Friday, October 24, 2025

It is the 24th of October 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

We’ve done a show in the past on Adonirum Judson- one of the names in the early days of the modern missionary movement. Adonirum, along with William Carey and Hudson Taylor, deserve much of the ink that is spilled regarding them when it comes to one of the stories of 19th-century Christianity: the spread of the faith from the West to the rest.

Who is the “father” of modern missions? I’d probably go with Carey- but the “mother” is most certainly the first wife of Adonirum Judson- Anne Hasseltine- known as Nancy it was her work and writings which helped to popularize her and her husband’s work which made them the first American missionary “celebrities”… although I’d strip the term “celebrity” of any of the unfavorable connotations.  

Anne was born in New England in that fateful year of 1789- the fifth of five children to what she would consider nominally Christian parents- it was a happy childhood, but by her own account, spiritually shallow. Being generally progressive, her parents provided her with a formal education, and it was at the Bradford Academy in 1806 when she was confronted by her own sin and need of a savior. Through reading the Bible and the likes of the English Christian Hannah More, she became focused on leading a “meaningful” life of service. Her own enthusiasm for her faith became a catalyst for her father to become involved in the local church. Her father would become a deacon in the local Congregational church and, in 1810, opened the Hasseltine house for a meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission. Among those invited was a young student and prospective missionary from Andover Seminary: Adonirum Judson.

The two would correspond, and he would propose to her via letter. It would become a requirement of the Foreign Mission Society that missionaries must be married. In September of that year, she recorded in her diary that Adonirum had proposed and that marrying him would make her a missionary too, and that she had been given the opportunity to spread the Gospel abroad and that she was “willing to relinquish every earthly object… and give myself up to the great work”.

Her friends wondered if it was romantic puppy love or wanderlust, but she was convinced.  

In February of 1812, the couple married at her family home and set sail for India. You might know the story, but on the trip, the couple became convinced Baptists and would have to wait two years with William Carey while the American Baptists arranged for them to sail to Burma.

On the trip to Burma, she would suffer a miscarriage. They would suffer the death of their next child in infancy in 1815. For almost a decade, she served with Adonirum in missionary work and in translation- in fact, she was likely more skilled in learning languages and translating than he. She helped him translate parts of the Bible into Burmese, and she herself became the first Protestant to translate part of the Scripture into Siamese with her translation of the Gospel of Matthew in 1819.

She would return to the States in 1822 due to ill health, but part of this was providential, as she was able to continue to write about her and her husband’s work abroad. It was her publicity of the work being done, and her role in the popular imagination, which helped the missionary movement to explode in the way that it did. Her “A Particular Relation of the American Baptist Church to the Burman Empire” is a classic primary text of the world missions movement.

In 1824, she would suffer again, now back in Burma, with the arrest of her husband, accused of being a spy, during the British-Burmese war. Having lost two children, she did give birth to Marie, and the two would squat outside the prisons in which Adonirum was incarcerated to bring him and other prisoners food and clothing. She would smuggle in materials for Adonirum to continue to work and write until his release in 1826.

But the stress of it all and her frail constitution took its toll and within weeks, Ann would die- on this, the 24th of October in 1826. Their daughter Marie would die within 6 months.

Adoniram would remarry (twice) and continue his work and be rightly established as a giant of foreign missions- but it wouldn’t have been the same were it not for his first wife, the mother of modern missions, Ann Hasseltine Judson, born in 1789, she was 36 years old.

 The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and 2 Timothy 3:

 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 24th of October 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who reminds you that in 1989, a military junta changed the name from Burma to Myanmar, and while the UN recognizes Myanmar, the US and UK still use Burma- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who was always partial to the college rock band Mission of Myanmar, as the UN calls it… I’m Dan van Voorhis. 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.