ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
CH3-032
PROFESSOR LAWRENCE REST
PROFESSOR WILL SCHUMACHER
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Lombard, IL 60148
800-825-5234
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is
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>> PAUL: Surely as the New World grew, well-established
churches on the European continent must've looked at
America and seen an opportunity. Was colonial America
viewed as a mission field and for which churches? Were
there some that were notably effective?
>> SPEAKER: Well, Paul, how I answer your would depend on
how we define mission field. European churches certainly
thought of the New World as offering new opportunities, but
exactly how they find those opportunities demands a little
bit closer inspection.
For some, the creation of European settlements was itself
a kind of mission work. It was, after all, more and more of
this new and wild and untamed land was coming under the
control and cultivation of Christians. And very few
Europeans in the 1500's or 1600's or 1700's ever doubted
that that was a good idea or a good thing, often viewed as
a valuable in that in itself. Was this mission work? Well,
probably not in the sense that we usually use the term. Was
it a vision for the spread and expansion of Christianity?
Yes, because European Christians were expanding and
colonizing a new country. And that was viewed as, in and of
itself, a good and God-pleasing process.
As the number of European settlers and colonists
increased and the settlements spread in geographical area,
there was also the increased need to provide for their
spiritual care. So there were growing spiritual needs in
this New World, in these New World colonies. In the
earliest times, this meant that pastors for the colonists
had to be brought from Europe. In the English colonies,
this meant bringing pastors from England which was a rather
unsatisfactory and inconvenient way of proceeding, both
because it was expensive and difficult and because the men
that could be recruited for such a task were often not the
most suited to it.
The very earliest educational endeavors in the colonies
really were aimed at meeting that need of spiritual
leadership and spiritual care for the colonists. Most of
the early institutions of higher education had as their
goal part of the purpose of forming them, the education of
clergy and the improvement of the spiritual and moral
conditions in the colonies. So you could view these early
educational institutions as part of the overall mission of
the colonies in a Christian sense.
Let me just mention a few that you certainly would have
heard of from the earliest educational institutions in the
New World. Harvard College was founded in 1636, the first
college in the New World. Although it was certainly a place
of serious learning, that was not its only purpose.
Students were, as a matter of course, expected to learn
Latin and Greek not to graduate from Harvard, but to be
admitted to Harvard. So they had rather high educational
standards. But they also had as one of their rules that
every student, and this is a quote from their rules, “Every
student shall consider the main end of his life and studies
to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life.” So the
spiritual development and the spiritual life of the
students was central to the purpose of Harvard when it was
established in the 1630's. Now remember, 1636 is just six
years after the Massachusetts Bay Colony had been
established. This is very early in the life of these
Puritan colonies of New England.
Virginia also a college from the early date. The College
of William and Mary was established in 1693 in
Williamsburg. And it had as its purpose that the youth of
the colony were to be piously educated in good letters and
manners, that the Anglican Church was to be provided with a
seminary of ministers of the gospel. Now that was not quite
as effective as it might have been because even though the
students were educated at the college, they could only be
ordained by sending them back to England to be ordained by
an Anglican bishop. And also the college had as its goal
that the Christian religion may be propagated among the
western Indians to the glory of Almighty God. Very
interesting to think about this colonial outpost of higher
learning setting as one of its primary goals the
propagation of the gospel among the Indians and the
spiritual well-being of the colonists and the general pious
education of the youth.
Yale College was established in 1701. In founding it, the
original board of trustees noted that they had too long
neglected the great errand to propagate in this wilderness
the blessed Reformed Protestant religion in the purity of
its worship and order. This great errand to propagate in
this wilderness the blessed Reformed Protestant religion.
So Yale also had as its founding purpose the propagation of
Christianity, and not just any kind of Christianity, but
this Reformed Protestant version of Christianity which was
the ideal of the colony.
Now, when you think of places like Harvard and Yale
today, you might not think of them as mission outposts.
They're not noted for their piety, but that certainly is an
important ingredient in their original history and how they
were founded.
I'll just mention one more that takes us into the middle
of the 1700's. A graduate of Yale College by the name of
Eleazar Wheelock, he was Yale class of 1733, was deeply
involved in the piety and excitement of the Great
Awakening, the spiritual energy that was part of that
movement. He determined to move into New Hampshire and
establish a school which would be open to both whites and,
this was quite significant, to Indians. And he founded in
1769, Dartmouth College open to both Indian and non-Indian,
although his emphasis was to provide education, a Christian
education, to Indians. His purpose being, and I quote, "To
save the swarms of Indian natives in this land from final
and eternal ruin which must unavoidably be the issue of
those poor miserable creatures unless God shall mercifully
interpose with his blessings upon endeavors to prevent it."
So the salvation of the Indians was the central purpose of
the founding of Dartmouth College as well.
Harvard, the College of William and Mary, Yale,
Dartmouth, these early institutions of higher education
were really part of an overall mission ideal not always
reaching the non-Christians but equally facilitating the
spread of Christianity in the colonies. So to answer your
question, it depends a little bit how you think about
mission, whether or not bringing Christianity to the New
World was seen as working in a mission field.
*****
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is
provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility
and may not be a totally verbatim record of the
proceedings.
*****