Malcolm Fenwick

Life

Fenwick was born in Markham, near Toronto, Canada. Most Korean sources give his birth year as 1863, although some give 1865. He had no formal university or theological education and worked in business. He is said to have felt called to missions after attending a foreign missions conference in the late 1880s.

In late 1889 he came to Korea as an independent missionary and a layman, without being sent by any denomination or mission board. The Korea Baptist Convention dates his arrival to December 8, 1889. For roughly the next four years he worked in Seoul and in Sorae, Hwanghae Province, while learning Korean. In 1893 he returned to North America and trained under A. J. Gordon, pastor of Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston; during this period he embraced Baptist convictions and became a Baptist minister. In 1894 he organized The Corea Itinerant Mission.

In 1896 he returned to Korea and made Wonsan, Hamgyeong Province, his base. In 1900 he married Fannie Hinds, a Southern Methodist missionary who taught at Holston Girls' School. He died in Wonsan on December 6, 1935.

Ministry and Achievements

• Self-supporting mission: He developed an orchard and farm in Wonsan and used the income to fund his missionary work. He also introduced agricultural techniques such as the use of fertilizer and poultry raising to the region.
• Taking over the Ella Thing Memorial Mission: In 1895 Clarendon Street Baptist Church organized the Ella Thing Memorial Mission and sent missionaries to the Gongju, Ganggyeong, and Chilsan areas of South Chungcheong Province. When the mission withdrew because of financial difficulties, it handed its members and churches over to Fenwick in 1901.
• Founding of the Church of Christ in Corea: In 1906 he convened an assembly at Ganggyeong, South Chungcheong Province, which organized thirty-one congregations into the Church of Christ in Corea (Daehan Gidokgyohoe) and adopted a forty-six-article church code (denominational rules). The body established an annual general assembly, the Daehwahoe, as well as the Danghoe, and Fenwick served as its first gammok (head of the denomination). He sent Korean itinerant evangelists throughout the country and devoted considerable effort to missions in Manchuria, Gando, Siberia, and Mongolia.
• Education and literature: In 1903 he opened a Bible institute in Wonsan to train Korean evangelists. He translated the New Testament, publishing the so-called "Wonsan Translation" in 1919, and issued a hymnal, Bogeum Chanmi (Gospel Hymns). His English-language works include The Church of Christ in Corea (1911) and Life in the Cup (1917).

Influence on the Korean Church

In 1921 the Japanese Government-General of Korea forced the Church of Christ in Corea to drop the word "Daehan" (Korea) from its name, and it was renamed the East Asia Christian Church (Dong-a Gidokgyohoe). It was renamed again as Dong-a Gidokdae in 1933 and as Dong-a Gidokgyo in 1940. After liberation, in 1949, it adopted the name Korea Christian Baptist Church (Daehan Gidokgyo Chimnyehoe) and entered into partnership with the Southern Baptist Convention of the United States; this body continues today as the Korea Baptist Convention. For this reason, Baptists call Fenwick "the father of the Korean Baptist church." Influenced by Gordon, he emphasized Bible reading and stressed the hope of Christ's Second Coming and an earthly millennial kingdom. These teachings strongly shaped the faith of early Korean Baptists.

Assessment

Fenwick trained and raised up Korean evangelists without relying on outside support. He is therefore regarded as an example of indigenous, self-supporting mission practice at a time when a sense of cultural superiority was strong among Western missionaries. Baptist circles held commemorative events on the 130th anniversary of his arrival in Korea.

He has also been criticized:

• His opposition to secular education that taught evolution was a decision of faith, but critics note that it ultimately hindered the denomination's development.
• His centralized style of governance, in which Fenwick personally appointed all officers and dispatched them to their posts, has been described as departing from the Baptist tradition of local church autonomy.
• Key leaders such as Shin Myeong-gyun and Son Pil-hwan left the denomination.
• Because he was an independent missionary, his work received less financial support than the missions of other denominations, which is also cited as a limit on the church's growth. After his death, the denomination's strength declined for a time.