Lessons in Mission from Adoniram Judson

Adoniram Judson may likely go down in history as one of the most influential Christians of the modern era. His name is no longer a “household word” in the church, as is Luther or Spurgeon, nor is he even as famous as other missionaries. Yet because of population shifts in the Christian world, the seeds that he first planted in a place now called Myanmar make him one of a handful of saints who may have spiritually fathered millions in the “next Christendom.”

We will move in the following order: 1. a brief biographical sketch of Judson; 2. how his theology related to his mission; 3. what the controversy over his baptism shift teaches us; 4. his practical missiology on the ground in Burma; and finally, 5. his family life as a clue to the often distorted views we have today about ministry qualifications and the commitment of ministry wives. 

Adoniram Judson’s Life and Mission

Judson was born in 1788 in Malden, Massachusetts. He attended Brown University where he became drawn into the orbit of Deism. It was but a season. The young companion who influenced him in that direction died suddenly while the two happened to be staying at the same New York inn, unbeknownst to each other. This jolted young Adoniram back to the faith of his Congregationalist parents. He would prepare for ministry at the new Andover Seminary, and no sooner did he recommit his life to Christ than he was inspired to be the first American foreign missionary. 

It was early 1812, the year that the United States and Britain resumed military hostilities. Ironically Judson had been in England only months before to raise funds, returning home to receive an unexpected and sizable American donation instead. Prior to leaving, he would meet Ann, or Nancy, Hasseltine, a young woman who was zealous for the gospel of Christ and found the prospects of spreading the gospel to unknown peoples the very reason for life.

The original destination was India, following in the path already blazed by William Carey. On the voyage over Adoniram conducted a Bible study on the meaning of baptism, which results he shared with his new wife upon arrival. In a matter of weeks they were agreed that infant baptism was unbiblical, and they were persuaded to break ranks with the Congregationalists even as their finances depended on them. Much controversy arose from this.

However, the more immediate trouble for the Judsons was the East India Company, a constant thorn in the side of missionaries. Trying and failing at other options, they boarded a ship for Burma, eventually making their way to the city of Rangoon: at the time between eight to ten thousand inhabitants in great poverty.1 It would be a long year after leaving America, but in July 1813 the Judsons were ready to begin their official work.  

The Burmese were simple and poor and for the most part Buddhist. Theology would not be the only challenge. This was a language not studied in the West; so “there he spent up to twelve hours a day studying.”2 This of course had to include the written form since Judson had his sights set on a Bible translated into Burmese.

The first two years were filled with much loneliness, and also the tragedy of losing their son Roger to the fever. They had already lost a first child. Things became very dramatic in 1824 as war between England and Burma made the Christians enemies of the state. Adoniram was one of those who was arrested and scheduled for execution. Near starvation was followed by a barefoot death march when the prisoners needed to be moved. He and his wife would only be reunited for a fleeting few weeks, first in a British embassy and then in Rangoon, so that Adoniram would have to learn of his wife’s death of fever while he was back serving as translator to make secular peace. He became despondent, eventually to the brink of insanity, living out in a self-made jungle hut. All three children born by Ann had also died. 

How would the heavenly kingdom planted in Burma fare? The prayers of his missionary friends and many signs on conversion, as he was brought around, restored to him the old flame. He would complete the last of their Scriptures by 1840.3 And he would remarry twice, his married life being another subject which we will address later. Prior to the British-Burmese War, Judson had been eying the capital city of Ava. If he could gain converts among the influential, anything could happen. After more persecution, sickness, and death, realism set in.

Nevertheless he would later observe, “The spirit of inquiry…is spreading everywhere … nearly 10,000 tracts, given to none but those who ask. I presume there have been 6000 applications at the house.”4 The Karen people who had already received the gospel, now had a connection to Adoniram, from his second wife who had previously ministered there. There were multiple points of contact throughout the country by the time the Bible rolled off the presses. 

Judson died in 1850 while seeking rest at sea from his latest illness. After a series of wars, Burma would officially come under the British Empire in 1886, bringing to completion circumstances that could only frustrate the spiritual nature of the expansion of Christ’s kingdom.

A 2014 census shows that 4% of that nation’s 51,419,420 population identify as Christian.5 That is approximately 2,056,776 Christians who can trace their spiritual heritage to this man’s zeal for the fame of Jesus Christ. 

How Judson’s Vision of God Fueled the Mission

It is argued by several biographers6 that Judson was a consistent Calvinist, though refrained from unnecessary labels and most of all “party spirit.” One can draw a line of teacher-mentor relationship from Jonathan Edwards to Joseph Bellamy to Adoniram Sr.7 Most of the resistance to the “Andover brethren” to launching foreign missions came from the New England elite who were Unitarian in their theology proper and Latitudinarian in the rest of their system.8

In other words, because no one doctrine was better (or more central) than another, neither could one’s whole system be better than another man’s, or another culture’s. What right, then, does the Calvinistic Christian, or any other Western system, have to impose itself upon the so called “heathen.” The ironies of inclusivism were already rearing their head at the turn of the nineteenth century. Wherever all was as good as anything else, one did not go out to all. Why would you? A democracy of the gods implies nothing to be saved from. What reason then for mission!

Judson’s Christ was exclusive and therefore must be shared with any who would have him.

Not coincidentally it was also the glory of Christ that fueled Judson’s request to Mr. Hasseltine of his daughter’s hand in marriage. The letter was at once permission to marry Ann and invitation for her to die with him. To the father he asked, “Can you consent to all this, for the sake of Him who left His heavenly home and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion and the glory of God?”9 And so on he went with the highest doxology, mission statement, and marriage request all rolled into one. So the rest of his life would be. 

A deep theology also meant, for Judson, communicating the mysterious depths of the gospel, as when a Buddhist teacher once challenged his idea that a King could ever allow his son to suffer. Judson replied,

“A true disciple inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason, but whether it is in the book. His pride has yielded to the divine testimony. Teacher, your pride is still unbroken. Break down your pride, and yield to the word of God.”10

God’s providence was what broke the spell of his guilt over the death of his lost children and wives. Later he would write: “If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.”11 This was not a new doctrine for him, as it was from the beginning, “the interposing hand of Providence,”12 he would write in his second letter back home, that would determine all success. “If they ask again, What prospect of ultimate success is there? tell them, As much as that there is an almighty God, who will perform His promises, and no more.”13

Conviction and Controversy: The Baptism Shift

It took a generation for Northeastern Congregationalists to put behind them the sudden conversion that Judson claimed to have about baptism. We will recall that this switch to the Baptist side occurred immediately upon being sent out to the foreign field. There may have been more to it than the honeymoon Bible study at sea. Division was on his mind. How would the natives conceive of this difference between the two groups? On the other hand, if he were united with the Baptists he would bite the hand that was feeding him.

The Judsons stayed with Carey for some time and were ironing out their thinking at the exact same time. Whatever we may think of his exegesis, for Judson the matter of conscience came before all other practical considerations. For this we should admire him, and all the more so when he had not even begun to receive funds while in the field. 

Fellow traveler Luther Rice would join them in this new conviction, and since he was single it was sensible for him to return to America and begin raising funds from new Baptist sources. Both Rice and the Judsons were baptized in the church at Calcutta, and Judson shortly after preached a sermon on his new conviction which was immediately published.14

To his credit he acted on obedience at once and made his sentiments clear just as quickly. This is mentioned not to make much of the debate between Baptists and Presbyterians, but rather to provide an example of what our conduct ought to be in light of our convictions. Many a liberalizing minister keeps his doubts to himself while the good will, prayers, and resources of unsuspecting believers flows into the treasury of a different spirit. Many a Pharisaical conservative man bullies his way into church leadership secretly leading a cabal against the preaching pastor for some hobby-horse far less important than the earthly applause of the liberal. All is advanced through the cover of darkness. The right boxes are checked with fingers firmly crossed behind the back. The lesson is simply that subscriptionism is a good thing, and Judson was an honest man. 

Practical Missiology According to Judson

We move on to strategy itself. How was such a man prepared for the mission? How was he funded? How did he deal with disappointments? How did he raise up indigenous leaders? What was his vision for the kingdom of Christ in Burma? What was his philosophy of contextualization? On that last question, briefly stated by one of his sons,

“Mr. Judson did not believe that Christianity should follow in the wake of civilization. He did not propose to spend his time in teaching the arts and sciences of the Western world … He believed that Christ was with him in the heart of the heathen, unlocking the door from the inside.”15

Once the various Baptist missionary societies was formed in the States, the Judsons would have little trouble being funded. As the first American missionary hero, regular attention in the press, including a never ending spring of new missionary magazines, continued to birth new interest in his endeavors.16 Some would even publish his letters, or those of his wives. In many ways his “method” of funding was unique and unrepeatable. 

For the gospel in Burma the tangible “medium” would be the zayat: “a shelter open to anyone who wanted to rest or to discuss the day’s events, or to listen to Buddhist lay teachers who often stopped by.”17 It was more like what we would call a “community center” than a traditional Western church. The Judsons would have sufficient funds for building their own in 1819. Later that summer came their first convert. Two more young men were baptized in December. These were not sermons, at first, held there. Rather a “single person would enter into discussion with the missionary, while a few others would draw near to witness the encounter.”18

But if the zayat was the formal cause of the kingdom come in Burma, the printed word was still its material cause. The first English visitor to the Judson home would be George Hough, who in 1816 would set up the printing press that would carry stages of the translated Word, like waves of seed to the soil. It took the whole first three years for Adoniram to master the basic structure of the language, including its scholarly precursor: a dead language called Pali.19

Aside from the translated Bible, Judson developed a series of tracts, two of which were foundational. The First Tract to the Burmese goes right into the distinctions between the Christian God as opposed to idols, and the second, called The Threefold Cord, is a practical guide to the Christian life.

The Judson Women and the Question of the Husband on Mission

As one peruses through a handful of biographies about the great Christian missionaries, one of the most remarkable features is just how differently the saints of the past thought about marriage than the way that this generation of conservative, suburban Evangelicals have tended to think about it. I do not mean that there was a fundamentally different notion of gender or purity or headship or the blessing of children. What I have in mind is more of what is required of the wife in terms of support and, conversely, what is required of the husband in living with her “in an understanding way” (1 Pet. 3:7).  

Naturally in those accounts written by more secular authors the opposite will occur as well. Humble submission to God’s will is treated to a reductionism.

We have already met first wife, Ann (Nancy), and she was regarded as a model Christian woman throughout nineteenth century American Evangelicalism. She was the daughter of a respected deacon. She read the works of Edwards.20 Her diary entries and letters that refer to her conversion experience is attributed by most authors to everything under the sun (mere imitation, peer pressure, limited options for women, etc.21)—chalked up to everything, that is, but the genuine work of the Holy Spirit which is obviously being described by Ann! It is probable that Ann’s many statements about the moral degradation of cultures not affected by Christian beliefs offends the sensibilities of feminists who write about her.22

Second wife Sarah, previously married to another missionary, would bear Adoniram eight children in ten years (1834 - 1844), and she would die the year after while traveling to America for medical reasons. As to his third wife, Emily Chubbock, one historian remarked, “Marrying a secular author still in her twenties, and only half his age, was not the proper thing to do, so said the American public.”23 Her pen name was Fanny Forrester. They met during his furlough in America and even agreed to pen a biography of his previous wife Sarah. When they were married and left for Burma, three of the Judson children were left under care in America. It was the last time they would see their father.

Back in the States after Judson’s death, Emily would write a polemical work to answer the Unitarians’ charge that such foreign missions were a waste of all these women and babies, and that their inclusion should actually be outlawed.24 She too shared the notion that the heathen would be better off not only with eternal life promised in the gospel, but with the cultural effects of Christian influence in the present.25

The Judsons would have rebuked the politically correct missiology of our day that reduces “culture” to ethnicity, thus intimidating Christians from holding that some ideas are superior to others: in fact, that some ways of life are morally preferable to others. 

As to the main question of insensitivity by Adoniram to his wives and children, a few contextual matters. It should be pointed out that leaving children with trusted caretakers for extended seasons was a normal practice in Western culture throughout the early modern era. Unlike other examples in history, the Judson women would not have been turned back from the mission field. They all had a zeal for the work. 

The innermost thoughts of Ann are nearest to Adoniram’s passion and they are the appropriate place to close. Because her second child, Roger, had lived several months longer than the other two, Ann confessed that this child had become their “all,” and so she wrote this:

“God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O, may it not be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he will stay his hand and say ‘It is enough.’”26

Such words are either from delirium or else from another world. Even a cursory reading of the Judsons lives tell that it is the latter. Their sincerity is a rebuke to our casual condemnation of their “reckless” trek across the sea. It seems more likely that they have lived and the vast majority of us have not. 

____________________

1. cf. Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson (New York, A. D. F. Randolph & Company, 1883), 76.

2. Ruth A. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983), 125.

3. This seems to be one of the subsequent revisions, as another account sets the first completion at 1834: cf. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 44.

4. Judson quoted in John Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009), 97.

5. The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census Census Report Volume 2-C. Department of Population Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population MYANMAR. pp. 12–15.

6. Piper lists Eroll Hulse, Adoniram Judson and the Missionary Call (Leeds, UK: Reformation Today Trust, 1996) and Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1986), as two more recents works that make this case: cf. Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, footnote, 87.

7. Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, 87.

8. cf. Brumberg, Mission for Life, 39.

9. Judson quoted in Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 20.

10. Judson quoted in Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, 89.

11. Judson quoted in Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, 87.

12. Judson quoted in Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 79.

13. Judson quoted in Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 93.

14. Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 41.

15. Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 82.

16. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 46-47.

17. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 126.

18. Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 85.

19. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 49-50.

20. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 25.

21. cf. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 29-32.

22. cf. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 90-91.

23. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 130.

24. The Kathayan Slave and Other Papers Connected with Missionary Life (1853), cited in Mission For Life, 41.

25. Brumberg, Mission For Life, 91.

26. Ann Judson, quoted in Piper, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, 88.