whole Enquiry · Electronic Text

1. An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians

William Carey · Leicester, 1792; Project Gutenberg text

Read the whole Enquiry in one place, with Carey’s Introduction, in the electronic text from which the textbook was taken.

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As First Printed · 1792

2. An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians

William Carey · Leicester: Ann Ireland, 1792; scan of a printed copy

See the Enquiry as it was first printed, with Carey’s tables in their original layout; the textbook gives the tables as paragraphs.

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The First Edition · Library Record

3. An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians

William Carey · 1792; Folger Shakespeare Library catalog record

Look at the library record of the 1792 first edition, with its publication details, before you cite the work.

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The Missionary Setting · Carey Center

4. An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians

William Carey · online edition, Carey Center

Read the Enquiry in the Carey Center’s online edition, for the setting of Baptist missionary history in which it is usually read.

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Honor attestation: By selecting three readings above, you affirm that you have read those three digests in full. The digests are CTS-authored summaries that may include brief excerpts or adaptations of public-domain works.