John G. Paton

Life

John Gibson Paton was born on May 24, 1824, at Kirkmahoe, Dumfriesshire, in southern Scotland. In Korean-language books his name is also transliterated as 존 페이턴 or 존 페이튼. As a young man he studied theology and medicine in Glasgow. Beginning around 1847, he spent about ten years as a city missionary with the Glasgow City Mission, working in the city's poor districts.

On March 23, 1858, he was ordained by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He married Mary Ann Robson on April 2, sailed for the South Pacific on April 16, and settled on the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides on November 5 of that year. A son was born on February 12, 1859, but his wife died of fever in early March, and the son died on March 20. When the hostility of the islanders put his life in danger, he left Tanna in 1862.

He then traveled through Australia and Scotland raising support for the mission. On June 17, 1864, he married Margaret Whitecross. Returning to the New Hebrides in August 1866, he opened a new mission station on Aniwa, an island near Tanna. From 1881 he served as secretary of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, working from a base in Australia. He died on January 28, 1907, in Canterbury, Victoria.

Ministry and Accomplishments

• Mission on Aniwa: He learned the island's language and translated the New Testament into Aniwan. The translation is said to have been bound and delivered to the island in 1899. He also built a home for orphans. His wife, Margaret, taught women and girls handicrafts, singing, and reading.
• Missionary mobilization: He led the Presbyterian mission in the New Hebrides and helped establish missions on other islands. He traveled to many countries recruiting missionary candidates and raised funds to build a mission ship.
• Opposition to blackbirding: He strongly opposed "blackbirding," the practice of kidnapping or forcibly removing islanders to work in other regions.
• Autobiography: His autobiography, first published in 1889, was widely read in the English-speaking world as a missionary classic.

Influence on the Korean Church

There is no confirmed record of Paton's direct involvement in missions to Korea. He became known to the Korean church mainly through translations of his biography and autobiography. A biography by John Legg was published in Korean translation in 2005 under a title meaning John Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific. In sermons and at mission conferences he is frequently cited as an example of a missionary who refused to abandon his mission field even after losing his family. Korean Christian media in Australia have also published articles on his life.

Assessment

Evangelicals regard Paton as a pioneer missionary who remained faithful to his calling amid suffering and as a social reformer who worked to protect the islanders.

He faced criticism even during his lifetime. Some Christians censured him for leaving Tanna in 1862. In August 1865, moreover, the Presbyterian mission synod, led by Paton, petitioned the Royal Navy. The petition, which cited damage to mission property and attacks on teachers and missionaries, prompted the intervention of the warship HMS Curacoa. As a result, he was fiercely denounced, including in the press. Paton himself later recalled that at that time he was the most reviled man in Australia. Because his writings depict the islanders' religion and customs chiefly in terms of cannibalism and fear, they are also read as sources that reveal the perspective of nineteenth-century Western missionaries.