William Carey

Life

Carey was born in a village in rural England. As a boy he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and as a young man he was converted and joined the Particular Baptists, a Calvinistic branch of the Baptist movement. He is said to have taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other languages while working at his trade. He later served as a pastor in Moulton and Leicester.

In 1792 he published the pamphlet An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. That same year he preached in Nottingham on Isaiah 54, and the words traditionally given as the gist of that sermon, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God," became widely known. In October of that year the Baptist Missionary Society was founded in Kettering, and Carey sailed for India the following year, in 1793. He never returned to England and died at Serampore in 1834.

Ministry and Achievements

• Theological case for missions: At the time, some Calvinists held that the conversion of the heathen was a work God would accomplish sovereignly and not something the church needed to undertake on its own. Carey argued that the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20 was an obligation laid not only on the apostles but also on the church of his own day.
• Work at Serampore: Beginning in 1800 he worked in Danish-held Serampore alongside Joshua Marshman and William Ward; the three men became known as the "Serampore Trio." That same year he baptized the first Indian convert, Krishna Pal.
• Bible translation and education: In 1801 he published the New Testament in Bengali. He and his colleagues translated and published the whole Bible or portions of it in many languages of India and Asia. He taught Bengali and other languages at the College of Fort William and took part in founding Serampore College in 1818.
• Social activism: He advocated the abolition of sati, the practice of burning a widow on her husband's funeral pyre, which the government of British India banned in 1829. Deeply interested in botany, he was also involved in founding the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India.

Influence on the Korean Church

There is no record of Carey having any direct connection with Korea. Following his writings and the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society, however, a number of mission organizations were established in Britain and the United States. The London Missionary Society is generally understood to have arisen as part of this movement, and Robert Jermain Thomas served under that society. In the Korean church today, Carey is frequently mentioned at mission rallies and at services commissioning missionaries. The phrase "Expect great things, attempt great things" is widely quoted as a missions motto across denominational lines.

Assessment

In the history of Protestant missions, Carey is regarded as a figure who led the church to organize itself and undertake foreign missions. He is also highly regarded for pursuing Bible translation, education, and social reform together.

He has also drawn criticism. His wife, Dorothy, did not want to go to India and suffered from mental illness amid the hardships of their early years there, which has led some to charge that he sacrificed his family for the sake of his ministry. Some also judge that, because so many languages were translated in so short a time, the quality of certain translations was uneven. In his later years, disputes over administration arose between the Serampore mission and the society's leadership in England, leading to a temporary break in relations. In addition, some studies take a critical view of the fact that his mission was carried out within the context of British colonial rule.