In November 1850 David Staats Burnet was preaching in Cincinnati and generally involved in all kinds of affairs among the Disciples. In addition to preaching, he had editorial and publishing experience, to which he added talents in publicity and organizational development for missionary and publishing societies. Regarding missions, as the item below notes, the American Christian Missionary Society was operational by 1850, with the Barclay mission to Jerusalem as its first project. Burnet the organizer and publicist then turned to African fields. The item reproduced below was the lead article in The Proclamation and Reformer for that month:
D. S. B., “Missions in Africa,” The Proclamation and Reformer 1:11 (November 1850), 673-674.
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Missions in Africa.
Dr. Barclay is by this time, most likely, in Europe, en route for his mission among the primal races of our planet, and it is time that we had turned our eyes to other fields. At home our State Meetings and Districts are beginning to act with some efficiency and the work may be considered as fully under way. Where may we now turn our eyes? But why ask the question? Are not fields white unto harvest everywhere?
For some time past the Age [the Christian Age, edited by Burnet and others, begun in 1845] has contained accounts of various portions of Africa, –of the climate, productions, capabilities, etc. These articles have had especial reference to Liberia, as being the most accessible and the best known.
In regard to our knowledge of Liberia, it is now quite accurate. The colonization and commercial enterprises in connexion with the infant republic, have placed America in almost European communication with it, and this frequency of intercourse is being, and is yet to be, rapidly increased. As far as knowledge is concerned, we are now prepared for action.
On the question of accessibility the following may be noted as worthy attention: The trip to Western Africa is now constantly being made. The ocean is a small barrier. It can be crossed sooner and easier than the Rocky mountains can be reached. Any competent American, whether [674] white or colored, is ready for the work without further preparation. He can preach and the Liberians can hear, without the tedious labor of acquiring a living language. The colony having recently made a large purchase of territory, which gives them now a control of four hundred miles of coast, there is a new field opened to operate upon the heathen inhabitants of the territory thus acquired. Converts made from the present inhabitants of the older settlements would make capital missionaries, –being the best acquainted with the people and their language. When an impression is once made upon a foreign tribe, all experience shows that the native convert becomes, first, a most valued assistant, and then a principal laborer and manager of other native assistants. To arrest the slave trade on the coast of Africa will not only be a great achievement for Africa, and for Brazil, where the slaves are principally carried, but, if Christians improve the providential opening, the establishment of a fulcrum point for the lever of Christian missions, ready for action–ready for the action of Anglo-Saxon enterprise, will prove incomparably more valuable than the arrest of this Spanish and American commerce in slaves, on the Atlantic. It will stop the slave trade in Africa. It will staunch the fountain. It will cure it at the heart, by teaching the tribes who war upon one another to make slaves for the market, the sublime and humanizing principles of christianity.
All the facilities above enumerated are to be increased in efficiency by the line of steamers of the first class, fit for war or peace, which it was proposed in the late congress, to establish. This arrangement, will be most probably effected, and Africa become a stopping place, en route to the Mediterranean and central and northern Europe.
Who should go? A colored man if possible. it is not impossible that such a one can be found in Cincinnati. Let us try.
D. S. B.
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I claim no special expertise in the history of missions, although it is of interest to me. I am interested in missions and so am interested in the history of it. One trained in the techniques of historical analysis who also possesses a familiarity with the lay of the land in historical missiology (of the American, 19th. century variety) will be able to do far more than I with this little article.
However, it appears to me to be a very nice launching point for inquiry into the nascent Disciple missionary enterprise. A quick Ebsco search reveals no one has cited this article. Through Google I can locate only one citation, by David Edwin Harrell in Quest for a Christian America, at page 95, who cites it in passing as he summarizes a description of the mission to Liberia. There may be others, and if so I shall be glad to learn of them [see postscript].
Burnet’s article strikes me as a pregnant jewel: we see something of a missionary strategy, inklings of latent political overtones concerning the colonization of Liberia and how such a colonized Liberia might function on the geo-political stage. We see also some theological anthropology at work here. What else might we find in Burnet’s oevre that could fill out for us his conception of the “humanizing principles of christianity”? I should like to know.
Burnet claims a Christian presence on the ground in Liberia would “staunch the fountain” of the slave trade. A result of genuine Christian conversion among the warring local tribes would be their acquisition of a sense of human dignity. Thereby the slave trade would be eviscerated and “cure[d] at the heart.”
And having examined that claim about the Christian gospel and noted the effects of its preaching, we might ask what might a fuller picture of this initiative to Liberia suggests about how we ought to view the claims of the Christian gospel. We might also ask what this story teaches us about the leadership of the American Christian Missionary Society and those who supported them.
Perhaps a graduate student will take this up in a thesis.
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Postscript: I drafted this post some time ago and in the intervening time Shawn Daggett has published a fine summary of the Cross mission to Liberia. This is the mission that grew out of Burnet’s appeals, of which the article herein is only one.
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Regarding Burnet, see:
Noel L. Keith, The Story of D. S. Burnet: Undeserved Obscurity. St. Louis: The Bethany Press, 1954.
ESCM, 102-103 and 807.
eScriptorium 