150 years of Friends and foreign missions
First minutebook of the Friends Foreign Mission Association with signature of Henry Stanley Newman, its first secretary
26th May 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Friends Foreign Mission Association in 1868. This put overseas mission and relief work on a permanent footing for the Society for the first time, and this work has continued in some form ever since.
There was a prior provisional committee set up, also meeting for the first time on 26th May, 1865, and work did commence under its auspices but the Association was officially constituted in 1868.
Quakers were not immune to the evangelical fervour that increased in many denominations in the early 19th century. One Quaker in particular took up this calling with great enthusiasm. George Richardson (1773-1862), was a widely travelled Quaker minister who was devoted to issues such as peace, temperance and anti-slavery. He became a passionate proponent of mission work and wrote extensively to Friends to drum up support for it. Richardson reported in 1860 that “It is now ascertained by an extensive correspondence that a large body of Friends cordially approve of an attempt being made for the promotion of this object…” (George Richardson Papers, TEMP MSS 378)
Richardson described the object as “aiding in the diffusion of Gospel light amongst the Heathen and other unenlightened nations”. This is language that Quakers today, might find uncomfortable. Further descriptions of the mission work Richardson had in mind, and was promoting widely among Friends, confirm how similar in nature it was with that of other denominations, as “labour for the spread of true Religion” by “scriptural education”. Quaker missionaries worked closely with the London Missionary Society at home, and with missionaries of other denominations in the field.
However judging this activity by modern standards would be somewhat unfair. In some ways, this enthusiasm for missionary work, in the context of the Society of Friends at that time, represented a radical challenge to quietism of preceding Quaker generations. It is interesting to see how Friends have viewed this work over the years. In a pamphlet marking the jubilee anniversary of FFMA in 1916, the tone was still evangelical. The writer asked of the Society: “How shall we take our right place in spreading the news that God is the Father, and loves us, that Christ His Son is the Saviour of the whole world?” (FFMA jubilee, 1866-1916, 1913)
However fifty years later, in an address on the centenary of FFMA, William Sewell, a relative of Joseph Sewell, one of the first Quaker missionaries, was looking at missionary activity with a more critical eye. He mentions the relatively poor understanding of non-western cultures and comments on the dangers, as well as virtues, of introducing “western values” into these cultures. He does say: “Friends fortunately did less harm than they might so easily have done”
(Continuing witness: addresses given at the Friends Foreign Mission Association centenary meeting, Friends Service Council, 1968).
We feel he really wants to say than other missionaries have done here, and attributes Friends’ comparably less harmful activity to their core belief in of that of God in everyone; he implies that although Quakers may have referred to people as heathens, they did not treat them as such.
Into the 1970s, Friends Service Council (successor to FFMA) was still referring to one of the strands of its work as “missionary activities”, and was a member of the Conference of British Missionary Societies, although stating that this body was “rethinking the concept of ‘mission’” (International Work of the Religious Society of Friends, 2nd ed., FWCC, 1975).
FFMA was run as an independent organisation funded by subscription with annual general meetings, and some non-Quakers were involved in both the funding and work. Its first projects were in areas Quakers already had some knowledge of and were led by strong individual characters who felt a calling to a particular area of work. And it was a calling – missionaries generally served for the rest of their life. This, in a time before air travel and health insurance, was at considerable personal cost, in terms of distance from family and home comforts, and potential for danger.
The first mission work the provisional committee approved was to send Rachel Metcalfe (1828-1889) to India to pursue “female education”. Rachel Metcalfe had worked as a domestic servant in younger life, and then as a seamstress. She had felt a calling to do mission work, and saw an advertisement looking for a sewing mistress at a school in India. Not having the means to fund her journey herself, she applied to Friends for help, and became the first missionary sent by the fledgling provisional committee for this work.
She set up several schools and an orphanage with the help of more Friends who joined her. She developed rheumatism in Benares which led to her use of a wheelchair by 1874, but this did not halt her work. Friends moved into Hoshangabad district as there were no other missionaries here, and started work which continued well into the 20th century there.
The potential danger these early missionaries faced was exemplified by a horrifying fate suffered by a Quaker missionary family in the other early field of work for FFMA: Madagascar.
Louis and Sarah Street, and Joseph Sewell were the first Quaker missionaries to go to Madagascar, in the second official mission of FFMA. They soon required assistance. William Johnson answered this call by going to Madagascar in 1871, Lucy Sewell joined him and they were married there in 1872. William became involved in educational work and became superintendent of a large boys’ school in Ambohijatovo. Johnson also oversaw the building of a hospital, designing it himself.
The Johnsons were asked to move to Arivonimamo to cover another missionary’s leave in 1895. At this time the French were at war with the Malagasy people, eventually “annexing” the island as a colony by 1896. Some Malagasy rebel forces blamed the defeat of the army, and deposition of the monarchy, on the recent conversion to Christianity, and harsh punishment was meted out to Malagasy Christians and missionaries. In November 1895, rebels overtook the Johnsons’ home and killed the couple and their child.
By 1889, the FFMA had 38 missionaries in the field, by 1902 that number had risen to 93. The activities of the association were capturing the attention of more than just a few enthusiastic believers in mission work, becoming a more general concern for the Society. This was reflected in the decision at Yearly Meeting, 1917, to have a “closer union” between FFMA, London Yearly Meeting and Ireland Yearly Meeting, essentially bringing FFMA under official management by both these yearly meetings.
World War I brought a challenge of a greater magnitude for Friends in overseas work. Here the focus was emergency relief in response to crisis rather than the ongoing education and medical activities done as part of mission work. Emergency committees were set up to organise this crisis relief. The lessons learned from this war would undoubtedly shape future views of overseas service.
In 1919 the Council for International Service was established. This was very much a product of WWI, and most of its activities were almost akin to secular mission work. Rather than spreading Christianity, CIS established a network of International Centres that promoted “international understanding” and nonviolent solutions to conflict. This was referred to as the ministry of reconciliation.
All this work was brought together under one banner in 1927. FFMA was wound up and the work of CIS incorporated into Friends Service Council. At this point FSC took on or started up projects in: China, India, Syria, South Africa, Pemba, Madagascar, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Poland, Russia, and Greece.
The nature of the work varied from place. Some work continued in a fairly traditional mission manner with building and managing of schools and hospitals. Other work included helping to support and sustain small communities of Quakers outside of Britain and building up networks of people sympathetic to Quaker values; it was this work which would lead to Quaker centres becoming refuges when Nazi oppression started threatening various groups in European society in the 1930s.
Quaker Peace and Social Witness, the successor body to Friends Service Council, today mainly focuses on promotion of nonviolence in areas of the world with conflict. This includes working with other churches to provide ecumenical accompaniers in Israel-Palestine; and helping facilitate a conflict resolution programme in East Africa. Friends World Committee for Consultation supports and encourages the Quaker faith around the world.
Henry Stanley Newman’s account of visiting missionaries in India.
While nineteenth to early twentieth century missionary activities, outlooks and language may to a certain extent be shaped by paternalistic, colonialist and racist attitudes, there is much to admire in the work of overseas missions. The stories of these ordinary men and women who gave their life’s work to the service of communities they joined overseas, often at great personal cost, can still prove inspirational and moving, over a century later.
9 Responses to 150 years of Friends and foreign missions
===
Jack Jones: A True Friend to China, the lost writings of heroic nobody Paperback – January 1, 2015by Andrew Hicks (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating
Paperback from AUD 114.60
1 Used from AUD 114.60
Earnshaw Books
Publication date
January 1, 2015
Product details
Publisher : Earnshaw Books (January 1, 2015)
Language : English
Paperback : 384 pages
Customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
-----
CPH
5.0 out of 5 stars An adventure story with a happy endingReviewed in the United States on September 3, 2016
The history of the West in China is a long and, from the point of view of the Chinese, a mainly unhappy one. From Britains' deliberate policy in the 19th century of encouraging opium addiction in order to redress their balance of payments problem, to the Boxer Rebellion and the subsequent looting of Chinese art, treasure and antiquities at the turn of the 20th, students of Chinese history will find it almost impossible to discover any interaction between China and the West that was not driven by greed and arrogance. That improved slightly following the 1911 establishment of a Chinese republic but only because by then the Western powers, principally the British, had everything they wanted from China, mainly the autonomous territories known as 'concessions' where the Chinese themselves were second class citizens, foreigners in their own country. So its a pleasure to be able to read about people like Jack Jones and his Anglo-American colleagues of the FAU China Convoy who came to the country during the Second World War in order help China during its struggle with the invading Japanese.
This period covered is one of the most significant eras in China's long history - the years between the closing stages of the war and the victory of the Communist revolution. The FAU did not operate in Manchuria, where the pivotal battles were fought and won, and had only a small presence in the east, where the revolution was consolidated but those areas are already well covered by others. Jones's perspective is from the West, and Andrew Hicks does a really excellent job of sorting the material available to Jones and reconstructing how he viewed events from these sources as they were developing.
This is a 'feel good' work for anyone looking for evidence of a positive interaction between the West and China but it also has a lot of period detail that will be valuable to students of China's modern history. The editor, Andrew Hicks, is almost invisible but his editing skill is evident throughout. This book is very much by and about Jack Jones, a witty, erudite and humane man.
Read less
A True Friend to China
5.0 star rating1 Review
Format
$ 45.00
Quantity Add to Cart
DESCRIPTION
Collected and edited by Andrew Hicks.
Large format paperback with 500 photos
Listen to a Podcast about the book from The China History Project here
Radio interview with the editor HERE
China in the late nineteen forties was another world, an ancient society still in the grips of feudalism and in desperate need of modernisation. There are many formal histories of those pivotal and turbulent times but Jack Jones, is among the few foreigners to have written contemporary accounts of day to day life there.
Together with his fellow members of the Friends Ambulance Unit ‘China Convoy’, his struggle to bring medical supplies and services to the poorest regions of China is vividly evoked in this book. Written by him for the China Convoy’s newsletter and lost and unread for more than half a century, these articles have recently been discovered in Quaker archives in London and Philadelphia.
An edited selection tells the remarkable story of how Jack and his team battled against all the odds in life-threatening situations to help relieve the overwhelming suffering of the Chinese people.
See more about this Book and the stories behind it at this Blog
Published by Earnshaw Books Ltd, Hong Kong.
Reblogged this on hungarywolf.
Greetings. Most interesting. Thank you. Tell me, what is the full title and reference for the image you give as “Henry Stanley Newman’s account of visiting missionaries in India” – I am not familiar with this manuscript.Best wishes, Tom Baker
Hello Tom! It’s from the Henry Stanley Newman Papers, Temp MSS 928 http://quaker.adlibhosting.com/Details/archive/110013727
Thanks for this fascinating post about Quaker missionary work which balances so well a great admiration for the selfless humanitarian work of the missionaries with our current concern for the context of the time in which a superior paternalism was always present. My research into the work of the Friends Ambulance Unit in China suggests how warmly the FAU members worked with a number of Quaker missionaries there such as Bill Sewell but how sceptical they often were of other denominations. Instances arose of missionaries welcoming them into their homes but refusing to admit their Chinese FAU colleagues. A number of passages in my book, A TRUE FRIEND TO CHINA mention these Quakers who were pretty remarkable people.
Very interesting post. Do you know if early Quaker missionaries ever wore any kind of uniform or insignia? I collect old photographs, and recently shared one that was taken in Metz, France, around 1870. It contains five people, three of whom are wearing armbands with an eight-pointed star. A reader commented that it looked like the symbol of the American Friends Service Committee. Do you know if that symbol was used prior to formation of AFSC?
Thanks and regards from Vermont, Brad Purinton
https://tokensofcompanionship.blog/2018/11/01/group-wearing-armbands-in-metz-france/
Sorry for the delay in replying to your comment, Brad. The answer is – yes! The star actually dates back to the Franco-prussian war of 1870. It was adopted again by AFSC in 1917. https://www.afsc.org/story/red-and-black-star
If you can access a copy, you might find this pamphlet on Quaker relief work during the Franco-Prussian War interesting: They chose the star, by William K. Sessions 2nd ed (1991)
Thanks so much! It’s likely that the sitters in my photo were five of the forty-one commissioners who went to France in 1870 from Britain and Ireland. I hope to identify them. The pamphlet sounds like a good place to start.
I haven’t found a digital copy of the pamphlet, but among the pages shared on your Facebook page (July 2017) is a photo of John Dunning, of Middlesbrough. He’s definitely at upper left in my photo! I read in “Old Cleveland” (1886) that he went to Metz in December 1870 with Thomas Snowdon, also of Middlesbrough, and Joseph Smith, of Louth, Lincolnshire. After returning to England, Dunning went to Metz again in late February or early March 1871 with a steam plough and “three steamship cargoes of seed-corn” (p. 115).