The Serampore Mission Enterprise, by A. Christopher Smith (IJFM 24:3, Fall 2007) pp. 160-161
—reviewed by H. L. Richard
This volume contains six previously published and now re-edited papers along with a new contribution focused on the evangelistic work of the Serampore Trio. There is also an eighth brief closing chapter and eight appendices. There are broad introductory papers and also papers focused on specific details; this is not a comprehensive study on William Carey and the contributions of Serampore to world missions.
Smith writes with great esteem for William Carey and his cohort in Bengal. He is careful to give due credit to all of Carey’s illustrious co-workers, and also traces out the rather notorious aspects of the conflict between the senior and junior missionaries that developed in the second decade of the mission. Smith at points is rather severely critical of “the Carey tradition” and the way mission promoters have romanticized the Serampore story; readers will need to judge for themselves whether Smith’s evidence supports this criticism. The romantic missionary hero William Carey was a great linguist who translated the Bible into multiple languages. Smith only reaffirms what is a commonplace among serious students, that in fact Carey was a poor linguist whose translation principles were foundationally skewed. This must not detract from the incredible impetus given to translation work by Carey’s remarkable effort and output.
The romantic missionary hero William Carey was a great pioneer of cross-cultural ministry. Smith shows that Carey was really only deeply related to the Bengali people during his first six exceedingly difficult years. From the time of his move to Serampore in 1800, and particularly after accepting employment from the British government in 1801, Carey was confined to the mission compound and the teaching institute in Calcutta (particularly the latter, far more than even being in Serampore). But those six years of immersion in local life gave Carey an insight into Bengali life far deeper than was ever attained by the vast majority of Protestant missionaries who followed him to Bengal in the succeeding decades.
The relation of mission and colonial government is a theme running throughout this book, and is a topic that makes it a book that needs to be read. The ministry of Serampore was clearly compromised by colonial associations, even though they set up shop in the Danish territory of Serampore because it was illegal to exist as a mission in British India! (The book title contains a double meaning, as local perception could only have been of the mission as a business enterprise related to the overall colonial effort; it certainly did not look spiritual.) This topic is far from exhaustively covered, as if that could even be considered possible. Smith mines archival sources to refine a picture of evangelism and church planting. Carey is famous for his translations, for his social concerns, and for his personal piety and sacrifices, but he longed for effective evangelism and church planting, and there was precious little success in this area. Smith struggles with this failure, as did Carey and his cohort. The colonial connection is part of the problem, but so is a terrible failure to properly deal with Indian sociological realities. Of course, sociology as a science did not even exist in that time. But the decisions made by Carey and his cohort, particularly the cynical perspective they adopted on caste, left a negative legacy that exists to the present time in Indian church and mission.
Smith shows that the birthing of Serampore College was related to aspects of the evangelistic struggle of the mission. It had laudable goals, and Carey and cohort were certainly entirely accurate in their assessment that national workers would have to be the effective evangelists. But romantic missiology refers to Serampore College in glowing terms which hardly match reality; Smith’s perspective needs to be carefully studied and taken into account.
Smith suggests that a divergence of myth and reality began already during Carey’s lifetime, and sorting out the difference is a task that needs more than one book. Yet however much disagreement there may be in various details, Carey is a truly heroic figure and one cannot but be challenged and encouraged (as well as warned and advised) by studying his history.
It is perhaps in the nature of a volume mostly of previously published papers that there is an element of repetition at times. But this volume presents some new angles on the study of Carey and Serampore, and as the issues that Carey grappled with are far from adequately resolved, much light is still shed on current situations from a careful study of the father of the modern missionary movement.
- L. Richard is an independent researcher focused on the Hindu-Christian encounter. He has published numerous books and articles including studies of key figures like Narayan Vaman Tilak (Following Jesus in the Hindu Context, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1998), Kalagara Subba Rao (Exploring the Depths of the Mystery of Christ, Bangalore: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2005), and R. C. Das (R. C. Das: Evangelical Prophet for Contextual Christianity, Delhi: ISPCK, 1995).
