William Carey
(This was taken from Randy Alcorn's writing on William Carey in both his book, Why Pro-Life?, and his online writing as well. Some changes have been made. Thank you to Randy for showing us that William Carey is a man we should imitate. Fresh back from India I am so thankful for William Carey and the seeds he planted in that land for the gospel. Oh how sweet the fruit is today from his labors and also from the disciple Thomas.)
In the late eighteenth century, there lived an Englishman by the name of Will. Will was an outspoken opponent of slavery. He went so far as to boycott sugar from the West Indies because it was the product of slavery. While still in England he began to preach as a Dissenter.
British law prohibited anyone attending a meeting of Dissenters, so Will committed civil disobedience every time he preached, and his parents and everyone who came to hear him preach did the same. (He failed in his first attempt to become ordained, because the ordination committee saying that his preaching was simply too boring.)
Then Will felt that God wanted him to go to India, where he entered as an illegal alien. He was shocked to discover that many of the Hindus took their infant children and exposed them to die as a holy act. The British government in India looked the other way because it didn’t want to interfere with the culture or religion.
But Will felt compelled to interfere because children were dying. He spoke out forcefully to prod both the British government and Indian society to spare the lives of innocent children and change the laws that permitted child-killing. As a result, eventually infanticide was abolished. Countless tens of thousands of children were saved by the activism of this one man.
The Hindus also practiced a form of euthanasia, in which they took the weak and sick and lepers and left them to die. Will and the missionaries who were his associates wrote and spoke against this practice also, finally resulting in prolife laws implemented by the government. But while exposure was still legal, the missionaries carried home people left exposed to die and nursed them back to health. Will provided medicine for such outcasts, and also actively opposed the various forms of slavery practiced in India.
Then one day Will witnessed something horrible—it was the practice called sati, where widows were burned alive on the funeral pyre of their deceased husband. After seeing one such death, he stood up in front of a group assembled to burn a woman alive. He told them the practice was wrong and they must not kill this woman. Seeing no other way to save her life, Will even lied and said the governor—general had threatened to hang the first man who lit the funeral pyre!
He then led a group of missionaries in protesting widow burning. He also set up public debates on the subject to expose what was really happening, and to bring God’s perspective to light. Missionary magazines in India published Will’s arguments against widow burning. As a result, in his lifetime the age-old practice of widow-burning was abolished.
A brilliant linguist and Bible translator, Will was also the British government’s official translator into the Bengali language. He received the official decree forbidding widow burning on Sunday morning December 6, 1829. Will was scheduled to preach the gospel in church that morning. But he didn’t show up. He called on someone else to preach instead. He dedicated the whole day to making the translation instead of going to church or preaching. Why? Because he knew that lives hung in the balance every minute he delayed.
Some criticized Will for his moral and political actions. You know what they said? They said, “That’s not what you’re here for. Focus on the main thing. Just preach the gospel and pray. Stay away from politics and moral issues. Be concerned about spiritual lives, not physical lives.”
Who was this radical? Who was this man involved in protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, attempts to change the laws, opening his home to the vulnerable and neglected, saving their lives from those who would have them killed? Who was this social activist so concerned about morality and laws and saving human lives? His name was William Carey. If you’ve ever taken a class in church history or the history of missions, you know that today William Carey is called “the Father of Modern Missions.”
When we think of the Great Commission and the modern missions movement, no other name is as prominent as that of William Carey. He went to India to win people to Christ and disciple them, and that’s what he did. In the process he sought to obey other parts of God’s Word too obeying the great commission, by personally intervening to save lives and laboring to change public opinion and evil laws. William Carey provides us a model for one of the great issues of our time—understanding the proper relationship of morality, politics, life issues and the great commission (Matthew 28.19-20: Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.).
Some Christians make the mistake of thinking social activism or politics are the answer to everything. They certainly are not. But many segments of the modern evangelical church have lost their activist heritage. Christian churches were once the conscience of the nation. When a nation like ours is in such moral decline it is because Christians have withdrawn from that God-given role and just blended in with the immorality of society.
