Amy Carmichael

Life

Amy Beatrice Carmichael was born on December 16, 1867, in Millisle, County Down, in the north of Ireland, the eldest of seven children. Her parents were devout Presbyterians. After her father's early death, she lived in the home of Robert Wilson, a leader of the Keswick Convention. The Keswick Convention was an annual gathering in England that emphasized a holy life of complete surrender to Christ, and Carmichael believed that she had been called to missionary service through this movement.

In 1892 she applied to the China Inland Mission, founded by Hudson Taylor, but was not accepted because of health concerns. In 1893 she went to Japan as a missionary and, after a stay in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), returned to England at the end of 1894. The following year she joined the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS), an organization that brought the gospel to Indian women. After arriving in South India in November 1895, Carmichael never returned home. Seriously injured in an accident in 1931, she spent most of the rest of her life confined to bed, and she died at Dohnavur on January 18, 1951.

Ministry and Achievements

At first, while learning Tamil, she traveled from village to village with Indian Christian women in evangelism. In the course of this work she learned that children from poor families were being dedicated to Hindu temples and sexually exploited. The beginning of this ministry is usually traced to 1901, when she took in Preena, a young girl who had escaped from a temple. That same year Carmichael settled at Dohnavur in Tamil Nadu, South India, together with the missionary Thomas Walker and his wife and with Indian coworkers. This settlement grew into the Dohnavur Fellowship.

The Dohnavur Fellowship established a hospital in 1912 and began receiving boys in 1918. In the mid-1920s it became independent of the Zenana Missionary Society. The children called Carmichael "Amma," the Tamil word for mother. Members of the fellowship wore Indian dress, and the children were given Indian names. The fellowship held to the principle of not soliciting funds but instead asking God in prayer to supply its needs. Carmichael is said to have cared for more than a thousand children over her lifetime. She wrote some thirty-five books, including Things as They Are (1903), which depicted the realities of the mission field.

Influence on the Korean Church

In Korea she has become known mainly through translated biographies. A biography by Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of Jim Elliot, was published in Korean translation in 2004 under the title Amy Carmichael (Bokinneunsaram). A biography of Carmichael was also included in the "Heroes of Faith" series published by Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Korea. Some ministries, such as L'Abri Korea, cite Carmichael alongside George Müller and Hudson Taylor as examples of the principle of not soliciting funds but asking God in prayer to supply their needs.

Assessment

Evangelicals hold Carmichael in high regard for her devotion in protecting exploited children, her missionary approach of drawing close to the local culture, and the piety she maintained in the midst of suffering. The Anglican Church is reported to commemorate her on January 18.

She has also been criticized. In the early years of her ministry, her practice of wearing a sari and doing menial work is said to have provoked opposition from some missionaries and Indian Christians. Because she took children in, she also acquired the nickname "the child thief." Today, her practice of staining her skin with coffee to appear Indian is regarded as problematic. Her strict methods of discipline, such as having ink applied to the tongue of a child who had lied, have also drawn criticism, although Carmichael herself regarded such discipline as springing from love. Some critics in the Reformed tradition fault the Keswick movement's understanding of sanctification (the life of growing in holiness), which Carmichael followed. They have also raised questions about the Sisters of the Common Life, a group Carmichael formed in 1916 on the model of the pre-Reformation Brethren of the Common Life.